Bonnie Guitar Intimate Session

1-CD-Album Digipak (4-plated) with 28-page booklet, 14 tracks. Playing time: 31:54.

An intimate session with one of the unheralded greats of country music! Sexy, sultry, and riveting! A previously unissued 1959 session arranged and produced by one of the era's top songwriters, Don Robertson.

In 1957, Bonnie Guitar recorded the haunting original version of Dark Moon. Two years later, she signed with RCA Victor and recorded several sessions with a small band of Los Angeles session veterans, augmented by voices on one session, and strings on another. The result was some of the most blissfully poignant vocals ever committed to tape. On a par with Julie London, Peggy Lee, or any of the era's finest female artists. ,

Singing in her languid ultra-lounge style and playing her white Gretsch Country Club guitar, Bonnie Guitar brought her distinctive, sultry vocal style to songs that were originally hits for The Ink Spots (Maybe) and Sanford Clark (The Fool), plus newer material from young songwriters like Hal David, Jeff Barry, and Harlan Howard. ,

To that, she added a couple of her own originals. Four of these sides were released as singles, the rest remained unreleased in their original form until now. With new input from Bonnie Guitar, Todd Everett's liner notes tell the whole story.

Press:
Deluxe packaging and informative liner notes add the cherry to the cake.” Blue Suede Shoes, # 97

Bonnie Guitar ,
...She was signed to RCA by the label's West Coast A&,R head, Dick Peirce, whom she'd known socially. Peirce at the time was married to Gail Davis, a protégé of Gene Autry best remembered for having starred in the 'Annie Oakley' TV series. "Dick was talking about producing me, but somehow I was assigned to Darol Rice." ,

A reed and woodwind player, Rice can be seen and heard in numerous screen musical westerns from the 1940s onward, and, very conspicuously, as the bass clarinetist on Tennessee Ernie Ford's Sixteen Tons. Working out of RCA's Hollywood office, Rice specialized in gospel acts, though his credits also include jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, and some easy-listening albums under his own name (Peirce's credits included albums by Henry Mancini, Lena Horne, jazzman Shorty Rogers, and Chet Atkins' 'In Hollywood' sessions).

The session's arranger, Perry Botkin Jr., was familiar enough with all types of music that he wound up working as arranger and sometimes producer with Shelby Flint, Connie Stevens, Jennifer Warnes, and Harry Nilsson. He arranged The Righteous Brothers' Ebb Tide for Phil Spector, and the Lettermen's hit medley of Goin' Out Of My Head and Can't Take My Eyes Off You (he's also written numerous film and television themes and scores). ,

The backing musicians included members of Hollywood's old guard (mainly on strings) and relative youngsters like future 'Wrecking Crew' members Tommy Tedesco, Bill Pitman, Billy Strange and Lyle Ritz (including Bonnie, four guitarists played on both sessions, Bonnie sticking to rhythm).

First up was Bonnie's version of The Fool, originally recorded four years earlier by Sanford Clark and written by its producer, Lee Hazelwood, under the name of his then-wife. Botkin retains the loping guitar riff Al Casey had appropriated for the Clark record from Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightnin', though Rice places the guitars much lower in the mix...