Featuring original artwork and liner notes, this latest release in the Avid Jazz Five Classic Albums series presents a second remastered two-CD set from Julie London.

On the intimate Lonely Girl (1956), the singer is accompanied solely by the gut-stringed Spanish guitar of the prolific Al Viola, whose playing graced hundreds of albums and film soundtracks (it's his mandolin playing you hear on The Godfather soundtrack). As heard on the title track, ‘It's The Talk Of The Town’ and ‘Don't Take Your Love From Me’, the duo combine to produce a collection of enormous lyricism and restraint.

By contrast, the remaining four albums Calendar Girl (1956), Julie (1957), London By Night (1958) and Send For Me (1961) feature London in larger orchestral settings.

Accompanied by Pete King and his orchestra, Calendar Girl features a song named after each month of the year, with Arthur Hamilton's ‘The Thirteenth Month’ appended for good measure. Composed by album producer Bobby Troup especially for the session, the dreamy ballad ‘February Brings The Rain’ is a highlight, along with a gear-changing ‘I’ll Remember April’ and a languorous ‘Memphis In June’.

With Jimmy Rowles playing piano, arranging and conducting, Julie contains a number of wondrous things, not least a glacially paced ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’. Standouts on London By Night, on which the singer is again accompanied by King and his orchestra, include Rodgers and Hammerstein's ‘That's For Me’, a song which featured in the 1945 musical film, State Fair, plus the magnificent aria ‘My Man's Gone Now’ from Porgy and Bess, while a brace of swinging Sy Oliver songs, ‘Tain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)’ and ‘Yes Indeed’ light up Send For Me, with Jimmy Rowles back at the helm.

The influence of London's close-mic’d, sotto voce susurrations continues to resonate to this day, from Diana Krall and Melody Gardot to Billie Eilish, who dusted down London's version of ‘I’m in the Mood for Love’ for a 2021 BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge session. For anyone new to London, this is just about the perfect place to start.