Lou Rawls - Lou Rawls And Strings (1965/2018)

In the spring of 1965, Bert Kaempfert scored a Top 40 hit with an instrumental version of the 1921 standard "Three O'Clock in the Morning," and Capitol Records put Lou Rawls into the studio to cut a vocal cover. When his single saw listings in the pop and easy listening charts his first chart appearances the label authorized an entire album of similar material. So, arranger/conductor Benny Carter put together a session with strings and a vocal chorus and came up with a bunch of other 1920s hits (plus a couple of ringers from the 1950s, "Now and Then There's a Fool Such as I" and "Cold, Cold Heart"). On Nobody But Lou, their previous album together, Carter had conceived of Rawls as a young Joe Williams and put him in a swinging big band context reminiscent of Count Basie and His Orchestra. Lou Rawls and Strings also swung, at least here and there, and Rawls attempted to put his own stamp on the corny material, adding such interjections as "I said" and "Talkin' 'bout" to the lyrics, and even throwing in the remark "Alaska ain't got nothin' on ya, baby," during "Cold, Cold Heart." But he was largely hemmed in by the material and the roomful of singers and musicians, resulting in a fairly schmaltzy record despite his and Carter's best efforts. Clearly, Capitol Records was not satisfied with Rawls' marginal sales after four albums and was casting about for a different approach with the singer. Reviving the 1920s probably wasn't the road to popular success, but Lou Rawls and Strings at least demonstrated that Rawls and his record company weren't going to settle for trying to clone Joe Williams. Later, their experiments would bear fruit.