The Girl Next Door

Here's an excellent, chronologically presented introduction to Annette Hanshaw, a marvelous singer whose personality glowed with unique warmth, even when deliberately mimicking Helen Kane's baby talk or Ruth Etting's nice-girl persona. Annette Hanshaw generally surpassed her peers by being true to her own heart while developing a personal approach to intuitive jazz sensibilities and scat singing, wrapping herself around each melody with irresistible charm and everyday elegance, often tagging her recordings with the offhand phrase "That's all!" An excellent set of liner notes were written by Roy Evans, a dedicated fan who befriended the elderly chanteuse in 1969. His commentary provides valuable insight into just who Annette Hanshaw really was. Self-critical and unusually modest to the point of insecurity, the singer was notorious for requesting multiple takes in order to get a song exactly right. Both Hanshaw and Evans disparaged "I Love a Ukelele," recorded in April of 1930 with Frank Ferera's Hawaiian Trio. But this is a perfectly harmless Hawaiian novelty tune, and the singer sounds heavenly. She could sing anything, anything at all, in any company, and sound like nobody else. Throughout this delightful retrospective Annette Hanshaw may also be heard accompanied by her own Novelty Orchestra and her Sizzlin' Syncopators, and with Rudy Vallée's Connecticut Yankees, the New Englanders, and the Three Blue Streaks, as well as a quaint, unidentified male chorus on "Happy Days Are Here Again."