Three Evenings with Fred Astaire (The Medleys) in Bloomington, MN

In 1958, 1959, and 1960,
Fred Astaire
starred in three television specials,
An Evening with Fred Astaire
,
Another Evening with Fred Astaire
, and
Astaire Time
. In each one, he performed a medley of songs he had introduced in his stage and movie
musicals
of the past, and those three medleys make up the bulk of this LP.
Astaire
is accompanied by an orchestra conducted by
David Rose
as he sings excerpts from
standards
by
Irving Berlin
George
and
Ira Gershwin
Jerome Kern
Dorothy Fields
Johnny Mercer
Cole Porter
Arthur Schwartz
Howard Dietz
, and others, his audiences breaking into applause at the recognition of each successive song. Something is lost without the visual aspect, particularly during the second medley, when
the Bill Thompson Singers
take up
"Puttin' on the Ritz"
as
clearly is off dancing. The LP puts the first two medleys on the first side and, having extra time to fill on the second, begins with two full-length songs that were performed in
but were not part of the medley, both of them
comedy
numbers by
Porter
:
"Miss Otis Regrets"
"Mrs. Lowsborough Goodby."
This material was not recorded with an eye toward commercial disc release, and the sound quality is not always high. But
is his usual charming self, and especially on the
songs he comes across well. And as he sings snatches from so many songs he sang in the movies, the listener becomes more and more amazed that one performer could be associated with so many classics. ~ William Ruhlmann