Big-band pop crooner
Perry Como was one of the first singers to take full advantage of the television medium when it charged across America in the late '40s, and as a result, he was RCA Victor's sugar daddy cash cow through the mid-'50s, selling millions of records. By the middle of the 1960s, though, the musical landscape, thanks to
the Beatles and the British Invasion, had changed incredibly.
Como didn't change, though, even if he modernized his songbook on occasion with songs that fit his warm, laid-back delivery. He had an unexpected left-field hit with
Don McLean's "And I Love You So" in 1973, a song produced in Nashville by none other than
Chet Atkins.
Como traveled to Music City to work on an album with
Atkins, and this set collects tracks from those and related sessions. It's not really country, or honky tonk, or anything like that, although
Como certainly knows what to do with a good country love ballad. It's really more like
Perry Como takes his thing to Nashville and records, and since everything falls into that easy, natural vocal style that was his signature, he didn't really need to put on the boots and the big hat. ~ Steve Leggett