After spending decades in stage and movie musicals dating back to the 1940s,
Howard Keel surprisingly achieved a new phase in his career after he took a part in the prime-time soap opera Dallas in his sixties. It brought him a whole new audience, especially in Great Britain, where he had appeared on-stage in the West End long before, and when his debut solo album,
With Love for Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, was issued in the U.K. in 1984 under the title
And I Love You So, it made the Top Ten, inspiring the chart-making follow-ups Reminiscing: The Howard Keel Collection in 1985 and Just for You in 1988.
Keel retained rights to those albums, and he has licensed the material to Prism Leisure, which has configured it differently to come up with a series of compilation albums. In whatever combinations, the assessment of them is much the same.
Keel, his rich baritone largely intact, mixes performances of show tunes, some of which he performed on-stage and screen, with his takes on more contemporary songs. He is at his best on the former, naturally enough, though he certainly tries his best on the latter. Here, the medley of songs from Show Boat, recalling
Keel's performance in the 1951 film version, is especially welcome since it affords him a chance to take on "Ol' Man River," a song denied him in the movie. His renditions of "This Nearly Was Mine" from South Pacific, "I Won't Send Roses" from Mack and Mabel, and, particularly, the exquisite "Once Upon a Time" from All American are powerfully affecting. The more emotionally ambiguous '70s adult contemporary fare, such as "Sometimes When We Touch" and "I've Never Been to Me," isn't up his street, but his voice is still enjoyable.