Vocalist
Rosemary Clooney again teams up with arranger
Nelson Riddle on this 1960 release. Although they had worked on
Clooney's radio show a decade earlier,
Rosie Solves the Swinging Riddle! (1960) is only one of two full-length studio outings the pair embarked upon. As the singer would later disclose, she and
Riddle were dancing to a tune of their own, and their affair ultimately dissolved both marriages. All the more interesting are
Riddle's comments on the back of the LP jacket that in part proclaim "Rosie and I are not exactly strangers" and the postscript that reads "Rosie, you are not the first to solve
Riddle...my wife and kids did it years ago!" That said, in the early '90s
Clooney revealed that
Riddle remained "the love of [her] life." Their respective affections definitely rubbed off within these grooves and the results are uniformly excellent on the dozen strong interpretations of familiar pop standards gleaned from the songbooks of Lerner & Loewe ("Get Me to the Church On Time"), Rodgers & Hart ("You Took Advantage of Me"),
Hoagy Carmichael ("I Get Along Without You Very Well"), and others. The Vernon Duke co-compositions "April in Paris" and "Cabin in the Sky" are exemplary examples of the dynamic duo at its peak. Both are driven at a pulse-quickening tempo, as is the spirited "I Ain't Got Nobody," which is earmarked by
Riddle's compact horn score and
Clooney's freewheeling lead. In 2004 the title was reissued in Bluebird Jazz's
First Editions series and the contents were extended with the 1961 non-LP
Clooney/
Riddle single coupling
Cole Porter's "Without Love" b/w "The Wonderful Season of Love (Theme from Return to Peyton Place)." The latter was ironically derived from a motion picture directed by
Clooney's then-hubby,
José Ferrer. Within the 16 pages of liner notes is an essay penned by
Riddle biographer Peter J. Levinson, and the text surrounds a handful of rarely published snapshots taken during the creation of the long-player. ~ Lindsay Planer