Betty Hutton - Blonde Bombshell (CD)

All Music Guide

While her sister Marion Hutton became Glenn Miller's wholesome AllAmerican girl singer, Betty Hutton's wild theatrical and comedic abilities fueled her tempestuous career as an alternately rowdy/sultry recording vocalist and a flamboyant fireball motion picture actress. Living Era's tribute to Betty Hutton assembles some of her hottest, campiest studio recordings, including melodies from "The Stork Club," "The Fleet's In," "Incendiary Blonde," "Duffy's Tavern," "The Perils of Pauline," "Red, Hot and Blue" and "Annie, Get Your Gun," the film in which she was cast as a replacement for her counterpart in excessive living, Judy Garland. The recordings presented here were made between October 1941 and March 1954, with orchestras led by Jimmy Dorsey, Paul Weston, Joe Lilley and Adolph Deutsch; she also paired up with vocalists Howard Keel and Perry Como.Born Elizabeth June Thornburg in Battle Creek, MI, and raised in Detroit, little Betty came up in a rough and tumble environment; mom ran a ...speakeasy and at times she and her daughters had to pull up roots and scurry off into hiding with law enforcement officials on their trail. Certain personality traits developed during childhood and adolescence were never far beneath the surface of Betty Hutton's persona and delivery. Her magnificently bawdy self is best displayed in the amazingly funny "Doin' It the Hard Way"; her ability to put across a song with the doublebarreled bombast of Ethel Merman and the rafterringing rowdiness of Cass Daley is demonstrated with great violence on "Rumble, Rumble, Rumble." The combined nasality and bludgeoning intensity of her portrayal of Irish seamstress Pearl White is wonderfully jarring. Although she was capable of singing romantic songs with incredible tenderness ("It Had to Be You," "I Wish I Didn't Love You So" and "Now That I Need You"), Betty Hutton's most remarkable recorded achievements involved shouts, screams and rapidfire delivery, sometimes accompanied by a battery of sound effects worthy of Spike Jones or a Tex Avery cartoon. There exists a version of "Can't Stop Talking" from the film Let's Dance (1950) that typifies this vocalist's most outrageous behavior; in an apparent allegory of her "Blonde Bombshell" identity, she makes her entrance holding one sustained note over the wail of an air raid siren. Although that recording doesn't appear on this compilation, there are plenty of moments here that are almost as outrageous. - arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide Read more Less