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JACKIE LEE – White Horses
Philips 1968 / Gonzo 2017
Irish songstress’ stellar hour – expanded
and enriched to add colors to her talent.
Were she as prolific as fellow dames Dusty and
Shirley, Jackie Lee – known as Jacky back in the ’60s – we would have mentioned
her name with the same reverence today, yet after a series of 45s, issued
between 1955 and 1973, the singer retired due to throat problems. Heard on
classics as diverse as Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Release Me” and Jimi Hendrix’s
“Hey Joe” – which entered the charts in 1967 – Lee remains an indelible part of
pop music’s DNA, her own career peaking the following year with a Top 10 single
“White Horses” that came from a children’s TV programme to spearhead the
artist’s debut, and penultimate, LP, ripe for rediscovery now.
There’s a great richness about Jackie’s voice,
even though Lee doesn’t resort to overtly impressive vocal inflections to adorn
a song in needless tinsel – that’s why these tapes ooze innocence and charm –
but “I Can Sing A Rainbow” brings it all home after the stereo title track has
wrapped her warm delivery in woodwind and caressed it with acoustic guitar. Done
in the same vein, “I Think I Like You” is timelessly deep, while pieces such as
“Too Many Chiefs (Not Enough Indians)” or “We’re Off And Running” are playful…
yet she could be classy, too, as illustrated by the panache of “Things I Don’t
Mean” with Dudley Moore on ivories. This reissue may have docked a couple cuts
from the album in order to expand Lee’s profile by including her personal
favorites, among them standards like “The End Of The World” and “The
Loco-Motion” – the latter one of a handful pieces by THE RAINDROPS, a quartet
Jackie was in – through which her personality shines ever so bright.
The artist’s optimism fills the orchestral sway
and celestial harmonies of “I Cry Alone” and the violin-elevated sadness of “The
Busker” that is the only remnant of an album she laid down with famed score
composer Christopher Gunning, albeit the most surprising is its boisterous bent
into boogie for “Here I Go Again” and rhythm-and-blues for “There Goes The Lucky
One”: and that could be the singer’s motto, because for all these track’s dated
production they stood the test of time to be as entertaining as they were
decades ago. Still here today, Jackie Lee deserves to be remembered.
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