Shirley Bassey, famous in the United States for her recording of "Goldfinger" is an exceptional British singer. Born in Wales, "The Fabulous Shirley Bassey, released in 1959, was her second album. Always a big voice, she strikes me as a powerful wind machine, and even the orchestration around her has to go from 8 to 10 in volume control. Which sounds a bit much, but the fact is her voice has a lot of warmth, and on the "Fabulous" album there are classic songs. "The Man Who Got Away," "Cry Me A River," "I've Got You Under My Skin," and others on this disc are superb pieces of contemporary music.
As part of my obsession with British pop music before the Fab Four, Bassey is a key showbiz figure that expressed the grit and soiled nature of pop music at the time. Hearing the recordings of that period it sounds light and fluffy, but I suspect it's aural candy to disguise the roughness of the post-war U.K. years. Bassey is not a light singer, but a performer of great attitude and brings magnificence to the main meal. When one digs up the beautiful landscape of a part of the world that suffered greatly, one can find great art. Shirley Bassey is such a fine, and the "Fabulous Shirley Bassey" is an album full of polished gems, but there is a lot of grit within its textures.
