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Face of My Love by Ken Greves (CD, 2009)
the-forgotten-vault (92)
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About this product
Product Identifiers
Record LabelCdb, CD Baby
UPC0884501209311
eBay Product ID (ePID)25046048234
Product Key Features
FormatCD
Release Year2009
GenreJazz
ArtistKen Greves
Release TitleFace of My Love
Dimensions
Item Height0.40 in
Item Weight0.25 lb
Item Length5.60 in
Item Width4.90 in
Additional Product Features
Number of Tracks16
Number of Discs1
TracksDaydream, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Where Have You Been?, You Stepped Out of a Dream/Dearly Beloved, Everything I Have Is Yours, I Thought About You/My One ; Only Love, Witchcraft/That Old Black Magic, It Was Written in the Stars, Alone Together, My Flame Burns Blue, Day in Day Out, There's a Lull in My Life, Chelsea Bridge, Someone to Light Up My Life, Don't Look Back, By Myself
NotesThe most important point that Ken Greves brings out in his interpretation of "It Was Written In The Stars" is that here is one of the major song texts to take us through the inevitable stages of a relationship. In fact, hearing it here, in this context, it makes me realize that "It Was Written In The Stars" (from the 1948 film Casbah), philosophically at least, sounds like it could have come from the score to Kismet. In American pop culture, the idea of fate is a very Middle Eastern thing: Casbah was set in Algiers and Kismet took place in Baghdad. And in fact there is something of a connection between the two works: at around the time Harold Arlen was composing Casbah, he helped out the composers Robert Wright and George Forrest. They were then considering the potential of a musical based on the old play Kismet, and it was Arlen who gave them the idea to use the work of the late Russian composer Alexander Borodin as a starting point. Which goes to show here that the concept of kismet works in putting together a classic musical as well as in a relationship, as Ken Greves deftly illustrates over the course of 16 songs in his first album The Face of My Love. All these points went through my mind, but the main thought I kept flashing back to was, "Yeah, he's like totally right about that!" - "he" in this case being a speaker-composite of both Ken Greves and lyricist Leo Robin (the two become one and the same). When you're deeply in love on that profound a level, you really do feel as if your relationship was pre-ordained by the stars, the fates, the Gods, or whatever. You don't question the idea that, "what was written in the stars must be," or, as they say in Kismet, "So it is written, so it shall be done." Ken takes us through all the stages implicit in the process: of being alone, falling in and then out of love, and, at the end, being alone again - waiting for the cycle to start anew. The Face of My Love begins with Billy Strayhorn's "Day Dream" (the first of three samples of Strayhorniana here) a song about being hopeful about finding love, and from there proceeds, logically, into "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," a song about meeting someone. Greves brings out the meaning of the texts in thoughtful and original ways: in "Day Dream," near the end of the second chorus, he deliberately skips a line or so of the lyric, which underscores the unfocused, day dreamy feeling of John Latouche's words; in "Nightingale," also near the end of the song, he spaces out the notes on "like an echo far away" to accentuate the distant, echo-y feeling. "Where Have You Been" and "You Stepped Out of a Dream" (as well as "Dearly Beloved") are all songs of romantic discovery: when you find Mr. Right (or even "Mr. Right Now," as they say in Lifetime TV movies) your first question is invariably "Where Have You Been?" (The former is that great rarity, a Cole Porter song that's rarely done.) "Everything I Have Is Yours?" and the magical pairing of "Witchcraft" and "That Old Black Magic" are songs of high romantic rapture, and, in both cases, Greves awakens the inner song nerd in all of us by throwing in verses that most of us will only know (if at all) from the original sheet music. I surely can't think of many examples of anybody actually singing the verses to "Everything" and "Witchcraft"; in the case of the latter, especially, it's a real mitzvah to hear this imaginative intro - the brilliant Carolyn Leigh was particularly adept at versecraft. The magic medley is framed by a particularly compelling piano figure from accompanist Wells Hanley; by hammering away lightly but insistently on a single note, he creates an enchanted sound suggestive of the elves in Santa's workshop. The kismet-driven "It Was Written In The Stars," "Alone Together" (done mostly just with bassist Tom Hubbard) and "My Flame Burns Blue" (done as a voice-and-piano duet with Mr. Hanley) show the relationship getting more serious. "Flame" is Elvis Costello's take o
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