Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes (1939) - Maxine Sullivan

from Victor 26260 78 rpm
with Claude Thornhill and his orchestra - arranged by Claude Thornhill
Music and Lyrics by Ben Jonson

[@Alex-ow5fi]

First! Absolutely gorgeous song with an equally gorgeous singer. 🎤 ❤

[@Trombonology]

Maxine is known to have grown very weary of "Loch Lomond," the number that made her famous (imagine how often she was called upon to perform it!). Pianist Claude Thornhill, responsible for that chart, then proceeded to come up with arrangements of several more traditional songs. This side is one of my favourites in this series. As we can hear, Maxine's pure tone and beautiful diction are very well-suited to the material. The lightly swinging background, featuring Buddy Banks' tenor and Lloyd Reese's trumpet, remind us of the actual time period, but Maxine's voice is timeless -- at once very old and very new.

[@miltonmoore8369]

BORN MARIETTA WILLIAMS IN 1911, SHE DIED AT AGE 75 FROM A SEIZURE IN 1987. I WONDER WHY SHE CHANGED HER NAME? MY MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME IS MARIETTA AMELIA GRAHAM. WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE NAME MARIETTA?) PEGGY LEE CITED MAXINE AS ONE OF HER EARLY INSPIRATIONS. NICE SONG. WHEN I SAW THE TITLE OF THE SONG I RECOGNIZED THE FAMOUS POETIC LINE, BUT MISGUESSED IT WAS WRITTEN BY ROBERT BROWNING, THEN SAW BEN JOHSON CITED AS THE LYRICIST SINCE THE TITLE OF THE SONG IS THE FIRST LINE FROM HIS IMMORTAL POEM, "TO CECELIA." JOHNNY CASH AND SCORES OF OTHERS HAVE RECORDED THIS GEM. (I couldn't understand many of the words due to the way Maxine was pronouncing them.)