Why Doris Day reigns as one of the great jazz singers
By Howard Reich
Chicago Tribune
Jul 03, 2019

Forget, for a moment, Doris Day’s famously bubbly persona in lighthearted Hollywood comedies and TV shows. Forget, too, her image as a purveyor of mercilessly upbeat hits of an earlier era, such as “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera).”

For beneath all the good cheer and easy-to-hum songs, beneath the high-toned exterior and the vanilla sentimentality lurked a superb jazz singer struggling to get out.

Explore Day’s best work (“Day by Day/Day by Night;” “Golden Girl” for example) there’s no mistaking where her heart and musical tastes lie. She sings of the glories of jazz and throws off remarkably fleet riffs alongside instrumental virtuosos in “Cuttin’ Capers” (1949). And she duets brilliantly with sublime trumpeter Harry James in “The Very Thought of You” and “Too Marvelous for Words” (1950), both from Day’s starring role opposite Kirk Douglas in “Young Man with a Horn” (one of the great – if slightly flawed – jazz movies, very loosely inspired by the story of doomed cornetist Bix Beiderbecke).

Indeed, it’s worth noting that some of Day’s most compelling Hollywood scenes unfold in jazz settings, whether she’s improvising with a trio in “Romance on the High Seas” or telling the dark story of jazz singer Ruth Etting in “Love Me or Leave Me” (1955).

It’s in the great repertory, however, that Day’s gifts fully blossom. When she gets to the bridge of another hit, “Secret Love” (1953), from the film “Calamity Jane,” the smoky incantations of her opening eventually give way to a burst of luminescence like nothing else in music of this era and genre. No one turns up the heat on a bridge like Day, and her recap of that passage ups the intensity still more.

On the rare occasion when she gets to sing with piano alone, as in “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” (1955), from “Love Me or Leave Me,” we hear not only another soaring bridge but also a three-in-the-morning, jazz-tinged world weariness long the province of Sinatra himself.
It’s the jazz-swing ethos that defines Day’s greatest achievements and serves as subtext to her most accomplished pop hits.

Which is why her recordings still enchant.
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