01. If I Can't Take It with Me (2:30)
02. Whatever Lola Wants (2:15)
03. C'est Si Bon (2:58)
04. All I Want Is All There Is and Then Some (3:20)
05. La Dolce Vita (2:39)
06. Fascinating Man (2:25)
07. In the Evening When the Sunn Goes Down (2:19)
08. Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe (3:54)
09. Mountain High, Valley Low (2:36)
10. Lola, Lola (2:46)
11. It's so Nice to Have a Man Around the House (2:41)
12. Chez Moi (3:57)
13. Never on Sunday (1:54)
14. Always True to You in My Fashion (2:04)
15. I Want to Be Evil (3:31)
16. Looking for a Boy (2:59)
17. Angelitos Negros (3:26)
18. My Heart Belongs to Daddy (3:01)
19. A Lady Loves (2:32)
20. Mambo de Paree (2:52)
21. Lilac Wine (3:45)
22. Under the Bridges of Paris (2:41)
23. Oh, John (Please Don't Kiss Me) (2:45)
24. My Heart's Delight (2:16)
25. No Importa Si Menti (2:48)
26. Just an Old Fashioned Girl (2:51)
27. Do It Again (2:37)

Eartha Kitt epitomized the idea of the sex-kitten chanteuse, rising to fame with a nightclub act centered on her slinky stage presence and her throaty purr of a voice. As much as she enjoyed vamping it up, she also projected the image of an exotic international sophisticate, especially since she sang in several different languages. She brought a definite zest to her torch songs, and favored lyrics that painted her as the Material Girl of her time. Kitt's persona was so vivid and well-developed that she remained easily identifiable well after her early-'50s heyday, and it also helped her find success as an actress in movies, TV, and theater. Even if many remember her best as one of the actresses to play Catwoman on the '60s Batman series, Kitt was always a cabaret performer at heart, one whose act translated best in a live setting. She rose dramatically to fame from a childhood of neglect and poverty, moving from South Carolina to Harlem at age eight to live with an aunt. She toured internationally during her late teens as part of a dance company, and also developed a singing act. Signing with RCA, she scored numerous hits over 1953-1955, including "C'est Si Bon," "I Want to Be Evil," and "Santa Baby," among others; she later branched out into an acting career. Following her sharp criticism of the Vietnam War in 1968, Kitt endured a ten-year blacklisting in America and moved to Europe to make her living. She returned to the U.S. in the '80s and '90s, both as an actress and as a singer on the nightclub circuit. In 2000, she received a third Tony nomination for her work in the musical drama The Wild Party. Kitt continued performing and recording into the 2000s, but was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, and passed from the disease in late 2008. --- Steve Huey, Rovi

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

uploaded yandex 4shared mega mediafire zalivalka cloudmailru oboom uplea

back

1   Just an Old Fashioned Girl
2   Je Cherche Un Homme
3    I Want to Be Evil
4    Mink, Schmink
5    Let's Do It
6    C'est Si Bon
7    Annie Doesn't Live Here Anymore
8    Monotonous
9    My Heart Belongs to Daddy
10    Under the Bridges of Paris
11    I Wantcha Around
12    Lilac Wine
13    Somebody Bad Stole The Wedding Bell (Who's Got the Ding-Dong)
14    Thursday's Child
15    Angelitos Negros
16    Lovin' Spree
17    Toujours Gai (From "Shinbone Alley")
18    Uska Dara - A Turkish Tale
19    Proceed With Caution
20    The Blues
21    The Heel
22    Santa Baby

In 1996, taxi patrons in New York were greeted with a tape of Eartha Kitt's famous "R"-rolling cat growl: "Wrrrrrrrrow. Cats have nine lives, but you have only one. So buckle up." This was a reference to the source of her fame for the under-50 crowd: her stint as Catwoman on the '60s Batman TV series. But her abilities as a tantalizing, talented seductress stretch further back to her early '50s singing career, wearing tight-for-then voluptuous gowns instead of a catsuit. Both Kitt and her records predated rock & roll, but her 1953-1955 success was a hint that bad girl behavior would become prevalent. Never mind Phil Spector's later girl groups; Kitt could sully a polite orchestral backing with her sex kitten purring on hilariously libidinous numbers such as the number 22 hit "I Want to Be Evil," the number four hit "Santa Baby," "Mink Schmink," and her standard "C'est Si Bon," another Top Ten hit. Hearing her saucy tongue wrap around the words is amusing, but Kitt makes it sound so exotic, dangerous, and impetuous, you want to take her on. If this was torch singing, she was going to burn down the clubs she headlined. If she had been more R&B and more gimmicky, she could have been the female Screamin' Jay Hawkins. You can hear it in every syllable, the attitude and raucous delivery that made her a song stylist more than a pop singer, allowing her to survive the coming barrage of guitars and drums that would initially bury her career. She could always prosper in her other haunts of stage and screen, and in her nightclub act. But a collection of the best of her old LPs, RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt and The Bad Eartha is no "bad" idea. Tangle with her if you dare. ---Jack Rabid, AllMusic Review

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett bayfiles

back

1-1 	Let's Do It
1-2 	My Heart Belongs To Daddy
1-3 	C'est Si Bon (It's So Good)
1-4 	A Woman Wouldn't Be A Woman
1-5 	Lazy Afternoon
1-6 	Chantez-Les Bas (Sing 'Em Low)
1-7 	Annie Doesn't Live Here Anymore
1-8 	Honolulu Rock And Roll
1-9 	Careless Love
1-10 	Mambo De Paree
1-11 	Oh John
1-12 	My Daddy Is A Dandy
1-13 	Under The Bridges Of Paris
1-14 	Lovin' Spree
1-15 	If I Was A Boy

Long before she was Catwoman, Kitt was the ultimate feline seductress. Here are 40 alluring classics: her mid-'50s hits Uska Dara-A Turkish Tale; C'est Si Bon; I Want to Be Evil; Santa Baby; Somebody Bad Stole De Wedding Bell , and Lovin' Spree ; her own spins on Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; April in Portugal; My Heart Belongs to Daddy; Careless Love; St. Louis Blues; Lullaby of Birdland; Let's Do It; Sweet and Gentle , and more! --- -Editorial Reviews, amazon.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to gett

back

2-1 	I Want To Be Evil
2-2 	I'm A Funny Dame
2-3 	Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
2-4 	The Memphis Blues
2-5 	Lullaby Of Birdland
2-6 	Beale Street Blues
2-7 	Avril Au Portugal (April In Portugal)
2-8 	Toujours Gai
2-9 	Mink, Schmink
2-10 	Take My Love, Take My Love
2-11 	Lisbon Antigua
2-12 	Strangers In The Starlight
2-13 	Je Cherche Un Homme (I Want A Man)
2-14 	Dinner For One Please, James
2-15 	St Louis Blues

Eartha Kitt epitomized the idea of the sex-kitten chanteuse, rising to fame with a nightclub act centered on her slinky stage presence and her throaty purr of a voice. As much as she enjoyed vamping it up, she also projected the image of an exotic international sophisticate, especially since she sang in several different languages. She brought a definite zest to her torch songs, and favored lyrics that painted her as the Material Girl of her time. Kitt's persona was so vivid and well-developed that she remained easily identifiable well after her early-'50s heyday, and it also helped her find success as an actress in movies, TV, and theater. Even if many remember her best as one of the actresses to play Catwoman on the '60s Batman series, Kitt was always a cabaret performer at heart, one whose act translated best in a live setting. She rose dramatically to fame from a childhood of neglect and poverty, moving from South Carolina to Harlem at age eight to live with an aunt. She toured internationally during her late teens as part of a dance company, and also developed a singing act. Signing with RCA, she scored numerous hits over 1953-1955, including "C'est Si Bon," "I Want to Be Evil," and "Santa Baby," among others; she later branched out into an acting career. Following her sharp criticism of the Vietnam War in 1968, Kitt endured a ten-year blacklisting in America and moved to Europe to make her living. She returned to the U.S. in the '80s and '90s, both as an actress and as a singer on the nightclub circuit. In 2000, she received a third Tony nomination for her work in the musical drama The Wild Party. Kitt continued performing and recording into the 2000s, but was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, and passed from the disease in late 2008. ---Steve Huey, allmusic.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to gett

back

3-1 	Mademoiselle Kitt (Mesi Julian)
3-2		If I Love Ya, Then I Need Ya; If I Need Ya, Then I Want Ya Around
3-3 	Just An Old Fashioned Girl
3-4 	Two Lovers
3-5 	Fascinating Man
3-6 	Hey Jacque
3-7 	Somebody Bad Stole The Wedding Bell (Who's Got The Ding-Dong)
3-8 	Uska Dara - A Turkish Tale
3-9 	The Day That The Circus Left Town
3-10 	If I Can't Take It With Me (When I Go)
3-11 	Looking For A Boy
3-12 	Thursday's Child
3-13 	Monotonous
3-14 	The Heel
3-15 	Apres Moi

A life is very difficult to capture, whatever medium or genre one works in: life, after all, is experienced from the inside, being predominantly made up of what Virginia Woolf termed ‘moments of being’. And yet we console ourselves with the idea that actions speak louder than words; that by examining one another’s behaviour we get a sense of someone’s essential self. This, of course, presupposes the stuff of inner experience finds full and meaningful expression in concrete, observable actions.

Nowhere have I sensed so thoroughly the futility of this presupposition than in John L Williams’ America’s Mistress. Here, the gap between Williams’ description of the life lived and his subject’s experience of living seems to be so great that upon closing the book my feeling was one of total bewilderment. Williams himself acknowledges the slipperiness of Eartha Kitt, drawing attention throughout the book to the many, often 'contradictory' roles she adopted throughout her life. But he fails to transform what he describes as a 'morass of detail' into a portrait of a living, breathing person.

It is difficult to tell whether this is due to Kitt’s essential mystery – perhaps the result of such self-mythologising that fiction and reality appeared to co-exist in her mind (the result, Williams says, of her wanting to 'build her own reality') – or simply to the nature of her career, which relied upon her cultivating a number of conflicting personas. What is clear is that the confusion of the book reflects the confusion of its subject. At one point, Williams describes Kitt’s own autobiography as 'a frustrating book, an impressionistic affair that leaves much unanswered'; yet this serves as a more than adequate description of his own biography.

Eartha Kitt was born Eartha Mae Kitt in the South Carolina lowlands in 1927. She never met her father (a white doctor named Starkie), and her black mother – who worked for Starkie as a domestic servant – abandoned her when Eartha was around three or four years old. Eartha’s existence, according to Williams, was 'a shame and a scandal', and Kitt was haunted for the rest of her life by her mother’s act of abandonment. Williams plots these early years of her life – including her move to 1930s Harlem and subsequent training at the Dunham Company studio – with some degree of energy. He includes vivid descriptions – frequently based on his own interviews and research – of the New York music scene and its dynamic array of characters. (In fact, it is when he strays off-topic and writes about the peripheral players in Eartha’s life that the prose becomes playful and absorbing.) In light of this – since Williams allows himself a number of little detours – the first half of the book is far richer and more rewarding than the second.

Unfortunately, once Eartha’s career begins to enjoy some success, the descriptions become repetitive and monotonous. After working in Europe as a cabaret artist and actress, she returns to America, and Williams documents endless shows, outfits, venues. He also – somewhat annoyingly – plays a ridiculous game of ‘did she-didn’t she’ with just about every man Kitt meets. His obsession with detailing the effect she had on men, as well as the abundant quotes from (male) admirers or reviewers describing her 'strange intensity' and 'intensely dramatic eyes' starts to grate. By the time the action gets interesting again – Kitt’s involvement in the Civil Rights movement and her very public strop at the White House – I felt almost totally disengaged from the story.

The most frustrating thing about America’s Mistress, however, is the fact that Williams identifies exactly why Kitt is such an interesting character: she is always on the cusp – black/white; sexy/childlike; vulnerable/strong. She is always 'the odd one out' – and always, it seems, at odds with herself. Yet he can’t seem to get to grips with Kitt’s 'tumultuous life'. It’s as if the material overwhelms him. The other problem is that her career – like her personality – is so utterly unpredictable and unconventional. She is both cabaret artiste and serious actress; sultry 'sex kitten' chanteuse and wannabe intellectual. There are moments of insight where we glimpse the strange combination of fragility and ambition which seem to drive her. (Most obviously these moments come when Williams allows Eartha herself to speak; as an interviewee she is most revealing.) But for the most part, he makes no attempt to truly draw out and analyse her character.

Hidden beneath salacious speculation (which frankly becomes banal) and the obsessive drawing out of details relating to Eartha’s sexual life there is a complex, gripping story. Her behaviour is often unpredictable; occasionally downright bizarre, hinting at the need for a much deeper analysis of this complicated and conflicted woman. Williams, in my view, just isn’t the man for the job. ---John L Williams, newwelshreview.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to gett

back