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How to own the Album

Any questions.. just ask! - ronnie at ronniewilliams dot com

There are also live versions of Route 66, Mack the Knife, I Don't Worry About a Thing and Ain't Got Nothin' but the Blues. Studio tracks include Orange Colored Sky, Gravy Waltz, Fever, Cast Your Fate to the Wind and One Note Samba-Desafinado medley.   Four original songs are also included along with a bonus VCD disk containing a video clip version of You're the One.  Some more song info:

Mack the Knife

The first version I ever heard of this great Kurt Weil song was of course the one by Louis Armstrong... you know... the "dig man!.. there goes Mack the Knife" intro.   I was eleven when I first heard Bobby Darin's arrangement... and it knocked me out... has to be the ultimate 'key change' song.      I must have sung it a thousand times and have never seen it fail to animate the most wooden of audiences.

I Don't Worry About a Thing

It's really hard with Mose Allison songs..   I love so many of them... but a hook steeped in light hearted cynicism that reads...

'I don't worry about a thing 'cos I know nothin's gonna be alright'

...is hard to resist.    That kind of Spike Milligan-esque logic that throws a custard pie in the face of.. and helps one through.. the most serious of circumstances. 

Route 66

Although I had heard Nat King Cole's version of this Bobby Troup number when I was a kid... it was the Stones handling of the song I included at seventeen (sounds like a song title) in the repertoire of my band...  at our first practice in the lead guitarist's garage.     
I've been singing it ever since... well... I stop when I'm eating...  this time performing it in the manner of Charles Brown... as also borrowed by Natalie Cole on her amazing 'Unforgettable' album... with Ray Brown's express train bass.

Cast Your Fate to the Wind

Mel Tormé died at 73 on June 5 1999.  Should you not have any Mel  in your collection first off  treat yourself to the excellent Rhino 'The Mel Tormé Collection 1944-1985'.   One of many high spots is the 15 minute Gershwin medley which would have been brilliant if studio-recorded.. the fact that it's live makes it stunning.

As a kid I was a weekly Saturday matinee patron and vaguely remember first seeing Mel Tormé playing 'Marty' in the 1944 movie 'Higher and Higher' (not in first release I hasten to add!)... in which Frank Sinatra appeared as himself.    
Well I was Fourteen... and Mel's version of this Vince Guaraldi and Frank Werber (lyrics) composition came up on my then hip transistor radio.
It was winter... cold.. windy and dark in late afternoon...(like it might be tropical!) and the atmosphere created by the lonely piano intro.. the string arrangement (which I now know were the work of Marty Paich).. and Mel's beautiful vocal stopped me in my adolescent tracks!        Just love the way it breaks into four at the bridge.
Here again... I've sung it since then... and with each successive cast of my fate to the wind.. and there have been many...  it has become more pertinent.

Since Mel wasn't crazy about much from his Atlantic sessions.. I doubt that 'Fate' and 'Gravy Waltz' would have been among his personal favorites.. however.. looking beyond the obligatory Sixties' 'yeah! yeah! yeah!' chants you will find that Tormé timelessness.. and it sure got through to at least one kid!

Gravy Waltz

I'm amazed that this song isn't better known...  it charted for Mel Torme after 'Cast your Fate'... though didn't share quite the same success.     Still.. coming hot on the heels of 'Fate'.. I naturally devoured it.. by now being a fan.
It was written by Steve Allen and Ray Brown which would explain why it's such a cool... yet unusual song.     Steve Allen held Mel in very high regard.       He and Mel were at Chicago's Hyde Park high school together.. the song may well have been written for Mel.
It sounds a bit politically incorrect in the Second Millennium to be singing lyrics like... 

'pretty baby's in the kitchen this glorious day'... and... 'she really ran to get the frying pan, when she saw me coming' 

...although I suspect we may be encountering a little bluesey innuendo in there!  It's just a great melody to sing... I've loved it from the moment I first heard it all those years ago.

Orange Colored Sky

Another Nat King Cole song that's simply fun to sing.. just love where it goes..

..'cos the bottom fell out and the ceiling fell in I went into a spin and I started to shout this is it'

Without a breath!   Just another cute song from the forties.