AMG Review of Complete Jerome Kern Songbooks

Leo Stanley
All Music Guide

The Complete Jerome Kern Songbooks combines the three individual discs in the Jerome Kern Songbook series -- A Fine Romance, All the Things You Are, and the instrumental Yesterdays -- in a mid-priced slipcase. All three discs are intelligently compiled and presented. Jazz purists may balk at various-artists collections, but compilations rarely come as good as this. It may rely exclusively on the Verve roster, but Songbooks draws a good portrait of the songwriter through interpretations by Ella Fitzgerald, Margaret Whiting, Cassandra Wilson, Sarah Vaughan, Arthur Prysock, Fred Astaire, Anita O'Day, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Stan Getz, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Roy Eldridge, Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson, among many others.