LISTEN TO ONE: More Than You Know
Sylvia Syms was in mid-career when she came to Prestige in 1965. A native New Yorker, she found the jazz clubs on 52nd Street as a teenager, and became a protégé of Billie Holiday’s. In 1941, she made her own debut on 52nd Street, performing at Kelly’s Stable. In 1948, Mae West, who was heading up a revue that played the swanky end of New York night life – the Copacabana and the Stork Club – heard Syms and signed the hard working singer for her revue. That led to future cabaret work, and an appearance on Eddie Condon’s Floor Show, believed to be the first live jazz show on network television.
Atlantic Records signed her in 1952 and she got her first record release, a 10-inch LP with a trio led by Barbara Carroll, also just starting on Atlantic. After a couple of records with Atlantic, she moved over to Decca, where she sang with an orchestra conducted by Sy Oliver, and her one big hit. My Fair Lady’s “I Could Have Danced All Night,” which won her a gold record. But her talent was best suited to a more intimate setting – Frank Sinatra had called he “the ultimate saloon singer” and Decca next put her with a jazz quartet led by two guitars, Mundell Lowe and Barry Galbraith.
As the decade rolled over, she recorded one-shot albums for Columbia, Kapp, and 20th Century Fox Records, the less successful arm of the entertainment conglomerate (although they were responsible for that Christmas staple, the Harry Simeon Chorale’s “The Little Drummer Boy”). Her recordings were generally praised for their intimacy and emotional honesty, though critics tended to find her improvisational skills limited.
Prestige signed her in 1965, and brought her to Englewood Cliffs for two sessions. The first, on August 11, matched her with a trio led by Kenny Burrell. The second, two days later, added Bucky Pizzarelli as a second guitar and Willie Rodriguez on percussion. This was an ideal setting for her, capturing the saloon-singer intimacy, and giving her the support she needed for some very satisfying improvisation.
The trio session featured mostly standards. “More Than You Know,” written by Vincent Youmans, lyrics by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu, sounds as though it could have been written for Syms, although virtually every other cabaret and torch singer seems to have felt the same way about it. First recorded in 1929 by Helen Morgan, it has been taken into the studio more than 400 times.
“I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over” (Allie Wrubel, Herb Magidson) is another often-recorded standard, but Syms and producer Cal Lampley weren’t wrong in picking them. The yoking of a good song and a good singer is always going to be welcome, especially with the tasteful and inventive backing of Burrell, Hinton and Johnson. “God Bless the Child” is going to be a tribute to Billie Holiday no matter who sings it, even if you secularize the lyrics (“So the Bible says” becomes “so the wise man says” in Syms’s version).
The second session, two days later, added the second guitar of Bucky Pizzarelli and the percussion of Willie Rodriguez, and song choices go a bit farther afield. The addition of Rodriguez opens the door to some Latin rhythms. “Brazil” was already a chestnut by the time Syms took it on, but the other Latin tune, “Cuando te Fuiste de Mi” (When you left me) is one that Syms, Lampley, Burrell and Rodriguez plucked from obscurity – at least, from mainstream obscurity. It had originally been recorded by Cuban singer Vicentico Valdes for the Seeco label, one of the more prominent independent New York labels specializing in Latin music (Celia Cruz was one of their artists). The bolero – romantic, melodic, gently rhythmic – is a nice fit for a cabaret singer, although not too many non-Latin artists incorporated it. Syms, with sensitive percussion work by Rodriguez, makes it work. “Cuando te Fuiste de Mi” would be rediscovered in the next decade by Charlie Palmieri, who reworked it with a salsa rhythm, and gave it new popularity, The two Prestige sessions became one album, Sylvia Is!, released in 1965 with testimonials on album cover from such notables as Woody Allen, Errol Garner, Tony Bennett – and Hollywood producer Ross Hunter, whose Wild is the Wind was the source of a song Syms included in the second session.
This was her only Prestige album, but she continued working and recording, mostly for smaller labels, with one notable exception: a 1982 album for Reprise, backed by an orchestra conducted by Frank Sinatra and called Syms by Sinatra. She sang her last note on May 10, 1992, when she was struck down by a heart attack in mid-performance – appropriately enough, in one of New York’s most iconic supper clubs, the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel.
