Million Memories

Includes liner notes by Ted Lewis.
Digitally remastered by Magmasters (England).
Ted Lewis was 65 years old and nearly in his 50th year in entertainment when he recorded this LP, also his last, in 1957. While most performers could properly be presumed to suffer from some decline in their skills and abilities, Lewis carried on in this last extended visit to the recording studio without skipping a beat, and the result is not only one of the finest bodies of music in his career -- a career that included 102 chart records between 1920 and 1938 -- but one of the best bodies of big-band dance music that one is likely to find in modern fidelity. No, none of the jazz legends that played with him in the 1920s or 1930s are present, but the band is a good one and Lewis' singing, narrations, and personality all create a flow across these 11 songs representing much of his history that goes beyond beguiling -- it's hypnotic, not a weird, big-band and nostalgia-based form of psychedelic experience, but almost a multi-media one because it's impossible while listening to the material not to imagine Lewis standing there doing these songs in that strange yet enchanting style. It's almost an early 20th-century brand of rap music. Reissued on CD in early 2000, the fidelity is impeccable, and the release is an essential part of any collection of popular music from before the rock & roll era. ~ Bruce Eder