Arkansas-born blues crooner Jimmy Witherspoon found himself in Stockholm, Sweden during the summer of 1964 for two sessions, one with a brassy big band, the other with strings and vocal chorus, both arranged by the great Benny Golson. The result was an album of pop tunes, blues ballads, a folk song, and a swinging rendition of the old Ruth Brown R&B hit “Teardrops from My Eyes.” As Gene Lees points out in his liner notes, the singer’s “blues viewpoint.Ê.Ê. obtains in whatever material he is doing. It imparts a curiously new coloration to some of the standard songs.” Noteworthy are ’Spoon’s personalized treatments of numbers associated with Tony Bennett (“I Wanna Be Around”) and Connie Francis (“Who’s Sorry Now’).

with big band arranged and conducted by Benny Golson