Gloria Lynne established a small but loyal following with a dozen or so collections of standards recorded in the 1960s for the Everest and Fontana labels. At that time, Lynne always seemed mannered and derivative, too eager to echo Sarah Vaughan or Ella Fitzgerald or both. As a result, she managed to remain indistinct.
Well, four decades have passed and, in recent years, Lynne seems to have found her comfort zone, now echoing the blues and gospel underpinnings of her youth while revealing a vocal honesty that is utterly her own. On this wide-ranging, 11-track set, there’s genuine joy in her lithe “Mountain Greenery,” real satisfaction in her breezy “There Are Such Things,” naked, heartbreaking perplexity in her “How Do You Keep the Music Playing?” and pixilated charm in her “It’s Magic.” Heck, she even manages to take two of the lamest, limpest movie anthems of the 1970s-Streisand’s “Evergreen” (from A Star Is Born) and Superman’s “Can You Read My Mind?”-and make them refreshingly listenable.
