Blossom Dearie Blooms Again On ‘Discover Who I Am’ Compilation
Her admirers and collaborators ran the gamut from Miles Davis and Georgie Fame to John Lennon and Barbra Streisand.
Revered vocalist, pianist, and performer Blossom Dearie’s Fontana Records era of the 1960s will be anthologized on the six-CD boxed set Discover Who I Am (The Fontana Years London 1966-70), to be released on June 30.
Widely admired for her originality and taste and for her striking vocals, Blossom’s admirers and collaborators ran the gamut from Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Michel Legrand, and Georgie Fame to John Lennon, Kylie Minogue, Feist, Barbra Streisand, Christina Aguilera, and Elliott Smith. She was the first female artist to have her own successful independent record label, Daffodil and enjoyed a five-decade career from the 1950s onwards, variously based in New York, Paris, and London.
In the 1960s, she established her own publishing company, Blossom Dearie Music which still operates and represents her catalog. During this period, based largely in London, she recorded four albums for Fontana, Blossom Time At Ronnie Scott’s, Sweet Blossom Dearie, Soon It’s Gonna Rain, and That’s Just The Way I Want To Be. She became a regular on British television during this time, often appearing alongside the comedy duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, as appearances on the BBC helped her establish a worldwide following.
Discover Who I Am is a comprehensive document of that era, featuring all four Fontana albums, several singles, and 27 previously unheard tracks from her sessions of the late 1960s, discovered in the family home in East Durham, New York after her death in 2009.
These recordings were made with jazz great Ronnie Scott and his organization and include songs that appear nowhere else in her canon, such as renditions of early Blossom originals “Feeling Good Being Me,” “Inside A Silent Tear,” and “Long Daddy Green.” She also interprets George Harrison’s “Something,” Rogers & Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things,” Bacharach & David’s “What The World Needs Now,” ‘”The Joker” by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, and Buffy Saint Marie’s “Until It’s Time For You To Go.”
The audio for the set has been remastered, or mastered in the case of the tracks being released for the first time, by Simon Gibson at Abbey Road. Discover Who I Am also features a stylish hardback book with an extensive new biographical essay by Blossom’s friend Jaime Smith, representing her Daffodil label. There are many previously unseen photographs, provided by Blossom’s niece and nephew, who both preserve and curate Blossom’s songbook and whose work led to the discovery and presentation of this unreleased music.
Pre-order Discover Who I Am (The Fontana Years London 1966-1970), which is released on June 30.
