Dawn Derow - My Ship: Songs From 1941

World War II seems so far behind us. But in her acclaimed cabaret show, My Ship: Songs from 1941, and in this album of it's music, Dawn Derow-a smart, sexy, expressive, and vocally polished woman of today-evokes that year as vividly as if it were happening now. You'll be plunged into a time of massive upheaval and all it's colliding emotions-the wistfulness, the loss, the giddy escapism that music could bring. Directed by the acclaimed cabaret singer Jeff Harnar, My Ship, which premiered in 2017, earned MAC Awards (from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs) for both her and Harnar. The show is, in part, a tribute to the performers who kept hopes high until victory was ours. Dawn recalls the sassy swing of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," the Andrews Sisters' hosanna to a trumpet god who did double duty in the military. She conjures up the torchy yearning of Billie Holiday, whose "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" spoke for a country full of women left alone. Dinah Shore, the G.I.'s favorite singing sweetheart, comes to mind as Dawn sings one of Shore's early trademarks, "Skylark," with lullaby tenderness. In Dawn's hands, "Chattanooga Choo Choo" is a come-hither invitation to loosen your tie and stay awhile. "Why Don't We Do This More Often?" was a hit for the grinning, professorial bandleader Kay Kyser and his two wholesome songbirds, Ginny Simms and Harry Babbitt. Dawn's version is as cozy as a goodnight kiss. Teamed with Aaron Heick on clarinet, she makes a jam session out of "Let's Get Away from It All," a double-sided hit for Tommy Dorsey and his legendary flock of singers: Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, and her fellow Pied Pipers. From Walt Disney's Dumbo comes "Baby Mine," a lullaby. Dawn and her pianist/music director, Ian Herman, go it alone. Then she unleashes the wrath of a woman spurned in Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night," which was all over the 1941 charts in five hit versions. -James Gavin, New York City, 2021