his recording is anything but ordinary. The three singers featured had left Bethlehem Records by the time this release hit the stores in 1957. Two, Nina Simone and Carmen McRae, are well represented on this LP. One, Chris Connor, is not. Regardless, this is a most welcome reissue, serving as a generous sampler, presenting four songs each by three of the finest female vocalists of the day.

The inimitable, irascible Nina Simone is featured on three previously unreleased tracks from her earlier, bestselling album Little Girl Blue, and a fourth, her landmark recording of “I Loves You Porgy,” which alone is worth the cost of the album. Once heard, the 24-year old Simone’s version of this George Gershwin classic will spoil you forever. The others (released without Simone’s knowledge) are a perky Simone original instrumental, “African Mailman”; a spiritual, “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands”; and the 1934 ballad “For All We Know,” each showing uniquely different sides of Simone’s burnished voice and wide-ranging musical palette. Jimmy Bond’s bass and Al “Tootie” Heath’s drumming are heard to good effect on these tracks.

The Chris Connor selections, taken from her 1955 album This Is Chris, seem to feature J.J. Johnson’s and Kai Winding’s trombone musings as much as Connor’s voice. Connor was 28, her husky, come-hither voice already in place, when she recorded the ballad “Someone To Watch Over Me,” a Latin-inspired “I Concentrate on You,” an up-tempo “From This Moment On,” and a lazy, melancholic “All This and Heaven Too.” Complementing the vocalist, multi-instrumentalist Herbie Mann and guitarist Joe Puma also made appearances, with the infamous Tom Dowd in charge of engineering. If you’re as smitten with Connor’s voice as I am, seek out the original mono LP.

Carmen McRae was in her thirties when her tunes were originally recorded in 1955 for the album Carmen McRae, and her jazz-centric voice was already in full bloom. The four songs heard here are alternate takes of those found on the original album and were recorded in true stereo. Of the three vocalists represented here, she swings the most, ripping through a tropical-flavored “Old Devil Moon,” a loping “You Made Me Care,” a mysterious “Too Much in Love to Care” and the sultry ballad “Last Time for Love.” Herbie Mann, pianist Dick Katz and guitarist Mundell Lowe contribute to the jazzy mood.

Mono? Stereo? Your call as to this album's overall classification. The album cover says stereo, but the catalog number on the jacket, BCP 6041, denotes a mono recording. In fact, only eight of the twelve songs are true stereo recordings. The four by Chris Connor are mono/electronically reprocessed for stereo. To make it even more interesting, the four Connor songs are not those found on the original release from 1957. Why Bethlehem replaced those tracks with four different mono tracks (with stereo reprocessing) appearing on this album remains a mystery.

Both CD and LP editions mirror the Japanese edition from 1961 [Angel HV-3016]. The LP was pressed at Record Industry in the Netherlands on blemish-free, exceptionally quiet, emerald-green vinyl. The cover photo, liner notes and blue-and-silver record label reflect the domestic original. The additional notes, by Yale University’s Daphne A. Brooks, proved helpful in increasing understanding of the context in which these recording were made.

As to the sound, I feel Kevin Gray has done an excellent job bringing this recording back from the vaults, with mastering true to the original analog tapes. However, it left me shaking my head. Perhaps it’s the source material he had to work with, but the sound reminded me of what I was hearing on my parents’ stereo in the early 1950s, when Command’s popular Persuasive Percussion series of LPs was launched, fraught with exaggerated stereo effects. As to the Connor tracks, I had the option to use the mono switch on my phono stage, restoring the dreadful fake-stereo processing to some semblance of coherency.