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Lyricist: Kay Thompson. Personnel: Kay Thompson (vocals, piano); Fred Astaire, Pat Kirkwood, Ann Miller, Audrey Hepburn, Danny Kaye (vocals); Johnny Green & His Quartette, Joe Marino , Roger Edens, Irving Aaronson (piano); Steve Steck, Lyn Duddy, Paul Burton, Ralph Blane, Archie Bleyer (background vocals). Audio Remasterer: Robin Cherry. Recording information: 1941-1959. Directors: Stanley Donen; John Frankenheimer. Arrangers: Joe Lipman; Johnny Green & His Quartette; Lennie Hayton; Archie Bleyer; Buddy Bregman. Although the 50-year copyright limit on recordings in Europe has resulted in many shoddy unlicensed reissues of popular recordings still in print in their legitimate versions, it also allows fans and collectors to assemble and present valuable rare and out of print material that the major labels have buried in their vaults and are likely never to unearth again. A good example is this, British reissue label Sepia Records' Think Pink! A Kay Thompson Party. Thompson (1909-1998) is a legend, even though she was not a star, her many accomplishments including authoring the series of children's books about Eloise, the precocious six-year-old who roams the halls of the Plaza Hotel; coaching Judy Garland and others for their singing in MGM movie musicals of the '40s; and headlining an acclaimed, but little documented nightclub act with the Williams Brothers (including a young Andy Williams) in the late '40s and early '50s. She also made studio recordings sporadically, among them a 1955 LP for MGM Records called Kay Thompson Sings, as well as appearing extensively on radio during its heyday and, occasionally, on TV and in films. Such sources, plus private recordings, have been compiled by Thompson's biographer Sam Irvin for this collection, which, astonishingly, is a three-and-a-half-hour triple-CD set. And, at that, it isn't even complete; it deliberately picks up the Thompson story where an earlier collection, 2003's The Queen of Swing Vocals & Her Rhythm Singers, issued by Baldwin Street Music, left off in the late '30s, then follows her to the end of the '50s. It does so non-chronologically, instead grouping the three discs into themes: CD one is "The Studio Recordings"; CD two "Rarities and Live Performances"; and CD three "Demos, Covers, Comedy, and Eloise." As such, the most conventional Kay Thompson comes at the start, with ten of the 12 tracks from Kay Thompson Sings (the other two are novelties held for the third CD), which make her seem to be a good interpretive traditional pop singer of the '50s in the mold of, say, Peggy Lee. Other tracks culled from singles reinforce this impression until the end of the disc, which contains excerpts from Thompson's one big featured role in a movie musical, 1957's Funny Face, in which she held her own against Fred Astaire. The second disc begins with an attempt to re-create what a nightclub performance by Thompson and the Williams Brothers might have been like, using some of their few recordings and ai
