OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With Jaye P. Morgan!

Greetings, music hors, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday - with a shout-out to those 'Muricans celebrating Labor Day. Are you doing a cook-out today, maybe going for a dip in the pool? More importantly, are you blasting festive music? Nothing accompanies festive music better than a side of cheesecake, dont'ya think? Speaking of, do you know the lithesome lass featured below? I bet you do, but only in her later incantation.

Have you guessed yet? Bet’cha haven't. Voila! It's Jaye P. Morgan. Surprised? If you only know her from her 1970s and 80s-era game show appearances - she was hilarious as a judge on "The Gong Show" (and stunned live audiences by flashing her breasts during commercial breaks) - that was just one teensy part of her career which started when she was only 3 years-old in her family's vaudeville act. Later, at age 18, she was hired as the primary vocalist for the Frank DeVol orchestra. Yet she was anything but the normal kittenish gal singer. Listen to her bold take on "My Heart Belongs To Daddy," perhaps the iciest version you're likely to hear. Shorn of routine flirtatiousness, it's a strictly transactional enticement. 

Jaye enjoyed decades of work as a popular vocalist on LPs, radio, and the nightclub circuit nationwide, scoring a big hit with "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries"...then poof, she vanished...and all but reinvented herself in the 70s, this time as a sexy-cool actress, guest-starring on just about every hit sitcom of the day. I'm not sure why she sidelined her singing. But as you'll realize from listening to the collection below, she brought a surprising amount of sophistication to what might have been a very ordinary group of standards. Maybe it's her fluid, bell-clear vocals; they perfectly dramatize the lyrics, of course, yet they also suggest something more - and it's kept just out of reach, like a mellow lure.

She was too urbane, I think, or perhaps too cerebral, for the time when her singing career was at its height (the late 50s weren't exactly a musically discriminating era, like the late 30s and early 40s) (she would have made a knock-out film-noir temptress). Whatever the case, her LPs feel remarkably fresh and modern (click through the video below to hear this terrific compilation). 

Surprisingly, in 2005 in her mid-70s, Jaye decided to lay claim to her vocal past by releasing a CD with strikingly modern arrangements - and strikingly modern songs, too, such as the opener, "Every Breath You Take," her coolly menacing interpretation of the song by "The Police." The rest of the CD (which you can hear in its entirety by clinking through the video below), isn't just wonderfully swank, but a masterful, even stunning, demonstration of vocal reinvention, as if the real Jaye - dangerous, classy and wise - were at last revealed from behind the 50s kittenish facade. Oh, and did you know? She’s still kickin' at 93, so whatever you're doing today, raise a toast to her, won't you?

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Getty Images; Concord Jazz