All My Love Belongs to You by Steve Lawrence

Liner Note Author: Joseph Lanza. Recording information: New York, NY (04/23/1952-12/07/1953). Arranger: Dewey Bergman. Hardly a compact overview, All My Love Belongs to You is an insight into pop star career-building in the early '50s, or an essay on "what do you do with a new crooner coming off a near-novelty hit?" In this case the singer is Steve Lawrence and the near-novelty hit is "Poinciana," an exotic, tropical-lite number with "the rhythmic, savage beast" growing inside it. The tracks all come Lawrence's pre-Eydie Gorme days, which besides "Poinciana" are hitless and forgotten. What makes the collection desirable are the wild and dreamy orchestrations from Dewey Bergman and the liner notes by Joseph Lanza, author of the great Vanilla Pop: Sweet Sounds from Frankie Avalon to Abba and Elevator Music. One of the great champions of exotica and kitsch, Lanza makes Lawrence's search for his defining style a lot deeper than the faux-jazz and maudlin ballads that pepper that album should warrant, but his ...