
The album sounds deceptively like a big band but is actually a much smaller ensemble consisting of Ian Robbins on guitar who also serves as musical director, bassist Lyman Medeiros, Hammond B3 player Joe Bagg, drummer Kevin Winard who is always spot on, Kyle O’Donnell on the many reeds, trombonist Garrett Smith, Jamelle Adisa on trumpet, and vocalist Renee Myara Cibelli. This is a fine collection of some of L.A.’s finest artists.
Olivo has chosen well in his song selection and Robbins has arranged them so well for Olivo and the band. An excellent collaboration!
Olivo is in the style of the classic crooners like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Harry Connick, Jr. and Michael Bublé. In fact, Olivo performs Connick Come By Me as a tribute to Connick.
The other songs on the album range from old vaudeville tunes like 1924’s How Come You Do Me Like You Do? by Gene Austin and Roy Bergere and It Had to Be You by Isham Jones to 1932’s It’s Only a Paper Moon by Harold Arlen, then to 1946’s Time After Time (NOT the Cyndi Lauper song) by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, to 1965’s L.O.V.E. by Bert Kaempfert and Milt Gabler and made famous by Nat King Cole.
Also included is Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s This Guy’s in Love with You. It was released in the US in 1968 by Herb Albert as a single wherein he sings in addition to the trumpet. Olivo also includes the Latin-rhythmed Sway, the Bluesy Come by Me, Fats Domino’s I’m Walkin, and concludes the album with All the Way, that beautiful standard by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn.
A crooner aficionado’s delight, for sure, Dan Olivo has drawn the right songs together with the right artists and has offered an album that will find an audience in love with it.
~Travis Rogers, Jr. is The Jazz Owl