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Helen Merrill was a jazz vocalist, born in New York in 1929 to Croatian immigrant parents, who began singing in clubs in her teens in the mid-1940s and made her first recordings in 1952. She recorded an album for Mercury, and the success of that brought her a long-term contract and a period of high visibility and popularity during the 1950s and ‘60s, providing the basis for an album career that lasted into the new millennium. She is still alive in 2026 at the age of 97. This 43-track 2-CD collection features her debut recording with Earl Hines and a single for Roost in 1952-3, plus the titles from her first four albums “Helen Merrill with Clifford Brown”, “Helen Merrill With Strings”, “Dream of You” and “Merrill At Midnight”. It features recordings with small jazz groups and larger orchestras, including performances with Clifford Brown, Barry Galbraith, Oscar Pettiford, Quincy Jones, Milt Hinton, Hank Jones and Joe Morello, with arrangements by Quincy Jones, Richard Hayman, Gil Evans and Hal Mooney. She was one of the lesser known jazz stars of the era, but was a highly respected performer, with whom the top musicians of the day were more than happy to perform and record. This is a fine showcase for her already highly sophisticated style, even at the dawn of her album career.
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