Belford Hendricks - Still at Mercury, With Sarah Vaughan

Still At Mercury, With Sarah Vaughan

As Hendricks' stature as an arranger grew, it was inevitable that Mercury Records would pair him with one of their biggest names, Sarah Vaughan, for some of the great jazz singer's forays onto more commercial territory. His arrangements for her produced one minor US hit, the R & B-tinged Smooth Operator, written by Otis with Murray Stein and seductively sung by "Sassy", as well as some distinctive takes on older songs, such as My Ideal, I Should Care, Irving Berlin's Maybe It's Because I Love You Too Much and particularly attractive versions of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel's Never In A Million Years and Charlie Chaplin's Eternally.