Catalog Number: SE-4852

Record Grading: Excellent (EX), Sleeve Grading: Very Good (VG)

Condition Details:

Vinyl plays with occasional light-crackles (play-graded). Die-cut gate-fold cover has discoloration spots. Inner-sleeve is original (generic white). Slight label variation. (Not a cut-out.)

Tracks:

• The People Tree
• In My Own Lifetime
• Tomorrow
• I Do Not Love You
• It's A Musical World
• You Can Have Her
• Love Is All Around
• When The Wind Was Green
• Sweet Gingerbread Man
• Mr. Bojangles

About The Record:

Portrait of Sammy Davis, Jr contains the hit single, The People Tree, another song in the bouncy style of The Candy Man, and written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley. Davis, of course, was no stranger to the songs of Bricusse and Newley already, having charted earlier in his career with their songs. Those songs were in their inspirational mode, suited to Davis' melodramatic style, and they have provided him with a couple more such compositions in Tomorrow and I Do Not Love You here, as well as another in a bouncy mood, It's a Musical World. The album's second side is bookended by two bravura performances by Davis. At the outset, he spends nearly seven minutes on You Can Have Her, arranged in a country gospel style, acting as if he's on stage pulling out all the stops. At the end, he lovingly performs Jerry Jeff Walker's Mr. Bojangles, a song he no doubt identifies with as a fellow hoofer and because he associates it with one of his mentors, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. In between, there's yet another potential follow-up to The Candy Man in Sweet Gingerbread Man and an attractive version of Love Is All Around (aka the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) that brings out its similarity to the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Portrait of Sammy Davis, Jr. is an uneven collection, but it contains a few Davis gems. (allmusic.com)