The three albums that form the core of this collection date from 1959-61 when Lester Koenig signed Helen Humes, to his Contemporary label. By then, Humes was 46, and her remarkable career from child star to big band singer is documented in a rather scattershot way by a collection of singles that make up part of the second CD. By the time of her Contemporary LPs she was living in Los Angeles, and her albums benefit from having some of the city’s finest session players in her backing bands. She still has the rather plaintive sound of her pre-war recordings, but this is backed by considerable strength and, rather like her near contemporary Alberta Hunter, the aural echoes of her early days gave her later style plenty of charm and depth.

The highlight here is Songs I Like To Sing! from 1960, which has the huge benefit of Ben Webster as guest soloist, and Andre Previn (at his most sensitive) as the band pianist. He shadows her beautifully through a song such as ‘Every Now and Then’, while Webster’s giant personality leaps out of Marty Paich’s tidy charts, notably on that song and the opening track ‘If I Could Be With You’. Her show business roots shine out over the rocking backbeat of ‘I Want a Roof Over My Head’, and she is a dab hand at a ballad, giving ‘My Old Flame’ a dramatically different treatment from Billie Holiday. The singles are a bit spotty in sound quality and artistic level. It’s a shame they omit her well-recorded 1942 sides with Pete Brown (with Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet) ‘Unlucky Woman’ and ‘Mound Bayou’ as they’d have raised the bar a little. But the 1959-61 LPs more than justify a four-star rating overall.