Charles Brown

This long overdue piece of record-making hits you with its craft and taste. Of course, you think. Brown's powers are undimmed since he topped the charts as a lounge singer forty years ago, so why shouldn't he sound just as fine in the studio today? And he does. With Billy Butler on guitar, his combo is at least as choice as the Three Blazers, and he has forty years of lounge classics to draw on--"One for My Baby," "I Miss You So," "Who Will the Next Fool Be," all right. There's only one problem: Brown is no Nat King Cole. His voice slips into the lugubrious so reflexively that at times you suspect clutch problems with the master reel, and it could just be that he's best appreciated over a highball--or else, like so many chart-toppers before him, in three-minute doses. (Grade: B+)