*** UNIKAT ***

Martha Miyake has released more than thirty albums to date, and she reveals that among them, "A Song For You"(Columbia) and "Sings Love and Sorrow" (Polydor) are quite well made. However, to be honest, I think there was no album to date to be called the "BEST". In spite of her effort to exercise her ingenuity and total commitment to each album, there has always remained a touch of uncertainty. In my opinion, although knowing that she is one of the top singers, I get a little tired listening to her songs for a long time especially when she puts all her energies to them, as her singing is considered “a square style”. Furthermore, I cannot support her characteristic of ending a song with a pose like Kabuki. At the time of planning for the memorial album for the 30th Anniversary of her singing career, I wanted to make an album full of love ballads just like Frank Sinatra's memorial album for his fifty-year-old birthday, called “September Of My Years”, and with the arrangement of Gordon Jenkins or Don Sebesky with the string orchestra played in the back. But we had to give up for it required too much money and time, and came up with a combination which Martha could sing with all her heart with no worldly thoughts and in a relaxed manner. I decided to go with Red Mitchell on bass and Don Abney on piano. The two veterans have full poetic turn of mind and have played the accompaniment of a great number of famous big artists. The problem was that these two having such mighty pride had no experience in accompanying the Japanese singers. However, fortunately, the two were my friends, and had heard Martha's songs before, and Abney had once appeared with Martha in a live house, so they graciously accepted to play her comp. For regularity’s sake, I should note that this case is completely different from others in which some Japanese singers fly to US to ask the famous players to play their back by flashing bundle of money. As for drums, I wanted to ask Grady Tate if he had been in Japan, but decided to appoint Mike Reznikoff who played in Red’s performance during his visit to Japan. I had nominated about 129 songs first but at the end, settled on 15 that were mainly love ballads and torch songs. The title song “Remember” was used for the theme of the album and 11 out of 14 other songs turned out to be ballads; so evidently all of them didn’t fit in one album. Finally, choking back tears of frustration, I had to cut two of them "For All We Know" and "Trouble Is A Man". My request to Martha was made only once, which was to ask her to sing the ending of the "The Very Thought Of You", the second song of the album, as closely as possible to the original song. As for the rest, she grasped everything and went so smoothly without any trouble. No strain, not too much eagerness, but with proper degree of tension. With the exquisite support of Red and Don, she was able to quicken her senses and sing in a relaxed and moderate tone, displaying her magnificent essence in a straightforward manner. What made me most contented was the comment of Mr. Takeshi "Tee" Fujii of TBM who supported me throughout the production of this album, saying, "it is the best album of Martha I've ever listened to." ( Excerpted from an original liner notes by George Otaki )