All That Jazz: The Best of Ute Lemper

1	All That Jazz 4:04
2	Don't Tell Mama 3:28
3	Mon Légionnaire 3:56
4	Whenever We Get Close (We Fall Apart) 4:21
5	Careless Love 3:39
6	Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack The Knife) 3:12
7	Alabama Song 4:37
8	Nanna's Song 3:41
9	The Bilbao Song 4:31
10	Surabaya Johnny 6:02
11	Le Grand Lustucru 3:12
12	My Ship 2:56
13	Want To Buy Some Illusions 2:50
14	They Call Me Naughty Lola/Ich bin die fesche Lola 2:38
15	L' Accordéoniste 4:52
16	La Vie en rose 3:12
17	Psalm 3:39
18	When The Special Girlfriend 2:37
19	The Smart Set 4:17
20	I Am A Vamp! 3:56
21	The Lavender Song 3:00

Barnes & Noble

Ute Lemper is an international cabaret artist for the 21stcentury. While paying full homage to the vocal greats of the past, Lemper (born in Germany in 1963) also embraces the theatrical and pop music of the present. This collection covers many of the stages Lemper has in her career as a singer and musical actress. We get songs by Kurt Weill ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife)," "Alabama-Song," "Nannas Lied," "Bilbao-Song," "My Ship," and "Surabaya-Johnny"), Edith Piaf favorites ("Mon Légionnaire," "Vie en Rose," and "L'Accordéoniste"), work from CABARET (" Don't Tell Mama and CHICAGO ("All That Jazz"), compositions by Michael Nyman ("Psalm'), and Berlin theater songs ("They Call Me Naughty Lola/Ich bin die fesche Lola," "I Am a Vamp!," "When the Special Girlfriend"). In other words, the standard repertoire just won't cut it for this multidimensional artist. Steve Futterman

All Music Guide

London Records' Ute Lemper compilation takes its title from a song she sang in her London appearance in the musical Chicago in 1998; it is followed at the start of the disc by her performance of "Don't Tell Mama," a song from another Kander & Ebb show, Cabaret, that she appeared in 1986, and which she recorded on her debut album for Columbia, Crimes of the Heart, in 1987. The two songs neatly dovetail her work over the 12-year period, not only because they are show tunes by the same songwriters but also because they are both pastiches of interwar music, and Lemper has specialized in actual interwar music in between. After several film songs, the compilation includes seven selections from her two albums of Kurt Weill music, followed by four tracks from Illusions, an album devoted to music associated with Marlene Dietrich and Edith Piaf. Then there is one contemporary song, drawn from her Michael Nyman Songbook release, and finally four numbers from Berlin Cabaret Songs. The wonder is that she is always so assured on material that makes different kinds of demands on a singer from formal precision to uninhibited projection (not to mention being in three languages, English, German, and French). Lemper makes it all sound easy, and she brings alive musical styles we are used to hearing on scratchy old recordings, if at all. She is very much a singing actress, creating characters to perform the disparate material, some of them distinctly unsavory, from Chicago's deadly Velma Kelly to the narrator of "I'm a Vamp!," who declares, "I bite my men and suck them dry, and then I bake them in a pie." Her lusty enthusiasm for such decadent material is her strongest suit, and this is an excellent pricis of her career so far. William Ruhlmann