Reprinted with permission from Idolvine.com

Doris Day's first album in 17 years hit number 9 spot on the UK's top ten charts last week. It releases tomorrow in North America.

There was a story going around about Doris Day about forty years ago when she was just in her forties. She had been asked to star in a romantic comedy for which she felt she was already too old. How would she look in her close-ups, she worried. The director is supposed to have said, "Don't worry about your close-ups, we'll shoot you through cheesecloth." "Cheesecloth!" she replied incredulously. "You'll have to shoot me through linoleum."

Now the famously ageless Day has done something even more amazing. At the age of 87, she has released a new album, My Heart, and it has gone to the top of the charts in the UK. She is the oldest artist ever to do so with an album of  mostly original music. My Heart was number nine in the charts after its release last week in Britain. To be clear, the music tracks were mostly recorded in 1985 when Day was sixty-one.

And what is this album about? She chose the songs herself and says that they reflect the things that are dearest to her. The tracks include some oldies like "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" by Ray Henderson and Les Brown, and "Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here," by Alan J Lerner and Burton Lane from On A Clear Day You Can See Forever; as well as songs by her son, Terry Melcher, who produced the album. Eight of the songs, including the title song "My Heart," written by her son Melcher and Bruce Johnston, have never been released before.

“These songs all mean so much to me," said Day. "They bring back happy memories of my friends who appeared on TV with me, my animal friends, and most of all, my [late] son Terry.” 

The reviews for My Heart have been excellent.  

"Languorous, sensual, with a pure, clear tone and perfect phrasing, Doris Day’s voice is timelessly beguiling on a charming new collection of previously unreleased recordings," says a review in The Telegraph.

"As an album, My Heart is emotional and haunting, proving that Day's talent and music is as timeless as the songs she's performing," writes the critic for Female First.

"There is an undeniable thrill upon hearing the delectable voice of Doris Day once again. Technically flawless, infallibly seductive in tone, it’s hard to think of another singer of her era who offers the listener such unadulterated pleasure." This last rave was from the BBC.

Many of us remember Doris Day as the purer-than-pure, perennially sweet-tempered girl of 1950s and 1960s romantic comedies like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back. But she began her career in radio in the forties when the big bands were still going strong, and she sang with Les Brown and Jimmy James among many others. It was the great Ella Fitzgerald that Day listened to and tried to emulate when she was starting out as a young singer.