When Love Goes Wrong

If Coltrane for Lovers and Miles Davis's Love Songs seem indicative of jazz's only comments on amorous passion, then When Love Goes Wrong is a doleful, refreshing wake-up call. The compilation, which focuses exclusively on vocal cuts, starts with the packaging--a faux-1950s jilted-love-turned-to-crime scene--and continues with searing, lost-love pathos from those who knew it intimately. There's late-period Billie Holiday--all husked-out as she sings "Broken Hearted Blues"--and pristine 1964 Chet Baker on "Born to Be Blue" to open the set. And the stars keep coming out: Johnny Hartman, also from 1964; Ella Fitzgerald pining elegantly from the The Irving Berlin Songbooks in 1958; and the Velvet Fog himself, Mel Torme, darkly crooning with Marty Paich on the uncharacteristically noirish "Gloomy Sunday." Oddly, this cleaved-heart tour is ultimately romantic--gimmicky theme aside--full of lavishly emotive lyrical performances and scything instrumental passages that reach justly for those vocal emotions. Love might be right, and this would still be a grand listen. --Andrew Bartlett