Another much covered song, 'You Belong To Me' had done the rounds before ending up with Jo Stafford, a pop cum jazz jack of all trades who perhaps spread herself too thinly to stand out with distinction in any one genre. As a song, it's the whole of Sinatra's 'Come Fly With Me' album crammed into three minutes; "Fly the ocean in a silver plane, see the jungle when its wet with rains" - the far flung exotic imagery was slightly cynically tailor made for an early fifties public just getting to grips with the expansion of commercial airlines and the opportunity for travel that came with it.As you'd expect from a singer of Stafford's reputation, her vocal rings clear as a bell throughout, though there's a stilted hesitancy in her delivery that makes her sound more concerned with her diction than putting any real wallop behind it. But then again, the prim and proper understatement of the orchestra backing isn't conducive to the passion gloves coming off and I'd have liked this a whole lot better if that xylophone player had been made to sit on his hands. In short, it's a solid performance of a solid song that would have gone down smooth at the sort of dinner parties I'm not invited to, but it's never going to set my heather on fire.
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