appetite. She sounds fiery and playful, with the sizzling Latin-inspired settings on her Bethlehem LP guaranteed to get the listener hot under the collar. Mongo Santamaria was among the featured musicians. In 1953 Jet magazine reported: “Newest and perhaps most sizzling „brown blonde‟ to break into the night club spotlight is Baltimore-born Sally Blair, who did her stage apprenticeship in smalltime Baltimore and Washington cafes, then toured with the Duke Ellington and Johnny Otis bands. Recently she tired of the one-nighter grind, gave up the band business in Los Angeles to have a fling as a single. Says she: „I‟m anxious to reach the top in show business, but not over the one-nighter road.‟ Like most „brown blondes‟ the beauteous Baltimore girl was originally a brunette, who bleached her once auburn tresses to platinum, then dyed them a buttermilk blonde. On stage Sally wears low-cut, slinky gowns to showcase her voluptuous (36-25-37) figure, tosses her shoulder-length hair around in a Bette Davis manner. While strong in the sex appeal department, Sally refuses to count on sex alone to sell her songs. Sally explains: „A singer shouldn‟t count on sex alone. I want to make it one talent, too.‟ Besides, she adds, sex will not „come off‟ on records.” At the end of 1957, hot on the heels of her Bethlehem release, Life magazine reported Sallie was the hottest singer to turn up on the nightclub circuit since Eartha Kitt and that she mixed her singing with improvised barefoot dances much to the delight of audiences. There were some striking photographs to accompany the feature. But it never really seemed to happen for Sallie.
Bethlehem used Russ Garcia a number of times as an arranger and conductor for its West Coast sessions. He was useful as someone who could easily flit between working on soundtracks in Hollywood and leading adventurous jazz recordings. He was, it seems, equally at home with the work of Schoenberg as he was with Duke Ellington, but didn‟t feel the need to make a big thing about his versatility. As perhaps the magnificent Porgy and Bess project shows, he had a sense of the absurd and even used the name Wigville for his Orchestra when recording for Bethlehem.