Most of the band's male singers tended to fit the Jeffries special mold of very carefully-controlled crooner - allowing for a lot of contrast between the highly-reserved voice in the foreground and the growlingly-overt emotionalism of the ensemble in support. The pinched-tones and heavy vibrato of Dan Grissom, who sang with the band from 1951 to 1957, here sounds less like his famous uncle, Jimmy Grissom (star baritone with Jimmie Lunceford), than he does Columbia's current vocal star, Johnny Mathis. For his last regular date with the Duke, Grissom takes on an obscure Ellington original "Love (My Everything)" also known as "My Heart, My Mind, My Everything."
Likewise, Ellington and Strayhorn set up "Autumn Leaves" (the one vocal on the masterpiece album Ellington Indigoes) as an extended duo for balladeer Ozzie Bailey and the multi-talented Ray Nance, here on violin. In two vocals, Bailey first sings the melody straight but uses unfamiliar words (the original french text), and then does the hit Johnny Mercer lyric but slyly alters the tune, skirting around its edges with a harmony line.
