My One and Only Love

The same Hartman-Ellington session, but a different emotional register entirely — warmer, more open, less guarded. This is one of the great love songs in the standard repertoire and Hartman treats it with a reverence that never tips into preciousness. His voice on slower tempos has a quality of absolute stillness; he doesn't ornament, doesn't push, doesn't demonstrate. He simply means every note. The melody by Guy Wood rises and returns, asking and answering, and Hartman follows it faithfully, letting the arc of the song do the work. Ellington's accompanying figures are minimal and perfectly placed — a chord held just long enough, a gentle arpeggio that suggests warmth rather than stating it. What makes this particular recording extraordinary is the impression it gives of a private moment accidentally captured. Hartman sounds like a man not performing a love song but actually feeling love while the tape happens to be running. There's no showmanship in it, no technique put on display for its own sake, just voice and piano and a feeling that seems to deepen the more closely you attend to it. You find this song at the moments when love feels most quietly true — not at its heights but in its steady, ordinary, irreplaceable center.