The Advocate

Shelden sings, to big band accompaniment, in the pop-swing style of Frank Sinatra. His new disc, "Imagination," is the latest development in a take of a man's willingness _ with a stroke of luck - to take a chance after reaching middle age. Shelden grew up in Elmira, NY, and like most college students of the early 1970's, was into the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other rock acts of that era. One night, a suite-mate played him the 1966 album "Sinatra at the Sands," a concert on which Sinatra was backed by a Quincy Jones-conducted Count Basie Orchestra.

"It was somewhat of an epiphany," Shelden says. "From that point forward I was hooked." Soon after, Shelden realized he could sing in that style but, as he says, "didn't do anything with it.

"Flash forward 20-plus years and Shelden, now a successful insurance executive, is dinning at a friend's home in New Canaan when he spots someone at the piano. That "someone" turns out to be Marion Evans, a three-time Grammy Award-winning arranger for Tony Bennett and Judy Garland, who dropped out of the business decades ago to become more successful creating financial software for banks."This guy is an absolute genius," Shelden says. "It was right in the early '60s when rock 'n' roll was really taking off. He kind of burnt on that business and saw the changes taking place.

"Shelden asked Evans' wife, Terry, a voice teacher at New York University, for a lesson. "Marion heard me downstairs and he came down and the two of them were tutoring me," Shelden says. Toward the end of 1998, Shelden and Evans were having lunch when Shelden asked about doing a project. They entered the studio to record their first disc the following year. Shelden admits to being a little intimidated by the A-list of players that committed to the orchestra once they heard Evans was again working in music. The result was "Any Swing Goes," a collection of songs from the Sinatra repertoire.

"Imagination," released late last year and, like its predecessor, financed by Shelden, is a collection of standards that highlights Shelden's baritone and ability to get to the core of a lyric, Evans' original arrangements and swinging big band. Pop standards such as "In the Still of the Night," "I Could Write a Book" and "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" breathe with a new found vitality and not only demonstrate the timelessness of great tunes but the enthusiasm with which Evans and Shelden approach them.

Shelden still holds down his career job in insurance but is planning a (possibly international) tour with Evans for this summer. The next record, Shelden hopes, will combine standards with the work of new songwriters. "That's our next goal, to find the next Cole Porters if they still exist out there," Shelden says. "Right now we're searching for the original material."

Jazz Connection Magazine

Don Shelden always had a Walter Mitty-like fantasy of becoming a singer in the style of his idol, Frank Sinatra. In his debut CD, Any Swing Goes, he does.

With the help of his friend, two-time Grammy Award winning arranger Marion Evans, this insurance executive spent the next four years training under Evans' watchful eye and the results are conclusive -- hard work does pay off and that dreams can come true.

Evans, a veteran of eleven different Broadway shows, seventeen different television shows and who also wrote, arranged and conducted for such musical greats as Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Vaughn Monroe, Percy Faith, Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, Julius La Rosa, Dick Haymes, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, dropped out of the music scene 25 years ago to pursue a career in the business world.

It was through a chance meeting by a mutual friend that helped to change the lives of both these gentlemen -- Shelden, trying to jumpstart a career, and for Evans, returning to one.

Evans' work is superbly orchestrated and is executed brilliantly by seventeen of the finest New York musicians money can buy including guitar great John Bucky Pizzarelli and Walt Weiskopf, tenor sax, the brother of Joel, who played in Woody Herman's band in the '80s.

This eleven-track disc provides a mixture of standards that swing hard in Count Basie-like fashion such as Falling In Love With Love and Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone to Latin-flavored tempos of Brazil and It Happened In Montery. Remaining selections in typical Sinatra and Bennett formats include Day In, Day Out, Fly Me To The Moon, It's Alright With Me, You And The Night And The Music, You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To, Oh! Look At Me Now and You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me.

The Sheldon-Evans collaboration clicks. Hope that they'll be more such partnerships in the future.

The spirit of Ol' Blue Eyes shines through Shelden's singing in a fresh way that exhibits good taste. And why not? Shelden has worked hard for it for four years.The bottom line is the album swings!

The Advocate & Greenwich Time

The spirit of Frank Sinatra hovers heavily over this debut CD by Shelden, who singing style unapologetically evokes the Chairman of the Board. Five Years ago, Shelden was a 40-year-old insurance executive with a lifelong ambition to sing like Sinatra. Then fate placed him at a party with fellow New Canaan resident Marion Evans, a veteran arranger and conductor who had dropped out of the music business two decades before.

Evans, who won two Grammy's and arranged for the likes of Judy Garland and Tony Bennett, liked Shelden's voice, and spent the next four years tutoring him in the finer points of being a singer. Finally, last year, Evans gathered a notable batch of musicians with some impressive credits, including guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (father of neo-swing sensation John) and alto sax man Andy Fusco, in a Manhattan recording studio to back Shelden's vocals.

The result is a polished, pleasant album that breaks no new ground but certainly reflects good taste; among the legendary talents represented here are Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter (twice) and Johnny Mercer. These tunesmiths wrote often-brilliant songs, but their work is not singer-proof. In a way, Evans and Shelden set a high hurdle for the singer by selecting such gold standards.

But Shelden comes through. There are times when his vocal quality and phrasing sound remarkably like those of Ol' Blue Eyes; he fares best on midtempo, midrange numbers like Mercer and Rube Bloom's "Day In Day Out" and Porter's "It's Alright With Me". The album's first cut, Rodgers and Hart's "Falling in Love with Love" may be the shakiest, especially in terms of the production, which seems rather too loud; thereafter things settle down and Shelden gets predictably smooth support. A creeping feeling of sameness in material and delivery is banished by a refreshing dip into soft Latin rhythms near the end of the album, with "Brazil" and "It Happened in Monterey".

-Lance Ringel