I'm Yours - P.J. Proby

P.J. Proby's career has had more than its share of ups and downs, and he'd been in a slump prior to the recording of 1973's I'm Yours; he'd been dropped by his longtime label Liberty Records and hadn't made an album in four years when he began work on this set, but if the man was anything less than confident, you won't guess it from listening to the finished product. Proby's days as a rock & roll idol were over when he made I'm Yours, and he seemed to know it; these sessions are dominated by show tunes and pop standards, accompanied by a polished studio orchestra, and Proby takes to the material like a duck to water. If Proby is somewhat less melodramatic here than on his hits of the '60s, he still sounds broadly theatrical, especially on con brio numbers like "Mama Married a Preacher" and "They Call the Wind Maria," and the more low-key songs like "Draw Me a Circle" and "Only You (And You Alone)" find him sounding a bit like Tom Jones, but with traces of his Texas roots still audible in his voice. In terms of production and arrangements, I'm Yours sounds like the work of a slightly hipper than usual Robert Goulet, but Proby's epic-scale vocal style is still on display here; this isn't as memorable as his run of British hits in the '60s, but it gives a clear sense of why he did so well in the theater in the '70s and '80s, and while it pales next to his best music, it's decidedly better than most of the work that would follow. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide