That Bad Eartha

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That Bad Eartha
Studio album by Eartha Kitt
Released	December 1953, 1954, 1956
Recorded	March 1953 at The Manhattan Center, New York and October 1953 at RCA Victor Studio No. 2
Genre	Vocal jazz pop
Length	37:01
Language	English French Spanish Turkish Swahili
Label	RCA Victor (US) His Master's Voice (UK)
Producer	Hugo Winterhalter Joe Carlton
Eartha Kitt chronology
That Bad Eartha (1953) Down to Eartha (1955)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[1]

That Bad Eartha is a twelve-song reconfiguration of material from American singer Eartha Kitt's first two eight-song, 10-inch albums issued by RCA Victor. It contains all eight songs from the 1953 album RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt. It repurposes the cover image and title, and four of the songs from Eartha's 1954 second 10-inch album, That Bad Eartha (10-inch, 8-song album). In this way, it could be considered an expansion of the first short-length album, supplementing it with packaging and selected songs from the second.

In May 1953, RCA Victor released the 10-inch vinyl album RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt, which reached No. 2 on the pop albums chart and featured 8 songs. The album was recorded in four sessions between March and October 1953 with Henri Rene and His Orchestra ^{[citation needed]}.

RCA released her second album, That Bad Eartha, in the 10″ popular format, in 1954. It was also released in a 45 RPM extended play version with two songs on each side of two disks. That Bad Eartha spent 12 weeks on the pop albums chart, peaking at No. 5.^[2]

Long-playing records were introduced in 1948 by Columbia with 10-inch albums as the popular music format and the 12-inch album the format for classical music. RCA introduced the 45 RPM format shortly afterwards. By the mid-50s, 10″ LPs were phased out, replaced by 12″ ones for popular as well as classical music. At this point, in approximately 1956, RCA Victor reconfigured these two 8-song albums into a 12-track album, jettisoning 4 songs. This then became the standard version of the album.

Several singles were issued from various configurations of these albums. "Under the Bridges of Paris" charted in the UK Singles Chart in 1955 at #7.^[3]

Many of the songs recorded for this album, such as "C'est si bon", "Uska Dara" and "I Want to Be Evil" became closely associated with Eartha Kitt, and were performed live by her until one of her last concerts at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, shortly before her death in December 2008. The complete album was re-issued on CD in 1994 as part of the Bear Family Records five-CD boxset Eartha – Quake; this included "Santa Baby" and several other tracks from the same recording session not included in this album.^[4]