The choice to do without musical numbers was bold, and in fact the film even includes two very funny moments poking fun at precisely the lack of musical numbers.
Yet Eckstine's musical tragedy, of being too hot, is a uniting theme of Hajdu's work, which in its best moments explores the edges of musical and cultural classifications and formally defined eras.
But those moments are really just footnotes to a musical career that spans more than 20 years and nearly as many albums, with a fiercely independent streak running through all of her work.
Furthermore, the errors critics find in the original soundtrack a sloppy entrance here, a flubbed horn there are not greater than moments of sloppiness on many celebrated recordings from the 1950s: technical standards (if not musical ones) are simply higher now.