Lisa Kirk's Sole Columbia Recording

This is a companion post to the selection of 24 single sides by the great singer Lisa Kirk that can be found on my main blog.

Here we have her sole recording for the Columbia, done in 1956, a few years after she left RCA Victor. It contains two songs from a CBS television production starring Kirk. The label at right identifies the program as A Heart to Call My Own, but that is a mistake. It actually was The Human Touch, broadcast on April 15, 1956.

The teleplay, which appears to be lost, was almost literally "ripped from the headlines," as they said back then. Kirk played a New York night club singer, which she was in real life. After her character, Ruth Elliott, becomes the subject of a scurrilous article in a Confidential-style scandal magazine, she threatens a defamation lawsuit. Elliott then is offered a juicy Broadway role contingent on dropping the suit. The drama turns on the choice of following through with the suit or taking the role.

Lisa Kirk in full nightclub mode

Such plots were not uncommon at the time. It has some similarities, for example, to Sweet Smell of Success, a 1950 Ernest Lehman story that would become a film in 1957.

The Human Touch contained at least two songs, coupled on this single. "A Heart to Call My Own" by lyricist William Engvick and composer Alec Wilder, is the better of the pair, even though it contains a fairly conventional waltz melody by Wilder standards. The other song is "A Smile and a Ribbon" by Kirk's husband Bob Wells and Mark McIntyre.

The backings are by Columbia stalwart Percy Faith. I like Faith, but these arrangements can best be described as characteristic. The sound is excellent.