André Previn on V-Disc

Following up Buddy Clark's V-Discs, here are several of the special Armed Forces discs recorded by the young André Previn in 1946.

Previn was nothing if not precocious. This wasn't even the 17-year-old's first recording session. That was with the Sunset label when he was 16. At the time he was already working at the M-G-M studio as an arranger while building a reputation as a jazz pianist. The download includes a 1945 Capitol News article on the young artist.

On the four V-Disc numbers, Previn is accompanied by an unknown rhythm section, although the speculation is that it includes Red Callender on bass and Irving Ashby on guitar - the pianist was recording with them for Sunset at about the same time.

On the first song, "I Cover the Waterfront," Previn is seemingly under the spell of George Shearing - even though Shearing had yet to emigrate to the US from England. On the other songs, he perhaps betrays a Teddy Wilson influence, along with the Art Tatum touches familiar from his slightly later Victor recordings.

Young André Previn with a fan

This post is a companion to a new item on my other blog, which presents a large number of Previn's 1947-53 RCA Victor recordings. [Note (July 2023): These V-Disc recordings are now available in ambient stereo.]

A quick follow-up to my Buddy Clark post: reader Max pointed out that I overlooked one of Clark's V-Discs, a great version of the Carmichael-Mercer "How Little We Know" made in 1945 when the singer was Cpl. Buddy Clark. Check the comments to that post for a link.

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