Doris Day - The V-Discs

For the second half of my tribute to Doris Day, I thought I might gather all the V-Discs she made with Les Brown and under her own name, including one duet with Buddy Clark.

As was common with V-Discs, some are dubs of commercial issues. Eight in this set of 12 fall into that category. The others are from a radio source, from unissued record company masters and from a special V-Disc session, complete with spoken introduction.

The first item in our collection is the most famous song recorded by Day when she was with Les Brown: "Sentimental Journey." This is not the Columbia recording; rather, it was taken from a November 1944 NBC broadcast of "For the Record."

Next in order of issue (although recorded first) was a special V-Disc made at a New Jersey army hospital in summer 1944, "Take Me in Your Arms." It includes a brief spoke introduction where Doris tells the soldiers not to take the title literally.

Les and Doris

"Till the End of Time" was one of the many classical-pop traductions of the time. On the label above, you can see that Kaye and Mossman didn't want to share the credit with Chopin. The second item is a Cahn-Styne topical piece called "He'll Have to Cross the Atlantic to Get to the Pacific" in the lyrics and by Columbia and "You've Got to Cross the etc." by V-Disc. We're going with the latter. Both songs come from a May 25 commercial session.

"You Won't Be Satisfied" is another Brown record for Columbia, dating from November 1945. It has a nice tenor sax solo by Ted Nash, who later had a very long career in studio orchestras.

From a March 1946 Columbia session, but unissued by the company commercially, comes a rocking number with the peculiar title of "Deevil, Devil, Divel," which may be why it remained in the vaults except for this V-Disc. It's a good workout for Brown's band, though.

By the next Columbia session, in June 1947, Doris had gone out on her own. The title selected for V-Disc was the commercial disc of "(I'm Still) Sitting Under the Apple Tree," which conveys a very different sentiment than "He'll Have to Cross the Atlantic to Get to the Pacific." Both were by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.

Terry Melcher with mom's portrait

In September of that year, Cahn and Styne had turned their attention to the polka, penning "Papa Won't You Dance with Me." A second song, "That's the Way He Does It," dates from the same session. Doris' record came out on both the Columbia and V-Disc labels.

The following session, in November, resulted in an Columbia master unissued except for V-Disc. It's hard to understand why. It's a terrific reading of "No Moon at All" - then a new song - with a powerfully swinging arrangement by blog favorite George Siravo and a nice tenor solo from Toots Mondello.

From December 1947 comes "I've Only Myself to Blame," a rueful ballad by David Mann and Redd Evans, who also wrote "No Moon at All." This was issued commercially by Columbia.

The final title was a duet with another superb vocalist (and another blog favorite), Buddy Clark. From December 1948, "I'll String Along with You" is beautifully done with simple harmonizing by these two great artists. It's a fitting remembrance of both.

All these items except one come from lossy sources, but have come up well in the remastering. "I've Only Myself to Blame" does have some minor residual noise. I've substituted the commercial issue of "I'll String Along with You" for the very noisy V-Disc dub at hand.

Please see my other blog for another tribute to Doris.

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