A Rare Jeri Sullivan Single

Last year I devoted two long posts on my main blog to Jeri Sullivan, a talented singer who never achieved the fame her skills may have deserved.

At that time, I wrote that among her recorded output were four songs on the Signature label. Two were included in my post - "Dream House" and "Cowboy Jamboree." I didn't have the other two - "You've Been So Good To Me, Daddy" and "Baby Won't You Please Come Home."

Now my friend Bryan Cooper, a vocal savant and fellow Sullivan enthusiast, has unearthed a transfer of that coupling, which I am happy to present today. These new songs are just as good as the others I presented earlier, with Sullivan in excellent voice.

Backing her on these numbers are the Les Baxter Quartet and Johnny White's Orchestra. I speculated in the earlier article that the quartet was actually Mel Torme's Meltones, who included Baxter and were appearing with the White orchestra at about the same time.

Although the Signature records came out in 1948, that company purchased the masters from a defunct company called United Artists. I suspect that the recordings date from about 1944, when Sullivan had a radio program called "Jeri Sullivan's Dream House." The program's theme song was among the Signature items I posted last year. (The August 1944 Radio Mirror cover above publicizes the "Dream House" radio show.)

By the way, I was wrong in stating that Signature only released four songs by Sullivan. Bryan has come up with evidence of four more sides that don't appear in the online Signature discography. They are "Love Ain't No Good" and "Regular Man" on Signature 15246, and "I Wish I Had a Penny" and "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" on Signature 15251. If anyone has a line on these records, Bryan and I would be grateful for any information you might send along!