Completing the Vic Damone Silvertone 78s

Vic Damone c1946-8

Some time ago on my main blog I posted most of the recordings that the great singer Vic Damone made for Sears' Silvertone Record Club circa 1946-7. These were among his first records, along with the three songs he contributed to an early 1947 Rodgers and Hart album and perhaps some of his Mercury output.

Those Silvertone singles came from my collection. Now I have found the remaining three Silvertone sides on Internet Archive and am presenting them here to compete the set of 14.

The new items start with "My Blue Heaven" (with Ted Dale's orchestra), which was the first Damone Silvertone. Also in the set are two with Tutti Camarata - "Something to Remember You By" and "Dancing in the Dark."

These all demonstrate that Vic was an accomplished singer right from the start, although certainly under the spell of Sinatra. The sound is good, but note that the single with Camarata has quite a bit of surface noise.

The recordings I posted previously are in better shape, and I've newly remastered them in ambient stereo.

From the 1947 Sears Christmas catalog

The Silvertone Record Club was a high-toned pop and light classical label that Sears operated from 1946-49. 

From my earlier post: "I believe that Sears contracted with Mercury for its Damone output ... Many of the songs first issued on Silvertone show up in his Mercury discography as well. It seems likely that the masters reverted to Mercury after the Sears imprint went under.

"So why transfer these if some can be found on Mercury issues? First, because the majority come from 12-inch masters, and I believe that Mercury shortened them for subsequent release. Second, not all of them were re-released. And most importantly, they are fine examples of Damone's balladry, and thus enjoyable in and of themselves."

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The Vocal Side of Leroy Anderson

Although Leroy Anderson is renowned as a composer of light orchestral music, seven of his compositions were given lyrics by Mitchell Parish - and one has become a holiday standard.

That standard is, of course, "Sleigh Ride," recently heard on this blog in the excellent version by Johnny Desmond. This post covers the rest of the Anderson-Parish vocal arrangements, save for "Belle of the Ball," which as far as I can tell has never been recorded. (Correction: my knowledge was incomplete. Reader JAC tells me that William Dazeley and Kim Criswell recorded it for the Anderson collection conducted by Leonard Slatkin for Naxos.)

I should mention in passing that Anderson also wrote music for the 1958-59 musical Goldilocks, with lyrics by Walter and Jean Kerr and Joan Ford, but those songs aren't covered here.

Eileen Barton

The first three recordings in this post come from 1951, one of the composer's most fruitful years. First we have "The Syncopated Clock," in a charming account by Eileen Barton, with the band directed by the estimable Neal Hefti, still in his 20s and writing charts for Count Basie.

Barton was recording for the small National label at the time. "The Syncopated Clock" was one of that company's last releases before folding. Eileen had enjoyed a number-one record the year before with "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake," originally on National and then picked up by the larger Mercury label. Barton moved on to Coral after National closed. You can hear a bit of her on that label here.

Mary Mayo never had a big hit, but she was well-known as a studio singer. Her Capitol version of "Serenata" makes use only of the gorgeous B section of Anderson's composition. Mary was one of several vocalists who specialized in ethereal vocalise, popular at the time, which she employs in the second chorus of "Serenata." (Others known for this technique were Loulie Jean Norman and Sally Sweetland, the latter of whom will be the subject of a main blog post in the near future.) The conductor of "Serenata" is Mayo's husband, Al Ham.

Mary Mayo and Florian ZaBach

Florian ZaBach was best known as a violinist, but on his record of "The Waltzing Cat" he introduces the song by singing at least the first part of Parish's lyrics, shakily but effectively. His fiddle and the band then indulge in the "meows" that populate the song. ZaBach had done well with another novelty, Paul Nero's "The Hot Canary," so varying the species made good sense.

Vico Torriani

Swiss singer-actor Vico Torriani presumably makes some use of Parish's lyrics in his c1952 recording of "Blue Tango" (a huge instrumental hit for Anderson), but I can't be sure because he sings in German. It's a good record; Torriani was popular for a long time.

A vocal version of Anderson's "Forgotten Dreams" unexpectedly turned up on Ed Ames' 1965 LP, My Kind of Songs. Ames' impassioned singing is just right for this lovely song. Marty Manning's arrangement features the plink-plunk piano accompaniment that was popular at the time, a cliché that has not aged well.

Ed's singing does redeem the record, though, and shows just how well Leroy Anderson's compositions work with vocals - as do all these selections.

This post is a companion to a two-part series on my main blog devoted to all of Anderson's 1950-54 recordings. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is forthcoming.

LINK to singles

Constant Lambert Conducts Borodin and Waldteufel

The composer-conductor Constant Lambert has been a long-standing interest of mine, as demonstrated by the frequent posts both on my main blog and most recently on this singles outpost, where I presented his recording of Émile Waldteufel's Skaters Waltz.

Today, we follow up that Waldteufel post with another from that composer - the waltz Pomona, again in a sophisticated performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Lambert. Waldteufel (1837-1915) was an Alsatian composer whose best-known work was the Skaters Waltz mentioned above, aka Les Patineurs.

Alexander Borodin

Lambert also was an aficionado of Russian music. His Tchaikovsky recordings have appeared on Big 10-Inch, but here he is in a superior performance of an atmospheric composition by Alexander Borodin (1833-87), In the Steppes of Central Asia. This helpful introduction to the motifs in the piece comes from Wikipedia: 

A caravan of Central Asians is crossing the desert under the protection of Russian troops. The opening theme, representing the Russians, is heard first; after it, the strains of an ornamented eastern melody on English horn, representing the Asians. The melodies eventually combine contrapuntally. Amid these two ethnic melodies Borodin inserts a "traveling" theme in pizzicato that represents the plodding hoofs of the horses and camels. At the end, only the Russian theme is heard.

As with the Waldteufel, this memorable work was recorded in London's resonant Kingsway Hall, the Borodin in 1946 (also with the Philharmonia) and the Waldteufel in 1950. Both recordings were remastered from 78 needle-drops on Internet Archive.

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Marion Harris Sings Gershwin

The singer Marion Harris is mostly forgotten today, even though she was very popular on records and radio from the late teens until the 1930s. Born Mary Ellen Harrison in 1896, possibly in Indiana, she was on Broadway in an Irving Berlin revue as early as 1915.

Soon thereafter she was making records for Victor, introducing such standards as "After You're Gone," "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "I Ain't Got Nobody."

Harris was successful because she was good, and moreover her voice was well suited to recording, with clear diction, lovely tone, and accurate intonation. She also had a personal quality that was well ahead of its time during a period when many singers developed a trumpet-like characteristic so they could be heard in the back of a theater.

Today, as a companion to a George Gershwin collection from Lee Wiley on my main blog, we have three Gershwin songs that Harris recorded in the 1920s.

The first was unfamiliar to me, and I suspect will be to most others: "Nashville Nightingale," which dates from 1923. This was before George was writing regularly with his brother Ira; the song has lyrics by Irving Caesar that trade on the usual Southern clichés complete with stereotypical language. If you can put that aside, you'll find that Harris sings the piece convincingly.

Sources differ on the genesis of the song. Some say it was heard in the short-lived revue Nifties of 1923, but the Internet Broadway Database does not list it in the songs from that show's opening night. It may have been cut before the opening or added during the six-week run. Later, the song was heard in the 1927 West End revue Shake Your Feet.

The next number, "Somebody Loves Me," is far more famous. It comes from 1924, when it was heard in that year's George White's Scandals. Gershwin worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on the song. Harris' Brunswick recording is first class.

Both these recordings were made by the acoustic process, with its limited frequency response. Even so, they are very listenable, in large part because Harris' voice recorded so well.

The final item, "The Man I Love," was written by the Gershwin brothers and remains one of their best-known numbers. As I note in my Lee Wiley post, "For such a famous song, it had the dubious honor of being cut from Lady, Be Good, inserted in Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town, and rejected for Rosalie." Although the piece was written in 1924, it wasn't until 1927 that the recordings started to flow. SecondHand Songs lists Harris' as the first, although versions by such fine vocalists as Annette Hanshaw and Vaughn De Leath came out at about the same time.

Harris' disc is fully satisfying, enhanced by the electrical recording process with its wider frequency response. The singer is accompanied by the unusual combination of violin, guitar and piano; the violin sounds like it might actually have been a viola.

The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists 167 sides by Harris, all of which were done before 1931. She appeared on American radio in the early 1930s, then was on radio in England for a brief time before retiring from the business. She died in a fire aged 48.

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