More of 'Today's Hits' from 1955

Here's another in a series of Today's Hits EPs from RCA Victor's Camden budget line, this one dating from 1955. The vocalists are Jack Haskell and Jeannie McKeon; the bandleader Johnny Guarnieri.

The pop music landscape was changing at the time, and the chosen songs give some clues to the market: two ballads, one R&B song and a old-timey medley.

Haskell was the better known of the two singers. At the time he was a regular on the Today Show on NBC, not coincidentally owned by RCA. He made a few LPs, which I believe I have, some singles and at least two more of these Camden EPs.

Jeannie McKeon otherwise only recorded for the small Black & White label in the 1940s, including a 78 album that I may offer later on. I suspect she was a studio singer in the 1950s.

Johnny Guarnieri, who has appeared on my other blog a few times, made his name as a pianist in the Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw bands. He did a number of these Camden collections along with a variety of other albums.

Jack Haskell

Jack Haskell leads off the collection with a smooth reading of "Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup." This Anna Sosenko song was first recorded by Hildegarde in 1935, but in 1955 the song was a hit for Nat King Cole. Jack had many good qualities - a nice voice, excellent diction - but he lacks Cole's unique charisma.

Jeannie McKeon

Jeannie McKeon does not have such formidable vocal competition for her solo song. "How Important Can It Be" was a chart success for Joni James, who had an appealing vulnerable quality but was not a strong singer. The song itself, by Bennie Benjamin and George David Weiss, is not a particularly good one, but Joni rode it almost to the top of the charts.

Johnny Guarnieri

Johnny Guarnieri gets to show off his virtuosity in the "Crazy Otto Medley." This was one of a series of rickety piano tunes that were popular in the postwar years for reasons that can only be imagined at this late date. The piece was inspired by a German pianist named Fritz Schulz-Reichel, who called himself "Crazy Otto." The American pianist Johnny Maddox slapped together a bunch of Schultz-Reichel's numbers into a medley he called "The Crazy Otto" that became popular over here. I don't believe that Guarnieri's selections match Maddox's - he includes a transgression against Dvořák's "Humoresque" yoked together with the 1918 pop song "Smiles."

Finally, McKeon and Haskell get together for the drab "Pledging My Love," the posthumous R&B hit by Johnny Ace written by Ferdinand Washington and Don Robey. They do what they can with it, which isn't much.

It occurs to me that after dissing Joni James and Johnny Ace I have albums by both in my collection. No Crazy Otto, though.

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Snooky Lanson with Today's (Actually 1955's) Hits

I had a request for this particular EP from musicman1979, who likes to hear the hits not by the original artists but by stand-ins as recorded for dime-store labels.

In this case, we have Snooky Lanson as the budget-label baritone. I'm sure no one younger than me would have any knowledge of him.

Snooky was a featured performer on the Your Hit Parade television show, sharing the airwaves with such as Gisele MacKenzie, who herself came out with one of these "Today's Hits" packages in 1955.

As a show, Your Hit Parade worked well enough in the 1940s on radio, when the likes of Frank Sinatra were intoning the romantic songs then in vogue.

Snooky Lanson

But by the mid-50s, R&B and its pale cousin rock 'n' roll were taking over. So you had the specter of a crooner like Lanson taking on songs that had originated with the Penguins ("Earth Angel"), the Moonglows ("Sincerely") and LaVern Baker ("Tweedlee Dee"). Not that Snooky does them poorly - as Billboard opined in its review, "Lanson sings the current material with engaging charm, backed in listenable fashion by the Johnny Guarnieri ork."

The Penguins - The Crew-Cuts

Actually, many of not most of the buyers of Camden's 79 cent package would be more familiar with the cover versions of these songs by the Crew-Cuts, the McGuire Sisters and Georgia Gibbs. respectively, so Snooky would not have been that far off the mark for them.

Both Guarnieri and Lanson had big band backgrounds. Johnny was pianist for Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw at times, and Snooky was a Ray Noble vocalist. The latter's strength, other than his charm, was his legato, hardly an asset with R&B material. His weakness was intonation, which did not matter so much with these selections.

Johnny Guarnieri

The final number - "Unsuspecting Heart" - was more in Snooky's comfort zone. The ballad had moderate success as a vehicle for the then-popular Sunny Gale and Terri Stevens. Camden's parent, RCA Victor, may have had a stake in the song itself - Gale was one of its artists. The song in any case was not a huge hit on the scale of the other three selections.

This blog has been in slumber mode for a few months, but I thought I might revive it to feature some of my collection of EPs, starting with Snooky.

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