The Hits from Cole Porter's 'Can-Can'

In the mid 20th century, whenever a famous songwriter prepared a new musical, the record companies would quickly enlist their top acts to record the numbers likeliest to be the most popular.

Cole Porter's Can-Can of 1953 was set in the boîtes of 1890's Montmartre, a perfect setting for a lively score. And Porter did produce several songs that enjoyed some popularity in the day, and a few that are still heard today. The show was quite a hit, remaining on Broadway for more than two years. It was the career breakout for Gwen Verdon.

Capitol records had several of its top acts swing into action with recordings from the score. Four of these are collected on today's EP, with one more added as a bonus.

Les Baxter

The record begins with a choral version of "I Love Paris" from a Les Baxter ensemble. The single did well on the charts (which may be why it leads off the record). Baxter effectively handles the transition from the dirge-like opening to the sunny proclamation "I love Paris every moment!" His instrumental chart is in the exotica style that was then becoming popular.

Gordon MacRae, Kay Starr

Gordon MacRae must have thought that "C'est Magnifique" required a bravura approach - he came out with an operetta-style performance that is effective of its type. Axel Stordahl is the conductor.

Kay Starr's intense singing is well suited to "Allez-vous-en (Go Away)," a good song that is less often heard that the two already mentioned. Providing the backing is Harold Mooney.

Nat King Cole

One of the label's biggest stars, Nat King Cole, was matched with one of the  weaker songs from the score - "I Am in Love." He handles it in his usual sincere manner, but it doesn't take flight, despite a chart by Nelson Riddle.

Bob Manning

Capitol entrusted the most famous song from the score - "It's All Right with Me" - to its new romantic balladeer, Bob Manning, in one of his first recordings for the label. Bob's smooth version did not make it onto the EP, possibly because the other artists were more established, but I've added it to the download file. Sid Feller was the conductor on Bob's single.

Manning's collected Capitol singles can be found here.

Such EPs with songs from the musicals of the day were common back then. At times they came from varied artists, such as this one, but just as often they featured one of the label's stars in all four songs. For example, just for Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 hit The King and I, RCA Victor issued an EP with Dinah Shore, and M-G-M did the same with Jane Powell. For the listener, it was an inexpensive way to get to know the new songs in versions by their favorite artists.

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Alfred Hitchcock Obscurities

Alfred Hitchcock

When it comes to music, the great film director Alfred Hitchcock is known for his collaborations with composer Bernard Herrmann on such productions as Vertigo and North by Northwest, and even his own 1958 LP Music to Be Murdered By. Today, however, we'll examine some of the more obscure records associated with the director's 1954-60 movies - including some discs that featured Hitch himself.

Let's begin with the records that feature the director's own, very recognizable voice - one that the moviegoer of 1960 would have known well from his 1955-62 television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. To promote his film Psycho, Hitchcock recorded a series of promotional discs not for airplay, but for use in the theaters themselves. These were to be heard in the lobby in the run-up to Psycho's opening, and thereafter while patrons were waiting in line to buy tickets, and then in the lobby.

Much of the content was based on the gimmick that no one would be admitted to the theater after the film had started - "no one, not the manager's brother, the President of the United States, or the Queen of England (God bless her)" as an accompanying poster made clear (below, with the label of one of the lobby spots).

The recorded spots are droll affairs, in keeping with Hitchcock's then well-established persona. In the line-queue recording he tells the listeners, "This queuing up and standing about is good for you. It will make you appreciate the seats inside." He proceeds to explain the no-admittance policy as follows: "Psycho is most enjoyable when viewed beginning at the beginning and proceeding to the end. I realize this is a revolutionary concept, but we have discovered that Psycho is unlike most motion pictures and does not improve when run backwards." All the Hitch spots are similar in tone.

The other recordings covered in this post come from two of the director's films of the 1950s, with three of them from one of his less-successful items, the 1955 comedy The Trouble with Harry. The first of these discs comes from the film itself. It is "Flaggin' the Train to Tuscaloosa," which is heard over the opening credits, supposedly sung by the lead actor, John Forsythe, but actually by bandleader Ray McKinley. The song, written by Raymond Scott and Mack David, was commercially released on Decca.

Ray McKinley and his Decca 45

Harry also spawned an exploitation song of the same name as the film, written by Floyd Huddleston, Herb Wiseman and Mark McIntyre. In that composition, "the trouble with Harry" is that he's a musician who plays the same riff over and over. This inspired two records - one by "Alfi and Harry," with "Alfi" played by the exasperated Ross Bagdasarian, 50s king of the novelty record, who tries to get pianist Harry to vary his tune. 

The other was by Les Baxter, taking a break from his exotica recordings to exhort Harry - who plays the baritone saxophone on this disc - to change his tune. While the two singles are surprisingly different, they are equally annoying. The idea is memorable, however - I can recall hearing the Bagdasarian record back when I was six years old.

Dimitri Tiomkin, Les Baxter, Ross Bagdasarian

Our final Hitchcock item is the theme from his 1954 suspense film Dial "M" for Murder, written by the distinguished film composer Dimitri Tiomkin. The theme veers from a menacing opening to a highly romantic main melody. It's a fine piece of music, although more conventional than Herrmann's scores, and so it has slipped into a perhaps undeserved obscurity.

These records all were cleaned up from Internet Archive posts.

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The Road to Minnesota with Bing and Bob

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope churned out seven of their popular "Road" movies over the years, starting with Road to Singapore in 1940, and ending up with The Road to Hong Kong in 1962. Just about the time the last one was coming out, the pair combined for this coda, "Vacation Road to Minnesota," a promotional EP sponsored by the state's Department of Business Development.

With many of us packing our bags for a getaway this time of year, I thought it might be appropriate to share this Hope-Crosby aural tour of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It's enjoyable, but does not come without some painful anachronisms - chief among them (so to speak) is Hope's fake American Indian lingo ("You speakum English? You wanna be guide for white brother?"). But generally the two display their familiar rapport, evident even though it sounds like they were not in the same place when their lines were recorded.

Bing and Bob

Bing also appears on a similar travelogue record sponsored by Oregon and issued around the same time. I have a copy of that one, but the pressing is defective, so I can't supply a transfer. Fortunately the sound on the Minnesota disc is good.

The "Vacation Road" was a product of Capitol Custom Records, and that label's Les Baxter composed and conducted the background music, making this, I suppose, an obscure Baxter collectible as well.