Bob Stewart on Embassy and Metro

Vocalist Bob Stewart appeared seemingly out of nowhere about 25 years ago, billed as one of the last of the great saloon singers. The first time I saw one of his CDs, I remember thinking to myself, "Bob WHO?"

It turns out that Stewart did have an earlier career, although it was an obscure one - and he really was quite a good singer.

This post brings together what are probably his two earliest recordings, both from 78s in my collection.

I believe the earlier of the two recordings, on the Metro label, dates from 1948. On it, Stewart is backed by a vocal group called the Victorians. The idea here was apparently to combine a singer who sounded a lot like Sinatra with a group that sounded just like the Mills Brothers. It all works surprisingly well, and the two innocuous songs are most pleasant - assuming you can tolerate the heavy surfaces on my well-worn copy.

I have not been able to find a date for the other record, which is on the Embassy label. The cover above may fool you into thinking the Embassy recording is an LP - it is not, and I was deceived myself when I picked it up years ago. It is a promo 78 sent to disk jockeys with a cardboard sleeve detailing Stewart's career, which to that point had entailed several big band stints and service as a plumber.

While the Embassy folks claim that their single was Stewart's first, I believe this record postdates the Metro 78 by a few years. On Embassy, the singer (to my ears) betrays the influence of Eddie Fisher, who did not become popular until 1950. However, I will admit that it is possible that the Embassy release comes from as early as 1948 - I found evidence of a record company by that name being founded in that year.

M-G-M promo

Whatever the dating, again this is a fine record, this time with pristine surfaces. The songs again are generic efforts, but Stewart and a backing group do well by them. One of the songs, "If I Had My Way," is basically "You Tell Me Your Dream, I'll Tell You Mine," an 1899 song that had been revived in 1939.

Now, because the singing styles on the two records are different, it is possible that there were two different crooning Bob Stewarts, although I think that is unlikely.

Stewart went on to tape a dozen or so songs for M-G-M in 1954, and had a least one single on Dot in 1957. But his most notable recording was a very good 1956 LP on Dawn with Mat Mathews, which has been reissued. After those efforts, nothing until his reemergence in about 1990.

This post is the result of a request from some time ago - sorry about the delay!

Copland for Children

Young People's Records (YPR) was a prolific and innovative postwar enterprise that lasted until it was dissolved during the 1952 Red Scare - only to have virtually its entire catalogue quickly resurface under the Children's Record Guild imprint.

YPR had the misfortune of being branded as a Communist-influenced organization during those tortured days, and many of its artists were likewise identified as sympathizers, such as folk singers Pete Seeger, Tom Glazer and Oscar Brand, as was YPR founder Horace Grenell.

The composer Aaron Copland also was in that category, although that is immaterial to his presence as the subject of this 78-rpm single, "The Music of Aaron Copland for Young People." This takes the form of a mother (radio-television actor Adelaide Klein) playing excerpts from the composer's music for her daughter (Madeline Lee), to a script by Raymond Abrashkin, YPR's staff writer.

Adelaide Klein

There isn't much you can say about a composer in the space of six minutes while playing his music, so the narrative confines itself to such passages as the daughter exclaiming that the excerpt from A Lincoln Portrait "feels like" Lincoln. (At this remove, it's probably more appropriate to say that our impression of the assassinated President "feels like" A Lincoln Portrait.)

The musical excerpts also include Appalachian Spring, El Salón México and Billy the Kid. All are well played by members of the New York Philharmonic led by Walter Hendl.

The dating of this record is uncertain, although I believe it comes from the late 1940s. YPR was founded in 1947, and Hendl was associate conductor of the New York band until 1949.

Walter Hendl

The sound from this early vinyl pressing is excellent. I mentioned YPR's record of innovation; the early use of vinyl was one facet, but more important was its mail-order subscription approach to marketing. It's said that YPR had a million subscribers at one time. I think this is wildly unlikely - I have encountered relatively few YPR records over a lifetime of collecting. Also, apparently one reason YPR went under is that libraries and other institutions cancelled their subscriptions during the Red Scare. These cancellations would not themselves have been a significant issue if the company truly had a huge subscription base.

YPR intended to produce a series of recordings about composers, but as far as I can tell, only this record and one devoted to Igor Stravinsky were ever completed.

I don't collect children's records (and didn't even when I was a tot), but I do have one other interesting item from the YPR/Children's Record Guild catalog - "By Rocket to the Moon" accompanied by the music of Raymond Scott, which I will share sometime in the future.

A 1934 Christmas Party with the Men About Town

My great pal Ernie (who is busily uploading Christmas music on his blog) expressed an interest in this particular record, which I happened to have, so here it is for one and all.

Now, I know Ernie, being a record collector, really wants the shellac item rather than the digital replica, but perhaps this will suffice.

It is a two-sided Decca 78 from 1934 called "Christmas Party," and it joins together holiday tunes familiar and not so, all under the auspices of the mysterious "Men About Town," which puts me in mind of a bunch of fellows in top hats and tails. Except that one of the most prominent party attendees is clearly a woman, who takes the lead during a good part of the vocalizing.

Not much can be found about the Men About Town and their female accomplice, but I think I have solved the mystery of at least the main protagonists on the record. The male lead is very likely Frank Luther, who at the time was equally prominent as a hillbilly and dance band vocalist, and who would later go on to dominate the children's record industry. The female voice is undoubtedly Luther's wife, Zora Layman, who is credited on the label of a Men About Town record from a few months earlier.

Frank Luther

Zora Layman

Under their own names Luther and Layman would go on to record a similar medley, "Christmas in Song," for Decca in 1939. (I should mention that the Men About Town also laid down a two-sided "Christmas Day" medley at the same November 1934 session in New York, and that both singles appeared on the Montgomery Ward label as well as Decca. I don't have the "Christmas Day" 78.)

As for the other voices on the "Christmas Party," my guess is that they are J. Donald Parker and Phil Dewey, who had recorded with Luther under the name the Melody Three. Parker and Dewey earlier used the "Men About Town" appellation with Will Donaldson.

I picked up this record many years ago hoping it would be at least a little ribald. Sorry to disappoint, but it is entirely sober, but pleasing nonetheless.

Christmas with Clark Dennis

Capitol had a sterling roster of vocalists in the late 40s - among the men were Nat King Cole, Johnny Mercer, Gordon MacRae, Andy Russell, Matt Dennis and Jack Smith. The label's moguls added radio tenor Clark Dennis to the rolls in 1946, and he quickly scored a chart success with the oldie "Peg O' My Heart."

That was to be the high point of Dennis's relatively brief recording career, which mainly consists of the three dozen or so sides that the crooner laid down for Capitol from 1946-50.

I believe this is the sole Christmas single he recorded during that time, although he was well suited to the genre. Evidence is his impassioned rendition of the "Cantique de Noel," which here is backed by a worthy version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" combined with "Joy to the World."

Clark Dennis

The busy studio keyboard artist Buddy Cole contributes what is optimistically described as "orchestral accompaniment." To my ears it sounds like harp plus the tones of Buddy's mighty Wurlitzer. (Does anyone hear any other instruments?)

The initial release of this coupling was in 1949; my copy is a reissue from about 1952. The sound is good.

Dennis, who earlier had vocal stints with Ben Pollack and Paul Whiteman in addition to his radio assignments, was about 40 when these recordings were made. He died in 1992.

Kay Starr with Charlie Barnet

Kay Starr first achieved popular success as a vocalist on Capitol records in the late 40s, but before that she was a band thrush (as Billboard termed them) with Joe Venuti, Glenn Miller, Charlie Barnet and a few other ensembles, making some records with Miller and Barnet.

Her Miller sides aren't that memorable. Starr was a temporary replacement for Marion Hutton and the material and arrangements were not well suited to her. She is, however, recognizably "Kay Starr" on this 1944 date with alto saxophonist Charlie Barnet.

The 78 couples two Doris Fisher-Allan Roberts songs that were actually big hits - but for other artists. And to make it worse, those hits were on Barnet's label, Decca. "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall" was a success for Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots (principally Bill Kenny) and "You Always Hurt the One You Love" was a blockbuster for the Mills Brothers.

Kay Starr with Charlie Barnet

Both those competing sides have a panache that the blustery Barnet band cannot match. Charlie's boys start out forte and end up forte, never really swinging along the way. But then I've never been much of a Barnet fan. The sound is fairly good, though.

Starr soon became a single act and eventually moved along to Capitol. My other blog is featuring records she made for that concern from 1947-49.

Margaret Whiting Meets Hopalong Cassidy

Back in 1950, televisions were finding their way into more and more American homes, and a great number of those sets were tuned in to Hopalong Cassidy western films, which had achieved new life on the new medium. Veteran actor William Boyd had originated the Hopalong character as early as 1935 for a long series of programmers that depicted his character as a clean-living, sarsaparilla-drinking hero who defeated a parade of bad guys with the aid of his horse Topper and a juvenile accomplice.

The explosive interest in Hopalong Cassidy led to an exhaustive parade of exploitation items - guns, clothes, lunch boxes, watches, dishes, and even Capitol kiddie records. Songwriters Nacio Herb Brown and L. Wolfe Gilbert, who had penned the theme music for Boyd's TV show, decided they wanted in on the action, and in 1950 they went to Capitol, who held rights to the character, with a request to record their "Hopalong Cassidy March" along with a lullaby they had written called "Hoppy, Topper and Me," in which the young protagonist dreams of riding as the cowboy's sidekick.

Hoppy, Maggie and
Johnny Mercer (?)

Only trouble was, as Billboard put it, the label showed "no eagerness to record the Hoppy numbers." Undeterred, Brown, Gilbert and their partner Boyd had the songs recorded independently, using Capitol artists Margaret Whiting and Frank De Vol. Capitol then agreed to ship out 500 copies of the promo single to the nation's disc jockeys. If the reception was good, a commercial release would be considered, per Billboard's November 25, 1950 issue.

The DJs must have liked the tunes well enough, because Capitol did eventually put them out in its regular series - the march coupled with another Frank De Vol side called "Circus Days," and the Whiting version of "Hoppy, Topper and Me" suitably backed by "This Little Piggy Went to Market."

This post combines the original Capitol promo single version of the Hoppy theme music with both sides of Whiting's regularly issued single. Personally, I can do without the march music, but the Whiting songs are predictably excellent, beautifully performed without ever seeming mawkish, nicely backed by De Vol and by Whiting's husband Lou Busch on "This Little Piggy." Boyd himself makes a cameo at the end of "Hoppy, Topper and Me," confusingly saying good night to the young cowpoke, after Whiting has made it clear that the tyke has just awakened from a night's sleep.

You also are invited over to my main blog, where I have just devoted a long post to early and rare Whiting 78s from the first several years of her career, before she encountered Hoppy and the horse he rode in on.

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.