Mercer Ellington and Carmen McRae

One of the most fascinating people I've encountered in the collecting world is Mark Cantor, one of the leading collectors of and experts on jazz on film. Mark has a rewarding website, Celluloid Improvisations, where he shares and comments on filmed performances by jazz and other artists.

Mark's latest effort focuses on the 1946 film Sepia Cinderella and a rare appearance by a band led by Mercer Ellington, the trumpeter son of Duke. The link above takes you to Mark's exploration of the film and its production, notes on the plot and the stars, and other material of absorbing interest. The leads in the movie were Billy Daniels (less histrionic here than he would later become) and Sheila Guyse, a hard-luck singer whose sole LP has appeared on my other blog.

Mercer Ellington

For some reason the Mercer Ellington band appears under the name of arranger Gil Fuller. A clip from the film (featuring a tenor sax solo from Budd Johnson) can be found via Mark's home page under “2nd Chorus: Watch.” It's a song titled "Ring Around My Rosie"  - look for a thumbnail image located at the bottom of the list, the last item on the page.

In connection with this, I thought I might share Mercer Ellington's only Musicraft single, which is worthy in its own right. It couples "Metronome All-Out," a simple riff that Mercer's father concocted for a Metronome All-Stars date earlier in 1946, with Mercer's own tune, "Pass Me By," with a vocal by the great Carmen McRae, making her first appearance on record. At the time, McRae was married to drummer Kenny Clarke, and so is billed on the label as Carmen Clarke.

McRae is already an assured and soulful singer, portending the great things she was to accomplish in her career. Fittingly, the song opens with an alto sax solo heavily reminiscent of Johnny Hodges of Duke Ellington's band.

As a bonus, I've also included another early McRae single, this one on the Sunrise label and dating from circa 1953. The singer contributes a effortless version of "A Foggy Day" backed with the less-often heard Romberg-Hammerstein song, "Wanting You." The backing is by the wonderful accordionist Mat Mathews and his combo, featuring flutist Herbie Mann, who contributes an unexpected tenor sax solo (in a Stan Getz mode) on the Gershwin song.

These singles are very much worth hearing, with vivid sound from the vintage 78s.

Carmen McRae

Ray Anthony on Parade

Ray Anthony started his band in the Glenn Miller mode, but grew out of the Miller manner into a more varied approach as the years went by. This 1954 EP adopts the Dixieland style, collecting single sides from 1949, 1950 and 1953.

The bandleader had for some time included Bob Crosby-style big-band Dixieland in his book, probably in an attempt to recognize the popularity of the Dixieland revival that began in the 1940s. That movement had room for such rediscovered musicians as Kid Ory and George Lewis, as well as the Chicago school of Bud Freeman and others and such revivalist bands as Turk Murphy.

Anthony himself has a credible Dixie solo on the first tune, "Darktown Strutters' Ball," with phrasing reminiscent of Louis Armstrong and Bobby Hackett. "When the Saints Go Marching In" adopts a quasi-live ambiance most likely created in the studio with a dubbed-in audience. Anthony himself leads the singing - or, more accurately, shouting - of the lyrics.

While bands such as Anthony's tried to co-opt the Dixieland style, the musicians also tended to look down on Dixieland ensembles, so they tended to kid the Dixie style at the same time as they tried to capitalize on its popularity. This can be heard on "Spaghetti Rag," where pianist Eddie Ryan uses what sounds like a tack piano, which is associated with the corniest versions of the style, later giving rise to such phenomena as "Crazy Otto" and his ilk, with the bowler hats and sleeve garters. Yikes.

Anthony would go on to record an entire Big Band Dixieland LP in 1955, including a remake of the "When the Saints Go Marching In."

This EP is a companion to a post on my main blog of Anthony's 1951 LP Houseparty Hop.

"Thanks, Fred, for congratulations" (?) - a 1954 Billboard ad

More Spirituals from Marian Anderson

This is a companion to a post on my main blog that presents a Marian Anderson 10-inch LP of spirituals dating from 1952.

Here we have an EP that brings together four additional spirituals that Miss Anderson recorded for Victor in May 1947.

As with the LP, the singing here is magnificent, and the identification with the material is total. The contralto was in all ways a phenomenon.

As usual, Miss Anderson's pianist is Franz Rupp, who accompanied her from 1940 until her 1964 retirement.

The sound from RCA's New York Studio No. 2 is very good.

Marian Anderson and Franz Rupp

To the Moon with Raymond Scott

A moon landing was 20 years off when this children's record was recorded in 1949, but space travel was already in the public consciousness and had been for some time. So it was no real novelty for the fledgling Young People's Records to concoct the idea of a disc telling the tale of a trip to the moon, and contracting composer-arranger Raymond Scott to score the proceedings.

It's a curiously casual trip - not with the astronauts we are accustomed to, but a gaggle of space tourists, who seemingly had chosen the voyage in preference to, say, a bus trip to Detroit. They seem shocked by the hub-bub when they return - "What's all the cheering about?"

Raymond Scott was a perfect choice for composer - his off-center approach to arrangement seems just right for this retro-futuristic fantasy. You will hear echoes of the compositions that even then were beginning to be used as cartoon backings - "Powerhouse," "The Toy Trumpet" and the like.

The stentorian announcer is Ralph Camargo, a radio actor and voice-over artist. The Gene Lowell Chorus sings and its members presumably interject the few spoken remarks needed. At one point, a fellow wants the captain to turn the rocket around because he forgot his wallet. The captain's reply: "You won't need your wallet here, a thousand miles from the atmosphere." This was in the days before they charged for everything on air voyages.

Longtime blog supporter David Federman says he had this record as a young fellow, and is looking forward to hearing it again. I hope he and all of you enjoy it.

Raymond Scott

A couple of minor notes. "By Rocket to the Moon" first came out on Young People's Records in 1949, then was reissued by its successor, the Children's Record Guild, about 1953. My transfer comes from a clean CRG pressing.

Those interested in Raymond Scott are invited to head over to the main blog, where I have refurbished an early 10-inch LP that collected some of Scott's 1930s output, including "Powerhouse" and "The Toy Trumpet." The post dates from the early days of the blog, but I have now remastered the sound and it's much improved.

Lisa Kirk's Sole Columbia Recording

This is a companion post to the selection of 24 single sides by the great singer Lisa Kirk that can be found on my main blog.

Here we have her sole recording for the Columbia, done in 1956, a few years after she left RCA Victor. It contains two songs from a CBS television production starring Kirk. The label at right identifies the program as A Heart to Call My Own, but that is a mistake. It actually was The Human Touch, broadcast on April 15, 1956.

The teleplay, which appears to be lost, was almost literally "ripped from the headlines," as they said back then. Kirk played a New York night club singer, which she was in real life. After her character, Ruth Elliott, becomes the subject of a scurrilous article in a Confidential-style scandal magazine, she threatens a defamation lawsuit. Elliott then is offered a juicy Broadway role contingent on dropping the suit. The drama turns on the choice of following through with the suit or taking the role.

Lisa Kirk in full nightclub mode

Such plots were not uncommon at the time. It has some similarities, for example, to Sweet Smell of Success, a 1950 Ernest Lehman story that would become a film in 1957.

The Human Touch contained at least two songs, coupled on this single. "A Heart to Call My Own" by lyricist William Engvick and composer Alec Wilder, is the better of the pair, even though it contains a fairly conventional waltz melody by Wilder standards. The other song is "A Smile and a Ribbon" by Kirk's husband Bob Wells and Mark McIntyre.

The backings are by Columbia stalwart Percy Faith. I like Faith, but these arrangements can best be described as characteristic. The sound is excellent.

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.