Betty Jane Bonney on Victor

Reader Max recently asked me if I had a copy of Betty Jane Bonney's "How Little We Know" (the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer tune, not the later Carolyn Leigh-Phil Springer effort). I did not, but after Max located a raw transfer on Internet Archive, I became interested in the singer, and decided to present all six of her 1945 Victor recordings.

These sides were made when Bonney was about 20 years old, but by then she had already cycled through the bands of Les Brown, Jan Savitt, Jerry Wald, Frankie Carle and Charlie Spivak.

Victor was pleased with their new signer, giving her a hefty promotional push with ads in and a cover of Billboard and cooperative ads with local record shops. She received so much attention that Victor's biggest female star, Dinah Shore, reputedly became annoyed. That could be why Bonney's Victor career was notably short lived - at most two sessions.

After her Victor contract expired, Bonney made an elusive record for the Gem label and later, Rainbow Records. She also appeared in the stage musical High Button Shoes.

Then in 1950, she made a new start by changing her professional name to Judy Johnson. She joined Sammy Kaye's band, and made a few Columbia records with the swinging-and-swaying one. M-G-M brought her in for several numbers, mostly duets with Bill Hayes, and she even may have made a brief return to RCA Victor, although it's not clear to me that is the same singer. She was often seen on American television in years to come.

While Bonney didn't fulfill her early promise, these records are very well done. The backings, mostly by the young Russ Case, are smooth. While these are not my transfers, I did remaster all of them, and the sound is good. I may present some of her Les Brown, Sammy Kaye and Judy Johnson-Bill Hayes material at a later date.

June 23, 1945 Billboard ad

Let's Boogie with the Grand Dame of the Harpsichord

I've featured harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe on my other blog performing music of 20th century composers. Today we hear her in 20th century music of a different type - boogie-woogie.

Although Marlowe became famous for her dedication to contemporary classical music, she started her career as a radio and cabaret artist who entertained with a variety of material, including transposing the then-popular boogie styles from piano to harpsichord.

Although she soon defected to the baroque repertoire, Marlowe's earliest discs offer such fare as "My Dog Has Fleas" and "The Village Blacksmith" along with classical-goes-pop novelties like "Haydn Seek" and "Mr. Mozart Meanders."

Her earliest records (dated to late 1939 or 1940 by my friend Nick Morgan) included several boogie-woogie piano pieces, and were made for the miniscule General label. This post has two of the three discs in that set (the second newly uploaded in June 2023).

On the first record we have Meade "Lux" Lewis' "Honky Tonk Train" and Jimmy Yancey's "Yancey Special" (spelled "Yancy" on the label). Here, the latter number is attributed to Lewis rather than Yancey.

The second record starts with "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" by Pinetop Smith. For the flip side, it veers to Raymond Scott's then-new Mozart pastiche "In an Eighteenth Century Drawing Room."

The "grande dame of the harpsichord" also boogied

Marlowe handles this material with aplomb. She is just as home here as in Scarlatti or Rieti. I believe Marlowe was using a large Pleyel harpsichord at the time, with stops and pedals that would not have been found on a baroque instrument. She makes liberal use of the pedals to produce some of the railroad effects in "Honky Tonk Train."

These recordings come from crackly uploads found on Internet Archive, but sound good in newly applied ambient stereo. The discs were part of a three-record set that also included Alec Templeton's "Bach Goes to Town" and Irwin Hellmer's "Boogie Woogie Rhapsody." I don't have transfers of those two numbers, alas.

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Dinah Shore Sings Gershwin

My friend Ernie complained that my last post wasn't a single - it was two records. Well, Ern, I guess I am cheating again, because here is another two-record set.

In it, Dinah Shore applies her considerable skill and charm to four Gershwin tunes, early ("Do It Again"), late ("Love Walked In") and in-between ("The Man I Love," "Someone to Watch Over Me").

Dinah was then (1945) at the height of her popularity as a singer, so of course Victor periodically produced 78 albums for her. I have an earlier one called Musical Orchids, whatever that may mean, dating from 1943.

Rather than using a hard cover, this present album is presented in a soft double envelope, with the colorful front cover above, a center spread detailing the songs, and a back cover glorifying the artist (below).

Click image to enlarge

I have presented a few of these soft-cover albums over the years. Their biggest drawback is that they offer little to no protection to the shellac within. Somewhere along the line, probably in moving, I managed to crack both records in four places. I found a good transfer of the 78 coupling "Love Walked In" and "Someone to Watch Over Me" on Internet Archive, so it's been substituted for my crunchy copy. For the other two songs I have resorted to lossy copies, which still do sound good. (Note (February 2024): these have now been remastered in ambient stereo.)

If you like Dinah, you'll find the results worthwhile. She's in good voice, and the backings by Al Sack are lovely, reminiscent of those that Axel Stordahl was producing for Frank Sinatra during the same period. Sack, a talented and in-demand arranger, died in 1947 of heart disease at age 36.

LINK

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Jane Powell's First Album

Jane Powell was a delightful presence in films of the 40s and 50s, making quite a few recordings for M-G-M, where she was a star attraction. But before she appeared on M-G-M records, her first discs were issued by Columbia - in its Masterworks series, no less.

Columbia later gathered some of these records in the 10-inch LP Date with Jane Powell, which appeared on my other blog in 2013, and is still available. Two of the songs were from Powell's first M-G-M musical, Holiday in Mexico, and had originally appeared as part of a two-record 78 album in 1946 with four of Jane's songs from that film. The album was descriptively titled, Songs by Jane Powell, M-G-M Star, as Sung in the Picture "Holiday in Mexico." Which about covers things.

Today I'm posting the complete set, adding "I Think of You" (purloined from Rachmaninoff) and Victor Herbert's "Italian Street Song" to the two songs on the LP - Delibes' "Les Filles de Cadix" and the inescapable Schubert "Ave Maria." The two new items and the associated graphics were snared from Internet Archive during my recent spelunking into its caverns. All remastered and restored to like new, or as new I can get get them.

Columbia didn't do an especially good job recording the songs, but I've done my darndest to compensate. Carmen Dragon's accompaniments seem to be coming from some distance, however. (Hellooo, Carmen!) Moreover, it's my theory that both the record company and M-G-M increased the speed of Powell's recordings to make her sound younger and her voice higher. She sounds better and more natural in a lower key, so I have dropped these numbers down a half step in all cases.

I will admit that I love Jane, so I hope you like this small addition to the Powell catalog to be found on my sites.

Mary Osborne Sings

I shared Mary Osborne's sole LP on my other blog seven years ago. It's a fine effort, showing off her well-honed guitar skills. But Osborne was a talented vocalist, too, and she doesn't sing on her album. But if you go back quite a few years, she did vocalize on the very first record issued under her name. Today's post is devoted to that 78, which Bob Thiele issued on his Signature Records in 1946.

By that time, the 25-year-old Osborne had already racked up some signficant credits, having played with the bands of Buddy Rogers, Dick Stabile, Terry Shand, Joe Venuti and Russ Morgan.

Her Signature recordings were limited to six sides; she then moved on to Aladdin, Decca and eventually M-G-M. The Warwick LP (which is still available via my other blog) came out in 1959. Unfortunately, it didn't lead to more albums, to my knowledge.

The Signature single's A-side was "Hoodle Addle," a nonsensical but catchy Ray McKinley song also recorded by the composer and by the wonderful Ella Mae Morse. Mark Cantor's Celluloid Improvisations site has an enjoyable Columbia Pictures short of a relaxed and personable McKinley singing that number and introducing his band members, who included Mundell Lowe and Peanuts Hucko. It's well worth seeing. I plan to transfer some of McKinley's records for my other site soon.

Osborne's B-side was her own composition, "What to Do," a moody contrast to "Hoodle Addle." The excellent pianist is Sanford Gold. I've seen the bass playing credited to Frenchy Couette, one of those names that sounds like a jazz pseudonym.

The sound on the single is very good.

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The 5 Red Caps and 'Destination Unknown'

Our friend and contributor David Federman asked me if I had a copy of this record, specifically the song "Destination Unknown," written by Andy Razaf and Irene Higginbotham. I did not, but was able to locate a lossless transfer on Internet Archive, and here - following some remastering- it is for David and all interested.

The artists were the 5 Red Caps, who appeared on my main blog in its early days, in their guise of Steve Gibson and the Red Caps. The group has a convoluted history, extensively covered by Marv Goldberg on his R&B Notebooks pages. The quick version is that the quintet was known as the Toppers until producer Joe Davis brought them into the studio and dubbed them the 5 Red Caps. Goldberg believes the name change was an attempt to fool the Musicians Union, who were striking the record companies at the time. For some time, the Toppers/5 Red Caps maintained the dual identity.

From Marv Goldberg's site

The group was under contract with Davis from 1942-46, then took flight to Mercury Records, where member Steve Gibson began to get first billing. When "Destination Unknown" and its flip side, "Don't Say We're Through," were recorded, the personnel were probably Gibson, Romaine Brown, Doles Dickens, Jimmy Springs, Emmett Mathews, and David Patillo. (I know that adds up to six members, but maybe one of them didn't wear a red cap.) Springs is the tenor on these records.

I've remastered and reuploaded my earlier Red Caps posts for those interested. They consist of the 10-inch LP You're Driving Me Crazy (with a cover that has to be seen to be believed) and the EP Blueberry Hill plus four bonus 78 sides. Those posts have more on the Red Caps and their style of music. At the time of the Joe Davis record above, they were heavily under the spell of the Ink Spots - as were many groups.

It's an enjoyable record. Although the 78 was worn, the remastering has revealed very good presence with acceptable noise. As I mentioned above, David's interest was what he calls a lost Andy Razaf song, "Destination Unknown." Razaf wrote the lyrics to such well-known songs as "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now" and "Honeysuckle Rose." David says he is deserving of the same increased attention as has been given to Willard Robison.

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Michel Legrand - Music from the Film 'Lost Continent'

The great composer, conductor and pianist Michel Legrand died in Paris earlier today. Here is a small remembrance of him from early in his career - a 1957 EP of music from the film Lost Continent.

Legrand was only 25 when the film and record were released in the US in early 1957, but he already was a well-known artist here because of his best selling LP I Love Paris, which Columbia had quickly followed with Castles in Spain. The series soon encompassed visits to Rome, Vienna and Rio, and eventually a jazz version and a stereo remake of the French excursion.

Lost Continent was an Italian documentary about Southeast Asia that came out in 1955 with music by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino, who scored a vast number of films during his career. The history of the soundtrack is unclear to me, but I do know that music from it was released in the US on M-G-M in 1957. There also was a French EP of Legrand's version. Both of these had far more, shall we say, exotic covers than the bland travelogue pic that fronts the Columbia EP. (Images are in the download.)

The young Legrand

The French critic Roland Barthes in fact complained that Lost Continent perpetuated a European sense of exoticism, while imposing Christian values onto the Buddhist traditions of Southeast Asia - or so Wikipedia tells us.

That exoticism comes through in Lavagnino's music and Legrand's arrangements, which, despite Barthes' protestations, are enjoyable period pieces.

This EP is a footnote to Legrand's remarkable career. I am sure I have a few dozen of his records in my collection alone, and I've always enjoyed his work, whether as composer, arranger or pianist. I had this EP transferred and ready to go a few years ago, but never posted it. It's too bad that Legrand's death was what impelled me into action.

The Lost Continent EP has not, to my knowledge, been reissued, although two cuts appeared on a Legrand compilation of movie music on a Columbia LP. The sound is excellent.