Doris Day - The V-Discs

For the second half of my tribute to Doris Day, I thought I might gather all the V-Discs she made with Les Brown and under her own name, including one duet with Buddy Clark.

As was common with V-Discs, some are dubs of commercial issues. Eight in this set of 12 fall into that category. The others are from a radio source, from unissued record company masters and from a special V-Disc session, complete with spoken introduction.

The first item in our collection is the most famous song recorded by Day when she was with Les Brown: "Sentimental Journey." This is not the Columbia recording; rather, it was taken from a November 1944 NBC broadcast of "For the Record."

Next in order of issue (although recorded first) was a special V-Disc made at a New Jersey army hospital in summer 1944, "Take Me in Your Arms." It includes a brief spoke introduction where Doris tells the soldiers not to take the title literally.

Les and Doris

"Till the End of Time" was one of the many classical-pop traductions of the time. On the label above, you can see that Kaye and Mossman didn't want to share the credit with Chopin. The second item is a Cahn-Styne topical piece called "He'll Have to Cross the Atlantic to Get to the Pacific" in the lyrics and by Columbia and "You've Got to Cross the etc." by V-Disc. We're going with the latter. Both songs come from a May 25 commercial session.

"You Won't Be Satisfied" is another Brown record for Columbia, dating from November 1945. It has a nice tenor sax solo by Ted Nash, who later had a very long career in studio orchestras.

From a March 1946 Columbia session, but unissued by the company commercially, comes a rocking number with the peculiar title of "Deevil, Devil, Divel," which may be why it remained in the vaults except for this V-Disc. It's a good workout for Brown's band, though.

By the next Columbia session, in June 1947, Doris had gone out on her own. The title selected for V-Disc was the commercial disc of "(I'm Still) Sitting Under the Apple Tree," which conveys a very different sentiment than "He'll Have to Cross the Atlantic to Get to the Pacific." Both were by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn.

Terry Melcher with mom's portrait

In September of that year, Cahn and Styne had turned their attention to the polka, penning "Papa Won't You Dance with Me." A second song, "That's the Way He Does It," dates from the same session. Doris' record came out on both the Columbia and V-Disc labels.

The following session, in November, resulted in an Columbia master unissued except for V-Disc. It's hard to understand why. It's a terrific reading of "No Moon at All" - then a new song - with a powerfully swinging arrangement by blog favorite George Siravo and a nice tenor solo from Toots Mondello.

From December 1947 comes "I've Only Myself to Blame," a rueful ballad by David Mann and Redd Evans, who also wrote "No Moon at All." This was issued commercially by Columbia.

The final title was a duet with another superb vocalist (and another blog favorite), Buddy Clark. From December 1948, "I'll String Along with You" is beautifully done with simple harmonizing by these two great artists. It's a fitting remembrance of both.

All these items except one come from lossy sources, but have come up well in the remastering. "I've Only Myself to Blame" does have some minor residual noise. I've substituted the commercial issue of "I'll String Along with You" for the very noisy V-Disc dub at hand.

Please see my other blog for another tribute to Doris.

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Music from 'Lady in the Dark' - But Not by Kurt Weill

The Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart musical Lady in the Dark was a major hit on Broadway in 1941. Hollywood, as it usually did, made plans for a film version, and then, as it also usually did, began making changes. One of the main modifications was to toss out most of the famous score. Very little "My Ship" and "This Is New." No "Tschaikowsky" (no Danny Kaye either). "The Saga of Jenny" and "Girl of the Moment" did remain.

Paramount did add some non-Weill music to its 1944 release, however. This post concerns the few numbers from the film that came out on commercial records. It is a companion to a post on my main blog that compiles the original recordings from the Broadway Lady in the Dark.

"Suddenly It's Spring"

The most important piece of music written for the film is "Suddenly It's Spring," a wonderful song by leading tunesmiths Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, who were most often found laboring on Bing Crosby's musicals. (They would win an Academy Award for "Swinging on a Star" from Going My Way that same year.)

Ginny Simms

Some record companies got behind "Suddenly It's Spring" - but not as many as you might think. Part of the problem was the ongoing musicians' strike, which was still in force for the biggest record labels in 1944. One company affected was Columbia; while it did record "Suddenly It's Spring" with Ginny Simms, it was with choral backing rather than orchestra. Her version is in the download. She aims to convey deep feeling, but ends up making this optimistic song ("You look at me / And suddenly it's spring") sound mournful.

One of the smaller companies that had made peace with the union also took up the song. HIT records, a budget label, enlisted Blue Barron's sweet band to record "Suddenly It's Spring" with the ever-chipper Tommy Ryan on vocals. The long-time Sammy Kaye vocalist had gone out on his own a few years before, and by 1944 was fronting the Barron ensemble for its leader, who was in uniform. On this record, you will hear Ryan introducing himself - it was common among such bands for the leader to announce the singer.

Technically, both Simms and Ryan do well by the song, which has a tricky release. I've included an aircheck by Frank Sinatra, where that great singer has trouble with the bridge on its second go-round. Nonetheless, only Sinatra's ecstatic version reveals the song's full stature. Too bad The Voice never did a commercial recording. The backing on the aircheck is almost certainly by Axel Stordahl.

"A Message for Liza"

The other music from Lady in the Dark to make it to record was, surprisingly, a bit of the movie score done by music director Robert Emmett Dolan. This music somehow came to the attention of Leopold Stokowski, who decided to record it in an August 1946 session with the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, which he had founded the year before. The delightfully lush orchestral miniature is called "A Message for Liza" on the label and "Waltz" or "Glamour Waltz" in the discographies. It is probably what IMDb calls "Artist's Waltz." The orchestration is possibly by Robert Russell Bennett, who worked on the film.

Bonus Stoki silliness

I've also included the other side of the Stokowski 78, although it has nothing to do with Lady in the Dark. It is Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 1 - but wait, what is different here? Stoki has thrown out the composer's orchestration, and substituted his own, complete with prominent xylophone and wild tempo changes that would have challenged even the most adept Hungarian dance troupe. The result sounds like Liszt at his most garish - and maybe that was the idea. The whole thing somehow reminds me of the Bugs Bunny parody of Stokowski conducting at the Hollywood Bowl - minus the tenor, of course.

Most of these recordings were found amidst the huge pile of stuff that is the Internet Archive, and remastered for your listening pleasure. The Sinatra came from a long-ago bootleg.

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André Previn on V-Disc

Following up Buddy Clark's V-Discs, here are several of the special Armed Forces discs recorded by the young André Previn in 1946.

Previn was nothing if not precocious. This wasn't even the 17-year-old's first recording session. That was with the Sunset label when he was 16. At the time he was already working at the M-G-M studio as an arranger while building a reputation as a jazz pianist. The download includes a 1945 Capitol News article on the young artist.

On the four V-Disc numbers, Previn is accompanied by an unknown rhythm section, although the speculation is that it includes Red Callender on bass and Irving Ashby on guitar - the pianist was recording with them for Sunset at about the same time.

On the first song, "I Cover the Waterfront," Previn is seemingly under the spell of George Shearing - even though Shearing had yet to emigrate to the US from England. On the other songs, he perhaps betrays a Teddy Wilson influence, along with the Art Tatum touches familiar from his slightly later Victor recordings.

Young André Previn with a fan

This post is a companion to a new item on my other blog, which presents a large number of Previn's 1947-53 RCA Victor recordings. [Note (July 2023): These V-Disc recordings are now available in ambient stereo.]

A quick follow-up to my Buddy Clark post: reader Max pointed out that I overlooked one of Clark's V-Discs, a great version of the Carmichael-Mercer "How Little We Know" made in 1945 when the singer was Cpl. Buddy Clark. Check the comments to that post for a link.

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Buddy Clark on V-Disc

The great but short-lived vocalist Buddy Clark recorded four songs for V-Disc that aren't found among his commercial recordings, at least in the same form. This post collects the four.

"How Are Things in Glocca Mora" is an alternate take to his 1946 Columbia record. The backing was by frequent collaborator Mitchell Ayres.

Buddy did "Peg O' My Heart" for Columbia, but this version for V-Disc was taken from an aircheck of a Contented Hour broadcast from May 1947. Percy Faith provided the accompaniment

The third item is one of the most unusual of all V-Discs. It was taken from a 1946 Columbia session that represented his first attempts at "Isn't This Better than Walking in the Rain."

Buddy Clark

Here for a V-Disc subtitled "Fluffs at a Record Session," we have a mash-up of two breakdown takes. In the first one, Buddy flubs the melody and makes up his own, invoking Dick Haymes and "Bingie Boy" in the process. In the second, he launches into a broad Jolson imitation. He ends with a plaintive "What the hell am I doing?"

The final item has a spoken Clark introduction - a feature of many V-Discs - followed by a reading of "You're Too Dangerous, Cherie" (an English-language version of "La Vie en Rose"). It was sourced from an October 1947 Contented Hour broadcast.

These are not my transfers, but I did work over the sound, and it's good, except for a high frequency roll-off and a bit of noise in the final item.

This post is a companion to a new survey on my other blog of some of Clark's Okeh, Columbia and Varsity records.

ADDENDUM - Sharp-eyed reader Max pointed out that I overlooked one of Clark's V-Discs, and it's a good one - a wonderful version of the Carmichael-Mercer "How Little We Know" made in 1945 with an excellent Army orchestra when the singer was Cpl. Buddy Clark. I've added a link to a repitched and remastered version in the comments. Thanks, Max!

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Vic Damone's 'Haunted Heart'

Here is a quick supplement to my recent post about the 1948 musical Inside U.S.A. It is Vic Damone's take on the big ballad from that show, "Haunted Heart."

Our friend David Federman asked for this version, saying it is his favorite of the beautiful Dietz-Schwartz song. To me, the prize goes to Buddy Clark, but I won't argue the matter. Both are wonderful - as is the Perry Como single. (The Buddy and Perry versions are in the Inside U.S.A. download.)

Damone is backed by Salvador "Tutti" Camarata on "Haunted Heart." Toots had already dispensed with his first name on record labels, styling himself as "Camarata," a la Liberace. Regardless, he was a fine arranger.

The flip side is "Tell Me a Story," an OK pop tune of the day also recorded by Sammy Kaye. Leading the band is Mitch Miller, then the A&R head of Mercury before moving the Columbia a few years later.

The young Vic Damone

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More Fiedler: Where Is Your Doo-Wacka-Doodle

I just had to bring you one more Arthur Fiedler record, this one a promo 78 from 1953. My reasons:

1. It has a RED promo label! (Sorry for the outburst; I am a record nerd.) RCA promos of this vintage always have white labels. I have to assume it was because Fiedler and the Pops were Red Seal artists.

2. The "A" side (at least it's the "A" side for me) is "The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)," which Fiedler later re-recorded in stereo for his Music from Million-Dollar Movies LP, available via my other blog.

3. The arrangement for "Where Is Your Heart" is by blog favorite George Siravo. I never would have guessed he did this Pops arrangement, which is different from his usual style (and quite wonderful).

4. RCA flubs almost every aspect of the information on the label, attributing the music to lyricist William Engvick and the words to composer Georges Auric, and misspelling Siravo's name. (They did get Fiedler's right.)

And now for the down side, also known as the flip side.

It is a tune called "Doo Wacka Doodle," written by Lou Singer, whose greatest hit was "One Meatball," so you know what to expect. This side is attributed to "Members of the Boston Pops Orchestra," and one can speculate that the other musicians refused to participate.

The Billboard ad at left suggests that Fiedler "swings" these tunes, but "Doo Wacka Doodle" is the antithesis of swing, and "Moulin Rouge" is a lush instrumental. Copywriters should listen to the records they promote.

Not my transfer, but I did work it over and the sound is good. Highly recommended for the "Where Is Your Heart."

Breaking Batons in Boston

Our friend and benefactor Ernie returns to the blogs with this unusual EP from 1954 called Fiedler's Folly. It includes four musical parodies as made popular by the Boston Pops and their longtime conductor, Arthur Fiedler.

Despite what the cover may suggest, far from getting mad about these things, Fiedler himself commissioned the parodies or at least the arrangements from Pops staff arranger Peter Bodge. The conductor used them to liven up his programs.

The best known of the four items is probably "The Glow-Worm Turns," based on an operetta tune by Paul Lincke. The Johnny Mercer revision of "Glow Worm" had been a hit for the Mills Brothers in 1952, and would have been very familiar to a 1954 audience. As is his pattern with these numbers, Bodge works in everyone from Richard Strauss to Johann Strauss in his arrangement.

Fiedler plays an RCA 45 - one of his own?

Also overly familiar to the contemporary Bostonians would have been basic material in the "Cry Parody," which is Bodge's deconstruction of Johnny Ray's histrionic 1951 single, "Cry."

Perhaps the most elaborate number is "Low-Tide," a take-off on Robert Maxwell's 1953 hit, "Ebb Tide." The sea setting provides Bodge a pretext to toss in The Flying Dutchman, seagulls, "Yo Ho Blow the Man Down," "The Sailor's Hornpipe" and similar material.

The fourth piece is Alec Templeton's "Mozart Matriculates," which weaves in "From the Halls of Montezuma" on muted trumpet.

The brief program is enjoyable; just don't expect a laff riot. Genteel titters were more the fashion in mid-50s Boston. Ernie's transfer is excellent, and I thank him once again for thinking of us!