Marion Harris Sings Gershwin

The singer Marion Harris is mostly forgotten today, even though she was very popular on records and radio from the late teens until the 1930s. Born Mary Ellen Harrison in 1896, possibly in Indiana, she was on Broadway in an Irving Berlin revue as early as 1915.

Soon thereafter she was making records for Victor, introducing such standards as "After You're Gone," "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "I Ain't Got Nobody."

Harris was successful because she was good, and moreover her voice was well suited to recording, with clear diction, lovely tone, and accurate intonation. She also had a personal quality that was well ahead of its time during a period when many singers developed a trumpet-like characteristic so they could be heard in the back of a theater.

Today, as a companion to a George Gershwin collection from Lee Wiley on my main blog, we have three Gershwin songs that Harris recorded in the 1920s.

The first was unfamiliar to me, and I suspect will be to most others: "Nashville Nightingale," which dates from 1923. This was before George was writing regularly with his brother Ira; the song has lyrics by Irving Caesar that trade on the usual Southern clichés complete with stereotypical language. If you can put that aside, you'll find that Harris sings the piece convincingly.

Sources differ on the genesis of the song. Some say it was heard in the short-lived revue Nifties of 1923, but the Internet Broadway Database does not list it in the songs from that show's opening night. It may have been cut before the opening or added during the six-week run. Later, the song was heard in the 1927 West End revue Shake Your Feet.

The next number, "Somebody Loves Me," is far more famous. It comes from 1924, when it was heard in that year's George White's Scandals. Gershwin worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on the song. Harris' Brunswick recording is first class.

Both these recordings were made by the acoustic process, with its limited frequency response. Even so, they are very listenable, in large part because Harris' voice recorded so well.

The final item, "The Man I Love," was written by the Gershwin brothers and remains one of their best-known numbers. As I note in my Lee Wiley post, "For such a famous song, it had the dubious honor of being cut from Lady, Be Good, inserted in Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town, and rejected for Rosalie." Although the piece was written in 1924, it wasn't until 1927 that the recordings started to flow. SecondHand Songs lists Harris' as the first, although versions by such fine vocalists as Annette Hanshaw and Vaughn De Leath came out at about the same time.

Harris' disc is fully satisfying, enhanced by the electrical recording process with its wider frequency response. The singer is accompanied by the unusual combination of violin, guitar and piano; the violin sounds like it might actually have been a viola.

The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists 167 sides by Harris, all of which were done before 1931. She appeared on American radio in the early 1930s, then was on radio in England for a brief time before retiring from the business. She died in a fire aged 48.

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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 Johnny Desmond Christmas Collection

This year I've already offered a few posts of holiday recordings by favored singers who never produced such a collection themselves - Margaret Whiting and John McCormack. Today we turn our attention to another fine vocalist - Johnny Desmond (1919-85) - with 10 songs he released from 1949 to 1956 for M-G-M and Coral records.

A few of these sides have appeared in compilations on my other blog, but this is the first time I've pulled them all together.

In conjunction with this new collection, I've also remastered Desmond LPs from Coral and M-G-M, as well as the soundtrack to The Stingiest Man in Town and the Coral LP Merry Christmas 1952, which includes two Desmond songs. Links are below.

A bit of Johnny's personal history: his first break was in 1940 when his vocal group the Downbeats was subsumed into Bob Crosby's band as the "Bob-o-Links." Desmond only stayed with Crosby for a year before turning solo with Gene Krupa's band. The following year he joined the Army, becoming a vocalist for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band, where he remained until the end of the war.

1949 Cash Box ad

Postwar, he recorded for Victor, followed by M-G-M and Coral; later on for Columbia and other labels. Desmond also was an actor, starring in three films in the late 50s, the Broadway show Say, Darling (which merited a cast album) and later in Funny Girl opposite Barbra Streisand, in the role originated by Sydney Chaplin. He also appeared in the 1956 television special The Stingiest Man in Town, the source of two of the songs on today's program, which follows.

Johnny released a Christmas single for M-G-M in both 1949 and 1950. The earlier coupling included the oft-expressed sentiments "You're All I Want for Christmas" and "If Every Day Could Be Christmas."

The former song is ascribed to Segar Ellis and Glen Moore, but for the melody they reused an old New Orleans standard called "Algiers Strut." Regardless it's a good piece, popular in 1949, with Desmond's competition including Bing Crosby and Frankie Laine. The B-side, "If Every Day Would Be Christmas," is much less familiar although not a bad song. Tony Mottola's guitar is featured along with a celesta.

Much different is Johnny's 1950 coupling, "Sleigh Ride" and "A Marshmallow World." The former is Mitchell Parish's vocal version of the Leroy Anderson favorite. The Boston Pops introduced the instrumental in 1949; Parish's lyrics followed soon thereafter.

Competing in the market with Desmond's "Sleigh Ride" were the Andrews Sisters and Percy Faith, but I doubt that any other version was a lively as his. It has the Ray Charles Singers imploring him to come out for a ride ("Aw, c'mon John!"), which he does, and ending with a sneeze instead of Anderson's horse whinny.

Johnny also does well with that season's new song "A Marshmallow World" by Peter De Rose and Carl Sigman, which we have just heard on my other blog, from Ronnie Deauville and Ray Anthony.

Tony Mottola

Moving ahead to Desmond's new label, Coral, we have two worthy items that appeared in the Merry Christmas 1952 album, "Christmas in the Air" and "Christmas Is a Time (That Will Never Change)." The former is a good Sam Stept-Jimmy Brewster song that Johnny does with the right amount of sincerity and feeling. The latter is by Carolyn Gilbert and is worth hearing, as well.

I've now remastered the Merry Christmas 1952 LP in ambient stereo. It also includes songs by the Ames Brothers, Don Cornell and Eileen Barton. You can find it here.

Tony Mottola was the bandleader on the Merry Christmas 1952 songs, as he had been for all the M-G-M singles covered above.

In 1955, Johnny had another winner with "Santo Natale," which was backed with "Happy Holidays to You." Al Hoffman, Dick Manning and Belle Nardone put together the first song; Koby Sirinsky, David Fischer and Desmond himself the latter.

We close the program with Desmond's songs from the 1956 television special The Stingiest Man in Town (who was Scrooge, of course, played by Basil Rathbone). Johnny, who appeared as Scrooge's nephew Fred, had two songs, "Birthday Party of the King" and "Old Fashioned Christmas," from the excellent score by Fred Spielman and Janice Torre. Tutti Camarata conducted Johnny's record.

The two Desmond songs in the present collection are taken from his Coral release rather than the Stingiest Man cast LP on Columbia. On LP, "An Old-Fashioned Christmas" is different from the Coral version, but I believe "Birthday Party of the King" may be the same. I posted the cast album many years ago and have now reworked the files in ambient stereo.

The Stingiest Man in Town was presented in color on television, but the only surviving version is from a black-and-white kinescope. The image below is a colorized screen grab from the kinescope.

Johnny Desmond sings "The Birthday Party of the King"

As mentioned above, I've also remastered two of Johnny's early LPs in ambient stereo:

Hands Across the Table (M-G-M)

Play Me Hearts and Flowers (Coral)

LINK to Johnny Desmond Christmas Collection

John McCormack at Christmas

The great tenor John McCormack (1884-1945) made surprisingly few Christmas records - or even discs that are vaguely related to the holiday. Even so, I've managed to corral 12 sides of interest from the collection at Internet Archive, and cleaned them up for this post.

McCormack made quite a number of records with violinist Fritz Kreisler from 1914-17, including the first four in this set, all of which come from March 1914 sessions.

Fritz Kreisler

The first is the Berceuse from Jocelyn, an opera by the French Romantic composer Benjamin Godard. The Berceuse, or lullaby, is often called "Angels Guard Thee" in English and is associated with the Christmas season even though Jocelyn takes place during Corpus Christi.

For these sessions, McCormack, Kreisler and pianist Vincent O'Brien also programmed three different settings of "Ave Maria" - the well-known versions associated with Schubert and Bach-Gounod, and a lesser-known example with music by the verismo composer Pietro Mascagni.

A few words of explanation. Schubert's "Ave Maria" is actually an adaptation of the composer's "Ellens dritter Gesang," which begins with the words "Ave Maria." Schubert himself did not set the entire "Ave Maria" prayer; the balance was added by other hands later on. The so-called Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" was Gounod's setting of the prayer text to Bach's Prelude No. 1 from The Well-Tempered Clavier. And the Mascagni version is based on the well-known Intermezzo from his opera Cavalleria Rusticana.

These 1914 recordings are all, of course, acoustics with limited frequency response. However, it proved possible to elicit a clear vocal tone from the 78s, and Kreisler's violin comes across very well.

McCormack produced the first of his two recordings of "Adeste Fideles" in 1915, accompanied by an orchestra, chimes and a vocal trio.

The vastly superior electrical recording format came along in 1925. The following year Victor had McCormack return to its Camden, NJ, studios to re-record "Adeste Fideles" with the new technology. This time he was accompanied by an orchestra and the Trinity Choir conducted by Rosario Bourdon. 

Later that same year, McCormack recorded "The Holy Child," also known as "Away in a Manger." He uses the setting by William J. Kirkpatrick. (The James Ramsey Murray setting is more often heard around these parts.) Nathaniel Shilkret conducted the orchestra.

In 1927, McCormack recorded the César Franck setting of "Panis angelicus," from the composer's Messe à trois voix. "Panis angelicus" was written by Thomas Aquinas for Corpus Christi, but again it is also associated with the Christmas season. Nathaniel Shilkret conducted this session.

Gerald Moore

McCormack had moved back to Ireland from the US in 1927. The final four recordings in this set all were made in London. In 1930, he set down a fourth version of "Ave Maria," this one by the German Romantic composer Peter Cornelius. The accompaniment is by a string quartet and organist Herbert Dawson.

In 1935, McCormack was at Abbey Road with longtime accompanist Edwin Schneider to record an arrangement of "Little Child of Mary" by H.T. Burleigh.

McCormack continued to record fairly regularly into 1942, including two Christmas songs in October 1940, both with Gerald Moore, who had succeeded Schneider upon the latter's retirement.

His first selection was "Silent Night," followed by "See Amid the Winter's Snow." The tune for the latter is unidentified, but The John McCormack Discography notes that it is different from the one of John Goss included in The New Oxford Book of Carols.

By the time of these last recordings, McCormack's voice had lost some of its luster and range, and, suffering from emphysema, he no longer had the all his legendary vocal control. But these late numbers are still cherishable, as are all the items in this set.

LINK

Gordon Jenkins Conducts Holiday Music

Gordon Jenkins

Let's take a look at some of the seasonal items that the great conductor-arranger-composer Gordon Jenkins put out from 1942-52, in company with such luminaries as Dick Haymes and Louis Armstrong.

Jenkins began recording for the new Capitol label just a few months after it began in 1942, both in support of vocalists Martha Tilton and Connie Haines and under his own name, with Bob Carroll for the vocal choruses.

It's the last team that made the first record in this collection, a cover version of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," which Bing Crosby had introduced in Holiday Inn that year and recorded for Decca. Carroll was a sonorous vocalist whom I admire and have featured here, but he was a more impersonal singer than Bing. At the time of the recording, he had most recently been with Charlie Barnet's band.

Jenkins began an association with Decca in 1945, and quickly found success with his first recording of his "Manhattan Tower." He soon was providing backing for such stars as Dick Haymes, including our next three recordings.

Bob Carroll, Dick Haymes

The first is a V-Disc of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," which came from a December 1945 aircheck of the CBS show Everything for the Boys. Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn wrote the tune earlier in the year, and it had become a hit for Vaughn Monroe.

That same year, Mel Tormé and Bob Wells produced one of the finest of all seasonal tunes, "The Christmas Song," a hit the following year for Nat Cole. Haymes and Jenkins covered it in 1947, a superb version. 

I believe "The Christmas Song" was actually the B-side of the Haymes release. The plug side was one of the new compositions that year: Irving Gordon and Lester Lee's "Christmas Dreaming." It's a superior song but has never become a standard, despite the Haymes-Jenkins recording and the better-known Frank Sinatra-Axel Stordahl competition.

Floyd Huddleston

In 1949, Jenkins produced a two-sided holiday release for Decca. One side was the excellent, and little-known "December." It was a new song written by two vocalists who also wrote music together - Al Rinker (once of the Rhythm Boys) and Floyd Huddleston. The latter is the soloist here; he acquits himself very well. It's an appealing piece in an affecting performance.

The other song was Jenkins' own "Happy New Year," an ironic title if ever there was one. The singer laments a lost love, wishing her a happy new year. It's a beautiful, depressing song, very much in the vein of Jenkins' earlier "Goodbye." The singer is another talented, although unheralded artist, Bob Lenn. (Decca misspells his name as "Senn" on the label.) Lenn worked in New York as a studio vocalist, vocal coach and actor. I placed this song at the end of the playlist.

The final record in this set features a performer today identified with the holidays, if not so at the time - trumpeter-vocalist Louis Armstrong. Decca had paired Armstrong and Jenkins as far back as 1949, and in 1952, the duo came up with a two-sided holiday release - "White Christmas" and "Winter Wonderland." The latter was written as far back as 1934, when it was a hit for Guy Lombardo. It had a comeback in 1946 via releases from Johnny Mercer and Perry Como. Armstrong is in characteristic form for this coupling, and he and Jenkins mesh better than I would have expected.

Armstrong recently appeared here on the blog with some of his earlier jazz records.

The sound on these vintage recordings is generally vivid.

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Louis Armstrong

Hamp Serves Gin for Christmas, Then Flies Home

Here are two songs that Lionel Hampton recorded in 1939 and that are in the holiday spirit (or more precisely, into the holiday spirits) - "Gin for Christmas" and its inevitable successor, "The Heebie Jeebies Are Rockin' the Town."

In that year, Hamp was a member of the Benny Goodman aggregation, appearing as part of the Goodman Sextet with such notables as guitarist Charlie Christian. Starting in 1937, he made dozens of records under his own name for Victor, including today's duo. These were issued as being by the "Lionel Hampton Orchestra," but that was a catch-all name for a variety of small studio groups, at least until Hamp left Goodman to form his own big band in 1940.

"Gin for Christmas" is a Hampton-penned instrumental made primarily with members of the Goodman band, including trumpeter Ziggy Elman, alto saxophonist Toots Mondello, tenor saxophonist Jerry Jerome and bass player Artie Bernstein. Also in the ensemble are tenor Ben Webster, who would soon join Duke Ellington, and Al Casey, then with Fats Waller. All can be heard on this lively riff number. Hamp appears as the raucous drummer.

For the "Heebie Jeebies" side, Hampton turns vocalist and vibraphonist. The band includes such luminaries as Henry "Red" Allen on trumpet, J.C. Higginbotham on trombone and Earl Bostic on alto sax. Guitarist Charlie Christian also is on board.

These records come from October 1939. That same month, Hampton made the first recording of what may be his most famous composition, "Flying Home," with the Goodman Sextet. I've included that record in the download. Note in particular the superb Charlie Christian solo.

But it wasn't until May 1942 that Hampton was to set down its most famous rendition, made with his big band. That recording became one of the most influential of the decade, and a seminal moment in the birth of rhythm 'n' blues. I've added it to this post as a bonus.

The Decca "Flying Home" is a riff tune arranged either by pianist Milt Buckner or by Hamp himself (sources differ). It is very much in the Basie tradition, with a difference - it featured perhaps the earliest and most famous honking tenor sax solo, with the 19-year-old Illinois Jacquet playing a repeated note for an entire chorus. Adding to the excitement is Hampton and screaming lead trumpeter Ernie Royal trading licks - not to mention the roaring section riffs from the trombones and saxes. The loud and flamboyant playing inspired a legion of extroverted tenor players and brash arrangements, which were popular even into the 1950s.

Underrated aspects of this performance are the powerful rhythm section, led by Lester Young's brother, drummer Lee Young, and the arrangement's low-end underpinning - not just Young, Buckner and bass player Vernon Alley, but the trombones and baritone saxophonist Jack McVea. All these add up to a classic in jazz - and R&B.

More about the genesis of "Flying Home" here.

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Perry Como's 1950-52 Christmas Songs and Promos

That laid-back baritone Perry Como recorded a great deal of Christmas material during his long career. In this post, we'll look at a few of the more unusual items, all of a promotional nature.

Perry's warm voice and holiday material were made for one another, This can be heard on the opening selection in our program, The First Christmas, where Como is both the story teller and the vocalist, supported by a Mitchell Ayers chorus and orchestra. 

Perry's label, RCA Victor, had been pushing the 45-rpm format for the past few years in opposition to Columbia's 33-rpm speed. But in 1950, RCA gave in and began issuing LPs. To promote The First Christmas, the label sent radio stations a special 12-inch, 33-rpm pressing of the elaborate eight-minute production, in a promotional sleeve. The cover is below; complete scans are in the download, along with the cover of the commercial issue.

The First Christmas was not Como's biggest seasonal success for that year, however. His hit was Carl Sigman and Mickey Addy's "There Is No Christmas Like A Home Christmas." Victor had Perry produce promotional voice tracks for that song and its flip side, another holiday hopeful called "The Christmas Symphony," which, while attractive, did not do as well as its mate. I believe RCA re-issued the latter song in 1951, but it still did not chart, to my knowledge.

Promotional voice tracks came in two forms - one asking the nation's disk jockeys to play a record, the other designed to be played on the air as an intro to the selection. These two items are of the latter variety.

Perry's holiday entry in 1952 was the touching song, "One Little Candle," by George Mysels and J. Maloy Roach. The singer had actually recorded the piece early in the year. It was released in March, possibly timed to Easter. The Christmas Seals charity decided to adopt the memorable tune for its 1952 campaign theme, and Como produced a promotional voice track, which was sent to radio stations along with the song.

As Perry noted in his voice track, the Christmas Seals stickers each bore "one little candle." The song is one of the best of the spate of the inspirational songs that were popular in the postwar years. The idea was that "if everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be." This fit very well into the Christmas Seals message that each individual could play a role in eradicating the leading infectious disease of the time, tuberculosis. The song also advocated that "we all say a prayer that the world will be free" - a popular sentiment in a world that had seen a Communist takeover of eastern Europe and was embarking on a prolonged Cold War with the real threat of nuclear destruction.

I well remember the song, not so much from its the 1952 release, but from its continued use as the theme of The Christophers, an inspirational group founded by Maryknoll priests that produced a television show in the 1950s and thereafter. One of my father's Navy friends had become a Maryknoll brother, so I knew about the organization from their correspondence. "One Little Candle" is a beautiful work that underlines The Christophers' belief that everyone can make a difference in the lives of others, a sentiment pertinent to the Christmas season and every day of the year.

These records were remastered from the vast collection on Internet Archive. The download also includes relevant articles and ads. Below, Perry and RCA's Mindy Carson on the Cash Box cover during the 1950 Christmas season.

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