The Vocal Side of Leroy Anderson

Although Leroy Anderson is renowned as a composer of light orchestral music, seven of his compositions were given lyrics by Mitchell Parish - and one has become a holiday standard.

That standard is, of course, "Sleigh Ride," recently heard on this blog in the excellent version by Johnny Desmond. This post covers the rest of the Anderson-Parish vocal arrangements, save for "Belle of the Ball," which as far as I can tell has never been recorded. (Correction: my knowledge was incomplete. Reader JAC tells me that William Dazeley and Kim Criswell recorded it for the Anderson collection conducted by Leonard Slatkin for Naxos.)

I should mention in passing that Anderson also wrote music for the 1958-59 musical Goldilocks, with lyrics by Walter and Jean Kerr and Joan Ford, but those songs aren't covered here.

Eileen Barton

The first three recordings in this post come from 1951, one of the composer's most fruitful years. First we have "The Syncopated Clock," in a charming account by Eileen Barton, with the band directed by the estimable Neal Hefti, still in his 20s and writing charts for Count Basie.

Barton was recording for the small National label at the time. "The Syncopated Clock" was one of that company's last releases before folding. Eileen had enjoyed a number-one record the year before with "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake," originally on National and then picked up by the larger Mercury label. Barton moved on to Coral after National closed. You can hear a bit of her on that label here.

Mary Mayo never had a big hit, but she was well-known as a studio singer. Her Capitol version of "Serenata" makes use only of the gorgeous B section of Anderson's composition. Mary was one of several vocalists who specialized in ethereal vocalise, popular at the time, which she employs in the second chorus of "Serenata." (Others known for this technique were Loulie Jean Norman and Sally Sweetland, the latter of whom will be the subject of a main blog post in the near future.) The conductor of "Serenata" is Mayo's husband, Al Ham.

Mary Mayo and Florian ZaBach

Florian ZaBach was best known as a violinist, but on his record of "The Waltzing Cat" he introduces the song by singing at least the first part of Parish's lyrics, shakily but effectively. His fiddle and the band then indulge in the "meows" that populate the song. ZaBach had done well with another novelty, Paul Nero's "The Hot Canary," so varying the species made good sense.

Vico Torriani

Swiss singer-actor Vico Torriani presumably makes some use of Parish's lyrics in his c1952 recording of "Blue Tango" (a huge instrumental hit for Anderson), but I can't be sure because he sings in German. It's a good record; Torriani was popular for a long time.

A vocal version of Anderson's "Forgotten Dreams" unexpectedly turned up on Ed Ames' 1965 LP, My Kind of Songs. Ames' impassioned singing is just right for this lovely song. Marty Manning's arrangement features the plink-plunk piano accompaniment that was popular at the time, a cliché that has not aged well.

Ed's singing does redeem the record, though, and shows just how well Leroy Anderson's compositions work with vocals - as do all these selections.

This post is a companion to a two-part series on my main blog devoted to all of Anderson's 1950-54 recordings. Part 1 is here; Part 2 is forthcoming.

LINK to singles

Constant Lambert Conducts Borodin and Waldteufel

The composer-conductor Constant Lambert has been a long-standing interest of mine, as demonstrated by the frequent posts both on my main blog and most recently on this singles outpost, where I presented his recording of Émile Waldteufel's Skaters Waltz.

Today, we follow up that Waldteufel post with another from that composer - the waltz Pomona, again in a sophisticated performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Lambert. Waldteufel (1837-1915) was an Alsatian composer whose best-known work was the Skaters Waltz mentioned above, aka Les Patineurs.

Alexander Borodin

Lambert also was an aficionado of Russian music. His Tchaikovsky recordings have appeared on Big 10-Inch, but here he is in a superior performance of an atmospheric composition by Alexander Borodin (1833-87), In the Steppes of Central Asia. This helpful introduction to the motifs in the piece comes from Wikipedia: 

A caravan of Central Asians is crossing the desert under the protection of Russian troops. The opening theme, representing the Russians, is heard first; after it, the strains of an ornamented eastern melody on English horn, representing the Asians. The melodies eventually combine contrapuntally. Amid these two ethnic melodies Borodin inserts a "traveling" theme in pizzicato that represents the plodding hoofs of the horses and camels. At the end, only the Russian theme is heard.

As with the Waldteufel, this memorable work was recorded in London's resonant Kingsway Hall, the Borodin in 1946 (also with the Philharmonia) and the Waldteufel in 1950. Both recordings were remastered from 78 needle-drops on Internet Archive.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

Louis Armstrong