The Earliest Recordings of Edgard Varèse

I posted a 1950 LP of Edgard Varèse's music about 15 years ago and speculated at the time that it might be the earliest recordings of his works. Not so - since then I've become aware of three 78s of his music dating from the 1930s. This post presents two of them.

The first dates from 1934 and involves an instrumental ensemble conducted by Nicholas Slonimsky, best known these days as a writer on music. The work is "Ionisation" (which also can be heard in the LP I mentioned above). If you are not familiar with Varèse's works, think "The Rite of Spring" combined with the ambient noises of a large city. Add percussion, sirens and other sounds. But don't think there is anything random about the result - Varèse's timbre-centric music has been highly influential. "Ionisation" is for percussion ensemble.

Nicholas Slonimsky conducts 'Ionisation' in Havana

The second work is "Octandre," at least its Third Movement, in a performance by a wind and brass ensemble led by Walter Goehr. This dates from 1937, and is part of a five-volume set called "The Columbia History of Music by Eye and Ear," put out by English Columbia.

Slonimsky himself conducted a recording of "Octandre" for Musicraft in 1938, but that disc hasn't come to light yet.

Both performances are fairly proficient, in music that is striking today as it was 90 years ago.

More Varèse is coming up on the main blog.

LINK to early Varèse recordings

More Jo Ann Greer with Les Brown

Jo Ann Greer

Singer Jo Ann Greer was the subject of a long post on my main blog in 2022, along with additional recordings made with band leader Les Brown here and here. I since have found five more Greer/Brown recordings on Internet Archive, and have prepared remastered ambient stereo versions for this post.

The first song comes from Greer's initial session with the Brown band - a June 1953 date for Coral that produced "Forty Cups of Coffee." It was a cover of Danny Overbea's R&B recording with the King Kolax band. Unfortunately for Danny and Jo Ann, Ella Mae Morse's record for Capitol was the most popular of the three.

Les, Jo Ann and band moved on to the Capitol label in 1955; the remaining four items come from their association.

The initial Capitol side is an oddity, in that I wouldn't have expected Brown to choose it and in that it has an uncharacteristically poor arrangement. It is "Sincerely Yours," the title song of Liberace's only film, with music by the pianist and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The record mates a predictable melody with the usual tuneless band vocal and an ill-advised spoken chorus from Greer before she starts singing.

Les admires his saxophone

Fortunately, the next song is perfectly suited to Jo Ann's talents, and she is in superb form. It is "Hit the Road to Dreamland," a song that Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer wrote for the 1942 film Star Spangled Rhythm.  

The Brown recording was stimulated by the song's revival for the 1956 Bob Hope comedy That Certain Feeling. The film took its name from a song the Gershwins wrote back in 1925. Brown and Greer included their version of "That Certain Feeling" as the flip side of "Hit the Road to Dreamland." On screen, Pearl Bailey sings both numbers.

The last selection in this set, also from 1956, is "The Best Years of My Life," an enjoyable ballad with an passionate vocal by Greer, deploying her vibrato to good effect, and dispassionate vocal support, likely sourced from the band.

LINK

A Parade of 'Easter Parades'

What you see at left is perhaps the first Easter parade in song - it is a still from As Thousands Cheer, the 1933 revue with music by Irving Berlin that introduced his "Easter Parade."

I believe the right foreground displays Clifton Webb and Marilyn Miller, who first sang the number. At left is co-star Helen Broderick.

Webb recorded the song for Victor with conductor Leo Reisman, and it's the first entry in today's "Parade of 'Easter Parades'," a collection of 10 diverse interpretations of the song, including the best known renditions and some lesser recognized discs as well.

Henry Hall

Following its introduction, it wasn't long before Berlin's holiday classic made it across the Atlantic and intro the hands of Henry Hall, the conductor of the BBC Dance Orchestra. The label for his 1935 recording says that the song is from a West End revue called Stop Press, about which little information has survived. We do know that either the producers or Berlin himself altered the lyrics to fit London - removing the reference to Fifth Avenue, and to "the rotogravure," which, come to think of it, is a term that may baffle anyone younger than me. ("Rotogravure" refers to the picture supplements of Sunday newspapers, taking its name from the printing process used for their production.)

A much different approach to the song was taken in 1939 by the Jimmie Lunceford band, performing a stylish arrangement by Sy Oliver. This swing version has a smooth vocal by Trummy Young, trombonist in the band and later a long-time associate of Louis Armstrong.

Jimmie Lunceford and Trummy Young

Our next selection could hardly be more of a contrast - it is Andre Kostelanetz's lush reading from his 1942 album Musical Comedy Favorites, Volume II. Both volumes are available on my other blog.

Bing Crosby had a go at the song for his 1942 film Holiday Inn, where he warbled to Marjorie Reynolds and her Easter bonnet, as seen below. For his commercial recording Bing had to be content with the Decca microphone and maestro John Scott Trotter. (The complete Holiday Inn recordings are here.)

Bing and Marjorie Reynolds

The most famous recording of "Easter Parade" may be the one in the 1948 film of the same name, as performed by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, who look splendid promenading below. The soundtrack version may be celebrated, but in truth Garland's singing does blare a bit.

Judy and Fred

Freddie Mitchell

Judy is not nearly as blaring, however, as the tenor sax of Freddie Mitchell in his 1949 R&B version for the Derby label. Freddie turned most everything into a boogie - literally so in this release, which first came out as "Easter Boogie," with Mitchell as co-author, but later was retitled "Easter Parade," with Berlin reinstated as composer. On the disc, the leader's tenor sax solo quotes Illinois Jacquet's legendary break in Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home." As usual on Mitchell's records, a tinny sounding upright piano is prominent.

The following year, the duo of Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely were in the Capitol studios to record one of their bigger hits, "Let's Go to Church (Next Sunday Morning)" along with its flip side, their take on "Easter Parade." Both featured the same creaky organ accompaniment.

Back then, the fashion in jazz circles was to record a noted soloist accompanied by sumptuous strings, following the success of alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker in that setting. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge got the treatment in late 1951, with his accompaniment arranged and conducted by George Williams. Eldridge recorded this cushiony interpretation for Mercury.

Roy Eldridge

To close we have an enjoyable version from the Ray Charles Singers, who made a long series of excellent records in the 1950s and 60s. This is from their Spring Is Here collection for M-G-M. The recording, from 1955, also features the Columbus Boychoir, for reasons that aren't obvious.

The Ray Charles Singers at a recording session. The leader is to the right of the microphone.

The recordings in this collection were remastered from Internet Archive and my collection.

LINK

Harold Arlen Sings Harold Arlen

The eminent songwriter Harold Arlen liked to sing, and made records from the 1920s into the 1960s. For this post, we'll review 13 recordings of his own songs made in the 1930s, most in the company of bandleader Leo Reisman. This is a companion to the "Lee Wiley Sings Harold Arlen" post on my main blog, which includes two of these songs - "Stormy Weather" and "Fun to Be Fooled."

The earliest Arlen vocals in the Discography of American Historical Recordings come from 1928, when he recorded 10 or so titles with the Arnold Johnson Orchestra, all of which he arranged, none of which he composed. He is listed on different recording sheets as Harold Arlen or Harold Arluck. (His birth name was Hyman Arluck.)

The first vocal in the collection dates from November 1930, when he recorded his "Linda" with cornetist Red Nichols and his band. Arlen was already an assured singer and, while he never had much range, is in fresh voice throughout this set. Ted Koehler was the lyricist of "Linda." Arlen worked extensively with him for the next several years.

Red Nichols

Nichols also led the next date, from February 1931, just a few weeks after Arlen's college musical You Said It opened on Broadway. On the record, Arlen (uncredited on the label) sang "Sweet and Hot" with a great deal of personality. His feeling for lyrics - in this case by librettist Jack Yellen - was evident. The other familiar songs from this score were "You Said It" (which is in the Lee Wiley collection) and "Learn to Croon."

The following year, musical stage couple Dorothy Stone and Charles Collins introduced a dance called the "Collinstone Fox Trot" via the song "Stepping into Love," with lyrics by Ted Koehler and music by Arlen. Bandleader Leo Reisman made a record of it, with the composer on the vocal. Musically it is striking; lyrically less so.

Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler

Reisman was an influential bandleader. Most of the remaining songs in this set were issued under his name, including the next - "Stormy Weather," from the Cotton Club Parade revue of 1933. Arlen presents the song simply; he undersells the heartache inherent in the lyrics. It's just as effective this way.

Leo Reisman

"Happy as the Day Is Long" is from a 1933 Cotton Club production. The recording is unusual because it starts with colloquy between Arlen and Reisman. This is possibly Arlen's best vocal on record; he is infectious, and is supported by a spirited arrangement and driving bass saxophone solo by Adrian Rollini.

"Ill Wind," from the following year's Cotton Club Parade, is one of Arlen's finest songs, hear in a neat performance by the composer and a unsubtle one by pianist-bandleader Eddy Duchin, an alumnus of the Reisman band.

Eddy Duchin

From that same Cotton Club revue came "As Long as I Live," which was coupled with "Ill Wind" on Duchin's Victor release.

Arlen had written the standard "It's Only a Paper Moon" with the immensely talented lyricist E.Y. (Yip) Harburg in 1932. Two years later, he prepared the score of Life Begins at 8:40 with Harburg and Ira Gershwin.

Yip Harburg

Arlen recorded four of the songs from the score with Leo Reisman - "You're a Builder Upper," "What Can You Say in a Love Song," "Fun to Be Fooled" and "Shoein' the Mare." All four are both lyrically and musically sophisticated. (The latter is distinctly sexist as well.)

"You're a Builder Upper" is a rhythmic and lyrical delight, and Arlen delights in singing the intricate words by the masters Harburg and Gershwin. In "What Can You Say in a Love Song," they rattle through the lyrical clichés of 90 years ago and today ("Mmmm - so sweetly. Mmmm - completely. Mmmm - forever more. What can I say in a love song / that hasn't been said before").

"Fun to Be Fooled" is one song from the score that has achieved some permanence. But the most popular at the time may have been "Let's Take a Walk Around the Block," which neither Arlen nor Wiley recorded.

Brief digression: Perhaps the best song from this period - and reportedly Arlen's favorite - is "Last Night When We Were Young," also not taken up by Wiley or the composer. The only recording from the time may have been by Lawrence Tibbett, for whom it was written. Arlen and Harburg prepared the number for Tibbett's backstage film musical Metropolitan, but it was not used. Victor did record it and release it on Red Seal, coupled with "On the Road to Mandalay," which Tibbett sang in the film.

Finally, we have two songs from the 1937 Arlen-Harburg musical Hooray for What: "In the Shade of the New Apple Tree" and "God's Country." 

The former is a racy number for the time, contrasting seduction techniques of old with the current day. The latter is a patriotic paean - "Hi there, Yankee, give out with a great big thank-ee / You're in God's country" and "We've got no Mussolini, got no Mosley / But we've got Popeye and Gypsy Rose Lee." It's not one of Harburg's best, but it did reflect his beliefs. In 1950 he was blacklisted for refusing to name Hollywood Communists. He wrote at the time, "As the writer of the lyric of the song 'God's Country,' I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy," he told the House Un-American Activities Committee.

This was the end of Arlen's recorded vocals for the 1930s. He next was in the recording studio for one of the songs from his 1944 musical Bloomer Girl, which had lyrics by Harburg.

LINK

Lambert Conducts Weinberger's 'Chestnut Tree' Variations

Jaromír Weinberger

Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is the second best-known work by the Czech composer Jaromír Weinberger (1896-1967), following his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper. If you are familiar with the latter - or its orchestral excerpts - you will know what to expect from the former: tuneful, kaleidoscopic, fascinating and charming all at once. A true successor to the dances from Smetana's The Bartered Bride.

The 1939 premiere of Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree was a high point in a decade of frustration for the composer. His works had been banned in Germany and then Austria. He fled to the US in 1939. Even so, he had difficulties in getting the new composition performed. As he wrote in the New York Times, "On Aug. 31, 1939, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London wrote me a letter, stating that my Variations Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree had been scheduled for a performance Nov. 30 at Albert Hall. Three days later the outbreak of war had postponed such a plan indefinitely."

But John Barbirolli, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, intervened with a performance on October 12 of the same year. It was well received.

The next day, Howard Taubman wrote in the Times, "The melody of Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree ... is a simple one, and Mr. Weinberger has fashioned his variations cunningly. In each of the seven variants he has attempted to evoke some English scene or sentiment, since the tune is English in its origin." The variations are titled "Her Majesty’s Virginal," "The Madrigalists," "The Dark Lady," "The Highlanders,"  "Pastorale," "Mr. Weller, Senior. Discusses Widows with His Son, Samuel Weller, Esq." [from Dickens' The Pickwick Papers] and "Sarabande."

Constant Lambert

Barbirolli did not record the work, but two other noted conductors - Constant Lambert and Artur Rodziński - quickly did so. It's not clear who was first. As I explained on another occasion, "Lambert's session with the London Philharmonic was on December 21, 1939. Sources differ on the Cleveland date: Michael Gray says it was December 13, 1939; Donald Rosenberg in The Cleveland Orchestra Story specifies January 9-10, 1940."

The Rodziński/Cleveland reading appeared a few years ago on my other blog, and has now been remastered to fix a pitch discrepancy. This post newly presents the Constant Lambert set, in good sound for the time and masterfully conducted, as always.

As you may be aware, I have been remastering and posting Lambert records here and on my main blog for some time, both from my own collection and as they have appeared on Internet Archive. This performance comes from the latter source, transferred from the US Victor pressings and remastered by me.

LINK

Bing's 'Top o' the Morning' - Songs and Promos

Continuing or series of posts about Bing Crosby and his film songs, today we examine the Irish-themed Top o' the Morning, from 1949.

For this post in addition to the five songs from the film, we have a series of broadcast introductions that Bing recorded for disc jockey use. The intros would have been sent with a scripted question for the DJ to ask, and Bing would respond with his thoughts about the record to be heard next. These gimmicks must have been popular, because the labels kept producing them. This site has several examples.

It's always amusing to hear Crosby responding fully in his "genial Bing" character to these disembodied queries. He was a pro.

Ann Blyth has a crush on Bing

The plot involved some rigmarole about Bing going to Ireland as an insurance investigator - investigating the theft of the Blarney Stone (no blarney) - meeting up with the local policeman (Barry Fitzgerald, of course), and romancing the constable's daughter (Ann Blyth, 25 years Bing's junior).

The songs were good, if not the most successful ever produced for a Crosby film. Two were by stalwarts Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, including the title song. "Top 'o the Morning" did become fairly well known, and lent its name to a much-later Irish compilation from the singer.

"Oh, 'Tis Sweet to Think" is a lyric by the 19th century poet Thomas Moore set by him to a traditional melody, I believe. Here it is a duet for Bing and Ann Blyth.

"The Donovans" is an 1896 song with words by Francis Fahy set by Alicia Adélaide Needham to the old Irish air "The Wind that Shakes the Barley." The modern adaptation is by Walter Kent.

But the best tune of all is from the Burke-Van Heusen team, "You're in Love with Someone," a tender, memorable item indeed, and perfect for our peripatetic crooner.

Bing also sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" in the film, but there was no recording at the time, presumably because he had just done it three years earlier. I have included that earlier disc as a bonus.

These are from my collection - the sound for the songs is just fine, the promos are serviceable. There are two promos for each song, except for the "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" bonus.

LINK

The Songs from Bing's 'Double or Nothing'

Bing Crosby's 1937 film Double or Nothing - via songsmiths Johnny Burke and Arthur Johnston - supplied four superb numbers for the singer to perform. Today's post covers Bing's commercial versions and several airchecks as well. Finally, the great Fats Waller makes an appearance.

First, about the film: let me assure you that the plot is one you have encountered many times before - Bing and accomplices must surmount a number of challenges to double their money. If they do, they get a million. If not, they get nothing. Even in the 1930s this premise was usually confined to B-pictures.

The music is much more enjoyable. In the US, the songs came out on Decca. At the top you can see the picture labels that the English Brunswick company used for its release. That's co-star Mary Carlisle with Bing. Brunswick issued a similar set for Waikiki Wedding, which you can find here and here.

The most enduring of the Double or Nothing songs is probably "The Moon Got in My Eyes." This collection has three versions - the Decca recording and Kraft Music Hall radio performances from October and November 1937. The latter two originated from transcriptions made for Bing's new music director, John Scott Trotter, who had recently joined him from Hal Kemp's band.

"The Natural Thing to Do" was the second hit of the film score, attracting many cover versions. For this set we have Crosby's Decca 78 along with a radio duet with his comic sidekick Bob Burns. It's from the first Kraft Music Hall program of the 1937-38 season and has special lyrics, probably provided by Johnny Burke. Burns had apparently been the host of the summer replacement show, and the lyrics of this version hinge on him turning the show back over to Crosby. Burns was a musician, but could not sing and seems ill at ease here.

Bob Burns and Bing

The least remembered song from the Double or Nothing quartet is "All You Want to Do Is Dance." Even so, it's a good number that Crosby does very well. The arrangement shows off the familiar Trotter sound that would complement Bing for many years to come. I haven't found an aircheck of this number.

The final song is "(You Know It All) Smarty." In addition to Bing's commercial recording, we have his radio performance from October. I've added a bonus in the form of the intensely swinging Victor recording by the inimitable Fats Waller. I wonder what the songwriters thought of his free interpretation.

All but the Waller selection are from my collection. The sound is good to excellent.

LINK

Fats Waller