Betty Johnson's RCA Victor Pop Recordings

The excellent pop/gospel singer Betty Johnson released three singles on RCA Victor in 1955, collected for this post.

This is a companion post to one on my other blog hat features her first pop recordings, made for Bell in 1954. 

Betty, born in 1929, was a member of the gospel group the Johnson Family Singers from the time she was 10.

The group had recorded extensively for Columbia before Betty set off on her career as a pop singer when she was 25.

After Bell (and Columbia), Victor engaged both Betty and the family group . The Family Singers made gospel records, and Betty herself joined the prestigious Victor pop roster.

The Johnsons recorded two LPs for RCA, both of which have appeared on my other blog: you can find Old Time Religion here and Sing Hymns with the Johnson Family Singers here. Both are newly remastered (and in one instance re-recorded).

Meanwhile, Betty was to release six pop songs on Victor as collected in this post. They are well worth hearing - Betty was very skillful - but none was a hit. The material just isn't strong enough, which was a problem for any artist moving to a major label with established stars. The big acts got the best songs.

Billboard February 19, 1955

RCA did a good job in promoting Betty's releases, starting with the ad above. The plug side was a Hal David waltz fantasia called "Seven Pretty Dreams," with music by Leon Carr. It's probably the best song she recorded, but it also is annoyingly repetitive, a la "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

The flip side, "Be a Lover," is a mild R&B effort by Cy Coben. Betty seems uncomfortable, and Hugo Winterhalter's cluttered arrangement is slow-moving and cumbersome.

"Beginner's Luck" is a pleasant number by the brother team of Earl and Alden Shuman. It was backed by "I'm a Sinner." Cash Box liked that one, praising Betty for her "tender, sincere delivery of a warm ballad." But the disc didn't stand out in a crowded market.

Billboard June 25, 1955

Betty's best performance (and Hugo's best chart) was probably for "Give Me Something I Can Dream About." She is on top of the lyrics, and Winterhalter's pizzicato arrangement doesn't get in her way. This is another Hal David-Leon Carr composition.

Her final entry was "That's Happiness," another good reading of a conventional lyric. This one was by the young Fred Ebb, working with Paul Klein. (This was before Ebb's famed partnership with John Kander.) Betty's performance is suitably impassioned, but the song was not successful. She or her manager must have liked Ebb's material - he and Klein wrote one of the songs she recorded for Bally ("I'll Wait") and her later novelty hit on Atlantic "The Little Blue Man." (That's the one where Ebb himself appeared as the little blue man, assuring Betty "I rov you ... to bits.")

A Pop Item from the Johnson Family Singers

The Johnson Family Singers seldom if ever recorded pop songs, although they did perform such material on the radio. One exception was the odd "Shifting Whispering Sands," a quasi-profound Western song by Vivian Clark Gilbert and his wife Mary Margaret Hadler. In brief (which the song is not) it is the tale of a prospector lost in the desert listening to the sound of the sands moving and thereby achieving zen knowledge of some kind. It incorporates every possible desert cliché; nevertheless it was a hit for Rusty Draper in 1955 and even more so for Ken Nordine and Billy Vaughn in 1962.

RCA had the Johnsons record the song its first time around, with Pa Jesse portraying the old prospector. The two-sided performance is a good one, even if Pa could have used another take on side 2. You'll enjoy it if you like this kind of nonsense.

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What Folks Were Listening to 90 Years Ago

Click to enlarge

The Great Depression was rough on most business, especially the record industry, which after all did not produce the necessities of life.

Even so, some labels soldiered on. Brunswick Records had a particularly strong lineup of artists, led by the formidable Bing Crosby. The flyer at left from September 1934 details just what Brunswick had to offer the record-buying population 90 years ago. I thought it might be fun to assemble those 14 songs and make a post out of them.

Brunswick's acts at the time, as summarized on the flyer, included the leading bands of Glen Gray and Ted Fio Rito, along with the relatively new Freddy Martin ensemble - and Bing, of course.

Bing's Songs from She Loves Me Not

One of Crosby's most famous songs came from the film She Loves Me Not, with Kitty Carlisle and Miriam Hopkins. It is "Love in Bloom," soon adopted by comedian Jack Benny and thereafter associated with him as much as Bing.

Kitty Carlisle remonstrates Bing for getting into her eyeliner

The singer's performance is more mannered than would be his norm later on, but the singing is nonetheless first-rate. The backing on the Ralph Rainger-Leo Robin song is by Irving Aaronson and His Commanders.

The flip side also is fairly well-known - the Gordon-Revel "Straight from the Shoulder (Right from the Heart)." Crosby's flossy singing is at least partially tongue-in-cheek.

Glen Gray with Kenny Sargent and Pee Wee Hunt

One of the best bands of that time (or any time) was Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, which merited second billing on the Brunswick flyer. Gray's first hit was his theme song "Smoke Rings," as illustrated on the billboard above. In September 1934, the band was offering its relaxed and polished version of Will Hudson's sophisticated "Moonglow" (which the label spells "Moon Glow") as one of its six releases of the month.

The record benefits from the marvellously laid-back singing of Kenny Sargent, who is far more natural here than the contemporary Bing. Sargent also does wonderfully well by Irving Berlin's masterful "I Never Had a Chance." Finally, "Long May We Love" is contrived, but enjoyable.

Pee Wee Hunt and Kenny Sargent hoist Annette Hanshaw on the Camel Caravan radio show (for some reason)

Kenny was just one of the two splendid vocalists in the band (both of whom were also instrumentalists). The other was rhythm singer Pee Wee Hunt, a distinctive stylist who was popular even into the 1950s. He is engaging in Winston Tharp's "You Ain't Been Living Right" and particularly "I Never Slept a Wink Last Night" by Nat Simon and Andy Razaf, a song otherwise unknown to me.

The Gray segment is completed by "Jungle Fever," an instrumental that somehow comes from the film Operator 13, a Civil War romance.

The Casa Loma Band, with the imposing Glen Gray at right

Ted Fio Rito with Muzzy Marcellino

Ted Fio Rito

Bandleader Ted Fio Rito also was in demand in 1934, having had two hits earlier in the year - "I'll String Along with You" and "My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii." His four offerings for September were not so successful, but are worth hearing, certainly.

Fio Rito's main vocalist here is Muzzy Marcellino, who also played the guitar. (Twenty years later he would be the ethereal whistler on the soundtrack of The High and the Mighty.) Muzzy's first song was "We Went Hunting (The Big Bad Wolf Is Dead)," written by Will Jason and Val Burton and introducted by Wheeler and Woolsey in the film Cockeyed Cavaliers. This seems to be a cheery Depression-fighting song - and Muzzy (and Fio Rito's Debutantes) are suitably jaunty.

Muzzy Marcellino and Fio Rito's Debutantes

Marcellino also is heard in the novelties "Hot Dogs and Sasparella" and Fio Rito's "Crickets in the Grass" - not great but not bad either. But the finest song is given to Ray Hendricks, who sang with many bands - Dorothy Fields' and Jimmy McHugh's "Thank You for a Lovely Evening," recorded by several artists that year and still occasionally heard.

The Young Freddy Martin

Freddy Martin and ensemble

The esteemed bandleader Freddy Martin was still in his twenties and on the way up and when he started recording for Brunswick - largely for its budget labels, but here we have two songs on the main marque.

Terry Shand

"We're Just Poor Folks (Rolling in Love)" - another Depression-aware title - comes from a W.C. Field film, The Old Fashioned Way. (That's the one where Fields plays "the Great McGonigle.") Here it is handled by Martin's main vocalist, pianist Terry Shand, who had a long career both as a singer and songwriter, with such fare as "Dance with a Dolly (with a Hole in Her Stocking)." 

Just as good was "Born to Be Kissed," a relatively little-known song by the successful team of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz. Here it is given to a trio, who are nice to listen to, although a soloist might have been preferable.

These recordings all were cleaned up from Internet Archive transfers. The sound is quite good.

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The Obsolete Collection

Let's celebrate in song some things that were once familiar, but now have vanished - at least in my part of the world. I experienced all but a few of these obsolete items in my lifetime, so they aren't long gone. In truth, most of them do live on, but only in a few places or other parts of the world.

Perhaps the oldest of the group is the town lamplighter, who would come down the street and light the gas streetlights at night then return to extinguish them the next morning. 

This custom was itself extinguished by the coming of electric lights in the late 19th century, although it lives on here and there for nostalgia's sake.

"The Old Lamplighter" was celebrated in song in 1946 by several artists. Our collection begins with Hal Derwin's version - his mellow singing was just right for this Nat Simon-Charles Tobias song.

Before electricity, the oil derivative kerosene was used as fuel for small lamps in the home and elsewhere. We have another sentimental recording, this one by the Prairie Ramblers  - "Just a Kerosene Lamp," from 1935.

These lamps were also used as signaling devices by railroad crews. Our set includes two songs that celebrate the old days on the railroad, back when steam engines ruled the rails.

"Coal Smoke, Valve Oil and Steam" is a 1951 song with Johnny Horton portraying a retired railroad engineer who misses the old days. At the time of the recording, diesel engines were replacing traditional steam locomotives. The song - as railroad songs were apt to do - uses the chugga-chugga, woo-woo sound effects that remind us of the age of steam. Remind a few of us, anyway. I am old enough to remember those smoke-belching behemoths.

Johnny Horton was a great talent whose best days were ahead with Columbia Records. This side was done for the small Cormac label.

One of the most amusing rail songs was "Choo-Choo Ch'Boogie," written by the country field's Denver Darling and Vaughn Horton, and recorded by the pre-eminent postwar R&B star Louis Jordan. He rides the rails in search of a job, accompanied by "democratic fellows named Mac." But while his protagonist has no luck, Jordan had a huge hit both on the R&B and pop charts with this infectious record. I believe Wild Bill Davis may be the rollicking pianist on this one.

Let's move on to the locomotive's smaller sibling, the trolley, which once provided the principal means of transport within the city limits and to nearby cities as well. Trolleys were (and are - they still exist in some cities) single- or double-car electric rail vehicles. Depicted above is an interurban car that served Pittsburgh and nearby cities in western Pennsylvania.

By the late 1940s, trolleys (or streetcars) had been to a degree supplanted by buses, which didn't require tracks or electric lines. As cities spread out, the flexibility of bus transportation enabled transport services to be expanded more easily. Even so, almost all of the places I have lived have been within walking distance of an old streetcar line. Today in the exurbs, I live not far from an old interurban line.

Our first song is from 1949 and Les Brown's band. Vocalists Betty Taylor and Ray Kellogg complain that he has to take two buses and a "Cross Town Trolley" to get to her house. (He can't afford a car or taxi.) The song has an amusing interlude set on the trolley with the characters you meet therein.

The most famous such number is Martin and Blane's "The Trolley Song," immortalized by Judy Garland in 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis. It's a wonderful song and a superb performance highlighted by Conrad Salinger's imaginative orchestration, which memorably conveys the exhilaration of this fateful trip.  It's best experienced on film - here's a YouTube link.

By the way, trolley interiors were not terribly plush. Above is a view from circa 1910. (Note the overhead ad for an appearance by the Sousa Band.)

Let's switch conveyances from rail to roadster. One notable feature that's now vanished is the "rumble seat." The young fellow above is leaning on one. Essentially it's an open-air seat the popped up out of what otherwise would have been the car's trunk. 

In their first incarnation, "rumble seats" were built onto the back of carriages, as a place to stash the servants, out of sight of the carriage's wealthy owner. Back in those solid-axle days, the servants could expect to be jolted around.

By the time of this Ford's appearance in 1934, the seats were a bit more plush, but one could still expect a bumpy ride - you were sitting on top of the rear axle. 

Our song about this long-vanished seating arrangement, "Get 'Em in a Rumble Seat," celebrates the seat's potential as a site for romance, which prospect strikes me as dubious. The song comes from 1928 and the Six Jumping Jacks, one of the many pseudonyms for prolific recording artist Harry Reser and his band. The vocalist is drummer Tom Stacks.

I can't say that I've ever received a telegram, although I did file newspaper stories by teletype a very long time ago. Telegrams are still used in some parts of the world, but are extinct around here.

The telegraph was a 19th century, station-to-station technology. You would go to the telegraph office, write out your message, pay the fare and clickety-clack the message would be sent to another office, which would deliver it to the addressee.

It wasn't a very personal method, as you can see in the message above from Joe to (presumably) his wife on her birthday. This was in 1954; Joe might have called, but long-distance was expensive at the time and may not have been available.

To honor Joe, his wife and this vanished form of communication, we have "Telegram to My Baby," a standard blues number by Blind Johnny Davis, from 1951.

These days the landline telephone is being supplanted by cell phones, but it wasn't so long ago that not everyone had a home telephone, and those who did often shared the line with other households. These so-called "party lines" were an open invitation for neighborhood disputes, as the circa 1950 ad above makes plain.

Party lines also were irresistible to people who wanted to learn about each other's business - it was easy to listen in on everyone else's calls. "Is somebody on the line?" was both a question and a request for the eavesdropper to put down the receiver.

Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson takes a humorous view of the subject via his "The People on My Party Line." I believe that Cleanhead is both the vocalist and the alto saxophonist on this one.

 

Now on to another household appurtenance, the "cuckoo clock." These are still made and are popular souvenirs of the Black Forest and other locales, but I can't remember the last time I actually saw one in someone's home.

The idea of these clocks was that the cuckoo bird doll would pop out of his hutch on the quarter-hour, sing his "cuckoo" song, and retreat.

Somewhere along the way, the "cuckoo" sound also became associated with the notion of being crazy, and it was this dual meaning that appealed to Johnny Mercer in writing the lyrics to his "Cuckoo in the Clock," with music by Walter Donaldson. Here Johnny sings his own tune with backing by Benny Goodman's band in 1939. "There they were, there they were / He was baby-talking her / And the cuckoo in the clock went 'cuckoo'," etc.

The second nearly-vanished horological curiosity is the ticking mechanical clock. The model above had brass bells to wake you up in the AM, assuming you could sleep through its incessant clacking. We recently celebrated such a device via Leroy Anderson's "The Syncopated Clock," but today instead we have the "Tick Tock Polka." This may have been recorded first in 1950 by Frankie Yankovic, who seems to have adapted it from another song, but our version is the powerhouse rendition from Chicago's pride, L'il Wally and band. Wally sings about the clock on the wall going "tick-tick-tick-tock," but believe me, Big Ben could not be heard over the din of Wally's enthusiastically raucous crew.

It used to be that you didn't need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. The milkman, his glass bottles and his metal carrier would "clink-clink-clink" their way through your early AM slumber.

Yes, milk (and bakery and other necessities) were once delivered on a regular basis by uniformed representatives of the dairy, bakery or other business. Today you can have pretty much anything but a baby elephant delivered to your door, but it isn't the same. Every house I lived in when I was growing up had a "milk chute" built into the house (and a mail chute; the older ones even had a coal chute).

Back in 1944, Ella Mae Morse had a hit with "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet," the lament of a war worker who had to get her 40 winks so she could be fresh on the job. Don Raye and Gene de Paul wrote the song for Nancy Walker to introduce in the film Broadway Rhythm. The songwriters also were responsible for Ella Mae's first hit, "Cow-Cow Boogie," in 1942.

To complete out program, we descend into mild scatology with a novelty adulteration of Leroy Anderson's "The Typewriter." (When did you last see one of those instruments?) Some anonymous person decided to add a frustrated typist's interjections to Anderson's memorable composition.

This post was great fun to put together!

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Dimitri Tiomkin Obscurities

Dimitri Tiomkin at the 1953 I Confess recording session

Dimitri Tiomkin was both a highly decorated film music composer and a powerful hit maker, especially in the 1950s. We are covering the hits and to some degree his film themes in a post on the main blog. This article is about some of the curiosities from his output - early records, little known songs, foreign language productions and just plain odd items.

Our first number takes us back to near the beginning of his career. It is the theme from the 1934 film of Alice in Wonderland. Tiomkin collaborated with Nat Finston and Leo Robin for the number. The eminent Isham Jones was the bandleader. It's a surprisingly perky song, with the uncredited vocal attributed to Eddie Stone, but it's not a match for Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard's song for the Disney movie.

Another relatively early release was 1949's Champion, with Kirk Douglas as a ruthless boxer. The title music is a march (which can be found on Tiomkin's own LP on the main blog), but there also was a pleasing ballad called "Never Be It Said," sung on the soundtrack by a very young Polly Bergen. Columbia recorded it with the accomplished singer Herb Jeffries, who himself starred in a number of low-budget films. Hugo Winterhalter provided the backing.

The Men, a 1950 Marlon Brando film, gave us another enjoyable ballad, "Love Like Ours," here in a splendid version by a favorite singer, Lisa Kirk. If you like it, there are several Kirk posts on my other blog.

For our next few songs, we have two of Tiomkin's Western tunes transplanted to Europe. The first is "Forlad mig ikke" - literally translated from Danish "Do not leave me," and yes, this is the theme from High Noon. The singer, Gustav Winckler, is no Ted Ritter, but this is OK by me. It even has a harmonica, which often shows up in Western scores. The vibraphone you hear, maybe not so much.

We move on to France for a version of the music from Blowing Wild - or "Le Souffle Sauvage" in translation. Lyricist Max François has turned this into "Comedie," which I don't think has much to do with the film. John William is the emphatic vocalist.

Tiomkin wrote "Love, Look What You've Done to Me" for Hitchcock's I Confess. You can hear the composer's conception via his album Movie Themes from Hollywood in the other post. Victor Silvester turned it into a strange tea-dance number for his release. You can almost hear the waiters clinking the plates and glasses.

The theme from The High and the Mighty is invariably heard with a whistler at the fore (or in the composer's instrumental, a theremin). There also are words to the tune, courtesy of Ned Washington, although they don't have anything to do with the film. Johnny Desmond sang them artfully on a Coral release with George Cates' backing.

The High and Mighty version from Denmark called "Jeg Var Fri Og Frejdig," or "I Was Free and Fair," also apparently has no reference to the airborne emergency. Lise Ringheim sings with Paul Clemensen's orchestra. The words are by Jette Grevil.

The High and the Mighty's theme inspired other versions as well. The eminent Perez Prado (or someone at the record company) decided to turn it into a mambo. I had visions of the passengers on the faltering airliner gyrating across the Pacific.

On to ancient Egypt and The Land of the Pharaohs. RCA Victor decided it might be nice to have harmonica wizard Leo Diamond record the theme music, because no instrument evokes the Great Pyramids more than the mouth harp, I guess.

Lucho Gatica

We end with a really good record - "Las Verdes Hojas De Verano" (The Green Leaves of Summer) from The Alamo as done by the superb vocalist Lucho Gatica. His passionate performance is quite a contrast to the understated folk rendition by The Brothers Four in our other collection.

These recordings were remastered in ambient stereo from Internet Archive originals.

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Piero Coppola Conducts Debussy

Piero Coppola

As a companion to a new post of Claude Debussy's music conducted by Marius Constant on my main blog, here are historic recordings of some of the same works led by a conductor who was responsible for the first recordings of several Debussy compositions.

The conductor is the Italian-born Piero Coppola (1888-1971), who was the recording director for French HMV (La Voix de Son Maître) from 1923-34. Coppola never held any major positions other than for HMV, but his work is nevertheless highly esteemed among aficionados of old records.

Both recordings date from 1931. Coppola leads the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in two of the four symphonic fragments from Debussy's incidental music for Gabriele D'Annunzio's Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien - No. 3 (La Passion) and No. 4 (Le Bon Pasteur). I believe both selections are somewhat abridged. The sound is very good for the time.

Gaston Hamelin examines the latest clarinet models at the Selmer showroom

Also in the program is the Première rhapsodie, pour clarinette et orchestre, with Gaston Hamelin as soloist. This one comes from a noisy pressing, I'm afraid. Both are from Internet Archive's transfers.

There is more about both works in the post on my other blog. If you are interested in the complete set of Coppola's Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien recordings, you can find them on the site of my friend Rolf (Satyr), on Internet Archive. Rolf also has posted Coppola's version of the other work on Marius Constant's LP - the Rhapsodie pour saxophone, with soloist Jules Viard.

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Claude Debussy

'Me and Juliet' - the Contemporary Recordings

Me and Juliet is considered one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flops, even though it ran on Broadway for a year in 1953-54. Such was the team's record of success that anything but a legendary musical was considered a failure.

As with the duo's other lesser-known shows - Allegro and Pipe Dream - there is much to admire about the Me and Juliet score, even though it produced but one hit, "No Other Love" - which had a recycled melody and has not survived as a standard. In this post we'll re-examine the some of the songs of Me and Juliet through the non-cast recordings made when the show was new.

RCA Victor underwrote the Broadway production, so several of the discs below along with the original cast album were issued on that label.

Me and Juliet is a backstage musical with a show within the show, titled, confusingly enough, "Me and Juliet." The principal characters of the meta-Me and Juliet were ancillary to the production of the play-within-a-play. Jeanie (Isabel Bigley in the original cast) is a singer in the chorus; her competing suitors are Larry (Bill Hayes), an assistant stage manager, and Bob (Mark Dawson), an electrician. Bob is the heavy.

The show starts with Jeanie singing the wistful "A Very Special Day." It's a simple song, befitting Jeanie's personality, but lovely and affecting. For our collection, it is very well done by Sue Bennett, one-time Kay Kyser vocalist who had recently finished a stint on Your Hit Parade. 

Sue Bennett

Bennett is backed by the orchestra and piano of Ted Straeter, the long-time bandleader at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The number is one of four on a "songs from" EP that M-G-M records put out at the time of the Broadway production. Three songs from the EP appear in this compilation.

Ted Straeter

The next number is "Marriage Type Love," which is performed by Charlie and Lily, the two principals in the play-within-a-play. The song is both a precursor to Jeanie and Larry's eventual marriage and a contrast to the difficulties in their relationship. The lyrics are deliberately moony: "We made a date, couldn't wait for my day off. / Now it's a thing, with a ring for the pay-off."

In our set, the song is performed very well by Bennett and Straeter. Ted was one of those singers-without-a-voice who proliferated in nightclubs and cabarets. He was wonderfully effective within his limits - he had clear diction and a great feel for lyrics - and his ringing piano playing is a pleasure to hear.

"Marriage Type Love" is one of the several songs in the score that have a Latin beat. Rodgers was picking up on the then-current fashion for the the mambo in particular. The next song in the set, "Keep It Gay," is another example. We hear it first from Straeter, then in an actual Latin arrangement from the Venezuelan bandleader Aldemaro Romero, who was then working for RCA and probably recorded the number in New York with a studio band. Romero's arrangement shows the influence of the fashionable sound of the George Shearing Quartet. Shearing would soon release Latin albums of his own.

Aldemaro Romero

In the show, "Keep It Gay" is designed to show off the insincerity of Larry's competitor Bob.

The best known song from Me and Juliet - and its only hit - is "No Other Love." Richard Rodgers wrote it as a instrumental tango called "Beneath the Southern Cross" for the 1952 television documentary Victory at Sea. (You can find the excellent original soundtrack LP via this earlier post.) In the musical, the song is a duet for Larry and Jeanie.

"No Other Love" was a big success for Perry Como in an overblown arrangement by Henri René that has the Moaner belting at the end (which he does quite well). The flip side of the record is Perry's version of "Keep It Gay," which has an even worse arrangement, so I've not included it in this compilation.

Noro Morales

I've added a version of "No Other Love" by the well-known Puerto Rican bandleader Noro Morales, who turns the tango into a mambo with the feel of a cha-cha-cha, which dance was just beginning its period of popularity. I believe Morales made this record in New York. 

Jo Stafford

The final song from the score to merit a commercial recording was "I'm Your Girl," a hymn from Jeanie to Larry. Religious and quasi-religious songs were popular back then - "I Believe" had been a hit for Jane Froman in early 1953 - and of course Rodgers and Hammerstein had a huge success with "You'll Never Walk Alone" in Carousel.

"I'm Your Girl" is an affecting piece, particularly in the rapt rendition by Jo Stafford that concludes this compilation. Although her singing always is warm, she has seldom sounded so involved with the words. The only clinker is Hammerstein's final line, "I'm the girl you own," which sounds wrong to modern sensibilities.

There were several other notable songs in Me and Juliet that did not achieve recordings outside the original cast album, including "That's the Way It Happens," "The Big Black Giant" and "It's Me." 

Me and Juliet didn't enter the R&H pantheon for many reasons. Its songs, particularly the lyrics, were not as strong as other shows. Its story was both too complex (the show within a show) and too simple (a good guy and a bad guy compete for a girl). But the critical issue was the public's expectations - that R&H should present "must-see" spectacles, which more modest shows like Me and Juliet, Allegro and Pipe Dream could not provide.

The recordings come from my collection and Internet Archive. The sound is generally excellent.

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Rodgers and Hammerstein in the run-up to the show opening, 1953

Pierné Conducts Chabrier and Franck

Gabriel Pierné

Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937), whose compositions are being celebrated on my other blog, also was a distinguished conductor and organist. This post looks at a few of the records he made leading the Orchestre Colonne, which he conducted from 1910-32.

The recordings, dating from December 1929, pay homage to two French composers of an older generation - Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) and César Franck (1822-90).

For Chabrier, Pierné chose the work that is still the composer's most popular - the orchestral rhapsody España. The lively and memorable piece set off a fashion for Spanish-themed works among French composers, including Debussy (Ibéria) and Ravel (Rapsodie espagnole). (It also "inspired" Perry Como's 1956 hit, "Hot Diggity.")

Franck is represented by a contrasting work, his solemn Prelude, choral et fugue, a brief piano work here in an orchestral transcription by the conductor. Pierné was one of Franck's organ students, and later succeeded him as organist at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris.

César Franck and Emmanuel Chabrier

The recordings, remastered from transfers on Internet Archive, were originally issued on Odéon. The transfers come from somewhat later US Decca pressings. The sound is vivid despite a relatively constricted frequency response, which tails off below 200Hz and above 4.5kHz. It does provide a good representation of the sound of the Orchestre Colonne under its distinguished conductor.

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For more on Pierné as conductor, please see this post on Internet Archive by my friend Satyr. It includes Berlioz's Carnaval Romain Overture, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite no. 1 and the Berceuse from Stravinsky's L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird). Pierné led the 1910 premiere of the work for the Ballets Russes.