Barber - Two Premiere Recordings, and a Bonus

My main blog recently recognized the composer Samuel Barber with a post of many first recordings, including the set of his 1950 Decca-London recordings.

Today we'll go back to two of Barber's initial successes, including his most famous work, the Adagio for Strings, in their own first recordings. And we'll end with a vintage recording of his earliest success, the School for Scandal Overture.

The Adagio for Strings and the second item on the program, Barber's Essay for Orchestra, were introduced in the same 1938 concert by the most famous conductor of the day, Arturo Toscanini, with his NBC Symphony. New York Times critic Olin Downes was taken with both the music and the performances:

Arturo Toscanini

"It goes without saying that Toscanini conducted these scores as if his reputation rested upon the results. He does that with whatever he undertakes. Mr. Barber had reason for thankfulness for a premier under such leadership. And the music proved eminently worth playing. The Adagio for the strings, particularly, is the work of a young musician of true talent, rapidly increasing skill, and, one would infer, capacity for self-criticism. It is not pretentious music. Its author does not pose and posture in his score. He writes with a definite purpose, a clear objective and a sense of structure...

"The Essay for Orchestra, modestly named, is well integrated, with clear instrumentation, and with development of the ideas that unifies the music in spite of changes of tempo and marked contrasts of orchestration. The Adagio impressed this chronicler, at the first hearing, as the better composition of the two, but it would be premature to put this down as a definite conclusion, and it is a matter of secondary importance. Of the first importance is the fact of a composer who is attempting no more than he can do, and doing that genuinely, and well." The complete review is in the download.

The Adagio is an arrangement of the slow movement from Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11. Toscanini was to record the orchestrated Adagio in 1942 with the NBC orchestra, thankfully in Carnegie Hall rather than the notorious Studio 8H, where they broadcasted. The Adagio has been called "the saddest music ever written," which it is not, and certainly not in this perfect performance.

Samuel Barber and Eugene Ormandy, circa 1970s

The Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12, is generally called the Essay No. 1 today because the composer was to write two others. Its first recording was not by Toscanini, but by one of the other pre-eminent conductors of the time, Eugene Ormandy, with the Philadelphia Orchestra. That session, also for Victor, was in 1940. Ormandy was not particularly known as an advocate of the composer - in the recording studio, he did not return to Barber's music until 1957 - but this early recording is splendid, with brilliant playing by the Philadelphians.

Howard Hanson

The Ormandy disc of the Essay was the first of any Barber composition, followed by Werner Janssen's recording of the School for Scandal Overture, which took place in March 1942, just a week before Toscanini's session. I don't have that Janssen record, but the score is memorable - like the Adagio, the Essay and the other works I posted recently. So I can't resist adding a version of it to this post. It is actually the third recording, dating from 1952 and by Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra in their long series of modern American music recordings.

Barber wrote the School for Scandal Overture in 1932 as his senior thesis at the Curtis Institute. It was done in the spirit of the 1777 Richard Brinsley Sheridan comedy of manners, but not for any production. The music is exhilarating. Hanson's performance is not as polished as the Toscanini and Ormandy, but still good.

The sound on all records is in excellent ambient stereo. The Essay and School for Scandal Overture come from my collection; the Adagio was cleaned up from an Internet Archive needle drop.

Two Songs from 'America's Sweetheart'

Rodgers and Hart's 1931 spoof of Hollywood, America's Sweetheart, was not one of their great successes, running on Broadway for less than four months. Most of its numbers are obscure and some apparently lost, but the show did include two outstanding songs, even if neither are heard much these days.

Why didn't America's Sweetheart succeed? Its critics grumbled that Hollywood satires were old hat, and that Herbert Fields' book was inferior to Kaufman and Hart's Once in a Lifetime. The story line hinged on the changeover to talkies and the havoc it brought to the industry and its actors. (Rodgers, Hart and Fields may have been 20 years ahead of their time, considering the success of Singin' in the Rain.)

Jack Whiting and Harriette Lake

The leads were by all accounts appealing. One, appearing under her birth name of Harriette Lake, later became famous as Ann Sothern. The male lead was Jack Whiting.

Lake and Whiting introduced the two memorable songs from the show - "I've Got Five Dollars" and "We'll Be the Same." The former is a Depression song, and a wonderful one at that, with some of Hart's most winning lyrics. Lake sang:

"I've got five dollars / Eighty-five relations / Two lace combinations / They belong to you!

"Two coats with collars / Ma and Grandma wore 'em / All the moths adore 'em / They belong to you!"

The verse includes this gem: "I was more selfish / And crabby than a shellfish."

"I've Got Five Dollars" has been recorded any number of times, including several efforts when it was new. "We'll Be the Same" - a first-rate example of Rodgers and Hart's magic - is neglected, with only a few releases when new and a handful thereafter.

The best version of the latter song I have heard is by Tammy Grimes, and can be found in the collection of her work I recently posted. Today, however, we will go back to 1931 and a 78 by Victor Arden-Phil Ohman and Their Orchestra that couples it with "I've Got Five Dollars."

Victor Arden and Phil Ohman

Arden, Ohman and their pianos had been heard in several Broadway shows during the 1920s, including Rodgers and Hart's Spring Is Here. They don't seem to have been in America's Sweetheart, however.

For these two songs (and many other records), Arden and Ohman engaged Frank Luther for the vocal choruses. Luther seemed to live in the recording studio for several years, working under his own name, as "Bud Billings" for the country market, and with various vocal groups. Luther had a good reputation, although here his singing could best be described as accurate rather than ingratiating. His choppy phrasing does nothing for Hart's lyrics, to be sure.

Lee Wiley and Frank Luther

Then too, Arden-Ohman don't include the verse of "I've Got Five Dollars" nor the lyrics written for Hariette Lake. This means that Luther doesn't sing any of the Hart lines that I quoted above. To compensate for this omission, I've included a 1940 recording by Lee Wiley complete with the verse. Wiley, unlike Luther, was a stylist who injects much more personality into her singing. Her backing is by a Joe Bushkin ensemble that includes some of the usual Chicago-style musicians - Max Kaminsky, Bud Freeman, et al.

The sound on these records is good for its time, and is enhanced by ambient stereo processing.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

Charles DeForest - the Bell Recordings

Charles DeForest

Charles DeForest (or Charlie, as he is known here) was an exceptionally talented singer who remained unknown except to the patrons of New York's best night spots. To my knowledge he recorded three LPs and perhaps five single sides, the latter of which are collected here. I'll get to two of the three albums on my other blog hopefully soon.

DeForest (1924-96) was a native of Genoa, NY, in the Finger Lakes region. He arrived in New York City in the early 1950s determined to become known as a songwriter, and while he did achieve some success in that realm - Tony Bennett was an advocate - his livelihood primarily was as an admired cabaret singer and pianist.

The New York Times' John S. Wilson described him as possessing "a soft intimate voice that manages to brush gently over the words in a manner that is clear and precise without being exaggerated." All true, but it understates his abilities. DeForest was an eloquent singer with notable technical skills, including clear diction and excellent intonation.

As far as I know, these Bell recordings from 1953-54 are his first. While he was invariably known as "Charles DeForest" in the New York cabarets, Bell called him "Charlie." At the time, that label was a budget operation that specialized in cover versions of popular favorites, often using artists who had some name value. So DeForest was matched with well-known bandleader Larry Clinton on one single, and on another he shared the disc with the big band vocalist Helen Forrest.

Here is more information about the five Bell sides that I've uncovered.

His first record was a pair of songs from the 1953 Esther Williams aquatic extravaganza Easy to Love. The tunes are not well-remembered, but nonetheless are enjoyable; both are by Mann Curtis and Vic Mizzy. "Look Out! I'm Romantic" was introduced by Tony Martin, and "That's What a Rainy Day Is For" by Martin and Williams (dubbed by Betty Wand).

"Young at Heart" was a hit for Frank Sinatra in 1953-54. It has a melody by Johnny Richards, originally called "Moonbeam," and a set of lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. DeForest is suitably fresh, and a nice alternative to Frankie. On these first three songs, the backing is by "The Magic Strings," and on this third side, the conductor is named as producer-arranger Morty Palitz.

The final two items are older songs that had been revived for 1954's pop listeners. Ted Daffan wrote "I'm a Fool to Care" for the country market in 1940. This version was probably occasioned by the later Les Paul and Mary Ford record.

Jack Lawrence's "If I Didn't Care" was a giant pop and R&B hit for the Ink Spots and lead vocalist Bill Kenny in 1940. DeForest thankfully does not adopt any of Kenny's famously mannered phrasing. His 1954 cover version may have been inspired by the Hilltoppers' version of that year.

Both these songs have backing by big band leader Larry Clinton.

The first three songs were remastered from lossless Internet Archive needle drops. The final two are from lossy commercial remasterings with strident sound that I've redone into more listenable shape. My versions are presented in ambient stereo.

Pierné and Grainger from Sokoloff and Cleveland

In recent years, I've devoted three posts to the work of conductor Nikolai Sokoloff, the first music director of the illustrious Cleveland Orchestra. The first was devoted to Tchaikovsky, Halvorsen, Sibelius, Borodin, Martinu and Britten, followed by Saint-Saëns and Nicolai and Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky.

The music in today's post is much different, consisting of two brief but delightful pieces, Gabriel Pierné's "March of the Little Fauns" and Percy Grainger's "Shepherd's Hey," in most characterful performances. Both works were relatively new when Sokoloff and the Clevelanders took them up - the Pierné written in 1914-15 but not performed until 1923, and the Grainger dating from 1918. Sokoloff's recording is from 1928.

The Pierné piece is from his ballet Cydalise et le chèvre-pied. "Chèvre-pied" is literally translated "goat-foot," but it actually refers to a satyr. The dance we usually call the "March of the Little Fauns" in English is in French "L'École des Ægipans," with Ægipans being a type of satyr. Well, it is a march and it is an impressionist work, so "March of the Little Fauns" makes sense, I guess. Sokoloff calls it "The School of the Fauns."

Gabriel Pierné, Nikolai Sokoloff, Percy Grainger

By whatever title, it is a delightful piece, and Sokoloff and band have a great deal of fun with it, being more flexible than other performances I have heard. The entire ballet is worthwhile - I plan to transfer Jean Martinon's 1970 recording of the ballet suite for my other blog.

Percy Grainger's "Shepherd's Hey" also is very amusing. The composer collected English folk songs, and subjected this Morris dance tune to a variety of imaginative transformations. Grainger did not much care about development of the theme; he just keeps running through it with different treatments. Wit and good humor abound, and the Clevelanders make the most of the revels.

The composer scored the work for concert band, but this version includes strings. Grainger often arranged his work for various ensembles - as did others - so I am not sure who is behind this orchestration. It is highly effective, in any case.

These recordings were made in Carnegie Hall and have good if at times slightly raw sound. By 1928, Brunswick had moved on from the "Light-Ray" electrical recording process, and adopted the superior Western Electric process used by other companies. The orchestra and Sokoloff made no more recordings together after these May 1928 sessions. Their story is told in this post.

The Grainger is cleaned up from an Internet Archive needle-drop that was misidentified as the Pierné piece. The actual "March/School of the Fauns/Satyrs" is missing there, so I worked from a lossy version that sounds just fine after some ministrations. Both are presented in ambient stereo.  

The Two 'Swedish Rhapsodies'

Hugo Alfvén, Swedish rhapsodist no. 1

Two different "Swedish Rhapsodies" became popular in postwar America (and elsewhere). The best known is the one by composer Hugo Alfvén (1872–1960). Written in 1903, he called it Midsommarvaka, or "Midsummer Vigil," with the subtitle "Swedish Rhapsody No. 1." (There are three by the composer, including the Uppsalarapsodi and Dalarapodi.)

Midsommarvaka is far and away the most popular, largely because of the colorful and memorable main theme - so memorable that the popular arranger Percy Faith adapted it for a Columbia single in 1953. That disc spawned a variety of other renditions, which form the bulk of today's post. We hear that distinctive theme on the organ, accordion with banjos, and a vocal version.

The Faith-Alfvén concoction, however, was not the first Swedish Rhapsody to become popular. In 1949 the Viennese composer-conductor Willy Mattes wrote one under the name Charles Wildman. It was composed for a French film titled Singoalla, released in the US as Gypsy Fury. His Swedish Rhapsody is an entertaining example of the bravura "piano concertos" that were popular in the 40s following the success of the Warsaw Concerto.

"Charles Wildman" (Willy Mattes), Swedish rhapsodist No. 2

The Wildman/Mattes Rhapsody spurred both pop instrumentals and vocals. This collection has an example of both.

The Offspring of Alfvén

But let's return to Hugo Alfvén's composition first. If you want to hear the original, conducted by the composer, you can head over to my other blog and this post of his 1954 stereo disc. That particular recording could well have been occasioned by the popularity of Percy Faith's 1953 adaptation.

Billboard, February 28, 1953

I don't know what led Faith to transform the Alfvén piece into a pop record, but it must have been a popular topic at his label, because at the same time Columbia's classical division was preparing a recording of the original composition by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Harold Smart and Ray Martin

The Faith recording inspired a number of other versions; it seemed to be particularly influential in England. Our first cover version is by organist Harold Smart, whose combo attacks the piece with some enthusiasm and as much skill as can be mustered in an adaptation of an adaptation.

The usual mood-music maestri took up the piece as well. Mantovani had his cascading strings and echo chambers working overtime in his version. We will hear from him below, but for this first Rhapsody let's instead have the recording by Ray Martin, active in England at the time but who actually was another Viennese conductor, born Kurt Kohn.

There also were versions elsewhere in Europe. Let's take a quick detour to Denmark and a peppy number by the duo accordionists Aksel og Erik with Pietro Tedesco's banjo orchestra. This one is over in a hurry, so listen fast.

Red Buttons

The above records all date from 1953. Came the following year, Columbia decided to capitalize on the Faith phenomenon by releasing a vocal version of the piece, with lyrics by Carl Sigman. The label's pop mastermind, Mitch Miller, decided to enlist actor-comedian Red Buttons (Aaron Chwatt) to sing it. Not such an odd idea - Buttons had a hit the year before with "Strange Things Are Happening." And he does just fine with this one, although Sigman's lyrics are cliché-stricken: "One little fellow on a Swedish street / Playing sweet - 'Tweet - tweet - tweet' / One penny-whistle and an oom-pah beat / Swedish rhapsody".

Warsaw Comes to Sweden

The English composer Richard Addinsell wrote the Warsaw Concerto for a 1941 film called Dangerous Moonlight (Suicide Squadron in the US). The bravura Rachmaninoffian piece was played by Anton Walbrook (dubbed by Louis Kentner) as a Polish concert pianist who became a fighter pilot. (That recording can be found in this collection.)

Addinsell's work spurred a stampede of melodramatic miniature piano concertos. One of the last was Wildman's "Swedish Rhapsody." It is derivative of a derivative composition, to be sure, but not less effective because of it.

Mantovani

Our instrumental version of the "Swedish Rhapsody" is the 1948 single by Mantovani with pianist Ivan Fosello. It's a good account, and Monti's echo chambers had not yet gotten out of control. Novello and Mantovani had combined in a popular version of the Warsaw Concerto earlier in the decade.

Dick Haymes

Came 1953, and the American Decca folks decided it was time for a vocal version of Wildman's piece. The lyrics are the handiwork of the well-known Don Raye, who called the piece "My Home Is in Your Arms." The vocals are handled by Dick Haymes with the backing of Gordon Jenkins' orchestra and Bernie Leighton's piano.

It's a very good record. Haymes sounds a little under-rehearsed, but also is in excellent voice and is suitably impassioned. Jenkins is the perfect choice for accompanist, and studio pianist Leighton has the style down pat.

Just to complete the circle, the Warsaw Concerto itself had a vocal version, too, recorded by several acts in 1958. Called "The World Outside," it again had lyrics by Carl Sigman. You can hear the Four Aces' version here.

Solomon Plays French Music

The great pianist Solomon has been featured often on the main blog, but is making his bow on this offshoot, with a few selections of French music he recorded in the 1940s.

The main work is Debussy's "La cathédrale engloutie" (Preludes Book 1, No. 10). This impressionist work illustrates the Breton myth of a sunken cathedral that arises from the water as the morning mist clears. Its grand organ is heard, and then it gradually retreats into the sea. Solomon is not the first person I would think of in such music; the clarity and exactitude of his playing would seem to be at odds with the genre. However, as with Chopin, he defies my preconception and provides a reading that does full justice to the score.

Déodat de Séverac, Louis-Claude Daquin, Claude Debussy 

The other two items on this program are pieces of descriptive music, although from different centuries. The first, by the baroque composer Louis-Claude Daquin, is "Le coucou" (from his Pièces de clavecin, Troisième Suite). This composition for harpsichord works well on the piano and the cuckoo makes himself known, amusingly.

The final selection is by Marie-Joseph Alexandre Déodat de Séverac - "Où l'on entend une vieille boîte à musique" ("Where we hear an old music box"). Séverac was a contemporary of Debussy, but his music is much different, although again descriptive. This and the preceding work were likely among the occasional items that Solomon used as encores.

The Debussy comes from 1948, the other two from 1946. All were recorded in Abbey Road Studio 3. The sound in ambient stereo is good, although there is a fair amount of surface rustle on the Debussy pressing.

Gordon MacRae's Strangest Hits

In preparing the recent post with two Gordon MacRae operettas, I noted that Capitol was keeping him busy at the time (1950), recording such deathless fare as "Hongi Tongi Hoki Poki" and "You Dyed Your Hair Chartreuse." It struck me that those songs and a few more of their ilk might make a fun post for this blog. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to use a goofy photo of MacRae with chartreuse hair.

All these five tunes were in the mold of novelty songs, which the recording industry was turning to in search of the elusive hit. These particular items range in style from Dixieland jazz to polka to R&B, but they all aim to get your attention with silly, even nonsense titles.

"You Dyed Your Hair Chartreuse" would not be an unusual observation these days, but was decidedly less common in 1950. In this R&B effort, complete with wailing sax, MacRae exerts a valiant effort to sell the song, even engaging in call and response with the Ewing Sisters. "What makes your big head so green!" he exclaims at one point, in homage to Caldonia. Hey, this is fun!

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Ophelia" is the Dixieland number, backed by Paul Weston's Dixie Eight. I know nothing of the provenance of the song, but it surely is designed to be reminiscent of the 1920s, although MacRae sounds little like any singer you might have heard back then.

"Hongi Tongi Hoki Poki" is a vaguely racist tale of a sailor boy who visits the Tongi Islands. I'm not sure whether "Tongi" is supposed to be "Tonga," but anyway MacRae marries the king's daughter but the inhabitants get sore and threaten to off him, so he sails from Botany Bay, which is in Australia, so I'm confused. It's a hornpipe and MacRae has a good time with it, abetted by a tuba player and the Les Baxter Singers.

"The Pigskin Polka" is mostly a chance to name check half the colleges in the US, paying homage to football teams from Rice to NYU. (I wondered if NYU ever did have such a team, and the answer is yes, it was one of the first in the US to field an eleven. But by the time of this recording - 1950 - the program was winding down and disbanded in 1953. Now you know.) The song is, as promised, a polka, but MacRae, the Ewing Sisters, Two Sharps and a Natural, and Frank DeVol's orchestra take it at such a clip that you might sprain an ankle if you tried to dance to it.

"Tik-a-Tee, Tik-a-Tay" is a lively quasi-Italian song, one that Dean Martin must have rejected. As with all these numbers, it's amusing and well done without ever exhibiting any quality that might have made it a hit. This one comes from 1955, unlike the others, which date from several years earlier.

So we have five songs in five different styles, all of them handled convincingly by a singer we just heard in operetta. You may not want to listen to any of them more than once - but honestly most are better than their titles portend!

Thanks to Internet Archive for the source materials, and to you for your patience.