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!

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

LINK

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.

We Bring You Eight Lulus

The toothy personality at the right is Lulu, who, according to songwriters Billy Rose, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, you were not supposed to bring to the party, lest she break up the place. 

Lulu was the off-stage protagonist of their lively 1925 composition. It was popular at the time and still retains some interest today because it is both catchy and witty.

"Don't Bring Lulu" is one of my favorite compositions of the 1920s, so I thought I might construct one of those posts where I present both period and more modern performances in varied styles. Today we have eight interpretations in all - vocals, a jazz band, R&B, even a theater organ.

The song's first releases were in early 1925, and must have been among the last batches of acoustic recordings that were made before the far-superior electrical recording process came into use.

Among the Lulu's first exponents was the popular singer Billy Murray, whose penetrating voice, perfect diction and not-unsubtle delivery were well-suited to the acoustic method. His Victor record has a strong period flavor, even including "doo-wacka-doo" figures in the noisy accompaniment. Murray handles the pay-off line of the chorus - "I'll bring her myself" - perfectly, by underplaying it.

"Don't Bring Lulu" also was a favorite of the instrumental jazz bands of the time. Our second selection is by the California Ramblers, identified as the "Varsity Eight" on the Cameo label below. The names of the musicians at the April 1925 recording recording session are somewhat speculative, but may have included Red Nichols and Tommy Dorsey. The band definitely features bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini, who provides a typical solo near the end of the performance.

Adrian Rollini, a gigantic sax and even bigger label

For our next selection, we jump ahead to about 1950. The disc features an obscure R&B group called, wonderfully enough, Fats Fuller and the Dunce Caps. Their "Lulu" was issued on a Philadelphia imprint called Palda, best known for Ferko String Band releases, but which also boasted early records by Al Martino, the Four Aces and Bill Haley on its subsidiary labels. I can't find anything about Fats and his associates, but I can tell you that the Dunce Caps have a King Cole Trio flavor, and Fats himself resembles his namesake Fats Waller in the piano department (assuming he's the pianist) but not vocally.

Tiny Hill

The ever-popular "Lulu" was taken up by another rotund singer, Tiny Hill, for a 1953 outing on Mercury. Hill led a big band that had novelty and country leanings. His easy-going rendition features the sandpaper-block shuffle rhythm that was his trademark.

Nostalgia for the 1920s came into vogue as the 1950s drew to a close. "Don't Bring Lulu" was just the thing for the young musical archeologist Bobby Short, who selected the song for his 1959 Atlantic LP The Mad Twenties.

Bobby Short and Dorothy Provine

The period mood also inspired such television shows as Margie (its theme song was the 1920s hit of that name) and The Roaring 20s. The star of the latter was Dorothy Provine, who played the leader of the band Pinky and Her Playboys. She even put out a popular 1960 LP on Warner Bros. (which produced the show), including her "period" performance of "Don't Bring Lulu."

Mitch and the Gang, sans accordions

Mitch Miller followed the trend in 1962 with a four-square (and just plain square) reading of "Lulu" with his Sing-Along Gang. Mitch must have worn out Columbia's reverb units making his expanded barber-shop recordings, with a jolly men's chorale and echoing accordions accompanying them.

Finally, a selection from an enormous set of theater organ recordings. "Lulu" adapted nicely to the sound of the behemoth instrument once housed in the Regal Theatre, Marble Arch, London - at least in the hands and arrangement of the experienced organist George Blackmore. This record probably dates from the early 1960s.

By the way, the Colgate toothpaste folks solved the mystery of Lulu's unpopularity in the 1940s. See the comic strip ad below for the unsurprising key.

LINK

Melchior and the Dorsey Band - 'Thrill of a Romance'

Way back when, I devoted several posts to the more informal recordings by one of the 20th century's greatest opera stars, the tenor Lauritz Melchior. I have now refurbished two of those recordings and am adding a new one, all timed to upcoming posts devoted to some of Melchior's lesser-known operatic and lieder recordings.

Today, we have the music from a Melchior film that I haven't posted before. It is Thrill of a Romance from 1945, in which the Heldentenor is transformed into a gigantic Danish Cupid bringing together famed aquatic thespian Esther Williams with war-hero Van Johnson.

Thrill of a Romance also starred the Tommy Dorsey band, so as bonus items I've added three commercial recordings of their songs from the film.

The Melchior Recordings

'Put on the bathrobe' - Melchior sings Pagliacci

When we (and Esther Williams) first see Melchior, he is on a balcony greeting the dawn with the verismo aria "Vesti la giubba," hardly the most cheerful piece for waking the neighbors. The best known excerpt from Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci, it deals with the singer finding out his wife has been unfaithful. Then again, the screenwriters could have been ironically foreshadowing the plot, for Williams is about to ditch her husband for valorous Van.

"Vesti la giubba" does not appear in this collection, but it will be included in one of my upcoming Melchior posts. Instead the Victor album starts with Grieg's Ich liebe dich (I love you), which, as it happens, also will be contained in one of the upcoming Melchior posts, in a different version. Here, as in the rest of his recordings, the singer is backed by an orchestra led by his accompanist, Ignace Strasfogel, who is uncredited on the label.

Van Johnson, Esther Williams, unidentified actor, Lauritz Melchior

The next piece is Jenő Hubay's Lonely Night, adapted by music director Georgie Stoll from an unidentified work. This is succeeded by Schubert's Ständchen, D 889; in English, "Serenade." The words that Melchior sings, however, don't seem to be a translation of Franz Grillparzer's original text. "Ständchen" also will appear in a forthcoming post in a more traditional recording with piano.

Melchior is in a celebratory mood for the next item, called "Vive l'Amour," better known as the French folk song "Vive la Compagnie." Stoll again is the arranger.

I believe Ralph Freed and Sammy Fain wrote "Please Don't Say No" for the film. It was recorded by many artists at the time, including the Dorseyites, as discussed below.

Finally, a piece that could have been composed for Melchior, it suits him so well - Victor Herbert's "I Want What I Want When I Want It," from the 1898 operetta Mlle. Modiste. The tenor is in commanding form.

The modern tendency is to portray classical musicians as monsters (a la Tár) or complex characters (such as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro). In 40s musicals, they just as likely to be lovable matchmakers, such as Melchior in this film or José Iturbi in Anchors Aweigh.

The Dorsey Recordings

Melchior with the Tommy Dorsey band

Included in the download are three commercial recordings of music that the Dorsey band performed in the film: "I Should Care," "Please Don't Say No" and "Opus No. One" (later called "Opus One"). I don't think that "I Should Care" and "Opus No. One" were written for the film, but their commercial recordings were made before the final edit was released, and so helped promote the production. They also were the most popular numbers from the movie, and among the most enduring.

Two eminent former Dorsey arrangers, Axel Stordahl and Paul Weston, wrote the music for "I Should Care," with the words by Sammy Cahn. In the film, former Hal Kemp singer Bob Allen performed with the Dorsey band. On record, Bonnie Lou Williams and the Sentimentalists were the vocalists. The latter is a fine performance, but does not surpass Frank Sinatra's 1946 recording with Stordahl.

Freddie Stewart, Bonnie Lou Williams and Sy Oliver

The vocal on "Please Don't Say No" is by short-term Dorsey singer Freddie Stewart, who also had a career as the juvenile lead of B-pictures. The record features one of the leader's signature muted trombone solos, along with the 11-member string section that the band then featured for recordings.

Finally, another song by a Dorsey arranger, Sy Oliver's "Opus No. 1," one of the greatest of all swing instrumentals. Buddy DeFranco is the clarinetist, Buddy Rich the assertive drummer. Oliver uses the string section to great effect in supporting and contrasting with the powerful band. It's a memorable record.

LINK to Thrill of a Romance

More Melchior 

Thrill of a Romance was Lauritz Melchior's first film. His follow-up was Two Sisters from Boston. I transferred the Victor album of songs from that release more than a decade ago, and have now improved the sound and processed it in ambient stereo. As I wrote then, the film "plunders Liszt and Mendelssohn to concoct noisy cod arias that Melchior attacks with some enthusiasm." As a bonus, I have now added Jimmy Durante's songs from the movie - no Liszt of Mendelssohn and quite a contrast to Melchior. (Jimmy's arias are offered separately in a recent post below.)

Also newly redone is Melchior's recording of Romberg's famous operetta The Student Prince with Jane Wilson and Lee Sweetland. This 10-inch album comes from 1951. The orchestrations are by Victor Young, who also conducted the ensemble.