Fulton Sheen

Bishop Fulton Sheen was quite a presence in American Catholic life for many years, and particularly in the early 1950s, when the record above was made. A mesmerizing speaker with a penetrating gaze, he actually had a prime time television program opposite Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra at that time. A cover story from Time magazine gives a good sense of his influence. There are quite a few examples of his television show on YouTube. This clip condemning Communism shows the power of his delivery.

The record above is actually a 10-inch 78 made for children, with two prayers and two religious poems. Bishop Sheen's intensity in the poems is a little frightening. I remember him well from my own childhood - and indeed I instantly remembered this record from many years ago when I acquired it recently. Like many young people of that era, I had a record player of my own and my own little record collection. This has led to a lifelong hobby and now this blog, but that's another story - and quite a dull one, too.

I've added a bonus item of sorts to the record above, and it really is esoteric. It is an excerpt from a sermon that then-Msgr. Sheen delivered to a gathering of 110,000 faithful in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1940. The sermon was issued by the Catholic Digest via a three-record set of 12-inch 78s pressed on unusual dark-blue shellac. I only have one of the records - the excerpt is from the second side. In this item, Msgr. Sheen gets transcendental and likens all of California to an altar, with Mexico the sacristy. I think that's what he is saying - the sound's a little dim.

LINK

Danny Kaye Returns

Our first Danny Kaye item was surprisingly popular, so here goes with another one.

Two of the numbers on this record were from Kaye's films - Lobby Number, an amusing six-minute ramble through movie cliches, was from Up in Arms, and the Little Fiddle, a send-up of introductory classical pieces for kiddies, was from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

If you are familiar with the performance of Triplets by Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan, and Fred Astaire in The Bandwagon, you may find this version interestingly different. Kaye also does some straight singing on this record, and very well.

This was Kaye's first album. It's a good one. My copy must have been owned by a real fan of Dan - it is a bit worn, I'm afraid.

Woody Guthrie

It's been some time since we visited the folk/blues/early jazz category, and what better way to add to that collection than with a Woody Guthrie album.

This is a Folkways LP that came out in 1950, but it collects some of the first commercial recordings that Guthrie made - for RCA Victor in 1940. On the A side you will find four classic dust bowl ballads; on the flip side, songs about the migrants who were chased from the southwest by the storms of the 1930s. These include a piece that Guthrie based on John Steinbeck's Tom Joad character.

It's interesting that Guthrie, thought of as a true folk artist, was influenced by Steinbeck's novel and (according to the notes to this album) even the film of the Grapes of Wrath. His work in turn became part of the collective consciousness, in a sense - I remember singing So Long and This Land Is Your Land in elementary school in the 1950s, well before I ever heard of Woody himself.

Guthrie's RCA session was tremendously successful artistically - this record doesn't include Do Re Mi, Vigilante Man, and Pretty Boy Floyd, all of which he recorded at the same session.

The cover of this album, by an artist named Carlis, is perfect for its contents. A great record and great package.

Mewton-Wood, Part 2

Continuing our series of the recordings that Noel Mewton-Wood did for the Musical Masterpiece Society circa 1950, we have a wonderful performance of this supreme work by Beethoven.

Mewton-Wood was one of those artists whose work always seems perfectly natural; whether elegant or impassioned, it just seems right. To achieve such results in rushed sessions for a budget label continues to be a source of wonder.

In this concerto, he partners with the Utrecht Symphony, which was a "real" orchestra (unlike the Netherlands Philharmonic heard earlier in this series). Once again, the conductor is the talented Walter Goehr.

I do hope you will listen - and forgive the noise at the beginning of the transfer. It soon fades, but the impression left by Mewton-Wood's artistry does not.

(Note: this noise has now been all but eradicated in the latest version.)

LINK

Georgia Gibbs

A high percentage of early LPs featured pop singers. We've neglected them here, so let's start to make amends with this album from a fine vocalist, Georgia Gibbs.

I wish there were a way to make amends to Her Nibs (as she was called) for this cover. Yes, her skin is really the color of a rotting lime on the original artwork. Yes, there are cobwebs attached to her head. And yes, there are rolls of flab on her neck. All of which signifies that the cover was designed by my very own "discovery," Fred Steffen!

We first encountered Fred in the early days of this blog. He did the outrageous art for a Steve Gibson LP featured way down below. I said then that I didn't know anything about the artist. Since then I've found references to him as being a Chicago resident (Mercury was headquartered there) who designed book illustrations and a couple of pieces of art for Rogue, a men's magazine. I surely hope the latter were more alluring than his work for Georgia Gibbs.

Gibbs deserved better. A talented singer with a gutsy approach, her biggest hits were R&B covers like Dance with Me Henry. This is a enjoyable record in good sound with nice backing by an anonymous group.

LINK

Humoresque

Here's one of those movies from the 40s that used classical music (or classical music by-products, anyway) in the service of melodrama.

Like our last venture into Golden Age Hollywood, this was a Joan Crawford vehicle. Fresh from her Mildred Pierce triumph, she was paired this time with smoldering prole John Garfield. I like the IMDB summary: "A classical musician from the slums is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite."

Well, you can probably imagine what happens with that plot (as IMDB says, "Tragedy ensues"). But you may find it hard to imagine what happens in the score when Franz Waxman decides that Wagner's Tristan and Isolde really needs the assistance of Isaac Stern and Oscar Levant in solo roles. What ensues is not exactly tragic, but it's not exactly Wagner either. Waxman, Stern, and Levant were all wonderful musicians, but this was not a good idea.

Stern has better luck with Waxman's arrangements of Dvorak's Humoresque and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble-Bee. Waxman also does an arrangement of Sarasate's arrangement of themes from Bizet's Carmen (if that makes sense). For some reason, he left Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen alone.

This record must have been aimed at the market for fiddlers (Stern was then an up-and-comer) because it has a nice drawing of the violinist rather than a photo of Garfield or Crawford on the cover. Thank goodness the result looks nothing like the gaudy movie poster.

Barbirolli Conducts Rubbra

Born in 1901, Edmund Rubbra was a contemporary and friend of such English composers as Gerald Finzi and William Alwyn. Like them, he wrote music that was conservative for its time.

His fifth symphony comes from 1947. This is its first recording, and the only recording of any of his symphonies for many years. (All 11 have now been recorded at least once.)

Barbirolli was a champion of this work, and the attractive record sleeve gives him the play over Rubbra - it's actually hard to read the title of the piece because the script font is reversed out of light blue.

It's an elegant package, and if the music inside is more earnest that elegant, it is well worth getting to know.

Mewton-Wood, Part 1

I have wanted to share the music of pianist Noel Mewton-Wood for some time. Mostly forgotten today, he wasn't even that well known in his own lifetime, which ended at age 31 in 1953, and at his own hand.

The Australian pianist did leave behind quite a few excellent records, many of them made for the budget label Music Masterpiece Society.

Mewton-Wood (note that the MMS releases for some reason dispense with his first name) had achieved some success in England and on the Continent by the time of his death. The story goes that he committed suicide because he blamed himself after his partner died of a burst appendix. There was a contemporary newspaper article with the blunt headline "Dying Pianist Dashed Poison Glass at Wall."

But now I am going on about the artist's sensational death, rather than concentrating on his sensational talent, and that is quite unfair to him. Listen to this performance and you will hear what he could accomplish with a pickup orchestra that's a little thin in the strings, a sympathetic conductor (Walter Goehr, who also died young), and very little rehearsal time.

The so-called "Netherlands Philharmonic" was generally composed of players from Dutch radio orchestras. (Note that there is now an actual Netherlands Philharmonic, formed in 1985.) MMS actually could produce a nice product - this is a pretty good recording of a pretty good orchestra on pretty good vinyl, and the piano playing is better than that. The "prestigious" cover with all the scrolls, geegaws, and composer cartoons - maybe not so good.

More to come on Noel Mewton-Wood here.

LINK

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

This one is a request from Mindy over at Sallie and Mel's Golden Age of Hollywood, a Franklynot production (to adopt the west coast parlance).

Jane and Marilyn were both excellent singers, so there is no vocal dubbing here, as least as far as I know. There are classic songs from Jule Styne and Leo Robin (Bye Bye Baby, Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend) and two good ones from Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson.

This is quite the short LP, but is nonetheless a wonderful reminder of an amusing movie and two great stars at their best.

Enescu Plays Schumann

I had a grand plan to share the recordings composer/violinist George Enescu made for Remington about mid-century. Except I can't find the Bach record. And this Schumann sonata has a pressing fault causing noise throughout most of the first movement. (Note: the 2019 remastering almost completely removes this noise.)

Ah well. I wish I could say the performance makes up for it, but the great man's work here is distinctly human. Pianist Céliny Chailley-Richez, however, plays well and the sound is pretty good, except for the noise, that is. (Note: ten years later, I'd say the performance is very fine indeed; the fallibilities are minor.)

I'll be back later with Enescu conducting his own music - and the Bach, if I can find it.

Serving the Mass

This LP on Serving the Mass is helpfully dated as December 15, 1954. It doesn't say where it was recorded, but it certainly seems to have been somewhere in Washington, D.C.

The album is supposed to be instructive for prospective altar boys (and they were all boys at that time), although I can't imagine that hearing a few songs, a potted version of the Mass, some quick Latin phraseology, and a set of directions would be very helpful to the novice. At that time, the altar boy had many duties, including standing in for the congregation in providing many responses to the celebrant in Latin, moving things around the altar, ringing bells, and assisting with holy communion, with all activities connected by some fairly stylized movements, bowing, etc.

Those who are not familiar with the Catholic lingo may wonder about the terms "Nihil Obstat" and "Imprimatur" on the LP cover. The Nihil Obstat is provided by a religious person who acted as a censor who made sure there was nothing in the item proposed for publication that was against church teachings. The Imprimatur is then the bishop's approval for the item to be published.

This record will give you a fair sense of what the Latin rite sounded like back then. The celebrant has what I think is a very Italianate pronunciation of the Latin words. Perhaps he trained in Rome. He sounds impatient with the altar boy's respondents. Probably in a hurry to get to the sermon.

This record was not an inexpensive item, by the way. It cost $5 in 1954, which would be almost $40 today.

LINK

Crawford in Torch Song

Torch Song is one of the great camp movies of all time. Or so I read on the various film sites. Me, I haven't watched it, although I did happen to see the clip of Joan Crawford galumphing around that appears in That's Entertainment III. I seem to have a horrible memory of it being done in blackface, which must have been in bad taste even in 1953.

Dear Joan plays a famous singer-dancer in this festival of unintentional comedy. She is quite the temperamental diva - that is until she is redeemed by the devoted love of a blind pianist played by Michael Wilding. They couldn't have been serious about this.

On to the music - this 10-inch LP presents songs from the movie as played by Walter Gross, who dubbed Michael Wilding's piano playing. Three tunes are performed by India Adams, who did the vocal dubbing for Crawford. The album doesn't say whether these items are from the actual soundtrack, but it doesn't sound like they are. The other musicians are guitarist Dave Gilbert and bassist Bob Shevak.

The music on this record is by a variety of people, including music director Adolph Deutsch and Walter Gross. Gross' big hit was Tenderly, which is one of the items here.

Elie Siegmeister

What you are seeing above is actually not the cover of the 10-inch LP that contained Elie Siegmeister's Ozark Set. It is the cover of the original 78 rpm album that came out in 1945, and is a much better example of cover artist Alex Steinweiss' work than the LP. It also is more evocative of the somewhat idealized version of rural America celebrated by this music – and other conservative music of the time.

Like Aaron Copland, who was eight years older, Siegmeister was born in Brooklyn and studied in Paris under Nadia Boulanger. It's too bad that Siegmeister's music is largely forgotten today. This is quite well done, and the quieter moments are very beautiful and evocative. There is much to enjoy here for enthusiasts of Copland's Americana pieces, even though the performances by Dimitri Mitropoulos and his Minneapolis troupe are neither subtle not especially well played. With this ensemble providing the music, "Saturday Night" in the Ozarks seems quite a hectic experience. One wonders if the barn survived the barn dance. A harsh recording and typically rough pressing are not helpful, either.

Also included on the 10-inch LP is the overture to Lalo’s opera Le Roi d'Ys, which sounds less like Ys and more like Liszt in this performance.

The cover of the LP that yoked the yokels with the Ysians is below. As you can see, the Ozark mountain on the 78 set has been reduced to a Ozark pimple down in the right-hand corner of the LP. Another interesting difference is that the liner notes for the 78 set quote an enthusiastic Russian review of the music, but by the time the LP came out in 1950, the Cold War had begun and the Russian commentary is nowhere to be found. Possibly a coincidence – who knows.

NEW LINK

Barber Conducts His Second Symphony

While there is nothing identifiably "American" sounding about Samuel Barber's music, this work at least had a patriotic basis.

The composition originally had the title, Symphony Dedicated to the Air Forces. Barber was a World War II flyer when he wrote it.

Samuel Barber with the score of his Second Symphony

This recording is unusual on a couple of counts. It is conducted by the composer, who made only a few other recordings as a conductor, including the Medea ballet and Cello Concerto, both at this same time as this recording. (He also recorded some of his songs.) Also, it is of a composition that Barber later suppressed and actually destroyed. Hard to understand why—it is a beautiful and evocative score.

There are a few modern recordings of the piece now, but this was the sole version for about 40 years. It was unavailable for most of that time, although it was reissued for a time on Everest records. This is a fine performance and good recording. [Note (September 2023): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]