Myra Hess

Here are some splendid recordings by Dame Myra Hess, as requested by David a while back.

She often has not received her due as an artist. Here is an admiring take by the critic Bryce Morrison: "Unlike Horowitz, to take an extreme example, she never sought to stun and bemuse, to leave her audience more exhausted than elated, or to create an impossibly wide chasm between artist and listener. Hers was a voice that ‘connected’, leaving her audience refreshed and, as she would have wished, conscious of the miracle of great music."

Myra Hess

Although these recordings are otherwise available, I did want to bring them to you because they show the artist's beautiful touch and sensitivity. Another reason is that it allows me to display an example of the cover designs by Atelier Cassandre.

Atelier Cassandre was the studio, I believe, of A.M. Cassandre, one of the greatest graphic artists of the 20th century. It's by no means clear that Cassandre himself designed this cover, or others in a very long series that I believe originated with Pathé in France, but whatever their provenance, they are all quietly superb.

While this is not as good an example as some, it nonetheless displays many of the series' characteristics. First, the extraordinarily elegant typography for "Myra Hess." Cassandre himself was a typographer, whose most notable contribution was Peignot. My favorite Cassandre font is Bifur, which is Art Deco incarnate. Another characteristic is the use on an inset photo or illustration. The result is simple and clean - and could hardly be more out of style. You can see a page of examples of these covers, concentrating on typography, here.

In focusing on the cover, I have not done justice to the music, which is very well done. My pressing, visually mint, has a bit of rustle in the Schumann, which I have minimized.

LINK (August 2025 remaster in ambient stereo)

Herb Jeffries, Part 2

We had a good reaction to our first post of Herb Jeffries, the ex-Ellington balladeer, so here's another.

Jeffries' signature tune was Flamingo, so it appears here as well on the previous Mercury album. Also Basin Street Blues, in the same arrangement with street cries, only here Herb does them, not a second voice. Those two tunes were cut with Les Brown. Leading the band on the other numbers is Dick Hazard.

This 1952 collection is just as good as the Mercury album, so if you liked that one, hope you'll enjoy this one as well.

REUP (May 2014)

The Johnson Family Singers

"Each Sunday morning at this time Columbia presents fifteen minutes of hymns and sacred songs with the Johnson Family Singers... a father, mother, and four children. Southern-born, steeped in the tradition of the Deep South, the Johnson Family Singers bring to the well-beloved, familiar songs of Christian people everywhere a sweetness and simplicity of interpretation."

This is the way the Johnson Family Singers were introduced during their radio heyday of the 40s. It gives a bit of the background of this group, captures their style - but the fact that it was being read on one of the major radio networks also conveys that the Johnson Family Singers were a commercial success.

Betty with Ma (Lydia) and Pa (Jesse) Johnson

This 1955 record - one of the group's earliest albums (it may be the first; I'm not sure) - also conveys some of that duality. The record is earnestly presented, but it's also contains several of the most well-worn pop gospel staples. The group is backed by studio musicians, who are quite good but also give the record a slick feel.

If this sounds critical, I don't mean it to be. The Johnson Family Singers are favorites of mine, and they spawned a very good pop singer, Betty Johnson (on the left in the cover photo), who was often seen on American television in the late 1950s and made several excellent albums.

Note: this album has now been remastered and augmented with four additional songs found on the 12-inch LP version. Addendum (September 2024): this LP is now available in ambient stereo via the link below.

LINK to Old Time Religion

Jean Françaix

Here are two delightful neoclassical pieces by Jean Françaix, recorded shortly after their composition. Unexpectedly - at least to me - both come from German orchestras.

The soloist in the Concertino for Piano is Françaix himself. The music manages to be memorable even though the whole piece lasts less than eight minutes. Telefunken recorded this with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1937. The conductor was Leo Borchard, who became the BPO music director for a few months after the second world war, until a sentry killed him by accident.

Jean Françaix

Eugen Jochum led the 1939 recording of the Serenade for 12 Instruments during his residence as Hamburg music director from 1934-49.

This record is one of a series that Capitol sourced from Telefunken circa 1950 - many of them recordings by the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg. All have this same drab cover style - particularly unsuited to Françaix's sparkling music.

Note (September 2023): this recording has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

Painting the Clouds with Sunshine

I think this one is fairly obscure - both the movie and the record.

Painting the Clouds with Sunshine was a 1951 vehicle for Gene Nelson and Virginia Mayo, as well as Dennis Morgan and Lucille Norman, who are the performers here.

We have encountered Lucille Norman before, opposite Gordon MacRae in Capitol's version of The Desert Song. Dennis Morgan was a sometimes lead in Hollywood comedies (Christmas in Connecticut ought to be showing up on your TV starting in about a month) and also in the occasional musical.

Norman, as noted before, was a very good singer, and was sometimes used by Hollywood studios as a vocal double. Morgan was an OK faux-Irish tenor who was himself dubbed by Allan Jones in the Great Ziegfeld, which was Morgan's first film.

The musical selections are a mish-mosh, but the George Greeley arrangements are bright and well-recorded, and this is worth hearing for all those who love their musicals.

Digression No. 11

Awhile back I was lamenting the fact that I couldn't share the score of Lovely to Look At. (Don't have it.) Well, my friend Mindy has come to the rescue and is offering it via the link below.

On behalf of all Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel fans, thanks to Mindy for these great tunes!

LINK

First Recordings of Barber and Copland

Here we have two superb works in what I think are their first recordings, and distinctive ones at that.

Louis Kaufman was a stalwart of the film music orchestras and made quite a few records for budget labels. He takes a very personal and romantic view of the gorgeous Barber concerto - much different from the poker-faced approach that's normal in most music these days. He, the indefatigable conductor Walter Goehr, and their pseudonymous orchestra also do a great job with the finale, which usually sounds like an afterthought.

Aaron Copland makes an appearance to conduct his early Piano Concerto, which is from the Jazz Age and sounds it. It's great fun and very enjoyable in this performance by the talented Leo Smit, a friend of Copland and a superb interpreter of his piano music. The sound isn't too bad.

The Musical Masterpiece Society and its sibling labels made many interesting records. We've seen several already on this blog, and more are to come.

Unre-released Charles Munch, Part 2

There was a great deal of interest in the last post of unre-released Boston Symphony/Charles Munch material. So here is another one - this time Schubert's second symphony. As with the Schumann, his orchestra/conductor combo later recorded the same music in stereo, which may account for this 1949 version remaining in the vaults since its first issue.

This early rendition was issued both on a 10-inch LP and on this 12-inch LP, where it was paired with the Schubert 8th, again by the Boston orchestra, this time conducted by Munch's predecessor as BSO music director, Serge Koussevitzky.

I can't confess any special affinity for Schubert's symphonies, but these versions are as well played as you might expect given the participants.

The last post in this series elicited a lengthy discussion about whether it was issued at the right pitch. I think this one is pitched correctly.

The Charioteers

The Charioteers made many excellent records in the 1940s, some of them collected on this very early Columbia LP.

Forgotten today, the group was prominent in the post-war era, regulars on Bing Crosby's radio show and making records with the likes of Frank Sinatra.

The Charioteers started out as a gospel group and made records in the 1930s for Vocalion. Signed to Columbia in 1940, they began recording pop music in a style similar to the Ink Spots.

The group's lead vocals were by Billy Williams, who went on to form a group under his own name in the 1950s, and to have a big solo pop hit with I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter in 1957.

This was quite a good group. Most of these sides have not been re-released, to my knowledge.

The cover is an example of Columbia's first generic house style.

NEW LINK

Kings of the Blues

This is a follow-up post to our item on Ida May Mack and Bessie Tucker. That was Vol. 2 in Label "X"'s Backgrounds of Jazz series, and this is Vol. 3. (Don't have Vol. 1.)

Remarkably, most of these sides were recorded in Memphis during the same week of August 1928 as the Mack and Tucker recordings.

As with the earlier LP. this must be one of the first albums ever devoted to reissuing the blues records of the 1920s. I should mention, though, that many of these sides are not really blues, strictly speaking.

Jim Jackson and Frank Stokes were experienced medicine show entertainers. Furry Lewis lasted long enough to appear with the Rolling Stones. He even showed up on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Ishman Bracey may be the least known of the group, having produced only 16 sides.

The two Jim Jackson songs on this record may be familiar to those who grew up in the 60s because they were rerecorded by two good-timey folk rock bands - I'm Wild About My Lovin' by the Lovin' Spoonful and This Mornin' She Was Gone by the Youngbloods (under the title Grizzly Bear). I wonder if those groups knew this album.

The cover is by Paul Bacon, who also did the cover of the Mack-Tucker LP, in a much different style.

LINK

Manhattan Moods by Gould

In the first easy listening post, I mentioned Morton Gould, so here he is with one of his innumerable easy listening records, and a very enjoyable one at that.

Called Manhattan Moods, it contains music inspired by the city, but even more so, by George Gershwin. Two ("Manhattan Serenade" and "Manhattan Moonlight") are by songwriter Lou Alter, who wrote many pieces with a New York theme.

Morton Gould

The Nocturne is by Thomas Griselle. "Park Avenue Fantasy," by songwriter-bandleader Matty Malneck, became known as "Stairway to the Stars" after it acquired lyrics. Gould wrote "Big City Blues."

Probably the best known composition is "Street Scene," from the music that Hollywood's Alfred Newman produced for the 1931 film of the Elmer Rice play, which is set in New York.

The recording was made in June 1950, possibly in Columbia's 30th Street studio in New York. It is quite resonant. I wonder if this in an example of "stairwell reverb."

The cover is by Alex Steinweiss.

LINK (June 2024, new remaster in ambient stereo)

Digression No. 10

News of the Schumann post below found its way over to the usenet group devoted to classical recordings. The consensus there was that it (in common with all the original issues of this recording) is pitched a semitone high. So I've repitched the symphony and replaced the file below, just like that.

I actually liked the faster tempos; but apparently Munch did not agree!

Unre-released Charles Munch, Part 1

This is one of a handful of records that Charles Munch made with the Boston Symphony that has never been re-released.

Recorded in 1951 in Symphony Hall, it was succeeded by a stereo recording of the same work, Schumann's first symphony - succeeded but not displaced as a great interpretation. This LP is characteristic of Munch in that it is by turns volatile, impassioned, and tender. And it is characteristic of the Bostonians in that it is beautifully played, with particularly gorgeous strings.

Schumann's symphonies are too little played for such great music. And this is a great recording.

Irene Dunne Sings Kern

I've very excited about this post. It contains seven of the eight commercial sides that Irene Dunne recorded. Six are from the 1941 Decca 78 album depicted above, with one from an LP reissue of a 1935 Brunswick record. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate the flip side of the latter record. I don't believe the Decca sides have been reissued.

The repertoire consists entirely of the music of Jerome Kern, notable because Dunne was one of the stars of the 1930s film versions of Roberta and Show Boat.

These days, Dunne is mostly remembered as the wonderfully funny lead in such screwball comedies as the Awful Truth, ironic because she started out as a singer and somewhat reluctantly veered into comic roles, at which she excelled. Also ironic because her persona remains compelling to us in those roles, even after 70 years, but as an interpreter of Jerome Kern, styles have moved on so drastically that it is easy to find her singing style unconvincing, even stilted - which is the last thing you would call her comic acting style.

As with all styles whose time has passed, you have to give up your preconceptions of how this music ought to sound and remember that this is the way (or at least one way) that Kern expected it to sound.

The accompaniments are by Victor Young on the Kern songs above, by Nat Shilkret on the final song.

SECOND NEW LINK

Tony Schwartz's New York

This post is a tribute to the remarkable Tony Schwartz, who died a few months ago. It's hard to describe in a few words what Schwartz did. He made aural documentaries, almost countless in number. He was an advertising consultant most famous for the Daisy ad that helped defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1964 US presidential elections. He also was reputedly an agoraphobic who kept to his own neighborhood. To quote his obituary in the New York Times, "In news articles and profiles, Mr. Schwartz was often described as an impassioned visionary and occasionally as a skilled trafficker in truisms with a talent for self-promotion."

Reading the various articles on him, it's hard to know what really is true and what may be embellished. So it's best, perhaps, to listen to his work. Here we have one of his better known products, a Folkways album from 1956 called Sounds of My City, which compiles interesting and characteristic sounds of New York that he recorded during the previous decade on his portable tape recorder.

The record, laconically narrated by Schwartz himself, begins with the sounds of a blues guitarist and includes everything from children's rhymes to subway noises to (pointlessly) a dog barking. In one section, a musician on the docks is poignantly backed by sounds of boat horns. One wonders if that was serendipity - or editing. There is no doubt, however, that this is it worth your time as an aural souvenir of the city as it was several decades ago.

LINK

Dohnanyi Suite in F-Sharp Minor

Ernst von Dohnányi's Suite in F-sharp minor could easily have been written in the mid-19th century. Dohnányi lived until 1960, but he produced this composition as early as 1909, clearly inspired by Brahms and Dvořák.

Dohnányi's work is none the less attractive for being quite old-fashioned and not a bit original. Here we have a good, well-paced performance by the London Symphony under Malcolm Sargent, recorded in December 1948 in Abbey Road Studio No. 1. It is well worth hearing.

The Desert Song (MacRae)

This really looks like one of those 2-for-1 deals that packages two LPs onto one CD. But instead it is an early LP that packages two 10-inch records onto one 12-inch record.

In this case, it is two operettas starring Gordon MacRae and Lucille Norman. The first side is The Desert Song. MacRae starred in the 1953 film of that Romberg work with Kathryn Grayson. You can find her version of the songs (made with Tony Martin) a few posts below this one.

This Capitol recording is presented less as a string of songs and more as a potted version of the operetta, complete with overture and a supporting cast of Bob Sands and the great Thurl Ravenscroft, who is heard in Let Love Come.

The Kern-Harbach Roberta takes up the other side of the record. MacRae and Norman (a very good singer who also had an acting career) are joined by character singer Anne Triola, who has a little too much character for my taste. The arrangements and musical direction on both sides are by George Greeley.

The problem with trying to cram a great score like Roberta into 25 minutes is that the individual items don't get much time. That's OK with me when it comes to Yesterdays, which has been recorded by everybody from Washboard Sam to Helen Traubel (or so it seems), but not so with The Touch of Your Hand, a gorgeous song that is too little heard, perhaps because it is not easy to sing. This record includes the hit songs both from the stage show and two that were interpolated into the 1935 film (Lovely to Look At and I Won't Dance).

In an ideal world, with an ideal record collection, I would be able to complete the circle by offering the Kathryn Grayson version of Roberta, which was released in 1952 under the title of Lovely to Look At. It would indeed be lovely to look at that particular record in my hands, but I don't have it, alas.

Instead I am preparing the 78 album that Irene Dunne made of Jerome Kern songs in 1941, including Smoke Gets in Your Eyes from this score. She, of course, was the star of the 1935 film version of Roberta. Look for that soon.