Hayworth Has a Fire Down Below

This is the second record cover I've posted with Rita Hayworth doing some kind of squat dance in a bar. (The other was Miss Sadie Thompson.) This was apparently a specialty with her.

On to the music - trying to figure out who composed what on this record is even more confusing that usual with these 50s soundtracks. IMDB says that Arthur Benjamin did the score; so does his bio, but he is not mentioned on the record or sleeve. I can tell you that the Fire Down Below theme was composed by Ned Washington and Lester Lee. The other theme heard repeatedly is the Harmonica Theme, which was composed by (of all people) Jack Lemmon, who is heard warbling the tune through his very own mouth harp. In addition, the Mardi Gras theme was composed by Vivian Comma and the segment poetically called Irena Goes Back to Table is by Ken Jones. Not sure where this leaves Arthur Benjamin.

As for the sound, unfortunately Decca pressed this on a substance that looks like linoleum, so expect a bit of peak distortion and a few other sonic crudities.

PART 1 | PART 2

Conrad Salinger in Improved Sound

To celebrate the forthcoming first anniversary of this blog, we are revisiting some of our favorite posts, presenting them in improved sound and lossless transfers.

And this is a real favorite - the only LP made by the great Hollywood orchestrator, Conrad Salinger, who was one of the people most responsible for the sound of the MGM musical during its golden age.

The original post has more information.

Georges Auric's Music for 'Bonjour Tristesse'

Here is an outstanding score from Georges Auric for the 1958 film of Françoise Sagan's tale of decadence among the Parisians, Bonjour Tristesse.

Georges Auric

The music features a perfect, languid version of the title song by Juliette Gréco, the muse of the Existentialists. (Inspired by this, I just had to get her 1950s records out to listen again. Sagan wrote the lyrics for several of her songs.)

This rip is taken from an unplayed copy of the original issue. [Note (June 2023): This now has been remastered in excellent ambient stereo.] The striking cover art is by Saul Bass.

Juliette Gréco

Irene Dunne in Improved Sound

Last October I presented this 78-rpm album of Irene Dunne singing six Jerome Kern songs, plus an additional single as a bonus, thus representing seven of the eight sides that Dunne recorded commercially.

I'm now proud to present these recordings in much improved sound. I had planned this to be the first in a series of posts that would mark the one-year anniversary of this blog next month. I've moved up the timing because I won't be able to record anything new for a while because of an illness in my family. For the time being I will be presenting some additional reposts in improved sound and some 12-inch soundtrack LPs from the 1950s that I had transferred for some collector friends.

For more about the Dunne-Kern post, please see the original October post. This is one of the favorite things I have presented on this blog, so I hope you enjoy it, or enjoy it again.

SECOND NEW LINK

Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee in the Jazz Singer

Where else but Hollywood would someone get the idea of making a movie called the Jazz Singer - and then cast a non-singer in the title role.

That's what the Warner Bros. did in this, the middle version of the tale of the cantor's son who wants to sing My Mammy (Al Jolson version)/Living the Life I Love (Thomas version)/Love on the Rocks (Neil Diamond version).

Well, at least Neil and Jolie were famous singers. Danny Thomas, star of the 1952 version, was a comic actor. I haven't seen this edition, so I can't tell you how convincing he is in the role, but I have heard this 10-inch LP (or EP set, in this case) and can tell you his singing is more enthusiastic than virtuosic.

The real singer in the cast is Peggy Lee, who was coming off her big hit with Lover, where her languid manner contrasts with Gordon Jenkins' Latin-style arrangement to great effect. That song was so popular that it was interpolated into the film, which also featured one of Lee's best compositions, This Is a Very Special Day.

The album above is one of those non-soundtrack soundtracks, in which the star remakes the songs from the film with a studio orchestra. Thomas cut these eight sides with Frank DeVol for RCA Victor. Peggy Lee was a Decca artist at the time, and she recorded Special Day and I Hear the Music Now for that company.

This package includes the Danny Thomas LP along with the three Peggy Lee songs mentioned above. As always on this blog, unless noted otherwise, all recordings are the original issues from my collection.

Shorty Warren and His Western Rangers

If you were looking for something to do in the early 1950s in northern New Jersey and were a country music fan, you may well have ended up in the Copa Club in Secaucus, a short distance across the Hudson from Manhattan. There you would have encountered Shorty Warren and his brother Smokey, veteran country entertainers and entrepreneurs who both owned the club and led the house band.

If you liked what you heard, you may well have invested in this 10-inch record as a souvenir of your visit. To us today, it is a souvenir of a time when western bands also played polkas for dancing, when novelty tunes were a staple of most every act, and when sentimental fare like "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" was expected as part of the complete entertainment package.

The Warren brothers, born in Arizona in the mid-teens, never became big stars and there is nothing here to suggest that was an injustice. But they did operate a succession of clubs, appear on radio and television in Newark, and made records for a number of labels. This is the only LP that I have found under their own name (they did back Rosalie Allen on a Waldorf records budget album), and as I suggested above, it appears to have been a private pressing. If so, I do hope that Smokey and Shorty got their money back because it is one of the worst produced records I have ever heard - poorly recorded, cut at far too low a level, and on the noisiest vinyl imaginable. I have done my best to uncover whatever music was in the grooves, and the results are listenable if not lovely.

The Warren brothers had long lives, dying only a few years ago

Mat Mathews

This post is a tribute to the eminent jazz accordionist Mat Mathews, who passed away last month. Mathews, born in the Netherlands, came to the US in 1952, and quickly began making records.

I first encountered him on some of Carmen McRae's earliest records. He made quite a few under his own name as well, and four with the New York Jazz Quartet. That group also included flutist Herbie Mann, guitarist Joe Puma, and bassist Whitey Mitchell.

The NY Jazz Quartet recorded this Latin-inflected record in 1956, under the vaguely distasteful title "Goes Native." A less likely group for this concept could hardly be found (see photo below). And in truth the results are not nearly as loose as they might have been. But the results are unusual and enjoyable - as are all Mathews' recordings that I have heard.

Rodzinski Conducts Bizet

When we last heard from Artur Rodzinski on this blog, he was conducting the New York Philharmonic in Prokofiev. I said he would return with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Since then, I've discovered that all the Cleveland/Rodzinski recordings in my collection are already available online here. So I've returned to his NYPO recordings for this 10-inch LP of Georges Bizet's early symphony, a work that was not performed until 1935

The recording was made in Carnegie Hall on the same January day in 1945 on which these forces incised the Rachmaninoff symphony featured here earlier. It first appeared on 78s then on this LP with cover by Alex Steinweiss.

Rodzinski and Bizet may not be an intuitive match - and truthfully this does not erase the sonic memories of other performances - but it is a spruce affair that is sure to give pleasure.

REMASTERED VERSION - JANUARY 2015

Merman Meets Martin

Two of the great Broadway stars got together to celebrate Ford's 50th Anniversary one day in June 1953, and Decca was there to record the occasion and later issue it on this 10-inch LP.

Ethel Merman and Mary Martin were both in excellent voice and barely pause to take a breath as they rush through what seems like half the tunes in their extensive repertoire. This kind of applause-inducing medley-mongering was very common in the television variety programs of the day, and they do it well - although maybe not quite so well as the plastered-on applause might have you think.

The television recording takes up one side of the LP, with the reverse being devoted to familiar items, including Merman's amusing set piece, Eadie Was a Lady.

NEW LINK (remastered)

Country Gospel by the Chuck Wagon Gang

The Chuck Wagon Gang were one of the earliest and most popular of the country gospel groups. They began in Texas in the mid-30s, were very popular on the radio, and recorded for Columbia for nearly 40 years. The group is still in existence today, but has had many, many changes in personnel from the original lineup of D.P., Anna, Rose, and Jim Carter.

These recordings seem to have been made in the late 1940s. The group's website says that the recording of I'll Fly Away was made in December 1948 - it was the first commercial recording of that classic number.

This is a very early Columbia LP. I'm sure it originally had a cover, but I found it in this Columbia Transcriptions sleeve.

Update (2019): I now have a cover for the LP - see above. Although I'll Fly Away and Looking for a City are from 1948, the other songs are from very early in their career - 1936-40.

VERSION WITH REPITCHED 'A BEAUTIFUL LIFE' 2023