Stravinsky Conducts His Mass

Stravinsky made most of his recordings for Columbia, with the exception of one made for Telefunken in the 1930s, several albums made for RCA in the 1940s, one Vox and one Mercury LP. This post by request starts a short series of Stravinsky's own non-Columbia recordings. It is a 1949 recording of his Mass issued on an early 10-inch RCA LP.

The performers are men and boys from New York's Church of the Blessed Sacrament, along with a wind ensemble.

Stravinsky's avowed purpose in this mass was to provide music that avoids operatic gestures and speaks to the spirit. The performance, however, is a bit anonymous and stylistically typical of its time. The recording is indifferent.

I'll be back with another RCA LP and the 1938 Telefunken recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, as reissued on Capitol.

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Alexander the Great

One of the great covers - Richard Burton in blue diapers and a blond wig (seemingly the same one that Barbara Stanwyck wore in Double Indemnity), contemplating world domination as Claire Bloom looks on admiringly.

What is it about Alexander the Great that makes actors want to adopt elaborate blond hairdos? Colin Farrell came up with a similar look for his turn as the coiffed conqueror in recent years, and hasn't been heard from since. Burton was more lucky, going on to some renown and even infamy as actor and lover both.

I've posted this not to make fun of Burton's look (although I have enjoyed doing that), but because the music was requested and I am pleased to oblige. Back in the vinyl-only days, this was quite a rare record (and I suppose still is). I believe it may have been the first Mario Nascimbene score to be issued on LP (it came out in 1956), and of course he went on to a long and productive career.

The music here is as you might expect from a sword-and-sandal epic, brass fanfares and martial drums interspersed with reflective flute and guitar items. Not really my thing, although I must have liked it at some point because it is, after all, from my collection!

This is a more or less mint copy (except for some odd noises). The sound is bright and a little fuzzy, sort of like Burton's wig.

Dancing with George Siravo

Returning to our series of postwar dance bands, here is another "dance date" as presented by Columbia in 1950. This one features George Siravo, who didn't have a road band but who was making a name for himself as an arranger for the finest singers, including Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Buddy Clark and later Tony Bennett.

Siravo has achieved some latter-day acclaim for his instrumental LPs as well, although this one (his first) is relatively unknown, but very worthwhile. As this album's excellent anonymous notes point out, his "firm, catchy beat" is in evidence throughout the set.

Siravo was doing quite a bit of work for Sinatra around this time, and his tune Barbecue Riffs on this LP later turned up on a Sinatra session as Farewell, Farewell to Love. Siravo didn't, however, do the arrangement for Frank; Ray Conniff did.

As with the Hal McIntyre record below, Columbia touted this album as presenting continuous music (in the process creating its own variant spelling for "medleys"). On the McIntyre set, the songs were linked by brief celeste interludes. Here Columbia just clomps them together.

Cowboy Hit Parade

I must admit that I chose this album primarily for its spectacular cover, with a facsimile of an iconic Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox, cowboy trio, Western scene, and jukebox strips listing the contents.

It is indeed a "cowboy hit parade," with some of the big hits of the late 1940s, the difference being that they are not presented by the original hit artists but by the ones who occupied stalls in Capitol's stables.

The back cover (below) suggests that the Capitol artists each picked a tune they wished had been a hit for them for inclusion in this album. I suspect the reality was a little different - at the time, the practice was to for record companies to hustle out cover versions of any song that looked like it might be a hit for a competitor. These were probably cover versions that didn't sell well.

Nonetheless the contents are enjoyable, with Merle Travis and Tex Williams in especially good form. The only dog on the record is Old Shep. Pardon the pun, but I do hate this tune. Ironically two of the songs here were hits for artists who appear elsewhere on the record. Jack Guthrie had a hit with Oklahoma Hills and Tex Williams had a giant success with Shame on You when he was Spade Cooley's vocalist.

By the way, this album is a box of four 45-rpm singles. This was one of the many packaging variations that came along following the 1948 microgroove revolution. The same contents were likely also available in a 78 album and possibly as a 10-inch LP.

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Copland by Koussevitzky

This post is in response to a request by friend of the blog David Federman. David says he has never heard a version of Copland's Appalachian Spring to rival the first recording, by the Boston Symphony and Serge Koussevitzky. So here is that mid-40s recording for David, and I imagine many others, in a mid-50s transfer on RCA - and a pretty good one, too.

This also includes Koussevitzky's 1938 first recording of El Salón México, also sounding well, if enshrouded in reverb.

This pressing of Appalachian Spring had a fault toward the end of the side, so I patched in a short section from a much later Victrola pressing, which almost certainly used the same tape transfer for its master.

The latter album also included the BSO/Koussevitzky version of A Lincoln Portrait, with narrator Melvyn Douglas, so I have added that to the download as a bonus. Here the sound is a little cloudier and there is more pitch instability, possibly caused by making a new disk master from an old and creaky tape transfer. I am not that fond of Douglas' histrionic approach to Lincoln. Copland's words tell us that Lincoln was "a quiet and a melancholy man," but Douglas seems to disagree. Give me Charlton Heston with Abravanel, a more monumental approach that is well suited to the stylized (and much criticized) narrative and to Copland's music.

UPDATE - This has been remastered and the Appalachian Spring is a new transfer.

Dick Haymes - Sweethearts

Dick Haymes has long been one of my favorite singers. While a collection or two of his recordings are usually available, these packages tend to be recycle the same items over and over.

I have a relatively large collection of Haymes on 78 and some day when I get a lot more time and energy, I will transfer some of the many items that have never been rereleased. Until then, I'll present his 10-inch LPs now and again.

This one is from 1951 and in common with the majority of his Decca LPs collects a bunch of singles, all very well done, including gorgeous renditions of Stella By Starlight and Laura. He is accompanied by Victor Young or Gordon Jenkins on most of these titles.

Hanson's Piano Concerto with Firkušný

Howard Hanson made a long series of recordings of music by himself and other American composers for the Mercury label in the 1950s. The stereo recordings are fairly well known, mostly for their supposed audiophile qualities; the mono recordings less so.

I recently featured one of those early mono Mercurys, and the response was good. So I'll be revisiting some of the other LPs in Mercury's Modern American Music Series soon.

But first, one of the few recordings that Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra made for Columbia, this one issued in 1951. The main item of interest is the conductor's piano concerto in its first recording, with soloist Rudolf Firkušný, who introduced the work with Hanson and the Boston Symphony in late 1948.

After an opening reminiscent of Hanson's second symphony, we quickly are off into territory that is more like Prokofiev, and none the worse for that, particularly with Firkušný in excellent form.

Hanson's Mercury recordings were all-American, but here he backs up his own music with that of Grieg -not the most vibrant Holberg Suite in my experience. I suppose the connection is Nordic (as the cover suggests). These recordings have not been reissued, to my knowledge.

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Ella Mae Morse

My own favorite cover art of the 1950s encases this 10-inch LP of R&B classics by the outstanding swing era vocalist Ella Mae Morse.

The singer made her name in the 40s with a series of boogie-woogie records, first with bandleader Freddie Slack and then on her own. In late 1953, Capitol decided to see how she would do with some of the big R&B hits of the day, matching her up with producer-arranger Dave Cavanaugh and some notable jazz artists.

The results are convincing - least so when she enters Clyde McPhatter territory ("Money Honey"), most so when she and the inspired band smoke through "How Can You Leave a Man Like This," which extols the joys of a lover who beats, cheats, steals money but is good in bed. Morse has the cheery outlook of a Bettie Page as she proceeds through this degrading litany. The excellent guitarist is Jack Marshall, who appears as a bandleader on a number of later LPs (e.g., Blossom Dearie's May I Come In?). The vocal group on the LP is the Modernaires (of all people).

Ella Mae Morse

The cover artist is Harold N. Kramer. I haven't been able to trace much about him, other than he worked in Chicago in the 40s and has at least one movie poster to his credit. The style is somewhat reminiscent of other Capitol covers of the era, such as Sharkey Bonanno's Midnight on Bourbon Street, which depicts a French Quarter scene as observed by a prostitute. I haven't yet found other covers signed by Kramer, however.

The singer on the cover is apparently supposed to be Morse, who while an attractive woman, did not look like this. I'm not sure that anyone actually is shaped like this woman - Harold N. Kramer had a lively imagination.

A final note: the song "I Love You, Yes I Do" on this LP was originally a hit for Bull Moose Jackson, whose other hit, "Big 10-Inch Record," lent its title to this blog.

The James Dean Story

James Dean made only three films but became an instant icon after perishing in a 1955 car crash at age 24. The great American postmortem exploitation industry was operating at full tilt soon after his death, with this 1957 documentary one of its first products. The James Dean Story was one of the estimable director Robert Altman's early efforts, following such gems as How to Run a Filling Station and Corn's-A-Poppin'.

Hollywood tends to impose a persona on its inhabitants, and Dean certainly had a strong one - one that was easily captured, anyway. David Stone Martin, on the album cover, portrays him as a confused child, playing with a toy car, smoking his cigarette (curious how this deadly habit persists as a sign of hipness), and carrying his drum in the thumbnail drawing. A striking if unsubtle pair of images.

Leith Stevens' score is more nuanced, displaying a variety of styles and moods in this characteristically well-recorded Capitol album. The title song is by the universal tunesmiths of the day, Livingston and Evans. It's presented on the soundtrack album by teen crooner Tommy Sands (who isn't bad, actually).

To illustrate how, as Jimmy Durante might say, everyone wanted to get into the exploitation act, I have appended a cover version of the title song - as presented by Mantovani, his cascading strings, and his bottomless echo chamber. The download includes the picture sleeve from the Mantovani 45 - a photo of Monte shares the front with the David Stone Martin drawing of Dean from the LP cover above. The back of the picture sleeve has the excellent likeness of the actor shown below.

Eddie Constantine

The American singer Eddie Constantine somehow became a French film icon in the 1950s while enjoying several hit songs as well.

Eddie's most famous movie character was the tough-guy detective Lemmy Caution, which he most memorably played in Godard's Alphaville.

Today we have a double post - a 10-inch LP and an EP from the 1955-57 period, both of which contain songs from Constantine's films. The title song of the EP is a charming duet with Eddie's daughter Tania (below). Here his manner is more yielding than his usual gruff, dry projection, which produces a more pleasing result. 

Small point of interest: vocal backing on the LP is by the Blue Stars, Blossom Dearie's old group. The group likely would have included Christiane Legrand, sister of composer Michel, who wrote the third song on the record, "Le Grand Bluff."

Digression No. 16

One thing I've learned in running this blog is that every post - no matter how obscure - has an audience. Case in point is the recent post of a Mennonite revival service from the mid-50s. I figured there might be very few takers for that one, but I was wrong. Part of the reason is, no doubt, referrals from like-minded bloggers such as Lee Hartsfeld, whose MY(P)WHAE blog posted an LP of Mennonite music on the same weekend (and what are the chances of that happening, I wonder).

Gospel music may never be as popular as Mel Blanc, Mary Martin, unreissued soundtracks, or some of the other items that I present, but it still has its adherents. And even if a high percentage of those who download are just curious, that's fine with me. Curiosity is what this place is all about.

Speaking of being curious, if you are wondering about the single most popular record ever featured here - far and away the most popular - it is the very rare 10" Ferrante and Teicher Christmas album from last December. Re-reading my commentary on that LP, I clearly was more interested in the cover than the music. Others strongly disagreed.

But it's also true that some of my personal favorites have achieved a good-sized audience - such as the Irene Dunne 78s that I posted twice and the Vaughan Williams Wenlock Edge-Pilgrim's Progress LP.

I have no lack of 10-inch albums yet to present (trust me), but I also have started a few series of 12-inch LPs in genres that I like or that readers really want, such as rare soundtracks and American classical music. I probably also will start featuring some 12-inch LPs by obscure pop singers from the 50s. And I am sure some other surprises as we go along.

Baby Dodds - Talking and Drum Solos

The pioneering New Orleans drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds, who made his name with the greats of early jazz in the 1920s, made these unusual recordings in January 1946 for Moe Asch.

Dodds was in the midst of a career renaissance sparked by a resurgence of interest in the New Orleans jazz musicians who were predecessors or contemporaries of Louis Armstrong. The winter of 1945-46 was a busy period for the drummer, who in a few months' span made records not only for Asch but for Circle and Blue Note.

The May 1946 Jazz Record, a magazine for traditional jazz fans, has Dodds on its cover (see below) and ads inside for the Circle and Blue Note releases. The magazine also has an article containing the drummer's reminiscences of his career, which I have included in the download.

The records that Dodds made for Asch were, unusually, drum solos. Four were issued on two 78s on the Disc label in 1946. In 1951 Asch packaged the 78s with some additional material and issued this LP on his Folkways label. The additional material includes a semi-incomprehensible discussion between Dodds and producer Frederic Ramsey that seems to start in the middle and proceed nowhere in particular. A recent book on Folkways quotes Ramsey as saying this was a deliberate attempt to elicit Dodds' insights on playing the drums, but I suspect it was an informal conversation that happened to be taped, and which Asch later retrieved to fill out the LP. By the way, the LP package originally included an insert that unfortunately I do not have. [Note: this is now included in the download, courtesy of Internet Archive.]

There are photos of Dodds and even a video of him on the Drummerworld site. Don't pay too much attention to the discussion about him there, though. It has the date of these recordings wrong, and the anecdote about Dodds joining Kid Ory's band is contradicted by Dodds himself in the Jazz Record article.

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Dancing with Mickey Katz

Mickey Katz became famous for his off-kilter Yiddish-flavored versions of 50s hits, turning How Much Is That Doggie in the Window into How Much Is That Pickle in the Window, Kiss of Fire into Kiss of Meyer, and Walkin' My Baby Back Home into Schleppin' My Baby Back Home ("Gee but it's fun, but this girl weighs a ton"). These versions often included klezmer-style breaks from Katz' crack crew of instrumentalists.

Katz and his cronies also recorded this all-instrumental album of American-Yiddish folk music and dances, and it is just a delight, with strong contributions from Katz' clarinet and Manny Klein's trumpet.

The album cover is by an artist named McArvin, who also worked on the Mel Blanc LP shared here a while back.

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The Strange One

An addition to our ongoing series of 50s soundtracks on 12-inch LPs. This time we have 1957's The Strange One, an interesting, jazzy Kenyon Hopkins score for a film about hazing in a Southern military academy. Ben Gazzara is the title character. The title music is one of the best jazz-influenced tunes of the time, with a sinister edge that suits the film's theme very well.

Technical note for those who care about such things: as sometimes happens with records of this vintage, the sleeve says it should be played back with RIAA preemphasis, but the record actually seems to have been processed with NAB preemphasis, which I've used for the transfer. Nice sound on this one - the record had never been played.

REMASTERED VERSION