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.