Elgar by Lawrance Collingwood

In January 1934, Edward Elgar supervised recordings of his music by telephone from his sick bed. He was to die only a month later.

The conductor of that 1934 session was Lawrance Collingwood, who returned to the studio 20 years later to make this recording of Elgar's music. Collingwood was a house conductor and producer for EMI for many years, as well as principal conductor at Sadler's Wells and a composer. Most of his recordings were accompaniments, but he did make this and one later Elgar LP.

I have included the contemporary Gramophone review by Trevor Harvey in the download, and I agree in general with his assessment - the Serenade for Strings performance is bland (and sounds curiously modern because of it), but the Bavarian Dances are quite well done and the Nursery Suite has a very beautiful violin solo in the last number. I also agree that the LP is well recorded - although I did have to do some readjusting of the sound balance to bring that out.

The download also includes (English) Columbia's two-page Gramophone ad for its September 1954 releases, including discs featuring Karajan, Cluytens, Kletzki, Anda, and Gieseking.

This record has not been reissued to my knowledge - but I imagine someone will let me know if it is otherwise available.

Ziggy Elman

What is it about the disembodied heads of musicians on LP covers that makes me want to feature them here? First we had Ralph Marterie. And now we present Ziggy Elman's giant noggin along with a drawing of a trumpet player who looks more like Harry James than Elman.

This is the latest post in my series featuring post-war dance bands. it includes sides that Ziggy cut for M-G-M from 1947-50, after he had made his name as a Goodman and Dorsey sideman. One source claims the 1947 items were recorded with members of the Dorsey orchestra; the later items with Elman's own band.

It doesn't make much difference - there is very little solo room on these recordings for anyone except the leader. The items are all very well played, and feature musicians who also show up on many records made on the west coast at that time and in later years. The arrangers include Larry Clinton (My Reverie), Sid Cooper and possibly Heinie Beau.

Note to the finicky: You will hear some residual background rustle and peak distortion on these recordings.

First Recordings of Roy Harris

I so much enjoyed the previous post of Roy Harris' music that I wanted to follow it with this LP of two premiere recordings of his symphonies. It couples a then-new recording of Harris' seventh symphony with a reissue of the composer's Symphony 1933.

Performing the seventh symphony is the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, who conducted the first performances. The sessions were in October 1955 in the Academy of Music.

The Symphony 1933 (which is sometimes called Harris' first) was a Boston Symphony performance under Serge Koussevitzky, who commissioned the work. This was a February 1934 recording in Carnegie Hall, made shortly after the first performance.

Both works display the muscular approach that Harris brought to his symphonies. The Philadelphia performance manages to sound refined, nonetheless, and the sound is well balanced without being especially vivid. In transferring the earlier work, Columbia has troweled on the reverb (as customary). This has the effect of making the timpani in the first movement sound strangely prominent and makes the atmosphere woolly. The earlier performance must have been all that Harris could have hoped for, although in truth the orchestra sounds a little uncomfortable with the meter changes in the Allegro.

The 1934 recording was thought to be the first recording of an American symphony when this LP came out, but I am not sure if this is still considered to be the case.

LINK - new remastered in ambient stereo, March 2025

Destination Moon

Twenty years before the Apollo astronauts actually landed there, George Pal was concocting a movie version of a trip to the moon - with the voyage financed by selfless capitalists. (It turned out that the selfless capitalism angle was more unrealistic than the actual exploration.)

I haven't seen the film, but the back of the LP says the idea was sold on a "whoever controls the moon controls the earth" pitch, and that the lead investor found this idea somehow moving. I'm not sure why he would get emotional over the moon exploration concept, but then I slept through the 1969 moon landing on my girlfriend's couch, so I'm no judge.

On to the music at hand, and it is a nice piece of work by Leith Stevens, who commanded a wide range of styles. This score bears little resemblance to The Wild One or The James Dean Story, which we've seen before in this space. I suppose it does have overtones of Holst and Ming the Merciless, and I know he cribbed one of the main motifs from somewhere I can't recall, but it is very enjoyable nonetheless and pretty well recorded for the time. And the cover is great!

Polite Jazz with Siravo

A short while ago I put up a George Siravo LP in my series about postwar bands. A lot of you were enthusiastic about Siravo's arranging prowess and a few were especially interested in this particular LP.

It says it is polite and in fact, that's just what it is. Not exactly cool, not exactly sweet, and certainly not hot. As the cover advertises, it is smooth and swinging. I was particularly taken by Boomie Richmond's Prez-toned tenor sax among the soloists. There isn't too much room to roam, however, in the arrangements.

Speaking of the cover, I hope you like the results - this one had quite a bit of water damage, so I had to do some reconstruction. Looks pretty good, I think.

We also had a request for Portraits in Hi-Fi, which is all Siravo compositions, so I'll prepare that one for our next installment.

Bob Manning on Capitol

Big-voiced Bob Manning had some success in the 1950s, but not, perhaps, as someone of his vocal talents should have had.

Starting out (as most pop vocalists of the period did) with big bands, Manning struck out on his own in the early 1950s, and actually produced his only semi-hit record himself (The Nearness of You) and sold it to Capitol. That company proceeded to make an LP with him called Lonely Spell, which represents his best work.

Here I have gathered two Manning EPs, which collect some singles, and add another single and the flip side of The Very Thought of You, which appears on one of the EPs.

You are not alone if you find Manning to be a vocal double for Dick Haymes. There are people who dispute this but the similarity was apparent to both Haymes and Manning. Not that this is a bad thing. Manning had one of the finest pop baritones ever to be recorded.

That said, he is at his best on familiar material. His take on Goodbye predates Sinatra's. Like Frank's version, it has a Nelson Riddle arrangement and the two versions have some phrasing in common. Goodbye is one of Sinatra's best records; Manning's is also very fine.

However, Capitol also gave Manning some lesser material to record. In Venus di Milo, for example, he is made to lament "where are the arms and the heart of you?" (I prefer Love Is Just Around the Corner where the object of affection is cuter than Venus "and what's more you've got arms!") And this is not the worst of it. Manning tackles this material gamely, but his dignified voice seems to fight the clumsy lyrics and saccharine melodies.

Manning recorded with Ziggy Elman and Art Mooney before his Capitol work, and then made some singles for RCA and M-G-M and one LP (of wedding songs) for Everest.

Digression No. 17

I am sitting here looking at an obituary of guitarist Les Paul with the headline, "Les Paul, 'an architect of rock 'n' roll,' dead at 94." It comes with a photo of Les and Paul McCartney and a call-out from Terry Stewart of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame saying that "Without Les Paul, we would not have rock 'n' roll as we know it."

Well, many people were "architects of rock 'n' roll," but Les Paul was not among them. Anyone who has ever listened to a Les Paul record - either the early ones where he copied Django Reinhardt, or the enjoyable kitsch he made with Mary Ford - knows that his music has nothing to do with rock 'n' roll other than it includes an electric guitar.

This is yet another example of how we want to legitimize musicians in other genres by saying how important they were to rock 'n' roll - as I mentioned in the Edgard Varèse post below. Les Paul is an extreme example, because in his case, it isn't even true. It was something that came up because many rock guitarists used a Gibson Les Paul model, and Les, Les' publicists, or Gibson promoted the connection.

Early Varèse Recordings

These were among the first recordings of Edgard Varèse's iconoclastic music. They were made under his supervision in 1950 by a small New York label. Although the cover says this is Volume 1, it actually is the only volume issued.

If you haven't heard Varèse's music, think of the sonorities Stravinsky unleashed in The Rite of Spring and Petrushka, and then use those sonorities as the basis of a musical syntax. That will give you some sense of Varèse's sound world.

And as C.J. Luten noted in American Record Guide: "Other key points, it seems to me, are his music’s continual suggestion of the characteristic sounds of city life (that the composer says 'have been all our lives a part of our daily consciousness') and its close affinity with primitive expression."

In truth, although Varèse was certainly considered "out there" in his day, he was in a sense a forerunner of trends to come, and composers of timbre-centered music have become more common and influential since his time.

The record did get warily positive reviews. The acute critic-composer Arthur Berger wrote in Saturday Review: "The ingredients [of Varèse's music] are pure rhythm and color, organized astutely in terms more realistic on paper than to the ear... To my ears 'Intégrales' is like an obstinate wisp of blues reflected in one of those distorting mirrors in amusement parks. Like most of his music, it points to a sensitive ear and enormous knowledge of what instruments can do, and EMS did full acoustic justice to these gifts. Any work of Varese is intriguing indeed on first acquaintance, but shock is not, as it would seem, its aim. There is no doubt of its sincerity, and it is a pleasure to see this sincerity rewarded by some recognition at last."

The performance on the record were praised by the critics. Conducting was Frederic Waldman. The flute piece "Density 21.5" was performed by René Le Roy.

One person who was strongly influenced by Varèse was the late rock musician Frank Zappa. He wrote an article for Stereo Review in 1971 where he talked about his quest to find a copy of this very recording and to get in touch with the composer. It's an amusing article and some of it may actually be true, so I've included it in the download. My real reason for bringing it up is because it demonstrates just how difficult it was to get recordings of rare music until fairly recently. The wonders of the internet!

Zappa's article also mentions that the LP was considered a sonic spectacular in its day, although in truth some of the seemingly spectacular quality was produced (as it often is) by a strong bias towards the presence region. I have compensated for that bias, and the results, while still sounding vivid, are now more full bodied.

REMASTERED VERSION - APRIL 2024

Oiltown, U.S.A.

Oiltown, U.S.A. was one of the first films made by the organization of the popular evangelist Billy Graham. This 1953 film was set in Houston and was the story of a hard-driving oilman who finds God.

Graham was set on using the popular arts as a publicity tool for his ministry, and he was able to get RCA to issue this 10-inch LP containing several musical numbers and one of his addresses.

On hand for the music was George Beverly Shea, a bass-baritone who has been associated with Graham since 1944 and who is still with us at age 100. Shea made many records for RCA in the 50s. Two of his songs here, accompanied by Paul Mickelson at the mighty Wurlitzer, are a bit somnolent, but the final tune with Ralph Carmichael's chorus and orchestra is well worth hearing.

The music also features Andy Parker and the Plainsmen, a Western group that had recorded for Capitol and appeared in films and on the radio. They back Redd Harper on one song, and, most notably, Cindy Walker on her own composition Christian Cowboy. Walker was one of the greatest country music songwriters, but somehow her performing talent escaped my notice until now. Here she shows herself as a superb singer (although with a lazy-S that I find oddly reminiscent of the young Wayne Newton). Christian Cowboy is a derivative of Riders in the Sky (recorded by everyone from Bing to Buckethead); instead of cowboys who have been damned to chase cattle across the sky, in Walker's version they are born-again riders who are roping souls.

Graham starts his sermon by telling the listeners (apparently a group of businessmen) that he isn't there to tell jokes or clever stories (which makes me wonder how many business groups would engage an evangelist to come in to tell jokes and clever stories). His remarks have an anti-Communist spin that put me in the mind of Bishop Fulton Sheen, heard in an earlier post; much different from the Bible-based comments of fellow evangelist Myron Augsberger, who made an appearance here not long ago.

The Wild One

Put Brando on a motorcycle and you get instant icon, and also a pretty good score, as composed by Leith Stevens.

The Wild One was probably the original biker movie, a precursor to the cheesy genre items that were so common in the late 60s. Unlike those films, which were accompanied by what seemed like one long fuzztone guitar riff, The Wild One was backed by cool jazz as played by some of the best West Coast musicians, as noted on the back of the LP. The pseudonyms are not hard to decode: Roger Short for Shorty Rogers and Manny Shell for Shelly Manne. (Too bad Paul Horn wasn't on the gig.)

This rip is from the original 10-inch LP; it later was issued on a 12-incher with a different cover.

I'll be back with Destination Moon, another Stevens score.

Another James Dean Story

The second in my mini-series of James Dean exploitation records (and the second to be called The James Dean Story) is this paean written and partially narrated by Steve Allen. The other narrator is Cleveland DJ Bill Randle, whose concept this is.

What we have here are a number of Dean exploitation singles ("Jimmy, Jimmy," "His Name Was Dean," "James Dean" and "The Ballad of James Dean" - I think they have most of the possible titles covered), music from his films, and a poem written by a teenage fan, stitched together by narration.

Amazingly, the poem is not the worst thing on the record - the dreadful choral rendition of "The Ballad of James Dean" takes the prize of dishonor. The other ballads are done by country/pop singer Jimmy Wakely.

Roy Harris on M-G-M

The recent anniversary of the moon landing reminded me that I attended the premiere of Roy Harris' twelfth symphony, which although named for explorer Père Marquette was written for a ceremony in honor of the Apollo astronauts. I thought Harris' music was anachronistic then and I suspect most music lovers and almost all music critics think so today.

But when you listen to a record such as this, all you think about is how beautiful and vital it sounds. This is one of a fine series of classical LPs put out by M-G-M in the 1950s, and it contains two superb Harris works from that era in recordings made in his presence and involving his wife Johana as pianist. The M-G-M Symphony under Izler Solomon accompanies her in the gorgeous Fantasy, and Nell Tangeman is the fine mezzo voice heard in Harris' setting of the Vachel Lindsay poem Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.

Lindsay was born in Springfield, and the poem, written in 1914, has a troubled Lincoln arisen from the dead and pacing about that town, fretting about the state of the world. It's a high-school conceit, but Harris made it into something moving.

Harris is one of the many composers who have used Lincoln as a symbol of American wisdom, including Harl McDonald and Aaron Copland, in works we already have encountered on this blog. Lindsay's work also was set by Charles Ives (General William Booth Enters into Heaven).

M-G-M's recording is excellent.