Sunny Side of the Street

The latest in our series of disembodied-head covers is also the latest in our series of soundtracks on 10-inch LPs. This one is a real obscurity, a 1951 effort called Sunny Side of the Street.

The two disembodied noggins, which appear to be singing to us from the windows of a shocking pink apartment building, belong to tune-shouters Frankie Laine and Billy Daniels, who played themselves in the film. To discover the movie's lead actors, you need to look at the back cover below, where you will find Terry Moore and Jerome Courtland in the upper right corner. (Poor Jerome doesn't even get his name on the cover.)

This record seems to be one of those "songs from the film" rather than "songs from the soundtrack" LPs. While Laine does sing these tunes in the film, these particular recordings were all released by Mercury some time before the movie was made. In 1951, Laine had moved on to Columbia.

Not that these performances are bad; far from it. These were among Frankie's first efforts, and they show the freshness and drive that made him popular. I May Be Wrong, one of his early hits, is particularly good.

Daniels is another story. His mannered belting and bellowing - popular in the cabarets - may have been great in person, but on record the effect is unendurable. The back cover captures him in characteristic pose -arms flung about, in the throes of some nameless rapture. I don't get it.

As far as I can tell, Daniels didn't sing either of these songs in the film, although both songs are used in the movie. In the film, Daniels did sing I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You, but here that is presented by Vic Damone. Neither Tony Fontane nor his song are in the film.

I should mention that the end of side one of this record is badly worn, affecting mainly the Damone tune (sorry I couldn't find a clean copy of this record to substitute). I believe this wear was caused many years ago by the record being played on an auto-changer turntable with the hold-down arm off to the side. At the end of the record, because no LP fell, this would cause the mechanism to think you wanted to repeat-play a 7-inch record. If you forgot about this and left the room, the end of the record would play over and over - and eventually wear out, as happened here.

UPDATE - I did find a copy of the Damone record among my 78s, so I've substituted it in the file linked below. While not worn out, this copy is pretty noisy, so it's not much of an improvement, I'm afraid. There is also a link to download only the Damone record.

UPDATED LINK | DAMONE ONLY

Elgar's 'The Fringes of the Fleet'

A few unusual works by Edward Elgar have come my way recently, and I thought I might write a bit about them.

The first is The Fringes of the Fleet, one of the lesser-known Elgar works, dating from 1917. It has been issued in an outstanding recording by the superb baritone Roderick Williams with the Guildford Philharmonic conducted by Tom Higgins, who prepared the performing edition. It's been written that this is a "lost masterpiece" by Elgar, but that's not so. It's been recorded at least three times, and while it's a fascinating work, it's not what most people would consider a masterpiece.

The composition is Elgar's setting of four poems by Rudyard Kipling, from a short book of the same name dealing with naval life during wartime. Kipling was gifted with an ability to summon atmosphere and storyline in a few words; and the poems are intended to provide vivid impressions of the naval service. Elgar, similarly gifted, set these poems to memorable tunes. The resulting work was heard not in the concert hall but as part of a wartime variety show at the London Coliseum.

Frederick Stewart, Harry Barratt, Charles Mott, Frederick Henry

As you can see from the production photo above, this was very much a popular entertainment. The four singers were baritones Charles Mott (the solo voice), Harry Barratt, Frederick Henry and Frederick Stewart. But being popular did not mean it lacked depth. Although the first song, "The Lowestoft Boat," is a comic ditty that indulges in unlikely-soldier stereotypes that will be familiar to anyone who has seen a Hollywood war movie, it also acknowledges the possibility of death more than once. That possibility is made real in the eerie "Submarines," where "we arise, we lie down, and we move / In the belly of Death."

Shortly after the first performance, Elgar added a fifth, acapella song called "Inside the Bar," to words by Gilbert Parker. This forms a conclusion of sorts - it's a hearty sailor's song, telling of home and his fine lass.

After the work had been taken on tour, with Elgar conducting, Kipling objected to the performances and the work was mostly forgotten. The usual reason given for this is that Kipling was bereft by the death of his own son in war; however, his booklet was not published until after that happened, so the reason seems improbable. It may be that he did not like the variety-show approach to his work - or even that he did not like how "Inside the Bar" had been tacked on to his efforts.

Elgar recorded the work for HMV with Mott and the other singers three weeks after it opened. I have dubbed their recording from an out-of-print LP and rebalanced the elderly sound using the new recording as a guide. The results are very listenable, keeping in mind that this is an acoustic recording from 1917. [Note (June 2023): I have cleaned the transfers up considerably. They are now in ambient stereo, which brings the elderly sound forward.] The link is in the comments, as usual, containing the transfer along with the texts. Here is a link to a PDF of Kipling's booklet.

When I posted the transfer above, I had been listening to a fascinating BBC reconstruction of The Starlight Express, a children's play by Violet Pearn based on a book by Algernon Blackwood, with music by Elgar. This is one of those conceits that posits that children are pure and adults are spoiled, and somehow if we all were more sympathetic, the world would be a better place. (And because this was mounted for the Christmas season of 1915, presumably the point was that there would be fewer wars.)

Charles Mott

The play is a period piece, but certainly will strike resonances with people who love its near-contemporary, Peter Pan, or one of the other Edwardian evocations of a make-believe time when children behaved with perfect manners and spoke with perfect diction - and had a mystical bent as well. The BBC performance of the play, from 1965, was offered years ago over at the classical music blog The Music Parlour, where it is no longer available.

The original lead male voice in The Starlight Express, as in the Fringes of the Fleet, was Charles Mott. He was called to active service during the run of Fringes of the Fleet, and was killed in France in 1918. There is a remembrance of him on Music Web International.

On the Twelfth Day

I recently called The Twelve Days of Christmas "inescapable and seemingly endless," so here we have a 25-minute version of it!

This is the soundtrack of a short comic film from 1955 called On the Twelfth Day, which is built around the narrative of the song - that is, it shows what would happen should your true love send you all those partridges, dancing ladies, leaping lords, milking maids, etc.

The film was devised and directed by Wendy Toye and designed by artist Ronald Searle, whose unmistakable style is on display above. Producer George K. Arthur was so impressed with his own work on the project that he manages to have his full name printed on the packaging an amazing 16 times. (Oh wait, I just thought to look on the spine - make that 17.) Too bad there weren't more days of Christmas or he could have worked himself into the rotation.

Although the carol certainly makes its appearances, the soundtrack consists mostly of music to accompany the gifts arriving at the the beloved's house (not to mention bird calls, cow noises, etc.). And it is this music that I am interested in, because it is the work of the fine but little known English composer Doreen Carwithin. She produced both film scores and concert works, but stopped composing after she married the better known composer William Alwyn in 1961, resuming her work following his death in 1985. Carwithin passed away in 2003. There have been a few CDs of her concert works, but this is the only record of her film scores that I have seen.

As far as I can tell, the film On the Twelfth Day is not commercially available, nor is it on YouTube. This LP version has not been reissued.

The record also includes some standard carols in standard arrangements with the Canterbury Choir directed by composer-conductor Macklin Morrow. I believe this is a repackaging of sides that may date back to as early as 1947.

REMASTERED VERSION (JUNE 2014)

Digression No. 19

When I got into the blogging game, I had no idea that it would lead to such wondrous occurrences as having a post of a Bobby Breen LP dedicated to me. But that has now come to pass over at the the Capt's Christmas Yuleblog, one of the web's main purveyors of musical holiday cheer.

Breen is the fellow on the left in the photo above - he made a living as a juvenile crooner and film star during the 30s. He is duetting here with Ned Sparks, a true hero of the early talkies and a fellow whose dyspeptic screen personality is closer to my real personality than is that of Bobby Breen, whose very name sounds sunny and radiant.

The Capt came by his interest in Breen through hearing him mentioned in Ernie Kovacs routines. Those of us of a certain age can tell you that Breen was kind of a stock reference point for comics like Kovacs during the 50s. Hearing Breen's name got the Capt interested in him, eventually led to him acquiring Breen's Christmas LP, and then dedicating the post to me because said record is of the 10-inch variety.

To the Capt, I say thanks for the kind words, and to all of the readers of this blog, I say head on over to the Christmas Yuleblog for Bobby Breen and many other Christmas goodies, including Dragnet - The Christmas Story, one of my all-time favorites.

Christmas in Berlin, 1955

Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft and its pop label, Polydor, produced many fine Christmas records during the 1950s, including this collection from 1955.

The artists are Willy Schneider (a popular baritone), the Berlin Motet Choir, Erich Bender and his children's choir, strings and organ, and the results they produce fully live up to the title on the cover, which means "the glow of Christmas candles."

It could be that this cover was also used for other Christmas records because the catalog number, artists' names and repertoire are on stickers. On the record itself the title is given as "The Songs and Sounds of Christmas Time." Well, whatever its provenance and packaging, the music and performances are appealing and very well recorded.

REMASTERED VERSION - DECEMBER 2014

Sargent, Royal Choral Society at Christmas

Malcolm Sargent, the most famous British choral trainer of the 20th century, was the conductor of the Royal Choral Society for nearly 40 years. Together they produced this collection of carols for release during 1954.

The garish cover may give you the impression that this is a small choir recorded in a parish church. Not at all - it actually is a very large chorus and the recording location was probably the Albert Hall, which the chorus called home - at least it sounds like that cavernous site. The recessed recording gives a very good sense of how the chorus sounded in person, at the loss of some detail and presence.

Many of the arrangements here are by Sargent; my favorite, however, is the soaring version of the hymn While Shepherds Watched.

In the download I've included HMV's four-page Christmas advertising insert from the December 1955 Gramophone Record Review - page three (with this LP) is below.

REMASTERED VERSION - DECEMBER 2014

Christmas with the Weavers

This is one of my favorite Christmas albums. There is joy and optimism in the Weavers' presentation of these songs, and their approach manages to sound both plain-spoken and sophisticated at once. All these songs (with the possible exception of the inescapable and seemingly endless Twelve Days of Christmas) have a freshness that is rare in the genre.

This 1951 LP was issued towards the end of the Weavers' first period of popularity, which ended in the McCarthy era due to their leftist politics. They were perhaps the first folk group to achieve broad appeal, one of a number of blues and folk acts who began appearing in New York clubs in the 1940s. We have already encountered Josh White on this blog; Leadbelly was another. The Weavers were brought to Decca by Gordon Jenkins (who has made several appearances here himself). Completing the circle, the Weavers' biggest hit was Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene, with backing by Jenkins - a song that has since been recorded by everyone from Mitch Miller to the Meat Puppets.

My copy of the original Weavers LP has some damage. The title song is unplayable, so I have patched in a reissue of that item. As is common these days, the reissue was both heavily compressed and re-equalized to have a strong upper mid-range emphasis. I corrected the latter, but the former can't be changed. It results in the singers sounding distinctly closer to the microphone on that tune than on the other songs. There also is a bit of damage on the second song, and a little noise elsewhere. But the basic sound is quite good.

At the time of the group's Decca recordings, its members were Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman and Lee Hays. I plan to feature one of Seeger's Folkways LPs here in the future; perhaps also a Ronnie Gilbert album.

Ferrante and Teicher - New Transfer and Scans

I first shared this 1954 Ferrante and Teicher 10-inch LP last year, even though I was dubious about its merits, commenting, "The musical results are interesting if a bit relentless, witty but also kind of tacky. Not really my thing, but the pianists and woodland creatures seem to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps you will, too."

There is no doubt that many of you did enjoy yourselves, despite my reservations. It was far and away the most popular item I have ever featured here. Therefore I am bowing to the tastes of readers here and bringing Art and Lou back for an encore, in a new, improved version.

Yes, friends, this is a new transfer in FLAC format, and new scans, including the back cover for the first time (below)! However, my opinion of the music remains exactly the same, proving that neither the holiday season nor the passage of time have improved my disposition.

There's more about the LP at the original post.

Boult Conducts and Rehearses Britten

A break from the Christmas tunes - here we have some of Benjamin Britten's finest music in both performances and rehearsal by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic.

The recordings were made in late 1956 by the American company Westminster in conjunction with the British Pye-Nixa. Included were the Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Britten's Peter Grimes and his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (a set of variations and fugue on a theme by Henry Purcell).

The latter was written for a 1946 educational film that was conducted and narrated by the urbane Malcolm Sargent (there's an excerpt on YouTube).

Westminster issued the Boult-LPO Young Person's Guide in two versions - with narration and without, and then for good measure added a rehearsal recording. I've gathered all these versions together for this post. In brief, we have the unnarrated Guide and Peter Grimes music in stereo (cover above) and the narrated Guide and rehearsal in mono (cover below).

The transition from mono to stereo recording provided some interesting experiments in recording, illustrated to a degree by the rehearsal recording. As producer Kurt List says in the liner notes, the seating arrangement used for his recordings "never coincides with concert seating; thus quite a different span of attention is required of the conductor and the orchestral musicians." List's practice was to spread the orchestra out and use multiple microphones, and then fix the balances in the control room. He then has the conductor do a run through and asks him to adjust the balances further. The rehearsal recording on this disk is in fact a session where List asks Boult to change balances for recording purposes.

The irony of asking a conductor who was noted for stressing clarity and balance to rebalance the music because you have exploded the usual seating arrangement and put microphones all over the hall apparently doesn't occur to List. But to be fair, the results are not bad, if not to my own taste, in both mono and stereo.

The Young Person's Guide is nicely done, even if Boult doesn't capture Britten's mock pomposity very well. The fugue is predictably wonderful. The Peter Grimes music is also beautifully rendered, and if the struggles seem external more than internal, that also may demonstrate the difference in temperament between conductor and composer.

As a bonus to this post, I've added a recording of the original Purcell theme (a rondeau from his Abdelazer theatre music) in a performance by the Bath Festival Orchestra and Yehudi Menuhin.

A Musical Version of Junior Miss

In recent weeks, we have been exploring some of the remarkable programming that was presented on US commercial television in the late 1950s, including an original Cole Porter musical, Aladdin. The sponsor of the Porter production was DuPont, which only a few months earlier had mounted yet another original musical from a famous composer, Burton Lane, and lyricist, Dorothy Fields.

Unlike the score for Aladdin, which is still remembered today, Lane's music for Junior Miss is largely forgotten, as is the program that evoked it. Perhaps even more surprising, the Junior Miss stories themselves are no longer remembered.

Those Sally Benson stories, originally published in the New Yorker, were collected into book form in 1941, and then became a play, film and radio show - and finally this televised musical. Set at Christmas in New York, the superb 1945 film once made occasional appearances on television but hasn't been seen lately (at least by me). Its disappearance is very strange - the film is both delightful and touching, with wonderful performances by Peggy Ann Garner in the title role and Allyn Joslyn as her father.

The TV musical featured Carol Lynley as Judy Graves, our protagonist, and Don Ameche as her father. Unlike other more famous TV musicals, such as Aladdin and Cinderella, there was no soundtrack recording to keep its memory alive - only this EP of performances by Columbia artists Vic Damone, Jo Stafford and Norman Luboff. I would have to assume this was issued in advance of the program, which aired on December 20, 1957. (This site says there is a poor quality bootleg of the performances by the TV cast, but I have never encountered it.)

The performances on the EP are as good as you would expect, and the recording as hollow as you might expect if you are familiar with Columbia's 50s pop output. The songs themselves are quite enjoyable, even if the lyrics of Junior Miss are reminiscent of Gigi and if I'll Buy It brings to mind I'll Buy That Dream. Let's Make It Christmas All Year 'Round also is not the most original concept.

It's fascinating to look through the listings for the DuPont Show of the Month in 1957-58. As I mentioned Junior Miss came just two months before Aladdin. And two months after the latter show, DuPont and CBS mounted a version of The Red Mill with the following cast: Shirley Jones, Harpo Marx, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Donald O'Connor, Elaine Stritch, Evelyn Rudie and Edward Andrews. It was a different time.

REMASTERED VERSION (JULY 2014)