Louis Alter's Album of Manhattan

Louis Alter was a fairly well-known songwriter who made a specialty of Manhattan-themed music. This 10-inch LP collects several of those items as presented by Paul Whiteman's Concert Orchestra.

Whiteman had recorded Alter's first New York piece, Manhattan Serenade, in 1928, and it became quite popular. So Alter continued to write music inspired by the big city, to lesser effect, although all the items are attractive and redolent of other music of the period, including Gershwin.

Decca issued this particular LP in 1949, but I suspect the recordings were made about a decade earlier, although I haven't been able to confirm that. Whiteman made Gershwin recordings with the concert orchestra for Decca at that time, and these arrangements sound more like the 1930s than the late 1940s. I would guess that Decca reissued them later because of the popularity of Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower.

The arrangements themselves are the work of George Leeman, who spent most of his career as an arranger for CBS, working 12 years with Arthur Godfrey. As for Alter, these days he is perhaps best known as the composer of Nina Never Knew, My Kinda Love, You Turned the Tables on Me, and Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans. The download includes a vintage Billboard bio on him.

Sound is good - very much worth hearing if you like Gershwin and similar music of the period.