Lisa Kirk and the RCA Show Time Series

When RCA Victor decided to issue a series of musical comedy recordings in 1953, for the most part it turned to performers who were then in leading roles on Broadway, but it made sure to include Lisa Kirk, who, will not then currently in a play, had been memorable in Allegro and Kiss Me Kate in previous years.

The post is something of a tribute to Kirk, a wonderful singer who is heard far too little these days, as well as RCA's venture into potted musicals. It includes three of the shows RCA issued in its Show Time Series, along with a number of Kirk's RCA singles from the same era.

The Show Time Series included four songs each from 18 shows. Limiting the number of songs to four meant that the company could issue each show on an EP, and combine two shows on a 10" LP. It also differentiated the RCA effort from Columbia's popular series of records that already had presented LP-length revivals of several shows - notably Pal Joey, which led to it being revived on Broadway.

The RCA and Columbia series shared a number of artists - Jack Cassidy, conductor Lehman Engel and, notably, Harold Lang, who starred as Pal Joey on the RCA record and in the subsequent revival.

We begin this post with an RCA LP that combined songs from two Rodgers and Hart scores, Babes in Arms and Jumbo, both featuring Lisa Kirk. On the Babes in Arms side, Kirk is excellent in "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine." William Tabbert, who was then on Broadway as Joe Cable in South Pacific, does "Where or When" (not very well). And Sheila Bond, who was in Wish You Were Here at the time and won a Tony, has her way with "Johnny One Note."

In the songs from Jumbo, Lisa has only "Little Girl Blue." Joining her is the superb Jack Cassidy on "My Romance" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." Cassidy was starring with Sheila Bond in Wish You Were Here at the time. The LP is rounded out by Jordan Bentley (Wreck in Wonderful Town - "I could paaaaas that football"), with "Over and Over Again."

Before moving on to Lisa Kirk singles, I've added a bonus EP of The Band Wagon, with two songs from Harold Lang. Lang started as a dancer, and while he could sing, subtlety was not his specialty, perhaps because he was used to playing such bluff characters as Pal Joey and Bill Calhoun (he was in Kiss Me Kate with Kirk). Here Lang blasts his way through "I Love Louisa" and "New Sun in the Sky." Lang is joined by George Britton, who had replaced Ezio Pinza in South Pacific, and Edith Adams (later Edie Adams), who was in Wonderful Town at the time. Britton does "Dancing in the Dark" and duets with Adams on "High and Low."

Billboard ad

Finally we have six Lisa Kirk songs from RCA singles - "Exactly Like You," "You're a Sweetheart," "Charlie Is My Darling" and "Beautiful Brown Eyes" from 1951, and "Do Me a Favor" and "King Size Kisses" from 1953. Kirk is generally fine but the material is variable here. None were hits (although Rosemary Clooney's rival - and superior - cover version of the country tune "Beautiful Brown Eyes" was a good seller).

The sound is excellent on all items except for the first two singles mentioned, which are transferred from a worn 78. The download includes contemporary photos of all the artists mentioned.

I've often remarked that it's a shame that a certain artist isn't better remembered - and that's once again true with Lisa Kirk, a glamorous, talented singer and fine actor. I'll probably be back later with one of her LPs.

NEW LINKS - REMASTERED AND REPITCHED VERSIONS (JUNE 2014):

BABES IN ARMS-JUMBO | BAND WAGON | SINGLES

Earl Robinson and Tony Kraber

From time to time I've presented some of the early folksingers who first came to prominence in the 1940s - the Weavers, Josh White, Woody Guthrie and others. Today we have a record by two singers who are lesser known but nonetheless important in their own right. They are Earl Robinson - the better known of the two - and Tony Kraber. (Although Kraber's name does not appear on the cover of this early Mercury LP, half the record is devoted to him.)

This album is a reissue of 78 sets that Robinson and Kraber made for Keynote records circa 1941-43, when that label was primarily an outlet for politically committed leftist music - issuing music from the Spanish Republican Army Chorus and the Red Army Choir, among others. Keynote also published the superb Almanac Singers, which you can hear via my friend Larry's blog, Vinyl Fatigue. The Almanac Singers' set, Talking Union (which is urgently recommended), was dedicated to the memory of union organizer Joe Hill, who was executed for murder in 1915 on what many people considered to be scant evidence. And that brings us back to Earl Robinson, who wrote the music for the famous labor song Joe Hill, most familiar today in the Joan Baez recording.

Earl Robinson

Although Joe Hill is not on this LP, it does contain Robinson's greatest hit, The House I Live In, in its first recording. This was a few years before Frank Sinatra took it up, made it a hit and appeared in an Academy Award-winning short film based on it. Robinson wrote the music for the song; the lyrics were by Abel Meeropol, who wrote under the pen name Lewis Allan. Meeropol also is known for writing the words and music to Strange Fruit.

The screenplay for the film of The House I Live In was written by Albert Maltz. He, like Robinson and Meeropol (and Tony Kraber, for that matter), was later blacklisted. All had been members of the Communist Party.

Robinson was an excellent composer and singer. His version of The House I Live In is certainly in a different style from Sinatra's, but they are equally earnest. This album also contains what would become some of the best known traditional songs, such as Drill Ye Tarriers, with an ironic labor message that was perfectly suited to Robinson's repertoire.

Robinson's other well-known composition (not included here) was Ballad for Americans, which had words by lyricist John Latouche at the beginning of his career.

Cover of Keynote 78 set

Tony Kraber was not as well known as Robinson, but he did have a notable career as actor, singer and director in New York. He was a founding member of the Group Theater and made other folk albums besides this one, which almost certainly was his first. He was an enthusiastic and convincing singer, again dealing primarily with material that has become familiar, such as The Old Chisholm Trail and the Boll Weevil Song (which he likely picked up from Leadbelly's version).

As mentioned, Kraber was blacklisted after being denounced as a Communist. He was one of the people infamously named by Elia Kazan before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The download includes cover scans from Kraber's Keynote album, which I recently acquired. The liner notes include the singer's commentary on each of the songs.

Abbe Lane in Living Stereo

Just like surfers are always looking for the perfect wave, bloggers are always looking for the perfect rip. This happens to be my friend flyingfinger's favorite Abbe Lane LP, and in search of the finest sound he previously has run through the mono CD edition (mono? odd, that) and his own refurbishment of a mp3 version from somewhere in the vast internet. Maybe this will be his perfect wave - or rip.

Instead of the vast internet, this particular version comes from my vast basement, and is sourced from a near-mint first edition of the Living Stereo LP. I ripped it at 24/96 and from that prepared this 16/44 FLAC edition. There are good sounds here, with just a few thumps to remind you of its vinyl source and that even RCA Victor in its heyday didn't produce perfect pressings.

For the uninitiated, Abbe Lane was the aural embodiment of the cartoonish sexuality that was all the rage in Eisenhower-era America. Although she didn't have much of a voice, she was quite a skillful singer and a wonderful entertainer - not to mention a good looker, as is apparent from the jacket.

At the time of this recording, Lane was married to (and the vocalist for) Spanish bandleader Xavier Cugat. Not that Lane was Hispanic - she actually was a Jewish girl from Brooklyn. They were quite a fine act until they split in 1964. Cugie went on to Charo - and all I've got to say about that is coochie-coochie. Abbe and Charo are still around, but Cugie and his chihuahua are long gone.

These are all teasing or rueful songs about men - with the exception of Go to Sleep, Go to Sleep, Go to Sleep, where Cugie makes an incognito appearance in a dreadful novelty item.

The recording is an excellent example of what RCA was achieving in Webster Hall in the early stereo era. It is a multimiked affair, but is beautifully balanced by engineer Bob Simpson and truthful. I'd say it is one of the best recordings they produced - but honestly, there are dozens and dozens more that are just as good. Then and now, the Living Stereo banner was and is a sign of very high fidelity. The arrangements are by Sid Ramin, a graduate of the Esquivel school of odd sonic effects. The results are well suited to Abbe's light-hearted singing.

Digression No. 24

The Proms start tonight in the Royal Albert Hall and even as I write these words the BBC Symphony, Jirí Belohlávek and a cast of not quite a thousand (but lots of singers nonetheless) have launched into Mahler's Eighth. I'm old enough to remember when Mahler was considered an acquired taste. Now it's a taste sensation that you can't escape. There is even a conductor who specializes in a single Mahler symphony.

Well, I don't have any Mahler for you today, but I do have a less grandiose choral work to celebrate the opening of the Proms. It is taken from the Last Night of the Proms in 1953 - September 19. This is Vaughan Williams' gorgeous Serenade to Music, in the choral version as presented by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus led by Basil Cameron, a conductor who made relatively few records.

This work is included with the July BBC Music Magazine, but that transfer manages to be both dull and strident. My version attempts to remove the muddy vesture of this mastering, perhaps with some success. I'm not in the habit of offering things that are already out there, but I do love this work.

LINK

Also wanted to mention a small site that may be of interest to you (thanks to a tip from John Leifert). The Museum of Broadcast Communications has a web site with quite a few interesting music clips from Chicago television. The other day I watched Aaron Copland rehearsing his Billy the Kid with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia. This 1960 rehearsal was staged for the cameras, to be sure, but is nonetheless fascinating - and the sound is good. Here's a link.

Two Leroy Anderson Collections

Leroy Anderson and Arthur Fiedler

If I were to identify the soundtrack to my early life (I was born in 1949), the music of Leroy Anderson would be prominent. His insistently memorable melodies were ubiquitous on both radio and television then, and so are ingrained in my memory.

Perhaps the biggest pop hit among Anderson's compositions was "Blue Tango," a big seller for the composer and Les Baxter in 1952 (the latter is available on this blog here). But the greatest factor in the popularity of Anderson and his work was undoubtedly Arthur Fiedler, conductor of the Boston Pops. Fiedler commissioned arrangements and compositions from Anderson, then programmed and recorded them.

The Boston Pops Plays Leroy Anderson 

This two-part post begins with the LP above, which presents Fiedler's classic first recordings of some of Anderson's most popular compositions. These sides display (and certainly were designed to display) the orchestral wizardry of the Boston orchestra. And of course they show off the composer's gift for melody, his remarkable craftsmanship and his ability to capture the popular imagination (assuming you like animal effects and the like) - all reasons why he is one of the most successful pops composer of all time.

The Fiedler recordings were made from 1947 to 1953. I suspect this particular collection from the latter year was issued to capitalize on the popularity of "Blue Tango."

Note (December 2023): I have added several additional Pops recordings to the LP above. First, their version of "The Syncopated Clock," from an EP that in other respects contains the same performances as the LP. Also, from 78s I've included "Jazz Legato - Jazz Pizzicato," "Promenade," "The Classical Jukebox" and "Saraband." The "Classical Jukebox" uses the then-popular hit "Music, Music, Music" (also called "Put Another Nickel In") as a framing device for Anderson's clever and amusing arrangements of popular classics.

The sound on the Boston recordings is excellent, and is now in ambient stereo. These all come from my collection, except for the 78s, remastered from Internet Archive holdings.

LINK to Fiedler recordings

Leroy Anderson Conducts His Irish Suite

The second part of this post is the album above, which presents the composer's own recording of his Irish Suite, which was dedicated to and first recorded by Fiedler. The irresistible suite consists of six traditional (and well-known) tunes in Anderson's glittering arrangements.

The Irish Suite was set down in October 1952 with a New York studio orchestra. Oscar Shumsky was the violin soloist in "The Last Rose of Summer."

The composer's recordings have now (December 2023) been newly remastered in ambient stereo from the original 78 issues, which have excellent sound - more vivid than the LP offered.

LINK to Irish Suite

Tuxen Conducts Nielsen

One of the principal attractions of running a blog like this is that you get to spin records you like and then pontificate about them. Many people listen and some even read what I have to say, so what could be better!

Today we have a real favorite of mine, Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 3, or Sinfonia Espansiva, as he called it., in what is perhaps the classic recording of the work, by the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra directed by Erik Tuxen (below).

Although he lived until 1931, Nielsen made no recordings of his own music. The early recordings by Tuxen, Launy Grøndahl and Thomas Jensen are considered to have a certain authenticity because they worked with Nielsen. However, since Tuxen was 29 when Nielsen died, I wonder how much the composer actually shaped his interpretation.

That said, this is surely a stirring performance of a splendid work, well played by the Copenhagen forces in characteristic sound from this label at that time (that is, a bit tizzy). The recording was made in January 1946. As far as I have been able to determine, this was the first Nielsen symphony recording, quickly followed by the second symphony under Jensen.

Nielsen was little known outside Scandinavia when these records were made. Today his symphonies are played on an occasional basis, but more often the fourth through the sixth rather than the first through the third. Too bad - this outgoing "expansive symphony" is beautifully wrought and inspiring, and Nielsen's first two efforts are hardly less impressive.

For some reason, this recording was not issued until mid-1949 in England, and then was little trumpeted by Decca, as you will see from the advertisement below from my copy of the June 1949 Gramophone magazine (click to enlarge). Assiduous record collectors will see a number of other items of interest in Decca's offering of that month.

The original issue of the symphony was on 78s, with the overture to Nielsen's opera Maskarade as a fill-up. When the symphony appeared on LP in 1951, the overture was left behind. While I don't have the original coupling, I do have Tuxen's recording of the Helios overture, and will be presenting it later.

This is from a very clean pressing.

Ormandy Conducts the Complete Albéniz Iberia

Albéniz's Iberia is usually heard complete in its original form for piano, or in the selection of five pieces orchestrated by Enrique Fernández Arbós. However, the remaining items were later orchestrated by conductor-composer Carlos Surinach, and are themselves quite worthwhile.

I believe this recording was the first of the complete orchestrated Iberia, and it is exceptionally good. This is one of those Philadelphia/Ormandy records that appeared in the mono era never to be seen or heard again. Too bad, because it is beautifully played and brightly recorded - and the music is so attractive.

This comes to us courtesy of Joe Serraglio, who has graced us with a number of Philadelphia recordings already. It's a fine transfer; my contributions were slight rebalancing and tracking. The recordings were made in early 1956 in the Academy of Music.

My thanks to Joe - you will thank him, too, when you listen.

Digression No. 23

It was quite a thrill to receive a note from Sue Raney and her husband Carmen Falzone following my posting of her uncollected singles recently. This was through the intercession of Bill Reed, who knows Sue and had taken Sue a CD of the singles. She responded:

"I can’t begin to express my gratitude for the compilation of the singles I made so long ago. It was such fun to listen to them again. We sure tried to get a hit record in those days (ha). 'Biology' was the only one that made it to the Billboard chart at about 50 something (I think). [Note from Buster - that's the only Capitol single I don't have, ironically.] What a special person you are to have taken the time to do all that. You made me so happy, and I thank you so very much for your love and support – the notes you wrote are also quite a keepsake for me."

Speaking of Bill (maestro of the People vs. Dr. Chilledair), he reminds me that in my recent Carole Simpson post, I really should have mentioned that Carole has a 2008 release called "Live" and Otherwise, available here.

Finally - and completely unrelated to the previous discussion - I came across a most interesting radio show on the web this weekend, and thought I would share my refurbishment of the sound. This comes from the Sunday Gramophone feature of a site called Crooks and Liars, which apparently does not refer to the musicians or proprietors but to the site's main preoccupation, politicians. Sunday Gramophone has exceptionally interesting material, unfortunately presented in exceptionally low bit-rate mp3s. Yesterday's offering was from an NBC program of July 1, 1943 by the NBC Orchestra, conducted by Joseph Stopak. This was in a late-night sustaining series called Music of the New World, devoted to all types of music from the Americas - a wartime effort designed to promote inter-American harmony.

This particular program was devoted to US composers, and included less-often heard works by Sowerby (Comes Autumn Time) and Creston (Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra, with Artur Balsam), along with pieces by Griffes and Carpenter.

I have rebalanced the sound, but the compression artifacts from the low bit-rate file are of course still audible (but not too distracting, I hope). It is presented in FLAC format to avoid additional compression effects. The program also is now tracked. The link is below.

LINK

Carole Simpson Sings Steve Allen

My friend Bill recently shared this at his blog People vs. Dr. Chilledair, but since Bill only leaves things up for a short time and I had a request for it, here is  Carole Simpson's Singin' and Swingin', from my own copy of the LP

A talented singer, Simpson made just two albums - the one for Tops Mayfair from 1960 and an earlier one for Capitol.

Here all the songs are by producer Steve Allen, a comedian, TV host, songwriter, author and pianist. Allen had something of an industry going with any number of records by him and others presenting his songs, which are fair to good in quality. This particular program contains his greatest hit, This Could Be the Start of Something Big, and what may be his second greatest hit, Spring in Maine.

Simpson certainly does well by Allen here and the record is entirely a success - certainly more so than the pressing. Tops was a budget label and its vinyl was carefully chosen to present a high hiss level. In the case of some of its product, this could be considered a benefit, but here it detracts. I have mitigated this to some degree and the results are, I think, as pleasing as Miss Simpson's appearance on the cover.

For more on Carole, see this article on Bill Reed's blog.