Eddie Fisher

Eddie Fisher, who died a few days ago, was just beginning his career 60 years ago with the release of his first big hit, "Thinking of You" (the Kalmar-Ruby song from M-G-M's 1950 musical, Three Little Words).

"Thinking of You" is the highlight of this, Fisher's first LP, which came out in 1952. The singer had already shown himself to be a big-voiced, accurate vocalist with a good sense of time and an individual timbre. He also had displayed a few stylistic tics, such as suddenly belting a climactic note.

As this LP shows, at this time RCA was having Fisher record the tunes of the day, such as "Sorry" and the country song "I Love You Because," almost always with the support of Hugo Winterhalter.

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Our second memorial offering for Fisher is the 1954 EP below, titled for its first song - "A Girl, A Girl." That song has Eddie giving out with some Prima-style Italianisms - "I'm just a fella / who wants to ring-a the bell-a". (It's-a dreadful.) The second song is more of the same, but on the other side we switch to German repertoire with "Oh! My Pa-Pa," a sentimental item that became an enormous hit for Fisher in the US and for trumpeter Eddie Calvert in the UK.

Fisher went on to have several more hits, but soon became more noted for his love live than his singing. First he married Debbie Reynolds, leaving her for Liz Taylor after her husband (and Fisher's best friend) Mike Todd was killed in a plane crash. Taylor later dumped Eddie for Richard Burton. This American La Ronde played out in endless gossip columns and movie magazine covers.

It's hard to say what was more influential in derailing Fisher's career - his personal habits or changing musical tastes and styles. But he was a prodigious hitmaker for a time.

I had a number of Fisher records as a juvenile record aficionado, and remember being fond of "Oh! My Pa-Pa." But my special favorite was Eddie's version of "Lady of Spain," which I believe was on a promotional EP put out in association with Fisher's hosting of the Coke Time TV show. I played that one incessantly. This suggests two things - that taste is not inborn and my parents were among the most indulgent of people.