1949-51 Margaret Whiting Singles

My post of Margaret Whiting's first album was very popular, so I am preparing some follow-up posts of her unreissued singles. This is the first of three such entries - maybe more, if I can find my stash of her 78s. These 12 songs all are from 45s, most of them unplayed store stock.

From 1949, we have a coupling of two Josef Myrow-Mack Gordon songs - It Happens Every Spring, from the film of the same name, and Every Time I Meet You, from The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend. Two excellent songs, nicely done.

From the same year, we have two Irving Berlin songs from the Miss Liberty score - Let's Take an Old Fashioned Walk and Paris Wakes Up and Smiles.

Moving to 1950, Capitol issued an odd coupling of It's a Most Unusual Day, from the two-year-old movie A Date with Judy, with the St. Louis Blues. Later that year, Whiting recorded (We've Got a) Sure Thing from the Bing Crosby film Ridin' High, backed with the awful Solid as a Rock, a synthetic r&b number also recorded by Ella Fitzgerald and the Deep River Boys.

Also from 1950 is a terrific rendition of Come Rain or Come Shine, with a flip side of Dream Peddler's Serenade. The latter had music by Johnny Mercer and lyrics by one of the winners of Capitol's Songs without Words contest, John Rufus Sharpe III. For that contest, Capitol asked entrants to write the words for new music by Mercer, Jimmy McHugh, Livingston and Evans, Isham Jones, Ray Noble and Paul Weston. Sharpe's work was apparently heavily influenced by Kim Gannon's lyrics for A Dreamer's Holiday, which had been a hit the previous year.

Our final 45 is from 1951, and has the hymn-like Faithful by French composer Alex Alstone with words by Jimmy Kennedy, and Lonesome Gal, a worthwhile song by Walter Schumann and Jack Brooks.

Whiting is backed by Frank DeVol on all recordings except Come Rain or Come Shine, which has a Paul Weston arrangement. The sound is excellent.

Hope you enjoy these relatively rare items by one of the finest vocalists of the time.