Malcolm Arnold's Inn of the Sixth Happiness

I thought I might bring you a few unreissued film scores by the English composer Malcolm Arnold, who died in 2006.

Arnold, who started as an orchestral trumpeter, is perhaps equally well-known for his concert music and his music for the movies. His most famous score is for The Bridge Over the River Kwai.

As Christopher Mowat says in an obituary of Arnold in The Guardian, "his music gave immediate and unconditional enjoyment to performers and listeners alike. It was full of tunes, technically brilliant, extravert, unselfconscious and fun. Occasionally, a darker side to his personality would surface, sometimes in his music or, sadly during several periods, in his mental wellbeing."

Malcolm Arnold

In fact, Arnold was quite a turbulent personality, and some of his later music is desolate. But there is no trace of that in this marvelous score for The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, from 1958. The Swedish Ingrid Bergman stars as a cockney missionary in China, and the main Chinese parts are played by the English Robert Donat and the German Curd Jurgens. The plot involves Bergman leading 50 Chinese orphans to safety in the face of the 1937 Japanese invasion, led by Charles Boyer. (OK, I made that last part up.)

Arnold's music, performed by the Royal Philharmonic led by the composer in this early stereo recording, is varied but entirely delightful. The finest music is during the "Jennie Lawson Passes On" scene, and naturally, that is where my pressing had some issues, which I have patched briefly making use of a separate rip made by a friend of mine. You may notice a few changes in sound during that passage.

More Arnold coming up.

Buddy Greco

Recently Will Friedwald let me know that Buddy Greco was celebrating his 85th birthday (it was August 14), and suggested that I might want to mark the occasion with a post devoted to the great swinging vocalist.

I'll do better than that - this is the first of two posts devoted to Buddy. Will is a great admirer of his, so let me quote from Will's recent book A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, where he calls Greco "the perfect synthesis of the two greatest male jazz-pop artists of the mid-twentieth century, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole." As Will says, Buddy has the swagger of Frank and the piano skill and precision of Nat.

Buddy in 1957

This 1956 LP, unreissued since then, is a good example. Unlike most of Greco's later records, it features his piano playing along with his singing, with repertoire selected from shows then (or recently) on Broadway. The least known show on the list is the Harry Warren flop Shangri-La, which closed in less than a month. Interestingly, this record contains a song that apparently did not make it into the final show, "Listen to the Sound of My Love." This suggests that this record was taped in the run-up to the show's June opening.

As Will points out in his book, Buddy heavily influenced the swinging side of Bobby Darin, and the template for Darin's biggest hit can be heard on this LP - "Mack the Knife," although Darin's version is more flamboyant and has a big band backing. Greco also influenced (either directly or through Darin) such quasi-rock artists as Bobby Rydell.

Broadway Melodies was Buddy's first LP for Kapp and only his second overall, I believe. Too bad that Kapp did not do very good work on the sound. Buddy sounds like he was recorded in a closet and his band like they were recorded in another closet down the hall. I've done my best to address this, with some success, and the results are pleasant if not the ultimate in fidelity.

As a bonus, I've included a single that Buddy recorded at about the same time as the album. It couples "Love Don't Be a Stranger" with "In Time to Come". The latter is a Carolyn Leigh-Phil Springer song that is strongly reminiscent of their hit for Sinatra, "How Little We Know," which had come out just a few months earlier. Jerry Wald contributes a suitably Riddle-like arrangement to the effort.

These days, Springer is best known for "Santa Baby," but he also had such gems as "I Want Eddie Fisher for Christmas." Carolyn Leigh was just about to embark on a notable partnership with Cy Coleman, which brought forth another Sinatra classic, "Witchcraft," along with such shows as Wildcat and Little Me.

Oddly, the sound on the 45 is much better than the LP. I'll be back at a later time with some of Buddy's early recordings for Coral and other labels.

More Wally Stott (Angela Morley)

Yes, there's no business like show business, and nothing conveys the glamour of show biz like a sickly green photo of a conductor, eh?

Poor Wally Stott did not have much luck with the art directors, as this very early Epic LP demonstrates. Fortunately, the music inside is much lovelier than the packaging. Stott was one of the best arrangers of the day, and this is a delightful compilation of Irving Berlin tunes.

Wally Stott

As a bonus, I've added a Columbia EP containing extended versions of "Deep Purple" and "September Song". The cover (below) is a clumsy combination of a magenta blob and a yellow explosion left over from a dime-store sales circular.

Some of the songs on the LP also appear on my previous Wally Stott post from a few years ago, where I pointed out that Stott later became Angela Morley, composer of such movie scores as Watership Down and an arranger who worked closely with John Williams among others. She died in early 2009.

Return of RCA's "Show Time" Series

Here's another installment in RCA's "Show Time" Series of potted musicals, issued in 1953. This one was spurred by a request for The Little Show, and so we start off with an EP that presents hits from that 1929 revue.

You'll notice that the cover calls this The Little Shows rather than The Little Show. That's because one of the songs is from The Third Little Show, from 1931 - "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba," which hardly merits its inclusion.

Carol Bruce as Julie

The star of this record is Carol Bruce, who presents two songs associated with Libby Holman (recently heard on this blog), outdoing the originator with superb versions of "Can't We Be Friends" and "Moanin' Low." Bruce is perhaps best known for appearing as Julie in the 1946 revival of Show Boat. At the time of this recording, she was touring in Pal Joey. I was so impressed by her performance, that I went in search of my copy of her 1958 Tops LP, only to find it has gone missing. I'll be sure to transfer it if I ever locate it.

The EP's second side is less enthralling. Sheila Bond (then in Wish You Were Here and previously heard on this blog post) belts "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan." Her rendition will be a shock to those used to the urbane Fred Astaire-Jack Buchanan version or the wry Sinatra recording.

Finally, Hiram Sherman sprechstimmes his way through "Yuba," Herman Hupfeld's other hit. Arranger Lehman Engel thankfully spares us the tuba effects. I wonder if Yuba, his tuba and Cuba inspired "Katie Went to Haiti," which didn't appear for another eight years. Sherman had won a Tony that year for putting up with Bette Davis in Two's Company, and would win another one 15 years later.

Note that although the back cover credits Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz with the score of The Little Show, only "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" is by that team. "Can't We Be Friends" is by Paul James and Kay Swift, and "Moanin' Low" is by Dietz and Ralph Rainger.

Morrow and Lanza match pompadours

To fill out this post, I've added the Show Time Series version of Naughty Marietta, the 1910 Victor Herbert operetta with lyrics by Rida Johnson Young. For this EP, RCA paired Doretta Morrow with Felix Knight. Morrow was a fine artist who introduced many famous songs during her appearances in the original casts of Where's Charley (the incredibly gorgeous "My Darling, My Darling"), The King and I ("I Have Dreamed" and "We Kiss in Shadow") and Kismet ("Baubles, Bangles and Beads"). When this record was made, she had just appeared with Mario Lanza in the film Because You're Mine and was on Broadway in Kismet.

Felix Knight is perhaps best known for singing in three Laurel and Hardy films. A reliable artist, he pops up on a number of operetta recordings.

This version of Naughty Marietta was conducted by Jay Blackton, who was in the pit for many famed Broadway productions, starting with Oklahoma. He was conducting Wish You Were Here when these records were made.