Remastered and Reupped, Vol. 1

As time goes by, I've become much better at mastering the recordings I present here. I have been revisiting a number of my earlier transfers with an ear on improving the sonics, and will be presenting the results here from time to time.

Here is the first batch - the links, as always, are in the comments to this post. You can learn more about the LPs themselves by investigating my original posts via the keyword links at right. The new links can be found in the original posts as well.

Let me stress that in all cases, the sound is far superior to the original post.

Alfven - Swedish Rhapsodies 1, 3; Festival Music (early stereo recordings conducted by the composer and Stig Westerberg)

Brahms - Piano Quartet No. 1 (New York Quartet)

Brahms - Violin Concerto (Ida Haendel; LSO - Celibidache)

Copland - Red Pony; Thomson - Acadian Songs and Dances (Little Orchestra Society/Thomas Scherman)

Ellis Larkins - Blues in the Night (a little noisy, but superb playing)

I Love Melvin (soundtrack with Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor)

Louis Alter - Album of Manhattan (Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra)

Miguelito Valdes - Bim Bam Boom

Morris Stoloff - Music from Movieland

Dream On with Elliot Lawrence

Conductor Elliot Lawrence has had a remarkably long career. Still active today, there are photos of him leading a youth band in the 1930s (with Buddy DeFranco on clarinet).

Lawrence's career splits neatly into two parts - first, as leader of big bands on the road and on records; and second, as conductor and arranger for Broadway and television, after being enlisted for Bye Bye Birdie by director Gower Champion.

In his band days, Lawrence had some association with jazz, notably using the arrangements of Gerry Mulligan on a number of occasions. But his niche was a soft, danceable variety, reminiscent of the style of Claude Thornhill. Here he enlists the services of several notable arrangers:

Mood Midnight - Al Cohn, composer and arranger
Someone to Watch Over Me - Lawrence
The Pretty One - Lawrence, composer and arranger
Our Love Is Here to Stay - Cohn
Nightfall - Cohn, composer and arranger
Deep Purple - Johnny Mandel
Cheek to Cheek - Frank Hunter
To a Wild Rose - Nelson Riddle
They Didn't Believe Me - Cohn
The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful - Hunter
Jazz Lullaby - Cohn, composer and arranger
I'll Follow My Secret Heart - Lawrence

As you might expect, the band is composed of New York's finest studio musicians (Cohn, Nick Travis, Urbie Green, etc.). Lawrence had given up his road band a few years earlier.

This was one of Fantasy's first stereo releases. The recordings were made in December 1957.

There was a considerable amount of interest in this disc in my recent poll, so I hope you like it. I have many Lawrence records, and have already transferred one of his first LPs for future presentation.

Juno and the Paycock

I transferred this some time ago, as a follow-up to my post of J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, and then never posted it. I am here today to make amends and satisfy a promise made back in 2012.

Cusack and McKenna

Sean O'Casey's 1924 Juno and the Paycock is often considered a successor to Synge's 1907 masterpiece, and rightfully so, even though it is set in Dublin and Playboy in the rural west. Here the similarities are accentuated by the casting, with Siobhán McKenna, Marie Kean and producer Cyril Cusack among the cast, as they were in the Synge recording. Both productions are from 1955.

Like Playboy, this is a tragi-comedy among the working class with a female character as the fulcrum and ineffectual males. Here, McKenna (as Juno) is married to the loutish Captain Boyle (Seamus Kavanagh), with the setting amidst the Irish Civil War. As with the Synge play, the language is key to its success. This is not an easy play to bring off; the present cast succeeds beautifully. The recording has a spoken introduction by the playwright. The sound is good.

The download includes a booklet with O'Casey's preamble, essays, photos and a synopsis. I've included the text of the play from Project Gutenberg.

YouTube has the 1930 filmed adaptation, with the original Juno, Sara Allgood. It is directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Noël Coward in 1954

Following his experience entertaining the troops during World War II, Noël Coward developed a cabaret act, which he honed in London and then took to the U.S. in 1955.

Before embarking for the States, Coward set down this collection, representing his repertoire at the time, and including many of his best known numbers. The recordings were made in London in July 1954.

Backing Coward here is the great arranger Wally Stott (Angela Morley) along with pianist Norman Hackforth, Coward's long-time musical associate.

This is another one of the stray items I offered to post a short while back. The performances and recording are excellent, so I hope those who expressed interest will partake.

Coward flanked by Yul Brynner and Tony Martin in 1954

Deems Taylor and Paul Creston

Recently I asked the readers of this blog if any of a selection of my half-finished transfers would be on interest. I should have asked if any of them were not of interest, because all of them received votes, most of them several.

But the exercise was not without merit - it elicited far more comments than anything else I have ever published here! So I am going to go ahead and share various items as I finish them off. I started off this AM with a post on my other blog of two EPs by a fairly obscure vocalist, Bob Carroll. I had thought that only I would remember him, but no, a few of you did ask for his work.

Taylor in 1931

I suspected that the present post would be more desirable, and sure enough, many of you requested it. This 10-inch LP is one of the American Recording Society series from the early 1950s, combining highly accessible works by contemporary composers Deems Taylor and Paul Creston.

If Taylor's name lives on today, it may be primarily as the narrator of Disney's Fantasia. But he was a formidable presence on the American music scene for several decades, as critic, composer and broadcaster.

"The Portrait of a Lady" is an attractive suite from 1925 that veers between Delius and light music. Taylor, in his capacity as the representative of the New York World, reviewed the premiere himself, commenting, "The audience, probably composed of the composer's relatives, greeted the piece with what seemed to us highly disproportionate cordiality."

Creston

Paul Creston's Partita is from 1937, a relatively early work. Creston was a conservative like Taylor, although his music is less romantic than that of Taylor.

These performances by an anonymous orchestra led by Walter Hendl are better than some of the ARS recordings heard here. Michael Gray's discography claims that the orchestra is actually the Vienna Symphony, and dates the recording to sessions in June 1952. The sound is very good.

Are Any of These of Interest?

I transfer more recordings than I actually present here on the blog, for a number of reasons: I may have lost interest in the item, didn't get around to doing the scans, or don't feel like writing about the LP in question.

It occurs to me that some of you may be interested in these records. I have given up trying to understand what appeals to people. Some of the most unlikely posts have been among the most popular - such as the songs of Roger Quilter or popular organ pieces played by Virgil Fox.

So here is the list, in no particular order - please let me know in the comments if these are appealing. I'll make one or more available.

Deems Taylor - The Portrait of a Lady; Paul Creston - Partita (ARS Orchestra/Hendl)

Bob Carroll - Camden EPs of "Today's Top Hits"

Curtain Going Up - Boston Pops/Fielder medleys of show tunes

Greatest Western Hits - Carl Smith, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price

Quincy Porter - Symphony No. 1; Concerto Concertante; Dance in Three Time (Concerts Colonne/composer)

Hymns and Sacred Songs - Cowboy Copas

Dream On - Dance On - Elliot Lawrence Orchestra

Mozart - Symphony No. 36 (VPO/Böhm) and 29 (SRO/Maag)

Modern American Music - Meredith Willson Concert Orchestra (short pieces commissioned from Gould, Arlen, Grofe, Ellington, Alter and others)

Rachmaninoff - Isle of the Dead; Vaughan Williams - Tallis Fantasia (Minneapolis/Mitropoulos)

Noël Coward - I'll See You Again (1954 recordings)

Mexican Hayride - Original Cast

New Music from Old Erin (by Brian Boydell, Seoirse Bodley, and Frederick May) - Radio Eireann Symphony/Milan Horvat

Sean O'Casey - Juno and the Paycock (Cyril Cusack, Siobhan McKenna)

Szell conducts Mendelssohn - Midsummer Night's Dream (PSONY) and Symphony No. 4 (Cleveland)

Dinah Shore Sings the Blues

Dinah Shore was not born to sing the blues. A middle-class girl from Tennessee, she became famous on radio, via records and in the movies in her 20s, and spent virtually all of her adult life as a glamorous American television presence.

But sing the blues she did, and very well, even if they were not the "real blues" and she was not a "real blues singer."

Shore's first brush with celebrity was on something called "The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street," an early-40s radio program that traded in Dixieland cliches and commercial blues songs. Dinah recorded some of the songs in this set for the first time while she was on that show, but the present collection dates from much later.

This RCA 10-inch LP came out in 1953, during one of Shore's less successful periods as a recording artist. As was the case with many singers of the time, she was a singles artist who was struggling to find material that would sell. Among her bigger records of the time were "Sweet Violets" (a tame version of the risque song) and "Salomee (With Her Seven Veils)." Not exactly the Great American Songbook.

"Sings the Blues," in contrast, was an attempt to appeal to a different audience. It was at a coherent album of commercial blues and torch songs - not a new or unique premise, but one that was nicely done, with charts by Frank DeVol, and with Dinah in excellent voice. Well-recorded, too.

In the 50s and thereafter, Shore's fame increasingly rested on her considerable charm and her powers of persuasion as a commercial spokeswoman for Chevrolet automobiles, but we shouldn't forget that she was a singer of great talent as well, one who went on to make any number of excellent LPs after the hits dried up.

Check my other blog for a new post of a 1953 EP from Dinah.

Dinah helps to introduce the new Corvette, circa 1953

Joe Mooney

Joe Mooney never became a great popular success, but the vocalist-accordionist-organist was, and still is, well regarded by the cognoscenti.

These recordings come from his greatest period: early in his career, when he was leading the tight-knit quartet that made his reputation.

After World War II, the group had become increasingly acclaimed by appearing in small clubs - so much so that the record companies apparently waged a bidding war for them. Decca won, and even ran an ad in Billboard (below) proclaiming its victory.

Mooney and his troupe (Andy Fitzgerald, clarinet, Jack Hotop, guitar, Gaetan (Gate) Frega, bass) first entered the recording studio in November 1946. They would set down a total of 18 numbers for Decca by the end of the following year.

The success was short-lived. By mid-1949, the group had disbanded, and Andy Fitzgerald was working in a Paterson textile plant. Contemporary sources say that Gate Frega left to enter the ministry.

Mooney continued, with a single on Carousel and then a few excellent sides with the Sauter-Finegan band in 1952, notably "Nina Never Knew." By 1956, Mooney was running and performing at a restaurant in Miami. Atlantic cut an LP with him that year that was released in 1957.

Finally, Mooney recorded two albums for Columbia in the early 60s. He still had something of a reputation - one LP was called "The Greatness of Joe Mooney."

Frega, Mooney and Fitzgerald in 1946

The Decca recordings first came out on 78, then collected for a 10-inch LP titled "You Go To My Head." Seven of the eight songs on that LP ended up on this 12-inch album, "On the Rocks" (a title chosen, one supposes, to enable the art department to plunk Joe and his accordion down in an old-fashioned glass with a bunch of ice cubes).

In addition to the 12 songs from "On the Rocks," I've added the orphaned item from "You Go to My Head," and two songs from 78 - in all, 15 of the 18 records the Mooney Quartet made for Decca.

One word about the "orphan" - it is one of the group's best set-pieces, "Shaky Breaks the Ice," with a fantastic double-talk intro from Gate Frega. All these records are good, in fact. The group was able to put its stamp even on material that wasn't written for them, such as "Meet Me at No Special Place," which was recorded by several artists in 1947.

I just love Mooney and hope you enjoy this set, which was suggested by our friend David F.