Jackie & Roy - Sing! Baby Sing!

My last post started a series devoted to recordings by the great vocal duo of Jackie Cain and Roy Kral. The response was excellent, so here is one of Jackie & Roy's records made for George Wein's Storyville label.

This LP came out in both 10-inch and 12-inch versions; my copy is of the larger format.

10-inch LP cover

The 10-incher comprised early 1955 recordings of a ensemble comprising Kral on piano, Barry Galbraith, guitar, Bill Crowe, bass, and Joe Morello, drums.The four additional tunes on the bigger format replace that group with Joe Rumoro, guitar, Mel Schmidt, bass, and Bob Tilles, drums.

By this time, Jackie & Roy had refined their act to a great degree, evident from the first song, a spirited version of "Sing Baby Sing" from the 1936 musical of the same name. Jackie follows this with a sensitive solo on George Handy's lugubrious "Forgetful," which David Allyn had introduced with Boyd Raeburn, I believe.

A real highlight of the album is the artists' version of "Season in the Sun." Jackie & Roy had begun championing the works of the then little-known writing team of Tommy Wolf and Fran Landesman as far back as 1952. J&R's other Storyville LP include "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," the composers' greatest hit, in what may have been its first recording. "Season in the Sun" is a much different kind of song, but hardly inferior in quality, and it shows off the singers' remarkable rapport to perfection.

The artists circa 1955

As was the case with the Charlie Ventura record below, Kral contributed several compositions of his own. I particularly enjoy "Hook, Line and Snare," which features drummer Morello, who was about to join Dave Brubeck at the time of this recording session. It also shows off the singers' bop roots. But all the songs on this one are delightful - and the sound is very good.

I also want to present Jackie & Roy's album of songs by Andre Previn and Dory Langdon, but that will be on another day.

Charlie Ventura with Jackie & Roy and Buddy Stewart

I wanted to pay homage to the great jazz singer Jackie Cain, who died this week, by presenting a selection of her recordings, starting with some early efforts in the studio with Charlie Ventura.

Her four sides on this LP date from 1948, when Cain was 20. She had already formed what would become a lifelong duo with her soon-to-be husband, pianist and singer Roy Kral.

By the time Jackie & Roy joined him, Ventura had enjoyed a certain amount of success with Gene Krupa and as a combo leader recording for Black & White, Crystalette and, starting in 1947, National.

Jackie Cain and Charlie Ventura

Although this 10-inch LP from the early 50s appeared on Mercury's EmArcy label, its contents were drawn from National masters that Mercury had leased or acquired following the smaller label's demise.

The LP's back cover identifies a group comprising Charlie Shavers (tp), Bill Harris (tb), Ventura (ts), Ralph Burns (p), Bill DeArango (g), Chubby Jackson (b), and Dave Tough (d), but that lineup actually only appears on two songs - "Synthesis" and "Stop 'n' Go," from March 1947.

The ensemble for "Pennies for Heaven", from September 1947, is Kai Winding (tb), Ventura (ts), Lou Stein (p), Bob Carter (b), and Shelly Manne (d).

Kai Winding, Buddy Stewart,
Charlie Ventura

"Synthesis" and "Pennies from Heaven" feature the exceptional vocalist Buddy Stewart, who was equally adept at bop and ballads. Stewart died in a car accident in 1950 before reaching his considerable potential.

Jackie & Roy came on board for an October 1948 session that resulted in "Euphoria," "F.Y.I.," "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," and "Gone with the Wind," a solo feature for Cain, as well as the instrumental "If I Had You." The personnel for the 1948 dates is a little murky, but includes trombonist Bennie Green.

1949 ad

Ventura styled his band as playing "bop for the people," and several of these numbers are bop-flavored. Sometimes this involves adding "ba-doo-da-la-lee-bop" frills to an old tune like "Blowing Bubbles," and sometimes it is more substantive, such as in "Euphoria." Ventura had a swing-based style that was more like Illinois Jacquet than Charlie Parker, but he was a fluid player with a full tone and considerable energy.

Jackie & Roy's appearances with Ventura brought them to public notice, starting a highly regarded career lasting until Kral's 2002 death.

The sound from these National masters is reasonably good. More from Jackie & Roy to come.

Boots Mussulli, Conte Candoli, Jackie Cain, Charlie Ventura, Roy Kral

Invitation to the Dance - Music by Ibert and Previn

Despite being made right after An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, Invitation to the Dance was not a successful venture for the great Gene Kelly. It was a departure in that it was an anthology film with three separate stories, all told entirely through the medium of dance. The studio did not have faith in the result, so it was shelved from 1952 to 1956.

This soundtrack LP contains the original music for two of the three segments - "Circus" and "Ring Around the Rosy." The third section, was set to music adapted from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. This part, which matches Kelly with cartoon characters, may be more familiar than the other parts of the movie because it has been anthologized.

Gene Kelly as sad clown

The first story in the trilogy is "Circus," a laugh-clown-laugh story with Gene as the broken-hearted and ultimately tragic figure. So the film started on a dour story - and an overly familiar one, at that. The music, however, is excellent. It came from the contemporary French eclectic Jacques Ibert, best known for Escales, recorded in the 50s by both Munch and Ormandy, with their respective ensembles. Here the good performance is by the Royal Philharmonic and John Hollingsworth.

With Tamara Toumanova in "Ring Around the Rosy"

Accomplished as it may be, that music is eclipsed by the wonderfully varied score for "Ring Around the Rosy" from composer-pianist-conductor André Previn, then still a Hollywood wunderkind. (He was 23 when the film was shot and 27 when it came out.) You will hear echoes of Britten, Khachaturian (!) and Gershwin, Kenton-style stentorian jazz, blues piano, salon music, mood music and much more. "Ring Around the Rosy" is a La Ronde-inspired journey that follows a bracelet as it passes from one person to another, with Previn switching styles at least as often as the bauble changes owners. The score is brilliantly played by the M-G-M Studio Orchestra with Previn himself at the piano.

The sound is better for Previn's contributions than Ibert's, but fine in both cases.

Reups and Remasters by Request

Fulfilling some requests tonight . . . Sorry it took me so long to get around to these.

Eddie Cantor Story - Cantor himself supplied the vocals for this 1953 soundtrack (mp3 only).

Enesco Plays Schumann - The great Romanian composer-violinist in Schumann's D minor sonata. This has been remastered to eliminate most of the surface noise and is now in lossless format.

Gordon MacRae on Musicraft - Early recordings from the great popular baritone.

Gregor Piatigorsky in Hindemith and Barber Sonatas - The great cellist in two notable 20th century works. Remastered.

Links to these are in the comments to this item, or can be found via the original blog posts.

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Note to those interested in Ives recordings. Bryan over at The Shellackophile recently posted one of the most elusive John Kirkpatrick recordings. This is an excerpt from Ives' first sonata, which originally was a fill-up on the 78 set of Kirkpatrick's famous recording of the second sonata. I recently posted the LP of the second sonata, which does not include the first sonata excerpt. So this is a chance to fill out your collection, and acquire scans from the 78 album as well. Also in that same post, Bryan included two interesting early Copland recordings from the Dorian String Quartet.

Barber Conducts Medea

Samuel Barber conducted three LPs worth of his own music for English Decca on consecutive days in December 1950 - his later suppressed Second Symphony (which I shared here several years ago), the Cello Concerto with Zara Nelsova, and this recording of his ballet suite, "Medea."

Barber draw the 23-minute "Medea" suite from ballet music he had written for Martha Graham, in the process adapting the music for large  orchestra. (Graham called the ballet Cave of the Heart or Serpent Heart.) Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the suite in 1947.

Martha Graham as Medea

In 1955 Barber re-adapted the music into a 14-minute piece called "Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance," mostly culled from I, IV and V of "Medea."

This conductor-led performance, utilizing an accomplished London pickup orchestra, was the first recording of the work, followed by the shorter suite on LPs from Boston and Charles Munch and from New York and Thomas Schippers. The sound of this Kingsway Hall production is quite good. [Note (September 2023): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.]

Samuel Barber

The Second Sauter-Finegan LP - and Bonus EP

My first foray into Sauter-Finegan territory was a resounding success with you, so I have quickly put together this post of the band's second album, from 1953, plus a bonus EP.

The Sound of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra came out as a 12-inch LP that was possibly intended to be a 10-inch LP when first conceived. The artwork on the cover is for a 10-inch LP - perhaps a clue that RCA had plans to issue this in the smaller format.

 Here's what may have happened. After the 10-inch LP was assembled, RCA decided to switch formats by adding two songs that had originally come out on an EP. The 7-inch EP (Extended Play) format was new, and to mark the occasion, the record company had asked Sauter and Finegan to compose an "Extended Play Suite". This consisted of the suitably titled originals "Child's Play" (from Finegan) and "Horseplay" (from Sauter).

Not that this change makes any difference. The Sound of S-F, intended to appeal to the nascent hi-fi cult, was not designed to be a cohesive record. It offers up a potpourri of vocals, attempts to recreate the "Doodletown Fifers" success, and even a rhythm and blues cover.

The vocals include three by the great Joe Mooney, including the semi-hit "Nina Never Knew," the excellent "Love Is a Simple Thing," derived from New Faces of 1952, and "Time to Dream." Former big-band warbler Anita Boyer does a good job with the awful "Now That I'm in Love," a travesty of Rossini that was a hit for Patti Page. "The Honey Jump" is a cover of Oscar McLollie's number one R&B single, with a typically disastrous band vocal and a kazoo out-chorus.

Also on the LP are the joint S-F compositions "Tweedledee and Tweedledum" and "Yankee Doodletown."

My great friend Ernie has contributed a very significant bonus - Sauter-Finegan's "Extended Play Suite - Volume II," which only came out on EP, in 1954. It contains "Dream Play" (Finegan) and "Holiday" (Sauter). This is complete with scans. Thanks, Ern!

1956 cover - Bill Finegan at the keyboard

I've completed the package with scans of the second issue LP cover, from 1956 (above). Instead of the hi-fi illustration, we have a portrait of the maestros, looking like insurance agents who had wandered on stage. The back cover has a selection of miniature color covers framing the liner notes - one of my favorite motifs from this era. Interestingly, RCA chose to advertise classical records to the Sauter-Finegan buyer. No Elvis records here, although Mario Lanza does sneak in.

The Sound of S-F was a labeled as being "Specially Recommended for High Fidelity Fans" on the original cover, and the sonics are indeed excellent.

Note (August 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo, and sounds even better.

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