The Brief Success Story of Adler and Ross

Richard Adler and Jerry Ross should have been one of the greatest Broadway success stories – and for a brief time, they were. The composer and lyricist, respectively, of two of the biggest musical hits of the 1950s – The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees – their rapid ascent was stopped only by the early death of Ross, at age 29 in November 1955, just six months after Damn Yankees opened.

Adler and Ross teamed up in 1950. Until The Pajama Game debuted, there was little in the duo’s output to suggest the range and skill displayed in that score. They did enjoy one big hit, Tony Bennett’s version of “Rags to Riches” in 1953, and they put together a good partial score for John Murray Anderson’s Almanac late that same year. Less distinguished was the work they did for the hyperactive R&B troupe, the Treniers, with their contribution of “Poon-Tang!”, a title derived from a vulgar American term referring to women as sex objects. (I should add that said title is the only racy thing about the song.)

(From left) Richard Adler and Jerry Ross demo their songs for director George Abbott (I believe) and Columbia Records honcho Mitch Miller

So when The Pajama Game opened in May 1954, it was a revelation. Every song was superb on its own and in context, and the music was complemented by an excellent book from co-director George Abbott and novelist Richard Bissell, a tremendous cast including John Raitt, Janis Paige, Reta Shaw, Eddie Foy Jr., and Carol Haney, direction from Abbott and Jerome Robbins, and choreography by Bob Fosse. The cast, with the wonderful Doris Day replacing Paige, repeated their performances for the 1957 film version.

Damn Yankees was hardly less successful, once again with a strikingly fine, if not as varied a score. I am less fond of this show, perhaps because the film is not as successful, with Tab Hunter (!) replacing Stephen Douglass as Joe Hardy, who makes a deal with the devil to become a baseball star and lead the Washington Senators to victory over the hated New York Yankees.

In the 1950s, songs from Broadway shows were still a major contributor to the repertoire of pop singers. The publishers would cajole the record companies into having their artists record songs from the upcoming shows as part of the pre-opening promotional push. These would first be issued as singles, then may have been repackaged as a compilation EP or LP, often in the low-price bracket.

Today’s offering is an example. It combined some of the hits from The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees as a tribute to Adler and Ross, and was issued in Epic’s budget-priced 10-inch LP series just before Ross’ untimely death. The record company was then a relatively new offshoot of Columbia Records. The artists, the Mello-Larks and Jamie, Dolores Hawkins and Neal Hefti, were on its roster at the time.

The Mello-Larks: Bob Wollter, Joe Eich, Jamie Dina, Tommy Hamm

The Mello-Larks started off with the Tex Beneke band in the post-war period, making a number of singles at the time. The original female singer in the group was Ginny O’Connor (who was to marry Henry Mancini). By the time these sides were made, the lead singer was young Jamie Dina, who was so accomplished and such an attraction her name was appended to the group’s own. Dina was married to group founder Tommy Hamm for a brief time, leaving him and the group for another musician, Joe Silvia. Together they founded the J’s with Jamie, who have themselves appeared on this blog.

The Mello-Larks were often on television and are quite polished in an entirely conventional manner. For some reason, arranger Neal Hefti takes a very square approach to “Once-a-Year Day,” treating it like a polka rather than the exuberant romp conveyed by the lyrics. The prominent trombone choir isn’t a help. “Whatever Lola Wants,” a vocal feature for Jamie, is much better.

The other featured singer is Dolores Hawkins, a very good vocalist who is particularly effective on “Hey There,” although she does not radiate the charisma of John Raitt (or Sammy Davis, Jr., for that matter).

For “Small Talk,” one of the best Adler-Ross songs, Hawkins is joined by contract artist Bill Heyer, a sonorous baritone reminiscent of Bob Manning.

Composer Adler never recaptured the magic of his collaboration with Jerry Ross, although Doris Day had a hit with his “Everybody Loves a Lover,” and his scores to Kwamina (for Broadway), and The Gift of the Magi and Olympus 7-0000 (for television) were released on LP.

The sound on the LP at hand is vivid. Backing Dolores Hawkins on her songs is Artie Harris. Don Costa leads the band for “Whatever Lola Wants.”

A note about the way that record companies would repackage material: Epic issued six-cut LPs by the Mello-Larks and Jamie and by Dolores Hawkins, both of which include two of the songs here. The record company also had an EP of hits from The Pajama Game with all three Hawkins tunes on this LP along with the Four Esquires’ version of “Steam Heat.”

Note (October 2024): This LP has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

Chopin Mazurkas from Maryla Jonas

This recording was the subject of a discussion on one of the classical sharing sites, which motivated me to transfer my very good copy of the LP, which contains an exceptional performance of 18 Chopin mazurkas by the neglected Polish pianist Maryla Jonas.

My friend Fred of the Random Classics blog also offered this album some time ago, but the links are now dead. I hope he doesn’t mind if I quote some of his description of the performance, because my reaction is the same: “This is not the Chopin that you are used to hearing and it is a polar opposite from the elegant, aristocratic approach of Rubinstein.” Fred’s response on first hearing the record: “Never had I heard such melancholy, such world weariness, from these brilliant miniatures. Indeed, Chopin had painted, below the surface, a sadness of seeing his Polish nation subjected to rule and desecration by others.”

Postwar promotional leaflet

Jonas herself had a most difficult life, and was the victim of Nazi persecution, which may have contributed to her early death at the age of 48. Her small discography, made in the US for Columbia in the post-war years, centers on Chopin but also includes a smattering of other composers. This particular LP reissue from 1956 combines two sets of mazurkas, which Jonas inscribed in September 1947 (set M-810) and September 1949 (set M-897), both of which also came out on 10-inch LPs. Sessions for the latter set were in Columbia’s 30th Street studios in New York. No location is listed for the 1947 dates in Michael Gray’s discography, but since that predates Columbia’s use of the 30th Street location, the site may have been Liederkranz Hall. The sound is quite good.

A note about the cover: Columbia had engaged the relatively new design firm Push Pin Studios to prepare a series of covers for its Entré reissue series. Push Pin had been founded by Seymour Chwast and Edward Sorel, who both were to become noted graphic artists. Sorel, soon to leave Push Pin, designed the cover of the Jonas LP in a style far removed from the biting political caricatures that he is known for today.

LINK (remastered in ambient stereo, April 2025)

Caballé and Wyn Morris in Debussy, Chausson

I transferred this unusual record as the result of a request on one of the classical music newsgroups, and thought some of you might be interested in it, although it falls outside the usual time frame of this blog.

It is one of the few issues on producer Isabella Wallich's Symphonica label of the late 1970s. As usual with her productions of this time, it featured the talented but tempestuous conductor Wyn Morris, the so-called "Welsh Furtwängler," this time in French music rather than his usual Germanic repertoire.

Unusually for the fledgling company, the record starred soprano Montserrat Caballé at the peak of her fame. The diva's representative had proposed recording the Debussy to EMI, but the firm was not interested. Symphonica stepped in, proposing a coupling of Chausson's gorgeous "Poème de l'Amour et La Mer."

Wyn Morris, Montserrat Caballé, Isabella Wallich

In her autobiography, Recording My Life, Wallich says the results were "neither the happiest nor the most successful sessions I ever undertook," citing problems with getting the scores from France, utilizing an unfamiliar hall and engineer, and working around Caballé's operatic commitments in London. For her part the soprano was "unfamiliar" with the Chausson and "somewhat unfamiliar" with the Debussy, per Wallich, although she does praise Caballé's vocal skill and professionalism.

All that aside, the record is decidedly successful. It is well recorded and nicely performed, with Morris seemingly at home in what may be the only French music he recorded, and Caballé in fine voice.

The Debussy is an early work, when he was under the influence of Wagner and the Pre-Raphaelites. "La Demoiselle Elue" is a setting in translation of Dante Gabriel Rosetti's poem "The Blessed Damozel," also the subject of Rosetti's later painting, a detail of which is shown on the record cover. The work by Debussy's older colleague, Chausson, is from the school of Franck.

The recording was laid down in All Saints Church, Tooting, in June 1977. This transfer is from my copy of the subsequent vinyl issue, which has not, as far as I can tell, been reissued. I was a Wyn Morris enthusiast back in the day, and acquired several of his records as they came out. As usual, the download contains hi-res scans of the covers, some related materials and the audio files in Apple lossless format.