Maria Cole

While Nat Cole was certainly the most famous member of his family, he wasn't the only singer in the brood. His brothers Ike and Freddy both sang professionally - Freddy still does, in fact. Nat married a singer, Maria Hawkins Ellington, and their daughter Natalie was very successful as well.

Nat and Maria Cole

Maria Cole had sung with Duke Ellington and Count Basie before her marriage, and made occasional records and personal appearances in the 1950s and 60s. Today's post is devoted to her second LP, made for the Dot label in 1960.

It's a pleasant outing in the pop style of the era - cooing backing vocals, piano triplets, swirling strings and the double-tracked alto sax of arranger-conductor Billy Vaughn, Dot's music director.

Jet Magazine, 1955

Vaughn was working around Cole's limited vocal range and questionable pitch, but he doesn't do her any favors by packing the program with peppy chestnuts like "Sweet Georgia Brown" and "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," which aren't suited to her. She does best with the pensive "So Help Me" and worst with the pop R&B of "(O Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely," a hit for the Four Knights in 1954. She sounds far too ladylike for the latter fare, particularly when set against the kitschy Vaughn arrangement. Cole might have done better with more sensitive backing and better song selection.

Even so, her low-pitched voice is agreeable, and this is a better record than I had recalled. I pulled it out of storage at the request of vocal maven Will Friedwald, who was curious to hear it. Let me finish with a plug for Will's latest book, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums, which hits the shops November 7. It's sure to be the latest in a long line of erudite and entertaining reads by Will, whose earlier tomes include the astonishingly thorough Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Sinatra! the Song is You, Jazz Singing and many others.

The 'Original' Slaughter, Plus Related Bonuses

Tamara Geva, George Church
and Ray Bolger in 1936

After I posted a soundtrack making use of themes from Richard Rodgers's "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," the question came up, what was the original version of this music? We discussed it in the comments section of that post, but I thought I would go over the matter here on the main page, post the original ballet music in its original scoring and add some bonus material from my archives and from generous blog followers.

Richard Rodgers composed "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" as one of the two ballets incorporated into the 1936 Rodgers-Hart musical, On Your Toes. (The other was "La Princesse Zenobia".) Both were choreographed by George Balanchine. Slaughter takes place in a West Side New York dive, with Ray Bolger and George Church contesting the affections of stripper Tamara Geva, who is eventually killed in a struggle. The ballet echoes the plot of the musical, explained well on the Lorenz Hart website.

Natalia Makarova and Lara Teeter in 1983

In 1983, the legendary George Abbott, who co-wrote the musical and directed the 1936 production, directed a Broadway revival. Abbott was 96 at the time. For the revival, the original orchestrator, 89-year-old Hans Spialek, supervised the use of his original charts, which were heard on the cast album conducted by John Mauceri. For this post, I've transferred that recording of Slaughter, which is in effect the original version.

Those of you who are used to pop versions of Slaughter, or the orchestral arrangement by Spialek's close associate Robert Russell Bennett, will find this approach to be much different. Spialek was arranging for a relatively small pit band. Its pungent sound takes some getting used to, if you are accustomed to lush orchestrations. But it quickly became my favorite version upon its release - and also is much longer than any other recording I know, which I consider to be a good thing. Blog reader Jeff sent along a link to an illuminating New York Times article on Spialek.

Now for a few bonuses.

Cover of 78 set

In conjunction with the last post, reader Kostrow asked me to reupload a post from the early days of this blog, Richard Rodgers conducting selections from Rodgers and Hart shows, circa 1939-40. Originally in an early Columbia 78 album, these were collected into a 10-inch LP, which was the source of my transfer. It's a highly engaging set, with 1930s-style dance band orchestrations, pleasing period vocals by Deane Janis and Lee Sullivan and excellent sound.

Also following the last post, longtime reader RonH was kind enough to contribute a stereo version of the Slaughter on Tenth Avenue soundtrack, which you may find very worthwhile if you like this Herschel Burke Gilbert version of the music.

Links to all items are in the comments to this post.

Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, the Soundtrack

Back in August, I brought you an Arthur Fiedler LP centered on Richard Rodgers's ballet music, "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue." At that time I noted, "This marks the fifth time I've presented some version of the music on this blog. in the wings is the soundtrack album from the 1957 film Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, in which stolid prosecutor Richard Egan takes on a waterfront mob boss, improbably played by Walter Matthau, to solve a killing on the docks - to the accompaniment of Herschel Burke Gilbert's arrangement of Rodgers's music."

Today is the day when I make good on that promise of said album. In it, Gilbert expands Rodgers's themes out to some 38 minutes or so, and makes them into convincing film noir background music. In doing so, the playful and lyrical aspects of the ballet score are shunted aside, perhaps or necessity, with the result being one dimensional, although enjoyable nonetheless.

Mobster Matthau confronts crusader Egan

Gilbert had begun his career as a Hollywood composer and arranger about 10 years before this assignment. His first soundtrack LP was for The Moon Is Blue, which I have around here somewhere, followed by Gunsmoke, Comanche and then Slaughter. He went on to score hundreds of films and television shows.

Gilbert

IMDb tells us that Henry Mancini assisted with the arranging duties on this film. Joseph Gershenson conducted the Universal-International Orchestra.

Decca's sound was characteristically strident and overbearing, which I have attempted to tame, with good results, I think. This LP did come out in a stereo version, but my copy is mono only, I'm afraid.

The cover may have been one of the first times that two legs were used as a framing device for a cover. The Empire State Building provides a convenient phallic symbol for the imposing male figure, presumably crusading district attorney Richard Egan. It's not clear why a Manhattan DA trying to clean up the NY docks is in Brooklyn (or is it Jersey?), but I guess they couldn't get the right angle on the Empire State from the West Side.

Lambert's Façade, Sargent's Wand of Youth

Tonight, two versions of Walton's Façade music from Constant Lambert, plus music of Elgar conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Side one of the LP above contains the two Façade instrumental suites for orchestra, as devised by the composer in 1926 and 1938. (Lambert intermixes the numbers of the two suites.) The second side has the first of two Wand of Youth suites that Elgar devised from his earliest compositions.

Walton by Michael Ayrton

Façade has a complex performance history. Originally devised as a family entertainment by poet Edith Sitwell, her brothers and their friend William Walton, its first public performance came in 1923. The audience saw only a curtain painted with a head. Sitwell and the instrumentalists were backstage, with the poet declaiming her words through a megaphone poking out of the mouth, to the tune of Walton's sophisticated musical parodies. This upper-class leg-pulling created a succès de scandale in certain circles, making enough of a stir that it became a mini-industry in itself, with Sitwell producing additional poems and Walton composing more music. Eventually there were ballet versions as well, and Walton was adding new pieces as late as the 1970s.

Lambert by Christopher Wood

Constant Lambert was closely associated with Façade. He appears to have been the first reciter other than Sitwell herself to present the work, on the occasion of its second performance in 1926. In 1929, he and Sitwell were the speakers in a Decca recording conducted by Walton. I have transferred that version from an LP dub in my collection and added it to the download as a bonus. Lambert was a remarkably facile reciter, who was well matched with Sitwell.

Lambert returned to the recording studios with Façade in 1950, this time as conductor of the  orchestral suites found on the LP above. These give a good impression of Walton's musical achievement, with characteristically fine performances from the vintage Philharmonia.

Sargent by Gerald Festus Kelly

Elgar's Wand of Youth suite could hardly be more different from the Walton-Sitwell "entertainment,"
although it was composed within 15 years of Façade. The Edwardians had a tendency to romanticize youth; several of Elgar's works display this characteristic. (See my post from several years ago discussing The Starlight Express, for an example.) Even so, it would be hard to dispute the charm, warmth and appeal of Elgar's heartfelt music.

Elgar himself conducted both suites for a 1928 recording. I believe the first suite's next appearance on record was in 1949, in a version directed by Eduard van Beinum. The Sargent effort with the Liverpool Philharmonic came only a few months later. Liverpool did not have a top-flight orchestra at the time, but they are in better fettle here than they were a few years earlier in the Horoscope recordings I recently featured.

Edith Sitwell with her brother (Osbert, I believe) in 1922