Getting Sentimental with Dick Haymes

I recently remastered an early Dick Haymes LP, and that experience was enough to motivate me to transfer another.

Here is the result: Sentimental Songs, a 10-inch album from 1951, although the recordings were taken from 1943-47 Decca singles. And while the title promises sentimentality, it would be more accurate to simply call them love songs.

Such ballads were a specialty of the artist, and no one did them better. His only peer was Sinatra.

1943 trade ad - Haymes was popular with record buyers,
moviegoers and hair product manufacturers

The earliest songs include "You'll Never Know," a giant seller for Haymes. On this and "It Can't Be Wrong," he was accompanied solely by a vocal group, the Song Spinners. The songs were cut during the first of two recording bans imposed by the imperious Musicians Union head, James Petrillo, meaning no saxes, strings or other instrumentalists. Just singers. Sinatra had a competing version with the Bobby Tucker Singers.

The accompaniment to the Haymes record is interesting. In it, the Song Spinners, a white group, adopted some of the stylistic cues of the contemporary black groups, notably bum-bum-bums from the bass and falsetto vocalise.

All other songs save one have backing by Decca's Victor Young. These include "Our Waltz" and "I Don't Want to Love You (Like I Do)" from 1944, and "Love Letters," "Till the End of Time" and "The Night Is Young (and You're So Beautiful)" from 1945. The impossibly romantic "Love Letters" is Young's own composition; it is the title tune from the film of the same name. Young also did a good Xavier Cugat impression with his arrangement on "The Night Is Young."

The final song in this collection is 1947's "What'll I Do," with a characteristic backing from Gordon Jenkins. It isn't far removed from the charts he wrote for Sinatra a decade later.

Please note that "Our Waltz" also appears on the Serenade album I recently reuploaded.

Excellent sound from this early LP. Hope you enjoy Haymes as much as I do.