Holiday Inn, Plus a New Year's Bonus

I recently heard a CD of the songs from the 1942 film Holiday Inn that sounded awful. It's a famous film and score, so I decided to produce my own version of the set working from the original 78s. I think it shows off Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire to much better effect than the other edition I heard.

In addition to Bing and Fred's contributions, David Federman has left us another holiday gift in the form of a New Year's compilation.

Holiday Inn

A copy of the Holiday Inn 78 set resides in my basement, but it was easier and quicker to make use of the lossless transfers that I found on Internet Archive. The results to me are pleasing, although perhaps predictably "White Christmas" has more surface noise than the other tracks. (I checked all four of the transfers of the 1942 recording that IA had available.) While you may find quieter transfers, this version is well-balanced and satisfying. The sound on the other tracks is generally excellent.

Most of the songs in Irving Berlin's score are themed to the year's holidays, and almost all are delightful. The exception is the "Abraham" number that tried to honor Lincoln's birthday with a blackface routine. The performance in the album is not as objectionable as the film, with its minstrel show scenario, but the record still includes stereotypical language that even then was considered racist.

Most of the songs in the album are sung by Crosby, with Astaire taking over for "I Can't Tell a Lie" and "You're Easy to Dance With." Bing and Fred split "I'll Capture Your Heart," aided by Margaret Lennart, standing in for the film's Virginia Dale. The backings are split between the bands of John Scott Trotter and Bob Crosby.

Bing, Marjorie Reynolds, Fred, and Virginia Dale

I imagine many of you will have a copy of this album, but if you don't, please enjoy this memorable score, but maybe leave "Abraham" out of the playlist.

The download also includes many cleaned-up lobby cards, posters and other ephemera.

A New Year's Compilation

David F. has provided a long and satisfying compilation to greet the New Year: 39 tracks all chosen to represent three incarnations of the compiler: "Daves of New Years Past, Present and Future," he explains. "Hence I call this download, 'An End-Times New Years Carol.'"

As you listen, all three Daves have this New Year's wish for you: "Stay warm; stay safe; stay sound, and, the toughest wish, stay sane. Staying sober remains optional."

Buddy Clark at Christmas

My friend Ernie and a few other kind folks let me know that the Internet Archive uploaded quite a few Carnation Contented Hour radio shows with Buddy Clark, one of my favorite singers. Among the shows was a Christmas program dating from December 20, 1948. It was the final Christmas of Clark's life: he was to die in a plane crash the following October, at the peak of his popularity.

Today's post combines a cleaned-up version of the Carnation show with bonuses of a Clark Christmas single and a duet with Doris Day, both from shellac.

The Carnation Contented Hour

Carnation has made condensed milk products for well over 100 years, and sponsored the Carnation Contented Hour on network radio from 1931-51. The hour was "contented" because Carnation's milk came "from contented cows," whose emotional health apparently was rigorously monitored. Also, Carnation optimistically called baby-feeding time "the contented hour."

Click to enlarge

Carnation's ads generally plugged the radio show, at least in the fine print. This was common back when advertisers sponsored complete shows. Another Carnation ad below is themed to Christmas, and depicts cute kids who were as interested, improbably, in Carnation's gelatinous "Christmas Tree Salad" as they were in the gifts under the spruce. "Jiminy Christmas!" they exclaim. "Presents ... and Santa Claus ... and exciting things to eat!"

Click to enlarge

Ken Darby

For the radio show at hand, Clark was assisted by the Ken Darby Singers and the Ted Dale Orchestra. Darby even then was a well-known vocal arranger. His singers had backed Bing Crosby on the original 1942 "White Christmas" single and the 1947 remake. Darby was to go on to win three Academy Awards for his arrangements.

The program mixes holiday fare with other items. Clark sings "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Silent Night" and "White Christmas." Darby and singers perform the tiresome "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Dale's crew presents "Winter Wonderland" and "London Bridge." I don't believe the latter is the Eric Coates composition with the same name, but I could be wrong. In any case, the arrangement shows off quite a Coates influence.

NBC's caricature of Clark didn't look a thing like him

In addition to the Christmas numbers, Clark performs "My Darling, My Darling," a song from Frank Loesser's current Broadway show Where's Charley? Buddy's duet with Doris Day was then on the market. (Their Columbia 78 is one of the bonus items mentioned below/)

The sound on the show is quite good, after some finagling, except for rustle during the first few minutes.

Bonus Singles

Clark recorded only two Christmas songs for commercial distribution: a coupling of "Winter Wonderland" and the "Merry Christmas Waltz," both done for Columbia in June 1949 with Ted Dale's band. I posted this single way back when, but I've included a new version in the download.

As mentioned above, I've also included Buddy's commercial recording of "My Darling, My Darling," to go with the radio performance.

The download also includes a Radio Album article about Clark's family finding a new home on the West Coast. Production of the Carnation Contented Hour had moved from New York to Los Angeles before the 1948 season.

Christmas with the Seegers, Plus Bonuses

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-53) had an usual career, first as an avant-garde composer then as an expert on folk music who produced several compilations of those works. 

Ruth Crawford was the second wife of Charles Seeger, a musicologist who with his first wife, Constance de Clyver Edson, was the father of perhaps the best known member of the family, Pete. Ruth was the mother of two other notable folk singers: Peggy, and Mike of the New Lost City Ramblers.

The Seeger family, circa 1940s

Shortly before her death, Scholastic published Ruth's anthology of Christmas folk songs. Four years later, her daughters Peggy, Penny and Barbara issued a charming album of some of these songs, with the aid of a children's choir. This LP forms the first part of today's post. For the second, I've included an 1957 album with one of Ruth's best known classical compositions (relatively speaking), the String Quartet 1931. The excellent LP also includes Ross Lee Finney's atmospheric Piano Quintet.

Finally, we have one of David Federman's always-welcome anthologies, on the theme of Christmas, I hardly need to add. Details below.

American Folk Songs for Christmas

Most of the material contained on American Folk Songs for Christmas was unfamiliar to me. Among the exceptions are "Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow" and "The Cherry Tree Carol." All the songs are very well performed by the Seeger sisters and the children from the South Boston Music School. The documentation includes the stories of each song, extracted from Ruth Crawford Seeger's book.

Peggy Seeger

The best-known Seeger sister is Peggy, who has had a long career in folk music as composer and performer. She often appeared with her husband, Ewan MacColl, before his death in 1989.

The LP is a splendid tribute to Ruth Seeger, who had worked with John and Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song in the 1940s, and who published several anthologies similar to the Christmas collection.

Chamber Music by Ruth Crawford Seeger and Ross Lee Finney

Ruth Crawford Seeger's own compositions are quite a contrast to the folk anthologies mentioned above. Almost all of them come from 1930-33, with the best known being her String Quartet 1931, which was well ahead of its time. In it, she applies serial techniques to other aspects of music besides pitch, a procedure she had developed with Charles Seeger. 

Ruth Crawford Seeger

In doing so, she anticipated practices that would not come into common use until the 1950s, as Eric Salzman noted in his highly positive review of the LP for the New York Times, adding that "the piece is astonishingly imaginative and expressive, too." The Amati Quartet performs the work for this Columbia Modern Music Series album.

Please see this 2017 Times portrait of Crawford Seeger for more on this remarkable composer.

Ross Lee Finney

The LP also includes another impressive work, the Piano Quintet of Ross Lee Finney (1906-97), here performed by the Stanley Quartet of the University of Michigan and the excellent pianist Beveridge Webster. 

Finney, who taught at Michigan for many years, was another composer who used serial techniques. His music, even so, was Romantic: Salzman calls it "a kind of free adaptation of Brahms and Bruckner into a contemporary idiom." That may be overstated, but it does contain a element of truth.

The early stereo recordings are excellent.

Both LPs above were cleaned up from lossless needle drops found on Internet Archive.

A Mix for Christmas

David F.'s typically generous and enterprising Christmas mix this year includes a bountiful 37 tunes. David calls it "An End-Times Christmas Eve and Morning," noting of its contents, "Christmas morning I wanted to make as beautiful and benevolent as possible. When I first listened to 'Above My Head I Hear Music' and 'Winter Will Soon be Over, Children,' I heard a music born of indestructible fortitude and hope in the face of what is for me unimaginable suffering."

The music is well-chosen and programmed (I think they call it "curated" these days), and I commend it to everyone. The link is in the comments, as always.

Vaughan Williams' Christmas Cantata 'Hodie'

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote a great deal of Christmas music, primarily carol settings, but also the well-known Fantasia on Christmas Carols, the relatively obscure "masque" On Christmas Night, and this cantata, Hodie.

The work dates from relatively late in the composer's career, in 1953-54, when he was 82. By this time, Vaughan Williams had explored a variety of styles; this work reflects many of them, from the pastoralism of his youth to the visionary quality of The Pilgrim's Progress.

Accordingly, in Hodie he set words from a variety of sources: from the Bible to Myles Coverdale, George Herbert and Thomas Hardy and his wife, the poet Ursula Wood Vaughan Williams.

In this regard, the work's anthology nature is similar, surprisingly, to Benjamin Britten's Spring Symphony of 1949. In that work, the composer remains at some distance from his material; nonetheless, the music is dazzling.

In the same way, Hodie is not consistently in the warm, consoling manner that we associate with holiday fare. This is a much different composition than the Fantasia on Christmas Carols. In his notes, Michael Kennedy notes that the work primarily expresses joyful exuberance, but to me, its visionary quality is to the fore.

The Performance

David Willcocks

Hodie had to wait until 1965 for its first recording, led by David Willcocks, who recorded a great deal of Vaughan Williams' choral music. By this time, the conductor had become well known for his work with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. He also was the director of the Bach Choir, which performs on this recording. The boys' voices are from Westminster Abbey. The orchestra is the London Symphony. The organist is Philip Ledger, who himself was to become the director of the King's College Choir.

Janet Baker

John Shirley-Quirk

Two of the solo voices were of the generation that came to prominence in the 1960s - mezzo-soprano Janet Baker and bass-baritone John Shirley-Quirk. The other voice was tenor Richard Lewis, who was 20 years older than his colleagues. None of the soloists were particularly associated with Vaughan Williams. This appears to be the only recording of the composer's music from both Baker and Lewis. Shirley-Quirk also can be heard in Willcocks' recording of Sancta Civitas and Previn's of the Sea Symphony. All distinguish themselves in this music, as was their pattern with all their recordings.

A few of the contemporary reviews thought that Willcocks' conducting could have been more incisive, citing the Narrations, which function as recitatives. These do tend to drag as the trebles and organ make their way through the biblical passages. But that's inherent in Vaughan Williams' writing. All told, the work is exceedingly beautiful, although its inspiration is not as consistent as the composer's best works. 

Richard Lewis

The Recording

Hodie was one of the many large-scale recordings of the time to have been recorded in London's Kingsway Hall. The sound on this record is a notable achievement by producer Ronald Kinloch Anderson and engineer Neville Boyling.

Kingsway Hall in 1970 - Sir Adrian Boult is the conductor

For EMI recordings of this vintage, the best sound is generally derived from the UK pressings. In this case, I have transferred my copy from a 1970s-vintage box set of Vaughan Williams' choral music from HMV. That's not to say that it is perfect in all respects: as with many classical LPs, the dynamic range is compressed.

The download includes many contemporary reviews of the LP, the front cover of the original UK Columbia pressing and the back cover from the US issue, which includes the texts.

Holiday Music from Ralph Flanagan's Big Band

Bandleader Ralph Flanagan was a stalwart of the RCA Victor catalog for nearly a decade, but by 1959 he had moved on to the smaller Imperial label.

Although it was a time of change in the music business, Imperial was still signing and promoting older-style artists for LP purposes. In the singles market, the label's mainstays were such R&B and rock musicians as Fats Domino and Ricky Nelson.

Flanagan was to make four LPs for Imperial, including this 1959 Christmas record. As with all the many Flanagan discs I have featured on this blog, this LP is immaculately played and highly enjoyable. As a bonus, it is an exceptional (if very bright sounding) example of early stereo.

Ralph Flanagan

No details are available about who might have played on the record or exactly when it was recorded. It's almost certain, however, that Flanagan used the best studio musicians. It's also possible that he is the pianist heard throughout the album; he often, but not invariably, performed on his own records. The pianism is too flowery for my taste, but that's a small point. Flanagan also was the named arranger on most of his records; whether he actually did the arrangements or used a ghostwriter is hard to say. We have no information about the arrangements here, but they are accomplished. That said, they do reflect some of the cliches of the time - bongo drums, a cooing Conniff-style vocal chorus, etc. 

Imperial called the record Holiday Inn, but the album does not include that song or any numbers from Bing's 1941 film of the same name, except for the inevitable "White Christmas."

Bonus Cuts

The RCA "White Christmas" 78 - the company did not bother to make its labels legible

As bonuses I've added two of Flanagan's RCA recordings. The Victor "White Christmas" was from one of the bandleader's earliest singles on that label, released in 1949. The download includes a few Billboard articles on the Flanagan band of this period, plus a brief review of the record. The review terms Harry Prime's vocalism as "passable," which may be a generous assessment. The arrangement is reminiscent of the Glenn Miller sound; Flanagan's was one of many Miller-clone bands of the time.

Finally, we have a second version of "Winter Wonderland" to complement the one on the LP. It's taken from a 1954 various-artists Christmas LP on the RCA label. It's available here in its entirety.

The Imperial and RCA LPs are from my collection. I cleaned up the "White Christmas" single from a transfer on Internet Archive. 

This post is for my friend Ernie; I believe he's been looking for a stereo copy of the LP. Ernie is, as usual, engaged in his seasonal posting frenzy that is a must for Christmas music fans. Go here to join in the fun. And don't forget my friend Lee, either!

Christmas Music from Prague

The cover says "Christmas Carols of Europe," and indeed that is the case, but half of them are actually of Czech origin.

That's entirely appropriate given that the artists are the Prague Madrigal Singers, led by their founding director, Miroslav Venhoda.

Miroslav Venhoda

Side 1 takes us on a tour of 16 European countries, with most of the music unfamiliar to these ears, save for "Ein ist es rose ensprungen," "Good King Wenceslas" and perhaps a few others. That's a good thing, because the music and the performances are fresh and pleasing.

The second side is devoted to the Czech carols, again unfamiliar but delightful.

Supraphon cover

Venhoda (1915-87) founded the Prague ensemble in 1956 to be, as its name implies, an early music troupe. Their recordings for Prague-based Supraphon concentrated on such masters as Dufay, Palestrina, Lassus, Monteverdi, Dowland and Tallis. Not every critic was pleased with the results; indeed, I found a few reviews that seemed exasperated by Venhoda's approach. Nor would it seem stylish to today's early music practitioners.

But such things don't matter much when listening to this sincere and enjoyable disc. Recording details are scarce, but I believe it was taped circa 1964 in Supraphon's Prague Studios. This transfer, remastered from an Internet Archive lossless source, is from the US Crossroads issue of 1966.

Venhoda conducts the Prague Madrigal Singers

Christmas with Huey 'Piano' Smith and Dr. John

Let's start off the holiday shares with the greatest possible contrast with the Anglican church music I posted earlier this week - music from New Orleans with Huey "Piano" Smith and Dr. John.

The LP dates from 1962, a few years after Smith's greatest successes and several years before Dr. John's heyday.

Huey Smith

Smith was best known for the rollicking singles "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie-Woogie Flu" and "Don't You Just Know It." He had been a session pianist on such records as Smiley Lewis' "I Hear You Knockin'" before founding his band, Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns.

That group recorded for Johnny Vincent's Ace Records, where the teenaged Mac Rebennack was a producer and session musician. By the time of this record's release, Rebennack had transformed himself into "Dr. John," and was credited as such on this LP. The good doctor was still just 21 years old. This was several years before his own solo breakout with the album Gris-Gris, after he had moved to Los Angeles and assumed a semi-psychedelic identity as Dr. John the Night Tripper.

[UPDATE: After I posted this, reader RL pointed out that this pressing is a reissue after Dr. John had achieved some fame. He was not credited on the cover of the original.]

The young Mac Rebennack

As with many records on small labels, there is little information on who does what. As far as I know, Smith did not sing and used a variety of vocalists on his records. I don't know who sings here. Also, both Smith and Rebennack played the piano, so it's not clear who is handing the keyboard duties here.

[UPDATE: Please see the detailed comment below from reader Boursin, who provides detailed credits derived from a book on Huey Smith.]

On the packaging, the album itself is variously attributed to Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns, the Dr. John Band, and the Dr. John Band with Huey "Piano" Smith. We do know that Smith wrote most of the material, save for "Silent Night," "Jingle Bells" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

None of this material will strike you as original, but it's all fun and enjoyable listening, which is more than I can say for most rock 'n' roll Christmas LPs.

As far as I can tell, Huey Smith is still with us. Dr. John died in 2019.

This record was cleaned up from a lossless transfer on Internet Archive. The sound is quite good.

A Service of Thanksgiving

With the coming of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., I thought I would post a Thanksgiving celebration of a different type. It is a service of Thanksgiving to mark the centenary of the Royal College of Music in February 1982.

Westminster Abbey

The service took place in Westminster Abbey, and the musical selections were all written by former students and faculty of the college. All are liturgical, reflecting the strong historic emphasis on church music at the RCM. Four of the composers were alive at the time - Sir Michael Tippett, Herbert Howells, Gordon Jacob and Douglas Guest. The latter had just retired as organist and Master of the Choristers at the Abbey.

Sir David Willcocks

For this occasion, the choir and instrumentalists were conducted by Sir David Willcocks, the RCM Director at the time. The organist was Simon Preston. Both were RCM alumni.

The RCM was founded by the royal family, and one of its members has served since then as its President. At the time of the service, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother held that position. She later was succeeded by the Prince of Wales, who remains in the post. Both attended the service.

The program is well performed (except for one exposed brass mishap) and exceptionally well recorded by the BBC for broadcast live on Radio 3. The RCM later issued this LP of the music.

The service as presented by the BBC actually included several spoken passages that are not included on the LP. One musical selection appears to have been left out - Parry's Fantasia and Fugue in G, performed by organist Jane Watts, then an RCM student.

Herbert Howells

For me, the most affecting passages are those by Herbert Howells and Douglas Guest. Howells contributed two selections: the Te Deum from his Collegium Regale and the hymn "All my hope on God is founded." He wrote the latter in memory of his son Michael, who died young. (The cover ascribes the piece to Michael.) 

Guest's selection is a setting of Lawrence Binyon's "They Shall Grow Not Old," from Binyon's 1914 war poem, "For the Fallen."

But all the music is well worth hearing; I hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful holiday!

The Royal College of Music

Stuart Foster - A Fine, But Forgotten SInger

The subject of today's post, Stuart Foster (1918-68), is a former big-band vocalist who was not even that well known during his heyday, and recorded only sporadically under his own name. He was featured, however, on records by bandleaders as diverse as Guy Lombardo and Gordon Jenkins, and had a long career as a studio singer. Foster was much more talented than his reputation would suggest, as I hope you will agree after sampling his output.

Foster had a strong voice, even throughout his range, excellent diction and superior intonation. While a forthright singer, he also was sensitive to words.

For this post, I've combined 12 single sides that he made with assorted bandleaders from 1944 to 1953, together with a 1954 EP issued under his own name. These provide a good overview of his accomplishments.

Early Career and Singles

Foster's first professional gig was as a singer for the Ina Ray Hutton band, starting in 1940. When Hutton disbanded in 1944, he joined Guy Lombardo. Our playlist starts with two Lombardo singles. "The Trolley Song" comes from Meet Me in St. Louis; in that movie, Judy Garland's ride was exhilarating, while Lombardo's band just lumbers along, as was its habit. Foster does fine, though.

"Poor Little Rhode Island" is a Cahn and Styne song from another 1944 film, the Kay Kyser vehicle Carolina Blues. Foster is again encumbered by the clunky Lombardo Trio, but the song is a good one. It presumably was the inspiration for the slightly later "Rhode Island Is Famous for You" (from Dietz and Schwartz' Inside U.S.A., which can be found here).

We'll skip over Foster's 1944-48 residency with Tommy Dorsey, which has been covered in reissues of Dorsey's records, and move on to 1949, when the singer joined Russ Case in the M-G-M studio for three songs. The first, "A Thousand Violins," comes from the Bob Hope film The Great Lover. It was among the many songs that Livingston and Evans contributed to the movies of the time.

I can't say much about the pop tune "All Year 'Round," but "Mad About You" is a Victor Young-Ned Washington song written, appropriately enough, for Gun Crazy. Sinatra also recorded this number; Foster's interpretation is not inferior.

The following year, M-G-M had Foster join another dance maestro, Shep Fields, for a go at "Today, Tomorrow and Forever." By this time, Fields had ceded his "rippling rhythm" bubble-machine gimmick to Lawrence Welk, so this is not a bad outing, if hardly a swinger. Foster is excellent, as you should be able to discerned through the coos of his backing choir.

In 1951, mood-music maven Hugo Winterhalter brought Foster on board for four songs recorded for RCA Victor. The first is a Cy Coben compose-by-numbers piece called "The Seven Wonders of the World." The vocalist shines against Winterhalter's lush background.

Bob Hilliard and Sammy Fain wrote "Alice in Wonderland" for the movie of the same name. It's a lovely song, and is one of Foster's best records.

The vocalist's final two items for Winterhalter are in the semi-folk vein that was popular following the Weavers' big 1950 hit, "Goodnight, Irene." Frank Loesser wrote "Wave to Me, My Lady" back in 1946 for the country market, where it became a number three hit for Elton Britt. Foster is entirely convincing in this song - as he is on the flip side, "Across the Wide Missouri." The latter is a folk song usually called "Shenandoah," although here the songwriting team of Ervin Drake and Jimmy Shirl have attached their names to it. This effort is probably a cover of the Weavers-Terry Gilkyson record.

Foster was very well matched with the trumpet and big band of Billy Butterfield for "Baby Won't You Say You Love Me." Josef Myrow and Mack Gordon wrote the song for Betty Grable's Wabash Avenue, which improbably co-starred Victor Mature.

The final single is from 1953, and is one of Foster's best. "Secret Love" was written for Doris Day to sing in Calamity Jane, and it would be hard to top her legendary performance, but Foster comes close, aided by Gordon Jenkins' backing.

The Camden EP

The final batch of Foster performances are from a late 1954 EP that RCA issued on its Camden budget label. "Today's Hits" was a catch-all title that the company used for extended-play cover versions of the then-popular tunes. These were presumably RCA's method for counteracting the cheapo labels that had tried to succeed in the low-price niche.

We've had three such EPs on the blog before: 1955 and 1956 entries from another big-band fugitive, Bob Carroll, plus a Gisele MacKenzie disc that also dates from 1955.

Foster's EP starts with "I Need You Now," little remembered today but a number one hit for Eddie Fisher in 1954. "Count Your Blessings," in contrast, is a beloved evergreen introduced by Bing Crosby in White Christmas. I can't imagine anyone being unhappy with Foster's sensitive cover.

"Papa Loves Mambo" was a major hit for Perry Como. Foster's version shows off his fine sense of rhythm. The song "Teach Me Tonight" entered the charts several times in the early 50s; the song's appearance here was probably inspired by the Janet Brace or Jo Stafford recordings, or both.

The anonymous backing on the EP is by a small combo or combos.

I hope this has been a good introduction to a talented artist. The singles were remastered from lossless needle drops on Internet Archive. The EP is from my collection.

Also featuring Foster, I also have two Camden LPs from 1957 with the hits of the day, along with two albums of Broadway show tunes done by producer-arranger Dick Jacobs for Coral late in the 1950s. I may share these at a later date.

Billboard ad, January 1, 1955

Charles Mackerras and 'Pineapple Poll'

The young Charles Mackerras

The eminent conductor Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) is remembered as a Janáček and Mozart specialist, but he first became known for adapting the tunes of Sir Arthur Sullivan into the ingenious ballet score Pineapple Poll.

Sir Arthur Sullivan as seen by Spy

That came early in Mackerras' career, soon after he joined the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet as an assistant conductor. The future Sir Charles was a Gilbert & Sullivan aficionado, having both sung and played in Australian productions when young.

So when Sullivan's music left copyright in 1950, Mackerras had the idea of using the famous tunes for a ballet score. He and a colleague chose one of W.S. Gilbert's stories - which also had become the basis of HMS Pinafore - and turned it into a ballet scenario called Pineapple Poll. (That's "Poll" as in "Polly," not "poll" as in "polling booth.")

John Cranko

Mackerras' employer was intrigued - the ballet seemed like a good candidate for an appearance at the 1951 Festival of Britain - and enlisted two superb artists to bring the endeavor to life: the young choreographer John Cranko (1927-73) and the popular cartoonist Osbert Lancaster (1908-86), who had long had the ambition to design for the stage.

The result was a smash success, so much so that three months after the ballet's March opening, Mackerras and the Sadler's Wells Orchestra were in the studio, taping the score for UK Columbia. Today's post presents that LP and a follow-up stereo recording for HMV dating from 1960. Mackerras went on to record the piece twice more.

The 1951 Production and Recording

Pineapple Poll is a simple tale with four primary characters - Poll, a waterfront vendor, dashing Capt. Belaye, whom she and all other women on stage adore, Jasper, the pot boy who loves Poll, and Blanche, the high-class betrothed of Belaye.

Cranko's ballet somehow manages to convey the essence of Gilbert's nonsense without using any of his words. At the end, Belaye surprisingly becomes an admiral and walks off with Blanche (and her aunt), and Jasper even more surprisingly becomes a Captain himself and finally wins over Poll.

Osbert Lancaster's original painting for the Scene 3 set

From Scene 3: Elaine Fifield as Poll, Sheilah O'Reilly as the aunt, Stella Claire as Blanche and David Blair as Belaye

Mackerras did his own conjuring trick with the music; every last bar is taken from Sullivan, but all of it has been reorchestrated into a ballet score as irresistible as Gaîté Parisienne, which Manuel Rosenthal's had compiled from Jacques Offenbach's music for a 1938 ballet. 

The download includes an review of the 1951 Pineapple Poll production by Irving Kolodin, who praises the conductor-arranger: "As rearranged (mostly rescored, to get away from Sullivan's work-a-day treatment of the pit orchestra) by Charles Mackerras and vivaciously conducted by the same talented young man this was as far from the Savoy Theatre as the Savoy is from the Savoy-Plaza."

Elaine Fifield as Poll, David Poole as Jasper 

The subsequent recording was a hit with the critics, who praised Mackerras' ingenuity and for the most part the orchestral performance and recording. Seventy years later, the sound struck me as having a peculiar screechiness, which I've tamed.

The popularity of the ballet meant that the Mackerras recording soon had two rivals on the market - led by his fellow Sadler's Wells conductors, Robert Irving and John Lanchbery. This hardly seems collegial. 

The download includes a couple dozen production photos, some from the premiere, some from later in the decade. It also contains photos of all Osbert Lancaster's set designs and many of the costumes.

Sir Osbert Lancaster

The 1960 Recording

Probably seeing the benefit of a new stereo recording and possibly spurred by a 1959 televised production from Sadler's Wells, HMV invited Mackerras to visit Abbey Road Studio 1, where he and the Royal Philharmonic re-recorded the Pineapple Poll score in resplendent sound. At least it has long been considered to be resplendent - I found it both boomy and tinny, the products of a boosted low-end and high-end, the usual recipe for "high fidelity."

Slightly tamed, however, it is revealed to be quite an improvement on the first recording, and Mackerras' mastery of the orchestra and score continue to be impressive.

For its cover, HMV decided to give us a close-up of a pineapple rather than something more germane to the ballet. That said, I am not sure that US Columbia's cover for the 1951 recording (see above) is much more attractive, with its focus on Capt. Belaye's muttonchops. The UK Columbia reissue cover is below - it at least has a production photo on view.

Second cover design for the UK Columbia recording

Seeing the Production

From the Birmingham Royal Ballet production

Pineapple Poll is still produced; the Birmingham Royal Ballet (successor to the Sadler's Wells Theatre Ballet) has staged it, and a few photos are in the download.

The ballet was presented on television in 1959, with Mackerras conducting. The production has come out on DVD, but is now out of print. You can see it, however, on Medici.tv, a subscription service. Part of the first scene can be found on YouTube.

Also available on YouTube is a good 1980 performance from the Australian Ballet. It's in color, but appears to have been transferred from a VHS copy with distorted sound.

The download includes a detailed list of the sources of Mackerras' G&S plundering. This and the vintage souvenir photos come from the Gilbert & Sullivan Archive. The Columbia LP was cleaned up from lossless files on Internet Archive. The HMV disc is from my collection. The download also contains quite a number of reviews of the 1951 disc.

Charles Mackerras by James Romaine Govett (1966)