"How to Murder Your Wife' and Other Fatal Attractions

Titling a film How to Murder Your Wife is probably not a maneuver that would succeed today, but in 1964 it was just fine as the name of a farce with Jack Lemmon as the prospective perpetrator and Virna Lisi as the intended victim.

Neal Hefti

Accompanying the action was an entirely characteristic but highly enjoyable, light-hearted score by Neal Hefti. This is the third such '60s score from his pen that has appeared here, following Sex and the Single Girl and Harlow. I'm posting it in response to a suggestion by longtime blog follower woolfnotes.

To fill out today's program, I've added nine "fatal attractions" - singles with "murder" (or in one case, "killing") in the title. Unlike Hefti's swingin' sixties motifs, these numbers from earlier decades cover the blues, jazz, Western swing, vocals and big bands - and even include another "murder" soundtrack theme.

How to Murder Your Wife

Lobby card

As you might expect, the How to Murder Your Wife proceedings were more innocent than the inflammatory title would indicate. The plot is more labyrinthine than I care to explain, but it involves Lemmon as an improbably rich cartoonist - with Terry-Thomas as a valet, no less - who ends up inadvertently married to the amazingly good-looking Lisi. The latter starts spending all his hard-drawn earnings and demanding constant sex, which wears Lemmon to a frazzle. He did have it tough, eh?

Terry-Thomas, Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi

Anyway, his fantasies of getting rid of her make it into his cartoon strip "Bash Brannigan," which star characters that look suspiciously like Lemmon and Lisi. I believe it all works out in the end, although Hefti finishes his score with the dirge, "Requiem for a Bachelor."

Bash Brannigan's fiendish plot

This all reflects the Playboy ethos of the time, and is so dated as to be seeming to come from another world. But there are compensations: Lemmon is always good, Terry-Thomas is perfect, and Lemmon's lawyer is played by the wonderful Eddie Mayehoff, he of the pop eyes and massive underbite. Also, Lemmon's enormous bachelor pad is not in the least dated - it would be in perfect taste even today, almost 60 years later.

Jack Lemmon and Eddie Mayehoff

Hefti's music is well suited to this Richard Quine comedy. You will immediately recognize its resemblance to his other scores of the period, including pre-echoes of the theme to The Odd Couple - another Lemmon opus.

The Other 'Fatal Attractions'

As usual with such compilations, I'll present the constituent parts of the "other fatal attractions" in chronological order.

First we have "Murder in the Moonlight (It's Love in the First Degree)," a contrived title if ever I've heard one, courtesy of the unknown to me but impressively named Ray Nichols and His Four Towers Orchestra, with its nasal vocalist Billie Hibberd. Nichols started recording as far back as 1925; this waxing comes from his final session, in 1935.

Lil Armstrong

"It's Murder" comes from the pen, piano and vocal chords of Lil Hardin Armstrong, by this time (1936) a veteran recording artist, here with her Swing Orchestra. This is a enjoyable piece from Armstrong, soon to be divorced from husband Louis.

Speaking of good music, it doesn't get much better than "She's Killing Me" from Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, with a classic lineup including vocalist Tommy Duncan, fiddler Jesse Ashlock, trumpeter Everett Stover and pianist Al Stricklin, all of whom Wills name checks. The disc is a cover of a 1931 Nichols Brothers effort. Wills recorded his version the day after Hardin's session (September 28, 1936), also in Chicago.

Tommy Duncan and Bob Wills

We move over to London for a 1937 date by American clarinetist Danny Polo and His Swing Stars, a group selected from Ambrose and His Orchestra, where Polo was ensconced in the reed section. "Blue Murder" is a Dixieland-tinged instrumental, a style that Polo and Ambrose's high-toned musicians handle pretty well.

J.B. Marcum

"The Murder of J.B. Markham" is an unusual outing for songwriter-singer Johnny Mercer. This folk ballad was apparently inspired by a field recording captured by Alan Lomax earlier that same year (1937). That was based on the true story of crusading attorney J.B. Marcum, who had been assassinated on the steps of a Kentucky courthouse in 1903. Mercer's record is the only one of our 78s that concerns itself with a real, as opposed to a figurative or fictional murder. His reading is lively but inappropriately jaunty.

From 1941 we have a hard-swinging instrumental, "Murder at Peyton Hall," from the big band of Charlie Barnet. The leader's alto is featured throughout the riff tune, with Cliff Leeman's powerful drums also much in evidence. Neal Hefti later would do arrangements for Barnet (notably "Skyliner"), but this chart is by the bandleader himself. The title's significance, if any, is a mystery to me.

Charlie Barnet serenades his pet Herman

Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh wrote "'Murder,' He Says" as a specialty for the hyper-kinetic Betty Hutton to introduce in the 1943 film Happy-Go-Lucky. Introduce she did; record she did not, at least not until this 1951 version with Pete Rugolo. By that time, the hep lingo had dated, but Hutton's knock-'em-down performance had not. She is far more lively than such genteel vocalists as Dinah Shore, who recorded the song back in 1943. You really only get the full Hutton effect from a video, by the way.

Dimitri Tiomkin

A much different experience is provided by Dimitri Tiomkin's "Theme from Dial 'M' for Murder," the film where Ray Milland tries to murder Grace Kelly (go figure). This Coral single is all that was recorded of the score at the time (1955). It was backed by the composer's far more popular "Theme from The High and the Mighty," which benefited in the film from Muzzy Marcellino's iconic whistling. The hit versions of the latter tune were by Les Baxter and LeRoy Holmes; the composer's own recording (not included here) was a late entry.

St. Louis Jimmy Oden

To complete our "fatal attractions" we have "Murder in the First Degree" by the veteran blues musician St. Louis Jimmy Oden, who was actually from Nashville and worked in Chicago. On this circa 1956 Parrot release, Oden is backed by the band of drummer Red Saunders, who in those days was a busy musician in the Chicago studios.

The How to Murder You Wife LP is from my collection; the 78s are courtesy of Internet Archive with restoration by me. The sound on all the singles is very good, except for some surface noise on Lil Armstrong's record. How to Murder Your Wife had the slightly shrill sonics that afflicted many 60s recordings. I've tamed that tendency a bit.

William Warfield's First Recordings - Loewe Ballads and Ancient Music

Today's post completes the collection of the four early LPs by the great American bass-baritone William Warfield, as issued by Columbia in the early 1950s.

This 1951 album presents an unusual coupling, bringing together "Ancient Music of the Church" with ballads by the German Romantic composer Carl Loewe (1796-1869). I believe the latter songs may have been products of Warfield's first recording session.

William Warfield

The disparate program may have been designed to appeal to the enthusiastic audiences who had attended Warfield's first two Town Hall recitals. For his debut in March 1950, the singer had programmed three of the Loewe ballads and three of the "ancient music" settings as found on the LP, and he performed the other items during his 1951 recital.

The New York Times was enthusiastic following Warfield's debut. Of the Loewe ballads, the reviewer stated, "Mr, Warfield turned in quick succession: from the light charm of 'Kleiner Hausalt' to the lyric tenderness of 'Suesses Begraebnis' to the spirited vigor of 'Odins Meeres-Ritt.' It was a tour de force, for ordinarily one would think it would take a soprano to carry off the first, a tenor the second and a bass the last. Yet the singer did each practically perfectly in its own way."

The early music works elicited this reaction: "This revealed still another facet of his talent, for he also has the gifts of the oratorio singer" - foreshadowing Warfield's success in that field.

Warfield in the studio

Also on the program for Warfield's premiere recital were a Fauré song, a new work by John Klein and a spiritual, concluding with two jubilee songs for which Warfield provided his own accompaniment. Otherwise, his usual pianist, the excellent Otto Herz, was at the keyboard.

Among the items on Warfield's 1951 recital was Howard Swanson's song "Cahoots," which I shared last year in the premiere recording by Helen Thigpen.

Although Carl Loewe's songs are not often heard today, he was a talented composer whose works have an immediate appeal. The settings heard here are of poetry by Friedrich Rückert, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Aloys Schreiber. The LP did not provide texts or translations, but I've added them to the download.

The "Ancient Music of the Church" selections are by the 12th century composer Pérotin, the transitional figures Claudio Monteverdi and Heinrich Schütz, and the Baroque composer Andreas Hammerschmidt. While I am certainly not an expert on such matters, I suspect these readings would be considered anachronistic these days. Performance practices have changed drastically in the 70 years since these recordings. Warfield's singing is expressive, nonetheless.

Andrew Tietjen

His accompanist here, Andrew Tietjen, was the associate organist of New York's Trinity Church. He would die young just a few years later; his obituary is in the download.

The download also includes both Times reviews mentioned above and three reviews of the LP, all laudatory.

The earlier installments in this series of Warfield recordings were:

• Schumann - Liederkreis and Brahms - Four Serious Songs
• Copland - Old American Songs and Dougherty - Sea Chanteys
• "Deep River" - folk and folk-influenced songs

The Complete Marian Bruce

I post the work of obscure vocalists from time to time, and here is one worthy of your attention. The singer's name is Marian Bruce, who had a relatively brief career in the New York cabarets, then went on to distinguish herself in the battle for civil rights.

Bruce's recording career lasted just a few years. I've only been able to find a single album, made in 1958 for Riverside, plus several numbers from 1957, one with Clark Terry and seven with Luther Henderson. I've assembled all these for this post.

The Halfway to Dawn LP

I transferred Bruce's Riverside LP, Halfway to Dawn, from a record in my collection. For that outing, she was backed by a talented group of jazz musicians - trumpeter Joe Wilder, pianist Jimmy Jones, guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Al Hall.

Her playlist is particularly well chosen, and likely reflects the repertoire she employed in such New York cabarets as Le Ruban Bleu and The Blue Angel. There are multiple songs by Rodgers and Hart/Hammerstein, the Gershwins and Duke Ellington. We also hear Bart Howard's "Let Me Love You," a favorite of the cabaret crowd, and the superb Coates-Attwood song "No One Ever Tells You." The latter is associated with Frank Sinatra, whom Bruce named her favorite singer. (I can't disagree.)

Joe Wilder

The set opens with the too-seldom-heard "Lucky to Be Me," a Bernstein, Comden and Green song from On the Town. Judging from Joe Wilder's solo, the trumpeter thinks that Lenny was inspired by the opening verse from "Stardust."

Closing the set is the wonderful "Don't Like Goodbyes," the Harold Arlen-Truman Capote song from House of Flowers that was introduced by Pearl Bailey. The song is certainly well done, but Bruce did not have the personality of a Pearlie Mae (who does?). and the result sounds cautious. But let's not make too much of this, because she was a talented singer, one with excellent diction who is often eloquent on her own terms.

Bruce had been introduced to Riverside records by trumpeter Clark Terry, then of the Ellington band and also a Riverside artist. Terry had used her on his Duke with a Difference LP, where she sang "In a Sentimental Mood." That effort is included in the download.

Songs with Luther Henderson

The distinguished arranger Luther Henderson was relatively early in his career when he recorded the Last Night When We Were Young LP in 1958. It appears to have been Henderson's first solo outing.

Luther Henderson

Henderson used Marian Bruce and Ozzie Bailey as his vocalists, Bruce on one side, Bailey on the other, with duets on two numbers. They are backed by an unidentified sextet.

Bruce's solo numbers are again similar to those you might have heard in a night spot of the period - "All in Fun," "Last Night When We Were Young," "Lonesomest Gal in Town" and "You Can Have Him," along with Henderson's "What Can I Say to You Now." On these selections, Bruce sounds more at ease than on her own LP. 

These numbers were remastered from lossless files found on Internet Archive.

Marian Bruce Logan and the Civil Rights Movement

Marian Bruce Logan and Coretta Scott King

Marian Bruce became a significant civil rights figure after her singing career ended. By that time, she was known as Marian Bruce Logan, having married Dr. Arthur Logan, an eminent surgeon and community leader in New York. 

Biographical information at the University of South Carolina notes that she first engaged in community work through the Student Emergency Fund, which helped African-American students make tuition payments. This effort came to the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who asked for her assistance in raising funds for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

She soon became the first Northern member of the SCLC board, remaining with the organization until 1969. She capped her career in 1977 when she was appointed as the Human Rights Commissioner of New York City by Mayor Abraham Beame.

Marian Bruce Logan died in 1993 at age 73. Her New York Times obituary is in the download, together with a few brief reviews of the LPs.

Constant Lambert Conducts Boyce, Rossini, Offenbach and Suppé

For some time, we've been presenting the works that Constant Lambert (1901-51) produced as composer, arranger and conductor. For today's post Lambert assumes the latter two roles. The main work is his arrangement of the music of the English baroque composer William Boyce for the 1940 Vic-Wells ballet The Prospect Before Us. Completing the program are his recordings of popular works by Gioachino Rossini, Jacques Offenbach and Franz von Suppé.

Boyce-Lambert - The Prospect Before Us

The Prospect Before Us - act drop

Lambert was a proponent of the music of his baroque-period predecessor William Boyce (1711-79). He edited Boyce's symphonies for publication and arranged his music for use in the comic ballet The Prospect Before Us, which opened in summer 1940 with choreography by Ninette de Valois.

The ballet was suggested by a 1791 print of the same name by the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), which depicts cavorting dancers on the stage of the Kings Theatre. (See below - I've brightened and clarified the faded original.)

Thomas Rowlandson - The Prospect Before Us

For the work, de Valois constructed a scenario pivoting on two rival theatrical managers who fight over the best dancers, with it all ending up with the calamity depicted on Roger Furse's act-drop at the top of this section.

Robert Helpmann

The download includes several of Furse's sketches for the costumes and a number of the publicity photos for the production. One such is Robert Helpmann's dance as one of the managers, shown above.

Lambert took the Sadler's Wells Orchestra into Abbey Road Studio No. 1 on August 1, 1940, less than a month after the ballet opened. The performance is as lively and high-spirited as the ballet must have been. The work was a popular success, serving as a diversion from the realities of wartime.

The download also includes reviews from The New Records and from The Gramophone, the latter of which provides a useful synopsis of the ballet.

Rossini - William Tell Ballet Music

Detail from 1939 Gramophone ad

Lambert also conducted his Sadler's Wells Orchestra in this 1939 Kingsway Hall recording of the ballet music from Rossini's opera William Tell. The sessions were not in conjunction with a Vic-Wells performance, as far as I can determine.

Some parts of this music may be familiar from having appeared in re-orchestrated form in Britten's Matinées and Soirées Musicales. Much of it is delightful, although the Gramophone reviewer drolly and accurately noted that, "There is a cornet solo of the kind beloved of the pier on Part 2." The music is very well performed and recorded, and as always, Lambert's touch is sure.

Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld Overture

Although he was the Vic-Wells music director, Lambert also recorded with orchestras other than the Sadler's Wells forces. Here, just a month after the Rossini recording, he was again in the Kingsway Hall, this time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The session was again devoted to music from the opera - the delightful overture to Offenbach's comic masterpiece Orpheus in the Underworld.

That's not to say that Offenbach actually wrote the overture per se - it was apparently concocted by the Austrian Carl Binder for a performance in Vienna. Nor was the concluding "can-can" originally devised as such. This galop from the score was co-opted by the Folies Bergère folks for their famous dance well after Offenbach's death.

Perhaps needless to say, Lambert and the orchestra do this to a turn - although I will note that the LPO's playing is not superior to that of the Sadler's Wells band in the recordings above.

Suppé - Overture Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna

While two of Franz von Suppé's best known and most parodied works are overtures to two of his seldom-heard operettas (Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry), the third was an early, stand-alone overture titled Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna. Like the others, it was used as the backdrop to a mid-century cartoon, in this case one of Bugs Bunny's conducting escapades.

Although I much admire Lambert, he did favor a few composers who leave me cold, notably Liszt but also Suppé, whose music strikes me as noisily insubstantial. That said, Lambert makes the most of the piece in this 1950 Kingsway Hall recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra, made near the end of the conductor's short life.

The transfers for all these works come to us through the good graces of Internet Archive, and were edited and remastered by me. The sound is uniformly excellent for its period.

Completing the Early André Previn Collection

My good friend Scoredaddy, one of this blog's earliest supporters, asked me for more early André Previn piano recordings. Specifically, he wondered if there were more items from Previn's years with RCA Victor (1947-53).

There were, and this post presents all such Victor recordings that have not previously appeared on this site, mainly drawn from two 10-inch LPs in my collection, Piano Program and Plays Harry Warren. Both albums came out in 1951, although the sessions were held mainly in the previous year. In addition to the LPs, we have two songs from a 1947 single that hasn't been offered here before.

As far as I can tell, if you combine this post with my previous efforts, you will have all of Previn's early piano sessions on RCA Victor. You also will have the even earlier recordings he did for the Sunset label, and a bunch of later material - a film score, songs, pop records and a classical date. Previn could - and did - do it all in the realm of music.

I also want to plug a related new post on my other blog - it consists of four live recordings released by the Modern label. These apparently came from a 1947 "Just Jazz" concert held in Pasadena. Also on the singles blog, you'll find an earlier post presenting several Previn V-Discs dating from 1946.

André Previn Piano Program

The André Previn Piano Program LP includes the following songs that will be new to those who have been collecting my Previn posts: "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," "Dearly Beloved," "I've Got My Eye on You" and "September in the Rain." The other two songs on the album also appeared on Camden reissues I've uploaded previously.

Previn's accompanying trio on the LP includes Bob Bain, guitar, Lloyd Pratt, bass, and Ralph Collier, drums. Several of the songs also have string arrangements, which Previn presumably wrote.

The cover above may look familiar to those who have followed these posts. One of my earlier collections included an EP that had the same busy graphics as this LP, but different contents. This is the opposite of the usual record company approach, i.e., the same contents with different covers.

André Previn Plays Harry Warren

By 1950, Previn was an old Hollywood hand, having worked in the studios since he was in high school. For this LP, he paid homage to another LA luminary, the songwriter Harry Warren.

For a renowned songwriter, Warren was unusual in that he wrote primarily for the movies. All eight tunes in this collection were first heard on a sound stage. The liner notes mention that Warren did not achieve the same fame as other leading songwriters, even though he had won three Academy Awards. But his compositions were known far and wide, as you will discover when you scan the contents for this disc.

The following songs have not appeared here before in a Previn version: "I Only Have Eyes for You," "I'll String Along with You," "Lullaby of Broadway," "I Know Why and So Do You" and "Jeepers Creepers."

Bain, Pratt and Collier again compose the backing trio, but there are no strings arrangements in this set.

"I Didn't Know What Time It Was" and "Should I"

Our final Previn record on RCA is a 1947 single coupling of "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" and "Should I." As far as I can tell, it has not been reissued.

The backing musicians are Al Viola, guitar, Lloyd Pratt or Chic Parnell, bass, and Jackie Mills, drums.

This record comes to us from Internet Archive, cleaned up for posting here.

To close out, let me add one more plug for the post of Previn's four 1947 live recordings issued on the Modern label, new on Buster's Swinging Singles.