My friend and occasional collaborator John Morris has come up with a discography of Matt Dennis' MacGregor transcriptions. This allows me to shed some light on the recording dates (years, at least) for the various songs in my recent post, and provides information on other recordings that have yet to come to light.
Here is a listing of all Dennis' transcriptions. The items included in my post are in blue boldface. Note that as I speculated, these recordings all date from the 1940s. "Angel Eyes" was recorded in 1946, soon after it was written.
1945
Matt Dennis/Eddie Skrivanek: Will You Still Be Mine/ Everything Happens to Me/ Let's Get Away From It All/ The Night We Called It a Day
1946
Matt Dennis: Angel Eyes/ Hitch Up the Sleigh/ Tonight Is Ours/ Natch/ I Haven't the Heart
October 1947
Matt Dennis: Lazy Countryside/ A Fellow Needs a Girl/ Saturday Date/ White Christmas/ I Still Get Jealous
November 1947
Matt Dennis: Rock Me to Sleep/ True/ Penthouse Serenade (When We're Alone)/ They Can't Take that Away from Me/ Can't We Be Friends?
January 1948
Matt Dennis: You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me/ Street
of Dreams/ Easy to Love/ Things that Couldn't Happen/ Between the
Devil and the
April 1948 (?)
Matt Dennis Trio: Sheik of Araby/ Little Kiss Each
Morning/ On Revival Day/ I Only Have Eyes for You/ ’Way Down Yonder in
Matt Dennis Trio: Riders in the Sky/ Don't Blame
Me/ By the
Note: Birth of the Blues and Yes Sir, That's My Baby with Eddie Skrivanek's Sextette from Hunger apparently come from commercial issues, presumably from the same period.
8 comments:
These can't be too common if they haven't turned up at the Internet Archive. I'll keep an eye out, but I'm not overly optimistic.
The Skrivaneks are up Internet Archive together with about another dozen Mac Gregors under his name, several of which list full personnel. The issue numbers seem quite near the Dennis sides so there also possible Skrivanek (bjo/gtr) George Thow(tpt) Joe Yukl(trb) Blake Reynolds(clt) Charlie LaVere (p) Don Hopkins(b) and (could we believe ?) Zutty Singleton (d) date suggested 1950. None of these are in my (old) Lord. That's what great about this blog, it sends you to obscure spots others do not.
just found these sides Lord under 'Sextette From Hunger'
George Thow (tp) Joe Yukl (tb) Blake Reynolds (cl) Charlie LaVere (p) Eddie Skrivanek (g) Country Washburn (b,tu) Bob Gonzelmann (d) Los Angeles, 1949-50
Birth of the blues - MacGregor 1002
Lock, stock and barrelhouse
Darktown strutters ball - MacGregor 1003
Yes sir, that's my baby
Thanks! There aren't very many out there, in my experience.
zoot - Many thanks! Very helpful. Confirms my surmise they were from the same period as the other items.
Gotta say: thanks for the transcriptions. A treasure !
Ravel - You are welcome!
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