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)

More Tchaikovsky - Ballet Suites from Boult

Sir Adrian Boult

In posting these ballet suites from The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, it may seem like I am getting a head start on the holiday season. The timing is a coincidence, however; this particular transfer is in response to a request.

The conductor is Sir Adrian Boult, whose recordings are always welcome on this blog. We have heard him most recently in the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Indeed, I've only had Boult here in English music (Elgar, Britten, Arnold, in addition to RVW). 

That narrow focus does Sir Adrian a disservice; he was a distinguished conductor of all types of music, and often programmed the works of Tchaikovsky. Of course, he didn't know the Russian composer, as he did all the English composers mentioned above. Still, their lifetimes did slightly overlap, the conductor being born in 1889, and the composer dying in 1893.

Boult recorded music from The Nutcracker on three occasions; this was his only recording of music from Sleeping Beauty. The set was done with the Royal Philharmonic in 1967. This particular record, may have been, in fact, the first Nutcracker I owned. Many have come (and gone) since then. The Nutcracker music has appeared here as conducted by Arthur Fiedler, Frederick Stock, Sir Thomas Beecham, Paul van Kempen and Fritz Lehmann. You can hear music from Sleeping Beauty led by Nicolai Malko, Constant Lambert and Robert Irving.

The Studio 2 edition

The two suites from Boult and the RPO were first issued in UK Columbia's Studio Two series. That was EMI's answer to Decca's Phase 4. Both were designed to be "sonic spectaculars." At the time, that meant they employed multiple microphones for a close-up view of the proceedings, rather as if you were sitting on Sir Adrian's rostrum and getting in his way.

In practice, whether because of the close-in mikes or knob-twiddling by the engineers, the result was a much-elevated frequency response in the upper mid-range and high frequencies. I've not tinkered with the sonic balance; your tone controls, if you have them, should be at the ready.

The Seraphim edition

This transfer is from the US Seraphim edition of 1971. The record suffers from the usual poor surfaces of the time, which in this case started with drop-outs in the first few measures of The Nutcracker. These were present on two different pressings, so apparently were induced in mastering. I have replaced those opening few seconds with another performance sonically matched to the EMI edition. You may notice a shift in perspective when Boult takes over.

Even with some caveats about the sound, these are buoyant performances that will give much pleasure. Sir Adrian had experience as a ballet conductor early in his career, and his tempos are generally pleasing, although I doubt that any troupe of Russian dancers could keep pace with his accelerando during The Nutcracker's Trepak.

In The Nutcracker, in addition to the selections contained in Op. 71a, Sir Adrian inserts the Pas de deux (No. 14a) before the concluding Waltz of the Flowers.

I have to observe that of the two covers above, I much prefer the graceful ballet image chosen by EMI to the drab mash-up of Peter Max and Petipa offered by Seraphim.

Although this record was originally issued in EMI's Studio 2 series, it was actually taped in Studio 1 at Abbey Road. At the time of the sessions, Abbey Road Studio 2 was the lair of the Beatles. The Fab Ones and the great conductor apparently were not in the building simultaneously, however. Otherwise, Sir Adrian could have conducted "I Am the Walrus," which was on the group's docket at the time. He had the moustache for it.

Sir Adrian in the studio, 1969

Singles from The Martins and Ralph Blane

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin

The songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were successes from the beginning of their partnership, which began with the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward. It was a typical campus comedy, enlivened by a spectacular series of songs, ranging from the wistful "Ev'ry Time" to the raucous "Buckle Down, Winsocki." (The Winsocki Military Academy was the site of the proceedings.)

But the team didn't start off as songwriters. Both were singers, who met in the chorus of 1937's Hooray For What?, a Lindsay and Crouse show with songs by Arlen and Harburg.

Not long after, the two formed a singing group called The Martins, adding two female voices. They eventually became a featured act on Fred Allen's popular radio show, then were added to Irving Berlin's 1940 musical Louisiana Purchase, for which they wrote the vocal arrangements. In the show, The Martins sang the title song with Carol Bruce and "(Dance with Me) Tonight at the Mardi Gras." There is no cast album, but Bruce's own recordings of two songs from the score can be found here.

The Martins: Ralph Blane, Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers, Hugh Martin

By the time of Louisiana Purchase's opening, the sister combo of Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers were the female voices in The Martins. A labored article in the April 1941 issue or Radio Parade, surely the work of a publicist, depicted this lineup. (The piece is included in the download.)

Today's post includes five songs recorded by The Martins, and seven by Ralph Blane as a soloist.

Singles by The Martins

Of the five recordings by The Martins that I've located (thank you, Internet Archive), two are devoted to the same song.

The Martins' first recording (at least of the ones I've located) is probably an obscurity on the Hit of the Week label. It is under the name of Leighton Noble, a hotel bandleader who made recordings sporadically from 1938-50, with a "vocal refrain" by The Martins.

The song is "Skip to My Lou," almost certainly a feature of the group's act. The song is attributed here to Hugh Martin, probably reflecting his arrangement of the piece. It is, however, a folk dance song dating to the 1840s at the latest. ("Lou" is thought to be a corruption of "love.")

I was surprised to find this song on the Hit of the Week label, which I thought had disappeared in the Great Depression. I haven't found any information on this later incarnation. The label says it came from the Holyoke Plastics company, whose product in this instance was chewed up by the heavyweight tone arms of the time. (In other words, you get some noise with the music.)

We don't know the exact date of the Hit of the Week record, but we can date the result of The Martins' output. Columbia brought the group into its studios for an August 1941 session, in the run-up to Best Foot Forward's October opening. 

The first release resulting from the session was two songs from the musical, "The Three B's" and "Just a Little Joint with a Jukebox." The second 78 coupled "Watch the Birdie" from the film version of Hellzapoppin' (sung there by Martha Raye and the Six Hits) and a second recording of "Skip to My Lou," virtually identical to the Noble version. (Martin and Blane also managed to work this piece into their superb 1944 score for Meet Me in St. Louis, in a somewhat similar arrangement that translates beautifully to the screen.)

The orchestra leader for the Columbia recordings was Franklyn Marks, who is said to have done some work on the Best Foot Forward orchestrations.

You may detect the influence of Kay Thompson in the vocal writing. Both Martin and Blane were associated with her; Martin sang in her group even before he met Blane, and Blane sang with her even at the peak of their Meet Me in St. Louis fame.

Singles by Ralph Blane

Ralph Blane

Despite being yoked together as a songwriting team, Martin and Blane also worked separately - and even were reputed to work separately on the songs attributed to them as a team. In his later years, Hugh Martin asserted that he was the main creative force in the duo, and that may well have been the case. 

"I was never jealous of Ralph except for two things: 'Buckle Down, Winsocki' and his glorious voice," said Martin a few years before his death. Well, "Buckle Down" is indeed a grand march and Blane did indeed have a glorious voice.

The pair did just one LP - Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane from 1956, which I featured here many years ago, and which is still available. It includes Blane's recording of "Ev'ry Time" (one of my favorite songs), which they did not otherwise record.

As far as I know, Blane's recordings as a solo vocalist began with a 1944 Johnny Green date, where he assayed the composer's "Out of Nowhere" and "I'm Yours," the latter perhaps more elegantly than the former. These were two of the eight songs that Green recorded at the time for a projected album, which in the event did not come out until 1947. Three other songs involved the Kay Thompson Singers, who almost certainly included Blane. The set is available here.

[Update: reader Unknown has found an earlier Blane single - you can find it on my other blog.]

Blane's solo recordings continued with a one-off Artie Shaw date for Musicraft where he sang Martin and Blane's "Connecticut." The piece had been written for an Army show in 1946, at about the time Shaw and Blane recorded it. Martin's view of the writing credits are as follows: "Meredith Willson asked me to write a song about 'Connecticut,' which I did, words and music." Regardless, is a clever song, nicely done here.

Bandleader George Cates brought Blane in for the vocals on two floral tunes done in 1950 for the relatively new label Coral. These included the then-new "American Beauty Rose," a remarkably bad song that Sinatra somehow recorded twice, and "Roses," an attractive country song written by Tim Spencer. The latter was apparently a follow-up to Spencer's big 1949 hit, "Room Full of Roses," which was a top-ten country song for both George Morgan and Spencer's former group the Sons of the Pioneers.

Our final Blane release came out on the short-lived Pan-American label in 1953. It offered two songs from the Blane-Bob Wells-Josef Myrow score for Jane Russell's musical The French Line. The soundtrack to that film has appeared here, but believe me, neither the tolerable Russell nor the toneless Gilbert Roland are any match for Blane in the title song and "Wait 'Til You See Paris."

In addition to the items mentioned above, Martin and Blane songs can also be heard on the soundtrack to the odd M-G-M musical Athena.

Except for the Hit of the Week 78 noted above, the sound on all these records is excellent.