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."

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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!"

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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