Stuart Foster with Tommy Dorsey, Part 2

This is the second half of our look at the complete Stuart Foster recordings with Tommy Dorsey. Both this and the first installment are courtesy of vocal aficionado Bryan Cooper, who was kind enough to compile all 50 titles for us.

Previously, we covered recordings from 1945 and 1946. Today, we pick up with some additional 1946 dates, then add the 1947 discs that were the last from Foster's stay in the Dorsey band. Those final recordings were on December 27, 1947, just a few days before the second American Federation of Musicians recording ban began.

Completing the 1946 Recordings

Our first selection comes from a July 1946 session that also produced "Gotta Get Me Someone to Love," the desperate-sounding tune that completed Part 1 of this survey. "That's My Home" is another one of the cowhand specialties that were popular then. Tunesmith Sid Robin's first hit was "Just Because," a 1938 country tune that was to become a massive hit for polka-meister Frankie Yankovic in 1948.

In August, Foster and Dorsey produced "There Is No Breeze (To Cool the Flame of Love)," from composer Alex Alstone and lyricists Roger Bernstein and André Tabet, the team that produced the successful "Symphony" in 1945. "There Is No Breeze" did not start the charts on fire, but even so it is a pleasant item, here in an excellent, romantic performance.

The B-side of "There Is No Breeze" was "This Time," a nice if non-memorable Paul Weston tune here in a sterling performance by Foster that is thankfully not undermined by Dorsey's sluggish tempo.

By this time, Dorsey and crew had moved lock, stock arrangements and trombones to Hollywood, where Tommy and brother Jimmy were starring in The Fabulous Dorseys. Tommy made only one commercial recording of music from the film: "To Me," an Allie Wrubel-Don George piece. It was sung by Janet Blair in the pic, but here is done by Foster. Blair, a former Hal Kemp vocalist, played a singer in the film.

Tommy Dorsey, Janet Blair, Stuart Foster

Foster appears in the film; he gets to play it straight throughout "Marie" in the face of that horrifying invention of the time, the band vocal. The whole film is on YouTube (see below); Foster's vocal starts at about 1:12:55. In the clip, you will see a reaction shot from Dorsey's mother, played by Sara Allgood, who within 20 years had gone from the lead in O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock to beaming at "son" Tommy as the band shouts, "Livin' in a great big way, MAMA!"

From The Fabulous Dorseys, we move on to another Irish clan, the McLonergans, and two songs from the splendid Yip Harburg-Burton Lane score for Finian's Rainbow. Foster's first item from the show is "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" The tempo is too slow, but still the performance has a lovely opening with a muted Dorsey, and a good vocal. Foster plays it straight; no dialect, thank goodness.

"Glocca Morra" is a wistful song, but "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" is both wry and sly. Too bad that Dorsey takes it much too slow, missing the humor in the piece.

The 1947 Recordings

For the first 1947 session, Foster tried his hand with two exceptional Cahn-Styne songs from Sinatra's latest film, It Happened in Brooklyn: "Time After Time" and "It Happens Every Spring." As was often the case, the tempo is too slow on both tunes. While these both have their moments, "Time After Time" needs more ardor and "It Happens" more snap.

Also from this January date came one of the less successful classical adaptations of the time - "A Thousand and One Nights" from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Both the arrangement and lyrics are undistinguished, but Foster and Dorsey do what they can.

The bandleader and singer were back in form for two songs recorded later in January. "My Love for You" has a pleasing melody that is right in Foster's sweet spot. But the better item is "Spring Isn't Everything," one terrific song, with a superior melody by Harry Warren and lyrics by Ralph Blane. It was written for Summer Holiday (filmed in 1946 but not released until 1948) but apparently not used. IMDb suggests there is an outtake with Walter Huston gargling the tune.

Acknowledging that the business was not what it once had been, Dorsey broke up his band early in 1947. But he would soon be back in business, and Foster would be with him.

After a several-month hiatus from recording, Dorsey returned in July with his new band and new vocal accomplices for Stuart Foster. They were the Town Criers, comprising four siblings: Elva, Lucy Ann, Gordon and Vernon Polk. Like the Sentimentalists, the Criers were a highly accomplished group, who already had worked with such bands as Kay Kyser and Bob Crosby.

The Town Criers flank Kay Kyser: Vernon, Elva, Lucy Ann, Gordon

After the Town Criers disbanded in 1948, Lucy Ann went on to become vocalist with Les Brown, and to make quite a few recordings. Our own Bryan Cooper, the savant behind these Foster-Dorsey posts, recently produced a superb two-CD set of all Lucy Ann's non-LP recordings. More information is here; you can order from Amazon.

Foster's first effort with the Polks was "I'll Be There," an OK Sam Stept song, taken (again) too slowly. Stept had had a recent success with "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."

Also from that July 1 session came "The Old Piano Tuner," "Deep Valley" and "Just an Old Love of Mine."

"The Old Piano Tuner" (any relation to "The Old Lamplighter" or "The Old Master Painter"?), is more light textured and spirited than some of the other songs in this compilation.

"Deep Valley" is taken from Max Steiner music from the movie of same name, with the addition of Charles Tobias lyrics. (I'm not sure if it was used in the film as such.) Deep Valley has quite the plot, in which Ida Lupino falls in love with an inmate workin' on a chain gang. The movie may have been melodramatic, but the song itself is more lively than much of the fare that Dorsey gave Foster to sing.

"Just an Old Love of Mine" is one of the best songs in the set: a Peggy Lee/Dave Barbour tune that they recorded for Capitol. Foster is impressive, as is Lucy Ann Polk in her solo chorus. An outstanding record.

"Old Chaperon" is in no way outstanfing, although it is well performed. This is one of the many ethnic items of the day, and Foster and Mae Williams enthusiastically adopt the appropriate (or inappropriate, depending on how you look at it) accents. This item has a spoken introduction by Dorsey, which Bryan lifted from one of Dorsey's radio shows. The bandleader had a regular spot on New York's WMCA at the time.

"Judaline" comes from A Date with Judy. It's an OK Don Raye/Gene de Paul song with a charming melody. The pitching is all over the place here.

In September, Dorsey recorded a six-song Tchaikovsky album, with Foster singing on four. Victor called the package Tchaikovsky Melodies for Dancing. I can't say I've had any desire to dance to the Pathetique Symphony, but Dorsey makes it work well enough.

"The Story of a Starry Night," the item derived from the Pathetique, is suited to Foster. "The Things I Love" is a reworking of a Mélodie Tchaikovsky wrote for violin and piano. Harold Barlow and Lewis Harris turned it into a catalog song, not especially well done lyrically.

The most popular of these adaptations was "None but the Lonely Heart," originally a setting by Tchaikovsky of a poem by Goethe, here wrung through the hands of Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. I do like the chugging dance beat, although it doesn't really go with the sentiment that "None but the lonely heart can know my sadness."

The final item was popularized by Larry Clinton, who had produced perhaps the first big-band classical hit with "My Reverie" in 1938. His 1939 follow-up, "Our Love," was adapted from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. The 1947 Dorsey version starts with the bandleader's trombone, and Foster handles the superfluous words in good fashion.

The September sessions also encompassed a tune called "Let's Pick Up," a generic ballad with  rhyming-book lyrics, although in a good performance by the vocalist and band.

In contrast, the next recording session featured one of the best songs of the era. "Where Is the One," recorded in December, is a brilliant Alec Wilder song with a superior Edwin Finckel lyric. The Clark Sisters (billed as such, not under their former Dorsey name "The Sentimentalists") lead off. The Clarks are always welcome, but I am not sure it was the best idea to start the arrangement with them. That sets an impersonal tone for a very inward song. Foster is outstanding here, on one of his last dates with Dorsey.

The next item couldn't be more different. Dorsey and arranger Sy Oliver decided to have fun with the oldie "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." Some clipped phrasing from tightly muted brass lends an old-timey air to the proceedings. Foster plays it straight in the face of the dreadful vocal counterpoint from the band. There is a real, live instrumental solo on this side, perhaps the only non-TD chorus in this set. Too bad it's not one of the best I've heard from the usually reliable tenor Boomie Richman.

For Foster's final Dorsey record, Tommy sent him back into Sinatra territory with "The Miracle of the Bells," the theme music from one of Frank's least remembered films, in which he plays a priest (!), not as successfully as Crosby's forays into the same territory. The music here is by Pierre Norman, with words from Russell Janney, who wrote the story. Sinatra himself did not record the tune, turning his attentions instead to the torporific "Ever Homeward," one of Cahn and Styne's few stinkers.

That effort completes our survey of Foster's recordings with Dorsey. Thanks again to Bryan Cooper for his contribution, which allows us to hear this talented singer during the period of his greatest popularity. For more of Foster, please see this post covering his later singles - and of course the first installment in the Dorsey series.

 

Foster with vocalist Martha Wright and DJ William B. Williams