The Young David Allyn - 1940-45

Vocalist David Allyn (1919-2012) is a particular favorite of mine. He never achieved great success, but was a well-respected artist among his peers, often being termed a "singer's singer." To me, that implies he can only be appreciated by other vocalists, but that's not the case. He was a warm, flexible and intelligent artist who was as comfortable with ballads as he was with jazz ensembles.

Most of Allyn's reputation rests on several LPs he recorded for World-Pacific, Warner Bros. and Everest in the late 50s and early 60s, but his career began much earlier. He was recording with the great trombonist Jack Teagarden at age 21 or so, and worked in the recording studios fairly regularly throughout the 1940s.

Today's post and a successor will cover all of his commercial recordings from that period (to my knowledge), adding in some transcriptions and live performances captured on airchecks. These come largely from my collection, with some additions from Internet Archive sources. This first installment includes 21 songs from 1940-45. The follow-up will offer 25 recordings covering 1946-49.

To demonstrate how far Allyn progressed from his early days until his late 50s record contracts, I recently posted his Warner Bros. LP from 1959. His singing there is spectacular.

The Jack Teagarden Recordings

Big T in the studio

Big T was both a wonderful instrumentalist and singer, but his big band never achieved much success. It was a good group even so, as demonstrated by the 1940 recordings he made for Varsity. "Now I Lay Me Down to Dream" is his first side to feature new singer David Allyn, who sounds mature but heavily under the influence of Bing and the Eberle(y) brothers.

On this song and the succeeding four, the arranger is the well-known Phil Moore. "Wait Till I Catch You in My Dreams" and "River Home" are run-of-the-mill pop tunes, smoothly done but not memorable.

At the beginning of 1941, Teagarden was the first artist to be issued on the short-lived Viking label, which quickly became known for its miserable pressings. Allyn is featured on two songs, "Here's My Heart," which isn't bad, and the terrific "It All Comes Back to Me Now." Even here, he has not really found his own style, dipping into the Crosby mannerisms here and there. The latter song has an excellent Teagarden solo.

On these early sides, Allyn is credited as "David Allen." He didn't switch spellings until c1945, and even so his surname would be spelled "Allen" periodically throughout his career. (His real name was Albert DiLella.)

In May and June 1941, Tea was in the studios making Standard Transcriptions, where Allyn can be heard to good effect, none the least because the technical quality was much better than Viking could provide. Dick DuPage is the arranger on the first two numbers. Allyn's first solo is "You're All That Matters to Me," which is done well, save for an ill-advised falsetto ending.

His next recording was a duet with the fantastically shrill Marianne Dunne, "Made Up My Mind." Much better was the fine song, "Blue Mist," one of Allyn's best early efforts (it also has a wonderful solo by the leader).

In June, Teagarden gave him two undistinguished pop tunes to handle, "These Things You Left Me" and "A Star Told a Story." Allyn does well, although he is not yet distinctive, nor entirely comfortable. 

October's "Sing a Love Song" is more of the same. Alec Wilder's "Soft as Spring" is a much better song. Its unconventional melody gives the vocalist some trouble initially, but he finishes well. 

For his final recordings with Teagarden, Allyn did "No Need to Be Sorry," followed by "This Is No Laughing Matter." On the latter, the Teagarden-Allyn duo is as good as most other versions I've heard of this current pop tune.

Allyn went into the Army when the war began, and was medically discharged a few years later.

Fellow on a Furlough

Bob Chester

By 1944, Allyn had become a much more polished and personal singer. There are no commercial recordings or transcriptions from this period, as far as I can tell, but we do have an excellent broadcast aircheck of the wartime "Fellow on a Furlough" with Bob Chester's band. Allyn's legato is much improved and he seems more into the material.

With Boyd Raeburn

Allyn's time with bandleader Boyd Raeburn, starting in 1945, was one of the high points of his career. The earliest performance in this set is another aircheck, this one from San Francisco dating from June 1945. On "There Must Be a Way," the singer sounds more relaxed than before, doing a smooth duet with Claire Hogan.

Boyd Raeburn

The next aircheck is from the following month, same locale. Allyn handles the then-new "Laura" beautifully, in the face of the band's fussy arrangement. Those odd, supposedly advanced charts were a defining feature of Raeburn's band.

George Handy

An August aircheck has a overly elaborate George Handy arrangement that does Allyn no favors, but he puts across the superior ballad "Out of This World" superbly, even so. He seemed to thrive on these challenging environments, and his lovely singing stands out even more as a result.

Also worthy is the following aircheck, from August, of another outstanding song, "There's No You." This also sounds like Handy, and his chart is even more distracting. Blasting, staccato brass incongruously leads into Allyn singing, "I feel the autumn breeze, it drifts cross my pillow as soft as a will o' the wisp." A good alto solo, possibly by Hal McKusick, also mitigates the odd arrangement.

Next we move into commercial recordings with one of Raeburn's most famous efforts, "Forgetful," a Handy composition with a chart that seemingly incorporates the Woody Woodpecker laugh, although this was a few years before that song became popular. "Forgetful" is not a good tune, but Allyn puts it across with authority. This is from the band's first date with the small Jewel label, in October 1945.

Another notable Raeburn song from this period is "Picnic in the Wintertime," here in a broadcast from Hollywood in late December 1945. A pleasant number, not helped by the showy Handy arrangement, or the bombastic Ernie Whitman announcements.

We'll complete Allyn's Raeburn sojourn in the second installment of this collection, then move on to his other commercial recordings and some airchecks from the late 1940s.