A Musical Christmas Tree from Morton Gould

Today's holiday offering is a circa 1968-69 recording of Christmas music arranged and conducted by the distinguished composer Morton Gould.

It's a good program that was essentially a stereo remake of a 1949 Gould set called Christmas Music for Orchestra.

The stereo version is dubbed A Musical Christmas Tree, which fir seems to be exploding on the cover above. 

Most of the stereo LP is devoted to Gould's "Serenade of Carols" and "Suite of Christmas Hymns," also found in the 1949 set. The suite is not identified as such on the later album and the various hymns are dispersed throughout the set.

The stereo album does include two items that were new to Gould's recorded canon. First is his composition "Home for Christmas," an attractive piece of Americana that dates from as long ago as 1939. Also new was "The Little Drummer Boy," a song first called "The Carol of the Drums" as written (or arranged) by Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. Harry Simeone recorded the song to great success in the 1950s, attributing it to him and his producer, while replicating an arrangement previously recorded by Jack Halloran.

Morton Gould

Gould's stereo LP was split between the New Philharmonia Orchestra of London and the RCA Symphony Orchestra, a studio group. Although the album came out in 1969, it's not certain when the recordings took place. We can guess that the New Philharmonia recordings come from October 1968 and Walthamstow Town Hall, a frequently site of London recordings. That's the only Gould-New Philharmonia date in the orchestra's discography, which says the session was devoted to the music of Grieg. Even so, it's possible that the holiday songs were set down at the same time.

As for the RCA Symphony, Alan Rich's liner notes make reference to some of its recordings being made in "mid-summer." That presumably means 1968 or 1969, but more likely the former because Rich's note is dated July 17, 1969.

The RCA recordings are pleasing, and are recommended if you want stereo sound. But don't discount the excellent results that Columbia obtained in its 30th Street studio 20 years earlier. That mono LP is newly remastered and is available via the original post and the comments to this post.

Christmas Music by Vaughan Williams, Finzi and Rutter

To start off the holiday season this year, we have Christmas music from three favorite English composers - Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and John Rutter. These come to us from a 1983 LP by Philip Brunelle and his Plymouth Festival Chorus and Orchestra.

The "Plymouth" in the title refers not to Massachusetts, but to Minneapolis' Plymouth Congregational Church, where Brunelle was and still is the choirmaster. Brunelle has had a notable career, making quite a few recordings, some of neglected operas (he was music director of Minnesota Opera for 17 years). I have in my collection his pioneering recordings of Britten's John Bunyan and Copland's The Tender Land.

In recent years, the Plymouth Festival Chorus has become known by the new-agey name "VocalEssence."

Vaughan Williams - Carols from The First Nowell

Philip Brunelle

Vaughan Williams' Christmas cantata Hodie is fairly well known, but his second effort at a holiday work, The First Nowell, much less so. In part this is because the latter is a very late work - so late that it was unfinished at the time of the composer's 1958 death. (Roy Douglas completed it.) But it is also because the music was written to accompany a nativity play, and is largely carol settings. Vaughan Williams arranged quite a number of carols through the years, so these are not unusual in his output.

Even so, these particular carols are treasurable pieces. Three are familiar - "On Christmas Night" (here in both orchestral and choral settings), "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," and "The First Nowell." "How Brightly Shone the Morning Star" is based on a chorale that Bach used in his cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.

Finzi - In Terra Pax

Gerald Finzi's In Terra Pax is, like The First Nowell, a late work, dating from 1954, two years before the composer's death. Similar to much of Finzi's music, it is both gorgeous and poignant. An article by John Bawden explains that "its genesis can be traced to an event some thirty years previously, when one Christmas Eve he [Finzi] had climbed up to the church at the top of his beloved Chosen Hill, between Gloucester and Cheltenham. The sound of the midnight bells ringing out across the frosty Gloucestershire valleys evidently made a lasting impression on him, retrospectively providing the idea for In Terra Pax, as he told Vaughan Williams."

The bells can be heard in the opening of the work, along with the melody of "The First Nowell." The words are a setting of Robert Bridges' "A Christmas Poem," dating from 1913, together with Biblical passages. (The texts can be found here.)

Brunelle and his choir

As Bawden writes, "Finzi, perhaps more than most, must have been aware of the terrible irony of Bridges’ reassuring Pax hominibus being swiftly followed by the outbreak of World War I, yet despite this, and despite his own terminal decline, In Terra Pax is a radiant, optimistic work of great beauty and sincerity; a miniature masterpiece that unites emotions, images and the familiar events of the Christmas story into a compelling musical narrative that is at once personal yet universal."

In Terra Pax is another English work that is in part a contemplation on the English countryside, a theme that flows through Vaughan Williams' work. On this blog, we have encountered this tendency most recently in his An Oxford Elegy.

Rutter - Carol Settings

Brunelle completes his program with the open rejoicing that John Rutter's contemporary carol settings represent. The conductor begins with "In Dulci Jubilo," another theme that was utilized by Bach, for both a chorale and chorale prelude.

Rutter also sets "Away in a Manger," "The Sans Day Carol" (which is related to "The Holly and the Ivy"), the French carols "Quelle Est Cet Odeur Agréable" and "Il Est Né le Divin Enfant," "Don in Yon Forest," and "I Saw Three Ships."

Philip Brunelle and John Rutter

These all display Rutter's gift for airy but satisfying settings, often flute-led, which are most appropriate for this joyous season.

Together with the Vaughan Williams and Finzi works, they make for a diverse but unified program that is a credit to this fine ensemble.

The sound as recorded was - as sometimes happened with early digital productions - both wooly and a bit strident, which I've addressed in the transfer. The result is very good.

The Marvelous Jo Ann Greer

Jo Ann Greer (1927-2001) was a talented artist whose work took place mostly behind the scenes - as a band singer and ghost vocalist for Hollywood stars. As such, she has never received the acclaim her skills should have ensured.

Today we have a good portion of the songs she recorded with several bandleaders, what may be her only single as featured artist, and several examples of her dubbing assignments for the movies. The single sides (and a few album cuts) number 19 in all, spanning 1952-55. These are supplemented by eight soundtrack vocals dating from 1953, 1957 and 1959.

I might as well state at the outset - as I sometimes do with these compilations - that Greer was not often given the best material. But even in the most ephemeral items, she shows remarkable presence, infallible rhythm and diction, excellent intonation, and a vibrato that she uses very effectively. Given good songs, she is extraordinarily impressive.

1952-55 Recordings

Jo Ann's recordings are almost all in a band context, where extroversion and projection were almost a necessity.

Her earliest records come from 1952 and the Sonny Burke band. The first item is "I Wanna Love You," a relentlessly repetitive riff that she shares with a pair named Hub and Hubbie, about whom I know nothing. (Update: reader lafong has discovered that the two were probably songwriters Don Raye and Gene De Paul.) 

The flip is "I'll Always Be Following You," an OK Bernie Wayne tune done in duet with Don Burke, an experienced band singer. Greer is confident and forthright even on her earliest records.

Sonny Burke and band

Burke was a mambo popularizer; his Mambo Jambo album has appeared here. Greer was the soloist on his "(Me with) Mambo on My Mind," built on a familiar riff. Hub and Hubbie assist.

The above records were for Decca, which soon had Greer record her first and (I believe) only solo single. For the plug side, she turned Kay Swift's rhythm number "Fine and Dandy" into an overwrought torch song, before increasing the tempo. "I Love to Hear a Choo Choo Train" is a novelty built on another familiar riff. It begins with the usual train effects. Peggy Lee's ex-husband, Dave Barbour, is the bandleader.

Jerry Gray

Jo Ann came into her own in two early 1953 songs with Jerry Gray, who didn't ask her to tackle novelties or mambos, or turn fast songs into slow ones. "My Heart Belongs to Only You" is a superb reading of a song that was making the rounds that year. "No Moon at All" is a great David Mann-Redd Evans song from 1947 that she does wonderfully.

At about the same time, Greer joined the Ray Anthony band for a short but productive spell. With her first number, "Wild Horses," she is back in novelty territory. The problem is not that she did this material poorly; rather, it's that it is poor material. The horse number is backed by "You're a Heartbreaker," a cover of a country ballad that's handled well.

Dick Stabile

Anthony recorded for Capitol, and while Jo Ann was on the rolls there, bandleader Dick Stabile borrowed her for his recording of "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street," which was Gene Austin's first hit, back in 1925. This is a beautiful reading, if you can tolerate Stabile's piercing alto. Coincidentally, Greer had dubbed the songs for Gene Austin's daughter, Charlotte, in the film Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder in 1952.

Stabile's recording credits go back to the 1930s, but most of his studio work was as the bandleader for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. You may know him at sight; he plays the bandleader for Rosemary Clooney's number "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me" in White Christmas.

Greer's final two recordings with Ray Anthony were her most successful on the charts. First was one side of a two-sided novelty smash. "The Hokey Pokey" and its discmate "The Bunny Hop," enlivened dances and wedding receptions for many years.  

Jo Ann's vocal charisma mightily contributes to the success of "The Hokey Pokey's" repetitive silliness. That's the bandleader calling out the bodily parts; his lack of presence sets off Greer's confident singing.

We're back in the 1920s for "That's My Weakness Now," which had been introduced by Betty Boop herself, Helen Kane. Greer could hardly be more of a contrast as she duets beautifully with Marcie Miller. This propulsive reading has a nice arrangement, too.

The Les Brown band with Jo Ann Greer, c1957

Later in 1953, Greer moved on to the Les Brown band, where she was to work for three decades. It's said that Sonny Burke recommended Greer to Brown. I believe that Jo Ann replaced the excellent Lucy Ann Polk, who has been heard on this blog with her family group the Town Criers and Kay Kyser.

Greer's first recording with Brown was Irving Berlin's "Sittin' In The Sun," which was written for White Christmas but not used. The song also was recorded by Frankie Laine at about the same time.

In September 1953, soon after Jo Ann joined Les' crew, the band recorded a live date at the Hollywood Palladium that Coral issued on two LPs, with one of her vocals on each disc. For the first, Brown programmed the oldie, "Back in Your Old Back Yard," scored by the talented Skip Martin. Les himself, along with his arranger Ben Homer, wrote the other song, "Sentimental Journey," his longtime theme that is also closely associated with his mid-40s vocalist Doris Day. Greer does it beautifully; she's a bit more extroverted than Day, as was her manner.

Let's move on the Les Brown singles from 1954. First is another train song, "Susquehanna Transfer," a very good swinger that Jo Ann does with a great deal of personality. Yet another is "Sentimental Train," a lovely tune once you get past the freight-train open, which arrangers seemed helpless to resist. The writer was Carroll Lucas, a former Sammy Kaye arranger.

"The Man That Got Away" is a Harold Arlen-Ira Gershwin song written for the latest iteration of A Star Is Born and made famous by Judy Garland, a star if there ever was one. Greer is not intimidated; she makes use of her vibrato here to give the song a great deal of passion. Band vocals don't get much better than this.

"Lullaby of Birdland" is a George Shearing standard from 1952 that the pianist wrote for the famous New York club. Shearing used the harmonies of Walter Donaldson's "Love Me or Leave Me." Brown's 1955 recording opens with an attractive sax chorus. Greer's vocals swing strongly. She could do it all.

Work for Films and Television

Jo Ann worked closely with Rita Hayworth on three films in the 1950s. In this set, we have recordings from two of them, Miss Sadie Thompson from 1953 and Pal Joey from 1957.

Jo Ann scaled her voice back when she did vocal doubling for the breathy Hayworth. Her projection is much less than she typically used in a band context, making her manner more confidential. "The Heat is On" in Miss Sadie Thompson and both of the Pal Joey tracks have voice introductions from Hayworth; you will notice how closely Jo Ann matches her voice to Rita.

The Sadie Thompson songs are good ones, written by Lester Lee and Ned Washington. The second is "Sadie Thompson's Song," sometimes called "The Heat Is On."

Pal Joey was a 1940 Rodgers and Hart show, recast as a Sinatra vehicle. Hayworth plays his foil Vera Prentice-Simpson, a former burlesque dancer, at least in the film adaptation. Hayworth's "Zip" number was inspired by the act of the "intellectual stripper," Gypsy Rose Lee. ("Zip! I was reading Schopenhauer last night. And I think that Schopenhauer was right.") "Zip" is mainly notable for its witty lyrics. The character's more enduring song is "Bewitched," which Greer sings wonderfully well.

In 1959, Jo Ann was enlisted for the vocals on an episode of a new televised crime drama, The Naked City. Her character is a young singer in New York; Greer dubs four George Duning songs with words by Ned Washington (again). The first two are good. "Somewhere, Wisconsin" provides the character's back story, and "Five Minutes After Forever" tells of her love for a young cowboy. The title of "Live Dangerously" provides all you need to know about it. And in the contrived "Solid Food, Solitude and You" she pledges to go off with the Westerner. All are nicely done, and Jo Ann, as always, is in great voice.

Jo Ann Greer

Elsewhere on this blog you can find the complete soundtrack LPs for Miss Sadie Thompson and The Naked City.

A few more Greer dubbing assignments, for Hayworth, June Allyson and Esther Williams, can be heard on YouTube, followed by a 1991 club appearance.

These recordings come from my collection and the Internet Archive. The sound is excellent in all cases. The download includes brief Cash Box or Billboard reviews of most if not all of the singles.

Walter and Serkin with the NY Philharmonic, 1948

I seldom if ever post live performances, but in this case I had an opportunity to remaster the sound of a notable 1948 concert for a friend, and he kindly consented to letting me post it here.

The concert features two of the greatest 20th century musicians, conductor Bruno Walter and pianist Rudolf Serkin, in music by Beethoven, Weber and the contemporary composer Douglas Moore.

The program derives from a broadcast of the Sunday, February 22, 1948 concert of the New York Philharmonic from Carnegie Hall, captured on transcription discs for re-transmission in Latin America, including some brief announcements in Spanish. The discs were not in great shape, but the sound as remastered is very good.

This concert was during a two-year period when Walter was the "music adviser" to the Philharmonic, having declined an opportunity to become its music director in succession to Artur Rodziński, who in 1947 had moved on to a short-lived residency in Chicago.

The broadcast begins with the overture to Weber's opera Euryanthe, which may be the second most played orchestral piece by that composer, following the overture to Der Freischütz (or perhaps the Weber-Berlioz Invitation to the Dance). The Walter-NYP performance is solidly in the German Romantic tradition. Walter never conducted a commercial recording of the Euryanthe overture; his only such venture into Weber's music was the Freischütz overture with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in 1938.

Douglas Moore

The second piece on the program is one of the best known orchestral works by contemporary composer Douglas Moore, his Symphony No. 2 in A major. It was then a new composition, having been premiered less than two years earlier. In the program notes, Moore explained that the piece was "an attempt to write in clear, modified, objective classical style, with emphasis on rhythmic and melodic momentum rather than sharply contrasted themes or dramatic climax."

It's a beautiful work, given a polished performance that outclasses the scrappy Vienna Symphony recording that appeared on this blog years ago. That was the first recording; it since has enjoyed two or three more commercial productions.

Moore dedicated the symphony to the memory of poet Stephen Vincent Benét, the librettist of his one-act opera The Devil and Daniel Webster, which is based on a Benét short story. I should transfer my LP of the opera.

The recorded program concludes with Serkin as the soloist in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5. The pianist, conductor and orchestra were of one mind about the concerto, having recorded it together in 1941. That was Serkin's first recording of the piece; he went on to editions with Ormandy and Bernstein. Walter had done it for records in 1934 with Walter Gieseking and the Vienna Philharmonic; he did not return to the work in the recording studio.

Rudolf Serkin in 1944

Serkin had the gift of being able to be both propulsive and contemplative, which this concerto demands. The first and third movements press ahead, while the Adagio is serene, with Serkin in spell-binding form. Despite the grand title "Emperor" (not bestowed by Beethoven), this concerto is not generally considered Beethoven's best, but Serkin and Walter (and the excellent orchestra) make the most of it.

This Sunday afternoon concert was presented on a live broadcast, which unfortunately did not encompass the concluding item on agenda, Smetana's Vltava. A shame, but the concerto certainly makes a satisfying close.

The download includes a New York Times review of the previous Thursday's concert, which included the Moore and Beethoven works.

Bruno Walter has appeared here in Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 8th symphonies with the New York Philharmonic, Rudolf Serkin in the Brahms piano concertos. 

Bruno Walter by Eugen Spiro, 1943

Anita Kerr Sings Mancini and Bacharach-David

After presenting Anita Kerr's two earliest albums a short time ago, I wanted to do a follow up of two of her best albums from the 1960s.

The first, devoted to the music of Henry Mancini, is with her Nashville group and was made shortly before she moved to Los Angeles in 1965. The second, with her new West Coast ensemble, comes from 1969 and is her take on the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

We Dig Mancini

Throughout the first half of the 1960s, Kerr worked for RCA Victor as a singer, ensemble leader and producer.

For this excellent LP of Mancini's compositions, she worked with her long-time Nashville associates. From left on the cover above, they are Gil Wright, Kerr, Dottie Dillard and Louis Nunley.

The material is generally selected from among Mancini's greatest hits at the time - such songs as "Charade," "Baby Elephant Walk," "The Days of Wine and Roses" and "Moon River" from films, and selections from the television shows Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky.

Some of the most interesting items are those that are lesser known - the theme from the Richard Boone television show, "Too Little Time" from The Glenn Miller Story (the oldest item in the batch, dating from 1954) and "The Sweetheart Tree" from The Great Race.

In this set, the group (identified here as the Anita Kerr Quartet) have assimilated some jazz influences - even resorting to some arranged scat singing - and at points can sound a bit like their contemporaries The Swingle Singers.

It's quite a good record, and well recorded in London (not sure why there) by the young Glyn Johns, who was just then coming into his own as the Rolling Stones' engineer.

The Anita Kerr Singers Reflect on the Hits of Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Kerr moved to Los Angeles because it was the center of the recording universe, so it offered her more opportunities to work as an orchestral arranger as well as a vocal group leader.

And soon she was doing so, working on many albums with the immensely popular Rod McKuen, providing backdrops to his poetizing with the San Sebastian Strings.

Anita Kerr conducts at a recording session

Meanwhile for her own LPs, she would sing with her new group, provide all arrangements and conduct. She worked throughout the late 1960s with studio singers Gene Merlino and Bob Tebow, and one or the other of B.J. Baker and Jackie Ward.

Ward, who performs on this record, was also known as Robin Ward, and had enjoyed a hit record in 1963 with "Wonderful Summer." Baker was an experienced singer (who parenthetically was at various times married to Mickey Rooney and guitarist Barney Kessel).

Gene Merlino, Anita Kerr, Jackie Ward, Bob Tebow

For me, this record encapsulates the "Kerr sound" because it represents the period during which I began to hear her work. Her sophisticated yet understated arrangements are particularly well suited to the songs of Bacharach and David, with Bacharach's complex rhythmic patterns and lovely melodies allied to the frequently rueful or melancholy lyrics of Hal David. This shows particularly on the lesser known songs, such as "The Windows of the World," "In Between the Heartaches," the wonderful, a capella "A House Is Not a Home" and Promises, Promises' "Whoever You Are, I Love You." The latter has some gorgeous interplay between Kerr and Ward.

In 1970, Kerr was off to Europe and more successes - but she perhaps never surpassed her work in the 1960s.

These recordings come from my collection. The sound is excellent. 

Ballet Music from Meyerbeer-Lambert and Bliss

Here are two souvenirs from the Sadler's Wells Ballet's 1950 season, directed by its staff conductors John Hollingsworth and Robert Irving - Les Patineurs, a pastiche of Giocomo Meyerbeer's music, and Checkmate, with a score by Arthur Bliss. 

Both works were premiered in 1937 and conducted then by Constant Lambert, the Vic-Wells music director at the time.

Massenet-Lambert - Les Patineurs

The Royal Ballet's 2009 production of Les Patineurs 

Les Patineurs has no connection with Émile Waldteufel's famous waltz of the same name. Lambert arranged Les Patineurs from melodies found in Meyerbeer's operas Le Prophète and L'Etoile du Nord, principally the former. Although seldom heard today, Meyerbeer's works were very popular in the 19th century, and this immensely tuneful and pleasing score shows why.

Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann - Les Patineurs 1937

Lambert conceived the idea of the ballet and using Meyerbeer's music; Frederick Ashton was the choreographer. As the title implies, the complete ballet depicts skaters, with the setting a Victorian skating party. Ashton's biographer Julie Kavanaugh notes that such productions were not a novelty: "Skating ballets themselves were a genre of sorts... but only Ashton's work has endured... [I]t is the paradigm of an Ashton ballet, perfectly crafted, with a complex structure beneath the effervescent surface."

Les Patineurs was something of a recorded specialty for Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet conductors - Lambert recorded it in 1939, Robert Irving in 1952 and Hugo Rignold in 1958. John Hollingsworth conducted this recording, although he and Irving shared 1950's live performances, as also was the case with the Bliss ballet.

Bliss - Checkmate

The 1947 Sadler's Wells staging of Checkmate

Bliss's Checkmate ballet music could not be more of a contrast to Les Patineurs. The composer himself conceived the idea of the ballet, with Ninette de Valois executing it. The concept is simple, taking place on a chess board with the pieces coming to life and eventually battling until a tragic checkmate.

Gillian Lynne as the Black Queen, Checkmate 1937

The music is dramatic and Robert Irving's performance with the Covent Garden orchestra is a good one. However, the reviews of the music as heard on this LP were not kind. "Meretricious melodies" sneered one. "Noisy, overscored and without anything musical to say" asserted another. Nor was Irving spared - Hollingsworth was deemed a "far superior leader." I think both positions were overstated.

Harold Turner as First Red Knight, Checkmate 1947

Regardless of the disdainful notices for the music, Checkmate has been a staple in the Sadler's Wells/Royal Ballet repertoire for many years.

Both these recordings are somewhat abridged from the complete scores. To my knowledge this was the first recording of music from Checkmate. The sound is excellent in both works. The download includes additional production photos and reviews.

Hollingsworth has appeared here several times recently. Irving was heard in music by Arnold and Britten. Constant Lambert has been a frequent guest on the blog. Bliss' music for the ballet Miracle in the Gorbals, as conducted by Lambert, can be found here.

1947 poster