The Early 'Babes in Arms' Recordings

Cover of souvenir booklet

The Rodgers and Hart score for 1937's Babes in Arms is a brilliant achievement - memorable melodies and clever lyrics abound. While several of its songs are still familiar, we don't know much about how they sounded on the stage in 1937 because there was no original cast album. This, of course, was a shame - the musical featured talented young performers who made just a handful of recordings in general, and only a few of the songs from this production.

The 1939 film version is not much help, either - Hollywood in its wisdom threw out almost all of the Rodgers and Hart songs, substituting songs by producer Arthur Freed and his close associate Roger Edens, and adding everything from "Oh! Susanna" to "Ida! Sweet as Apple Cider." In fact, there are more of the original Babes in Arms songs in the 1948 Rodgers and Hart biopic Words and Music than there were in the filmed musical.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart

However, there are enough early recordings of the Babes in Arms songs to allow us to assemble a collection that, while not a facsimile of what the audience in the Golden Theater heard in 1937, is an interesting artifact in its own right.

Let's take the songs in the order of their appearance in the score.

Mitzi Green and Ray Heatherton

The juvenile leads in 1937 were Mitzi Green as Billie and Ray Heatherton as Val. Green, who made few if any recordings (although we have an aircheck of "The Lady Is a Tramp" below), was known primarily as a Hollywood child star. Heatherton was a band and radio singer with some stage experience.

Fortunately there is what seems to be an aircheck of Heatherton singing one of the score's major hits, the wistful "Where or When" with an unknown orchestra, and that fine version leads off the collection.

Victor did have Heatherton in the studio to record "Where or When," but it teamed him with stodgy society bandleader Ruby Newman, who saw the piece as a tango, and made Heatherton wait until the song was nearly over to introduce Lorenz Hart's fascinating lyrics.

Douglas McPhail and Betty Jaynes

"Where or When" is one of the two original songs that appears in the 1939 film, sung by Douglas McPhail and Betty Jaynes, with a very brief appearance by Judy Garland. These are presented as two separate files in the collection. (Note that the out-of-tune string playing is deliberate - the vocalists were supposedly being accompanied by a band of children.)

Douglas McPhail leads the 'babes in arms'

The show's title song, "Babes in Arms," is a stirring march, and is another thing that the film got right. There it was sung primarily by McPhail, who possesses the proper heroic quality for the piece. So heroic that whoever did the orchestral arrangement inserted more than a little Wagner into the mix.

'I Wish I Were in Love Again'

The filmed version dropped the enduring standard "I Wish I Were in Love Again," but the film's stars, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, did eventually record it, for Words and Music (Garland's last film for M-G-M). Rooney is hammy in the piece, and even Garland mugs too much for me. She also recorded it in 1947 for Decca (her final song for that label), but the tempo there is too fast.

Edgar Fairchild and Adam Carroll

The Babes in Arms songs go from strength to strength - next up is the perennially popular "My Funny Valentine." Here we call on the duo pianists Edgar Fairchild and Adam Carroll, who were in the Babes in Arms pit band, and who recorded several songs from the score for the Liberty Music Shop label. There is orchestral backing on this and all their sides. (Fairchild has been heard on the blog before - in a piano duo with Ralph Rainger with a medley from Oh, Kay!.)

As far as I can tell, none of the revival cast albums include the next number, for reasons that the title will make clear - "All Dark People Are Light on Their Feet." In the original production, this number was a specialty for the amazing Nicholas Brothers, who played the DeQuincy brothers. One Babes in Arms subplot was the discrimination faced by the DeQuincys. The only recording I have found is by the Bunny Berigan orchestra, with a vocal by white singer-trombonist Ford Leary. Neither the Nicholas brothers nor this song are in the film version.

The clever "Way Out West" ("Get along little taxi / You can keep the change / I'm ridin' home to my kitchen range / Way out west on West End Avenue") is not heard these days, but is always fun to encounter. In the musical, it's a specialty for the character of Baby Rose, played by the 16-year-old Wynn Murray. There is a good live recording of her singing the piece, which I've included in the download.

Teddy Lynch

Next in the collection, Fairchild and Carroll reappear, bringing along the mannered cabaret artist Teddy Lynch as vocalist in "Way Out West." Lynch wasn't a great singer, but she was talented enough to attract the attention of the world's richest person, J. Paul Getty, whom she would marry a few years later.

Ruth Gaylor and Hal McIntyre

The standard "My Funny Valentine" was introduced by Mitzi Green. In absence of a recording by her, we again turn to Fairchild and Carroll for our first interpretation. I've added a superior 1944 recording by Hal McIntyre's big band, with a good vocal by Ruth Gaylor, betraying the influence of Helen Forrest. The McIntyre arrangement is in a different sound world from Ruby Newman or Fairchild and Carroll.

Wynn Murray and Alfred Drake

Wynn Murray did make a commercial record of her number "Johnny One Note," one of the best-known songs in the score. It appeared on the flip side of the record that Ray Heatherton did with Ruby Newman. To me, Murray's clear voice is just right for this song, which can be annoying if belted.

Murray, Alfred Drake (making his first non-operetta appearance on Broadway) and Duke McHale presented the underrated "Imagine" in the original production. The song has a Depression subtext ("Imagine your bills are paid / Imagine you've made the grade," etc.). I can find no better version than the one by the obscure Mardi Bayne, from the 1952 studio cast recording. She is so appealing it's surprising she did not do more on Broadway. (She was about to appear in Wish You Were Here with Jack Cassidy at the time of this recording.)

Jack Cassidy

Val and Billie returned for "All at Once," but neither Mitzi Green nor Ray Heatherton recorded it. So I have turned to the 1952 studio album again for the splendid singing of Bayne and Cassidy.

One of the score's most famous songs is "The Lady Is a Tramp," not least because it was in Sinatra's repertoire for many years. It was introduced by Mitzi Green and this collection includes what sounds like an aircheck of her singing the piece with a great deal of personality. It must have come across well on the stage.

Mitzi Green sings 'The Lady Is a Tramp'

I've also added a version by Teddy Lynch with Fairchild and Carroll and orchestra.

The final number in the score is the neglected "You Are So Fair," which has a lovely melody but not one of Hart's best set of lyrics. Jack Cassidy makes the most of it for the 1952 album, which was conducted by Lehman Engel. The orchestrations are by Carol Huxley.

Lee Sullivan

I thought it might be helpful to include Richard Rodgers' own recordings of a few songs from the score, which are drawn from his album Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart, released in early 1940. For "Where or When," he turned to the talented vocalist Lee Sullivan (who would later originate the role of Charlie Dalrymple in Brigadoon). These recordings were made "under the personal direction of Richard Rodgers," and if that is accurate, I can attest that he favored a rapid tempo for "Where or When." Sullivan also appears in "Johnny One Note," where his part consists of only that one famous note. This Johnny is more mellifluous than most - somewhat similar to Wynn Murray, in fact. The complete Rodgers album can be found here.

The recordings come from Internet Archive and my collection. The sound is good; even the airchecks are listenable. The download includes a number of production stills other than the ones above. It also has my restoration of the original 16-page souvenir booklet, from the New York Public Library site. As usual with such library files, the resolution lacks the detail that one might wish, but the booklet is fun!