1954 Christmas Seals Shows with Julius La Rosa and Jack Benny

Christmas Seals have been a holiday tradition since 1907. Originally a campaign against tuberculosis, today they help the American Lung Association "make progress towards defeating asthma, lung cancer, influenza, tobacco use, air pollution and other lung diseases, including COVID-19."

During the 1950s, the Christmas Seals folks promoted their cause by sending special records to the nation's radio stations, with well-known personalities performing and asking listeners to use Christmas Seals on their greeting cards and packages. I'll have a few such programs for you this year, starting with today's selections, which date from 1954 and feature Julius La Rosa and Jack Benny. I recorded these from the original 16-inch transcription disk. Each program runs for 15 minutes.

The Julius La Rosa Show

Singer Julius La Rosa was at the peak of his career in 1954, just a year after being fired on-air by the dictatorial variety show host Arthur Godfrey, who claimed that Julie "lacked humility," a tactic that backfired badly. People were sympathetic to the 24-year-old talent, and the nation's comics were gifted with a new catch phrase  - "he lacks humility." (Even the announcer for this program refers to it.)

La Rosa had already enjoyed his first hit record with "Anywhere I Wander," from Frank Loesser's score for the Danny Kaye television special Hans Christian Andersen. You'll hear it as La Rosa's theme song during this program. Russ Case is the bandleader, and the vocal group is the Wanderers.

The songs are split between seasonal fare and other material. The holiday items are "Winter Wonderland," "The Christmas Song," "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Silent Night." A more predictable program would be hard to imagine, but the selections are nicely done. The non-holiday tunes are "I Love Paris," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive."

This program was taped specially for Christmas Seals, which wasn't the case with a few other such shows that I will present later in the season. As you will note if you enlarge the label above, KTAR (a Phoenix station) aired the show twice in mid-December.

If you like La Rosa, last year my pal Ernie and I collaborated on a 15-song playlist of holiday tunes from the vocalist's long career, including several non-commercial cuts from a Navy LP. It's all well worth hearing.

The Jack Benny Show

Jack Benny was an enormously long-lasting radio and television performer who was on the air regularly from 1932 to 1965. His shows did evolve over time, but by the early 1950s they generally were in a sitcom format with both regular characters and recurring performers.

Jack's Christmas shows at the time usually had one of two plots. In one, Jack goes shopping and drives clerk Mel Blanc to distraction by dithering and changing his order repeatedly. The second involved Jack throwing a cast party. This show is from the latter species. It would seem to have been edited from the December 20, 1953 episode of Benny's radio program.

The program features all of Jack's core cast at the time, which included Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (with Benny in the photo above), Mary Livingstone (in real life, Benny's wife), Dennis Day (who sings a Christmas medley), announcer Don Wilson and bandleader Bob Crosby, who had succeeded Phil Harris in 1952. Jack's most famous multi-character performer, Mel Blanc, shows up as the exasperated but eventually pacified landlord, Mr. Martin.

It's a fun episode, while not being as wacky or imaginative as some. As with the Julius La Rosa Show, there are two Christmas Seals spots. KTAR aired the Benny program once, in early December.

More from Christmas Seals

A few days ago I posted the 1952 Christmas Seals song, "One Little Candle," in Perry Como's excellent recording. This came from a special disk jockey copy that included a Como voice track for radio stations to play as an introduction. That post, on my singles blog, also includes Como's 1950 Christmas songs, together with the voice tracks that were used to introduce them on the air.

LINK TO BOTH SHOWS

Holiday Express, Part 2

David Federman has assembled another of his fascinating posts for us, themed to the season. This one is called Holiday Express, Part 2. (See this post for the first installment.) Here are David's notes:

I am sending this on Black Friday for quickest recovery from the malestrom of mall music and materialism. The second in a series of three escapist vintage holiday medleys, this "Holiday Express" tells a tale still told but truer to its humbler early and mid 20th century observances. It took a lot of savings to afford a diamond ring when my parents fell in love.

Here I imagine Christmas as an intimate twosome between lovers who personalize Christmas Eve into an intimate birth of love. One partner arrives after a long train trip and fast cab ride to give a diamond ring to the other. Whether the gem is natural or synthetic dodesn’t matter. Either way, the pledge of permanence is real. Don’t feel left out if this is more of an anniversary or an evening spent alone. This music can also serve for those whose Chirstmas Eves will be more hermetic and insular - an homage to love's longevity where rings are as much symbols of remembrance as physical objects. The idea here is to transport you back to vastly more sedate and honorably sentimental times when Christmas was for companionship and reflection. You will be at all times safe from the fall of darkness and reach of shadows from Black Friday. Alas, this medley leaves a strong carbon footprint as fireplaces burn throughout. To quote Frank Loesser, I want you to feel "warm all over."

Although a few songs mention Christmas by name or reference to iconic activity associated with the occasion (such as kissing under the mistletoe), this is more about the winter's first and most important holiday as celebrated in times preceding climate change. So it's steeped in suitably vintage winter music. (You haven't lived until you hear Hawaiian guitar virtuoso Roy Smeck play "Winter Wonderland.") Indeed, it ends on a note of nocturnal sublimity as the world is enveloped in sleep, snow and silence. Enjoy. I hope ‘yule’ be glad you listened. 

A third Holiday Express will leave Christmas day for a more raucous New Year's filled with public cheer and festivity. But I promise no red-wine headaches - just a lot of sing-alongs, toasts and dancing.

Download the songs now and save them for whenever you feel like listening to it. There are 34 - but I know you have enough computer storage somehwere to keep it for playback at the right moment.

I have prepared this mix as an annual good will gesture for my favorite blog, Big 10-Inch Record. It will not be posted on either Twitter or Facebook. It's just for Buster at 10-Inch and also the usual suspects, most of whom are paid subscribers to my Substack blog. I believe in time travel as salve and salvage. If you do too, hop aboard this Holiday Express where then is now - and now is always.

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Robert Shaw's 1946 and 1952 Christmas Albums

When the young choral conductor Robert Shaw issued his first album of Christmas music in 1946, it was immediately hailed as something special. The American Record Guide critic wrote, "As far as I know nothing of its kind has ever been so satisfactorily done for the phonograph before," adding "It is getting to be difficult to find new words to describe the work of this splendid group of singers and of their director, Robert Shaw."

This post presents not just that first set of holiday songs, but adds Volume II, which Shaw recorded in 1952.

Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume I

Christmas Hymns and Carols contains 25 selections spread across four 78s, with some of the selections quite brief. This enabled the unaccompanied chorus to vary its program without monotony setting in. While most of the numbers will be familiar to us today, several of them were less well known at the time - "I Wonder as I Wander" had been popularized by John Jacob Niles only a few years before, and Shaw added "Patapan," "Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella," "The Carol of the Bells" and "Go Tell It on the Mountain" before they became ubiquitous.

"The singing here (all unaccompanied) is characterized throughout by fine spirit, usually accurate if not always quite perfect intonation, and clear diction," wrote the American Record Guide critic - praise that understates the quality of the singing on display, which is positive and rhythmically secure while also seeming completely natural.

The recordings were done in December 1945 and June 1946 in New York's Lotos Club, which was then on W. 57th Street down the block from Carnegie Hall. I worked from needle drops of the 78 set found on Internet Archive, which the resulting sound pleasing and truthful, if not overly spacious.

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At an early recording session

Christmas Hymns and Carols, Volume II

The first collection of hymns and carols was so successful that RCA Victor had Shaw's troupe compile a second volume in 1952. In the meantime, the Chorale had branched out into hymns of Thanksgiving, which recently appeared here, and Easter songs, both recorded in 1950.

Victor used the same cover illustration for the second Christmas set as the first, while giving Shaw more prominent billing.

The conductor had established a permanent chorale in 1948. The back cover of Volume II names its members, including such well known singers as Lois Winter, Florence Kopleff, Clayton Krehbiel, Russell Oberlin, Warren Galjour and Calvin Marsh.

Despite its title, this collection includes very few hymns. In his notes, Shaw explained, "In our first album of Christmas music some years ago we recorded in addition to certain carols the twelve most familiar Christmas hymns; and in this album we had thought to include some five or six additional hymns next in familiarity. Time after time, seeking to find point of proper inclusion within the sequence of carols, the hymns would remain pedestrian, pedantic, faded and inarticulate. One by one they dropped out of the album. Only the greatest of composed Christmas music - a Bach chorale, a motet of Vittoria, or a chanson of Costeley - these only proved suitable companions to the beauty and sensitivity of anonymous folk music."

The reviewer for The New Records noted that the first volume "is probably the most popular item in the whole Christmas repertory," adding that "we have nothing but praise for Mr. Shaw's second volume."

The sessions were in July and August, 1952 in New York's Manhattan Center, near Penn Station on W. 34th Street. The transfers come from my copy of the original LP. The sound is excellent; more resonant than that from the Lotos Club. The singing is again superb.

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Music for Thanksgiving with Robert Shaw

When the young choral conductor Robert Shaw made this brief 10-inch LP of Hymns of Thanksgiving in 1950, he indeed had much to be thankful for.

He had been discovered leading a Pomona College ensemble by the bandleader Fred Waring, who hired him to create a choral group for his orchestra. This Shaw did, and within a few years began his own Collegiate Chorale. He soon became so well known that he attracted the attention of Arturo Toscanini, far and away the most famous conductor in the US. "The Maestro," as he is still known, called on Shaw and the Collegiate Chorale for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the NBC Symphony. Toscanini then engaged Shaw to prepare choruses for him until the older conductor's retirement.

The Collegiate Chorale took its name from holding its rehearsals at Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's Marble Collegiate Church in New York. But Shaw and Peale had a disagreement over the conductor's inclusive policy for membership in the chorale, so the singers departed the premises. (The story is told in more detail in this post.)

In 1948, Shaw founded a smaller group, the Robert Shaw Chorale. By that time he had already been recording for RCA Victor for three years. As far as I can tell, that association began with a set of chansons by Paul Hindemith, a composer that Shaw championed and from whom he commissioned a setting of Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

His next recording was a popular success - the Christmas Hymns and Carols were done for Victor in 1945 and 1946, coming out as an four-78 set with nearly an hour of music. The performers at first were identified as "Robert Shaw and His RCA Victor Chorale," but by the time the same performances appeared on LP, this was simplified to the Robert Shaw Chorale.

It is that latter group that prepared 1950's Hymns of Thanksgiving, a brief 10-inch LP (and corresponding EP set), with six selections and only about 18 minutes of music. Although short, the album is of high quality. As the New York Times reviewer commented, "the chorus sings in the straightforward manner that choruses would sing in if they sang as well as the Shaw Chorale. Despite the title, it has year-round interest." 

Even considering the praise, I believe the writer is understating the skills of the chorus and its director. You will seldom hear such careful balancing of voices, clear diction, complete control of dynamics and total conviction. It is remarkable.

Hugh Porter

On the LP, the accompanist is Hugh Porter, a distinguished organist who was at the time the president of Union Theological Seminary's School of Sacred Music. The program was recorded in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. The sound is excellent in ambient stereo.

This Thanksgiving program is in effect an appetizer for the main course, both of the Shaw Chorale's mono albums of Christmas Hymns and Carols, the 1945-46 set mentioned above and its 1952 successor, which will appear here soon. The first volume was later redone in stereo, but neither of these mono sets have been reissued, to my perhaps faulty knowledge.

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Comments and Links

Blogger adamantly refuses to let me post comments on my own blog, despite me following every arcane instruction on the web (e.g., allowing third-party cookies, clearing the cache). So for the time being I won't be able to respond to your comments or even post links in the comment section. You will find the links at the bottom of the post for any new items.

Dick and Kiz Harp

Dick and Kiz Harp were a charming act who built an enthusiastic following in Dallas in the late 1950s. To a degree they were inspired by Jackie and Roy - the lead singer was Kiz; the pianist and secondary vocalist was Dick - but they did not sound all that much like the more famous duo.

But before I go into their music, let me tell you first that their story has a tragic ending. Kiz died of a cerebral hemorrhage in December 1960, at age 29.

Dick and Kiz had recorded two live LPs for the small 90th Floor label in spring 1960. The first LP was a success; the second was issued after Kiz' death. This post presents both.

Dick and Kiz Harp at the 90th Floor

"The 90th Floor" wasn't just a label; it was the Harps' Dallas nightspot, named for the Cole Porter song "Down in Depths (on the 90th Floor)" beloved of cabaret performers. Far from being a penthouse, the club was a converted warehouse.

The liner notes talk of Dick and Kiz developing a celebrity following including the likes of Tony Bennett. This may be true, but it may be embellished. Back then Dallas was not the metropolis it is now; the Dallas-Fort Worth population then was about a fifth when it is today. I will note, however, that the fine singer Sylvia Syms was a fan and wrote notes for this LP: "I make no bones about my admiration and respect for them as great humans and as artists."

The program starts, inevitably, with "Down in the Depths (on the Ninetieth Floor)." The second song is less known, although it has been recorded a number of times - "Inchworm," which Frank Loesser wrote for Danny Kaye and the 1952 film Hans Christian Anderson.

The pair then duet on "Too Good for the Average Man," my least favorite song from one of my favorite scores, Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes. Its lyrics were clever then but are decidedly dated now. The duo redeem themselves with "Angel Eyes," the Matt Dennis-Tom Adair classic.

The welcome "You Are Not My First Love" is one of Bart Howard's best and best-known compositions, surprisingly not included in the Portia Nelson compilation I posted earlier this year. The song's initial recording was by Mabel Mercer for her first Atlantic LP, in 1952.

"I Like It That Way" is a moody song that Kiz puts across nicely. I know nothing about it, but the performance does display her main influence - not Jackie Cain (or Jeri Southern, as Cash Box suggested in a review of the LP), but Carmen McRae. That's not a bad thing - McRae is a huge favorite of mine.

We're in more familiar territory with the Jerome Moross-John Latouche song "Lazy Afternoon," from The Golden Apple. Many people, including me, consider it one of the finest songs of the 1950s. The Harps take it very slowly, which works admirably.

We are back with Frank Loesser, Danny Kaye and Hans Christian Anderson for the next song, "Ugly Duckling," done effectively as a duet.

The songwriting team of Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf were in their prime for "There Are Days When I Don't Think of You at All," which the Harps may have learned from Wolf's first LP, Wolf at Your Door, released in 1956. It's not one of the songwriters' greatest, but is well served here.

Frank Loesser returns for an encore with perhaps the most frequently recorded song from his most elaborate score - "Joey, Joey, Joey" from The Most Happy Fella, also from 1956. The song was introduced on stage by pop singer Art Lund, who had quite a run of success on Broadway. The verses are handled by Dick, who is only adequate as a singer, with Kiz intoning the "Joey, Joey, Joey" refrain. It's a good arrangement.

Bernie Hanighen and Marvin Wright wrote "Thanks for You" in the 1940s. Dick and Kiz may have picked up the song from June Christy's 1955 recording.

The final song is another relatively unknown but appealing item - "Too Much in Love" by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent. This was introduced in Jane Powell's first film, 1945's Song of the Open Road, but she didn't sing it; Jackie Moran did, which is suppose was preferable to allotting it to one of the leads - W.C. Fields, Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen. Good song, nice performance.

Again! Dick and Kiz Harp at the 90th Floor

The second album, Again!, was taped at the same session or sessions as the first LP, and for the most part is as enjoyable, with its mix of common and lesser-known songs.

The first song was not yet a popular success when they recorded it under Bart Howard's initial title, "In Other Words." It wasn't until a few years later that he renamed it "Fly Me to the Moon." Dick plays an introductory chorus, then Kiz presents the seldom-heard but welcome verse. A smooth performance.

Next, the duo yokes together two songs written in faux-antique English. "Thou Swell," the better known of the two, is by Rodgers and Hart. "Dearest, Darest I" is a relatively unknown Burke and Van Heusen song. Unlike many of their songs, it wasn't introduced by Bing Crosby; rather it comes from a Jack Benny-Fred Allen farce called Love Thy Neighbor. I haven't been able to determine who sang it in the film - it may have been Mary Martin or the Merry Macs - but Ray McKinley with Will Bradley recorded it in 1940, as did others. I like the Harps' arrangement; it's an imaginative way to vary their program.

"Winter Warm" is an early Burt Bacharach-Hal David song and a lovely one, introduced by Gale Storm in 1957 in a sincere version from a singer I don't usuall like. Kiz's reading is cooler, but better sung.

One of the lesser-known Cole Porter songs is next - the rollicking "Great Indoors" from his 1930 show The New Yorkers, where he extols the virtues of not escaping the city's summer heat for the country. Kiz is perfect for this type of material.

Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote the gorgeous "If I Should Lose You" for the unlikeliest vehicle - the 1936 film Rose of the Rancho, where it was sung by Gladys Swarthout and John Boles. Swarthout, who plays the role of Rosita Castro appears en travesti as the leader of a band of vigilantes fighting the outlaws who want to take over her land. (None of this has anything to do with Kiz' sterling reading of the song, of course.)

The next cut is perhaps the only misfire on either LP. "Fugue for Tinhorns" is one of Frank Loesser's finest songs. The composer liked intricate creations - such as "Ugly Duckling" above - and this trio for racetrack gamblers is nothing less than genius, as can be seen and heard in the filmed version with Stubby Kaye and Johnny Silver of the original Broadway cast. The idea of allotting the song to one professional singer and two musicians was not as inspired. The album compounds the error by including a breakdown take, which might have been amusing live, but is tiresome on a record. Fortunately you can drop it from your playlist.

"The More I See You," one of Harry Warren's finest creations, is in good hands with the Harps. The song was introduced by Dick Haymes in the 1945 film Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe.

I don't care for the arrangement of the exhilarating "Trolley Song," another 1945 creation, this one by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for Judy Garland and Meet Me in St. Louis. The cluttered chart gets in the way of the adrenaline rush that should be conveyed both by the trolley and such lyrics as, "I started to yen, then I counted to ten, then I counted to ten again."

"God Bless the Child" is too much of a nightclub version of an affecting song made famous by Billie Holiday.

"Let Me Love You" is one of Bart Howard's most familiar songs, particularly popular in the 1950s and 60s. Mabel Mercer introduced it on her second Atlantic LP. The arrangement has a spot for a fluid Dick Harp piano solo, accompanied by him moaning a la Thelonious Monk.

Perhaps Kiz's finest performance on this set is the best known Fran Landesman-Tommy Wolf song, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most."

The Harps conclude the program with an unexpected turn to Rodgers and Hammerstein - "A Wonderful Guy" from South Pacific, surely Kiz' tribute to Dick, just as these LPs were his tribute to her.

These transfers come from my own collection (for Again!) and the Internet Archive, as remastered by me. The sound is close but truthful, although the piano tone can be aggressive. Both pressings were mono, enhanced by ambient stereo processing.

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Two Symphonies by Michael Haydn, Plus a Thanksgiving Bonus

Two features for you today. The first is a set of two delightful symphonies by Joseph Haydn's younger brother, Michael. Added to it is one of David Federman's always welcome compilations - this one is a "Holiday Express" marking the upcoming Thanksgiving celebration in the US.

Michael Haydn Symphonies

Michael Haydn is still relatively unknown, but he was a talented composer admired by his more famous sibling Joseph and by Wolfgang Mozart, whom he knew well.

Michael wrote 41 symphonies, a corpus little explored until the efforts of such pioneers as conductor Harold Farberman (1929-2018), who set out in the 1980s to record the cycle. While he did not reach his goal - only 17 to my knowledge were ever released - the quality of what he accomplished is impressive.

Most of Farberman's Haydn has been reissued, except for the two symphonies I've transferred for this post, in response to a request.

Michael Haydn

Haydn's Symphony No. 5 dates from 1763, soon after he had assumed a post as court composer in Salzburg, where he was to remain for the next 43 years.

Symphony No. 14 is thought to date from the late 1760s. In his sleeve note, Charles Sherman suggests, "It seems unlikely that Haydn conceived the music as a symphony. From the point of view of style (and particularly that of the Andante with its elaborate solo writing), the four movements probably served first as parts of a larger divertimento or serenade." 

Both No. 5 and 14 were once thought to be the work of his older brother. Parenthetically, if you have ever wondered why there is no Symphony No. 37 by Mozart, it is because the work once identified as such is now known to be Michael Haydn's Symphony No. 25, which does have an introduction by his more famous colleague, thus the confusion.

Harold Farberman

Harold Farberman was a percussionist in the Boston Symphony before pursuing conducting full-time in 1963. He was successively principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony, music director of the Colorado Springs Symphony and music director of the Oakland Symphony. He recorded all the Ives symphonies and several of those by Mahler, among other works. The noted conductor Marin Alsop was among his students.

These imaginative symphonies are well played by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and smoothly recorded. The release dates from 1983.

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Holiday Express, Part One: Thanksgiving

Let me turn the mike over to David for a few words about his latest compilation, with 33 well-chosen songs:

This is a first for me, as far as mixes prepared specially for Big Ten Inch Record go. With so little to be thankful for in the current-events present, I thought a Holiday Express to vintage Thanksgivings, where cheery, thankful songs were far more plentiful, might be helpful as a morale booster. When poverty is widespread, there are always the riches of song. 

 

So hop aboard my Dis-Orient Express and listen to toe-tapper and slow dance music of the Jazz Age and Depression Era (plus a couple of stowaways from more recent nostalgia-worthy eras). This music stopped tears and fears and made the moment at hand a reason for handshakes and hugs as well as a sanctuary for friends and strangers, all heading home and arriving to festive aromas and the artful amnesia of family reunion and celebration. You’ll find me by the phonograph spinning pure golden oldies. Bon appetit! Leave at a respectful hour or volunteer to help with cleanup. 

 

Thanks to Radio Dismuke for a special loan of the last song. Two more Holidays Expresses are scheduled to leave - one for Christmas and the others New Years. But first things first.

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