The Recordings of Martin, Blane and The Martins

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin

I've devoted several posts to the music of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, including a number that presented them singing their own songs and those of others. Today, I'm gathering them all: consolidating the performances by Blane, Martin and their singing group The Martins - including a few new songs - and linking to a refurbished version of the 1956 LP Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane. Also included are the songs from the films Athena and The French Line, and Martin's music for a documentary on the artist Grandma Moses.

First, the 16 songs by Martin, Blane and The Martins are discussed in chronological order, making liberal use of my previous descriptions of the recordings.

Background

The songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were successes from the beginning of their partnership, which began with the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward. That was a typical campus comedy, enlivened by a spectacular series of songs, ranging from the wistful "Ev'ry Time" to the raucous "Buckle Down, Winsocki." (The Winsocki Military Academy was the site of the proceedings.)

But the team didn't start off as songwriters. Both were singers, who met in the chorus of 1937's Hooray For What?, a Lindsay and Crouse show with songs by Arlen and Harburg.

Not long after, the two formed a singing group called The Martins, adding two female voices. They eventually became a featured act on Fred Allen's popular radio show, then were added to Irving Berlin's 1940 musical Louisiana Purchase, for which they wrote the vocal arrangements. In the show, The Martins sang the title song with Carol Bruce and "(Dance with Me) Tonight at the Mardi Gras." There is no cast album, but Bruce's own recordings of two songs from the score can be found here.

The Martins: Ralph Blane, Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers, Hugh Martin

By the time of Louisiana Purchase's opening, the sister combo of Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers were the female voices in The Martins. A labored article in the April 1941 issue or Radio Parade, surely the work of a publicist, depicted this lineup. (The piece is included in the download.)

Earliest Recordings

Even before they formed The Martins, Hugh and Ralph had made a few records separately. The earliest I have found is a 1937 recording by Kay Thompson, Her Orchestra and the Rhythm Singers. The Singers included Martin. Thompson herself was not a great vocalist, but she was an influential vocal arranger who certainly influenced both Martin and Blane, who sang with her at various times.

The Thompson record is "Carelessly" by Nick and Charles Kenny and Norm Ellis. It's not a great record - or song, for that matter, even though it was recorded by many artists at the time. Thompson is as subtle as a jackhammer, and Martin's contribution is limited to singing in the chorus. An inauspicious beginning to our collection, but a beginning nonetheless, and a recording newly added to this set.

The earliest recording of Ralph Blane that we've found (thanks to reader Jeff M.) very likely dates from 1939. It contains two Arlen-Harburg songs from The Wizard of Oz, which was released in that year: "Over the Rainbow" and "The Merry Old Land of Oz." Actually, Blane also recorded "If I Only Had a Brain" and "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead" at the same time, but we haven't located a copy of the latter single.

Surprisingly, "The Merry Old Land of Oz" comes off better than "Over the Rainbow." Blane's jauntiness suits the former, but he seems uncomfortable with the wistfulness of the latter. He generally sings well, although his pitch is not always accurate. The bandleader is Franklyn Marks, who also conducted some of the singles discussed below. I believe Blane had a radio show at the time of these recordings.

Singles by The Martins

Of the five recordings by The Martins that I've located (thank you, Internet Archive), two are devoted to the same song.

The Martins' first recording (at least of the ones I've located) is probably an obscurity on the Hit of the Week label. It is under the name of Leighton Noble, a hotel bandleader who made recordings sporadically from 1938-50, with a "vocal refrain" by The Martins.

The song is "Skip to My Lou," almost certainly a feature of the group's act. The song is attributed here to Hugh Martin, probably reflecting his arrangement of the piece. It is, however, a folk dance song dating to the 1840s at the latest. ("Lou" is thought to be a corruption of "love.")

I was surprised to find this song on the Hit of the Week label, which I thought had disappeared in the Great Depression. I haven't found any information on this later incarnation. The label says it came from the Holyoke Plastics company, whose product in this instance was chewed up by the heavyweight tone arms of the time. (In other words, you get some noise with the music. In this new remastered version, I've managed to improve the vocal sound so it isn't so buried.)

We don't know the exact date of the Hit of the Week record, but we can date the result of The Martins' output. Columbia brought the group into its studios for an August 1941 session, in the run-up to Best Foot Forward's October opening.

The first release resulting from the session was two sparkling songs from the musical, "The Three B's" and "Just a Little Joint with a Jukebox." The second 78 coupled "Watch the Birdie" from the film version of Hellzapoppin' (sung there by Martha Raye and the Six Hits) and a second recording of "Skip to My Lou," virtually identical to the Noble version. 

About the same time, the group made a Soundie of "Skip to My Lou" with the foursome cavorting in a barn. It's the same arrangement (again) and could well be the same recording. An excellent transfer of the Soundie can be found on YouTube.

The Martins skip to their lou(s)

Martin and Blane also managed to work this piece into their superb 1944 score for Meet Me in St. Louis, in a somewhat similar arrangement that translates beautifully to the screen.

The orchestra leader for the Columbia recordings was Franklyn Marks, who is also said to have done some work on the Best Foot Forward orchestrations.

Solo Singles

Ralph Blane

Despite being yoked together as a songwriting team, Martin and Blane also worked separately - and even were reputed to work separately on the songs attributed to them as a team. In his later years, Hugh Martin asserted that he was the main creative force in the duo, and that may well have been the case. 

"I was never jealous of Ralph except for two things: 'Buckle Down, Winsocki' and his glorious voice," said Martin a few years before his death. Well, "Buckle Down" is indeed a grand march and Blane did indeed have a glorious voice.

As far as I know, Blane's second set of recordings as a solo vocalist were a 1944 Johnny Green date, where he assayed the composer's "Out of Nowhere" and "I'm Yours," the latter perhaps more elegantly than the former. These were two of the eight songs that Green recorded at the time for a projected album, which in the event did not come out until 1947. Three of the eight involved the Kay Thompson Singers, who almost certainly included Blane. The set is available here in a newly augmented version that includes two additional songs recorded at the same time but not in the album.

Blane's solo recordings continued with a one-off Artie Shaw date for Musicraft where he sang Martin and Blane's "Connecticut." The piece had been written for an Army show in 1946, at about the time Shaw and Blane recorded it. Martin's view of the writing credits are as follows: "Meredith Willson asked me to write a song about 'Connecticut,' which I did, words and music." Regardless, is a clever song, nicely done here.

Hugh Martin

Martin wrote the music and lyrics for the 1947 Broadway show, Look Ma, I'm Dancin', a vehicle for Nancy Walker. Even though he was not in the cast, he sang one of his songs for the original cast album - "The Little Boy Blues." Joining him for the number was Sandra Deel. The explanation on a reissue album was that "a threatened musicians union strike made it necessary to cut the album while the show was still in rehearsal." On stage, "The Little Boy Blues" was done by Virginia Gorski (later Gibson) and Don Liberto. Deel was in the show, but did not sing this number. Regardless, it's a charming song, charmingly done, and new to this collection.

Bandleader George Cates brought Blane in for the vocals on two floral tunes recorded in 1950 for the relatively new label Coral. These included the then-new "American Beauty Rose," a remarkably bad song that Sinatra somehow recorded twice, and "Roses," an attractive country ballad written by Tim Spencer. The latter was apparently a follow-up to Spencer's big 1949 hit, "Room Full of Roses," which was a top-ten country hit for both George Morgan and Spencer's former group the Sons of the Pioneers.

Our final Blane release came out on the short-lived American label in 1953. It offered two songs from the Blane-Bob Wells-Josef Myrow score for Jane Russell's musical The French Line. The soundtrack to that film has appeared here (and is now newly remastered in ambient stereo), but believe me, neither the tolerable Russell nor toneless co-star Gilbert Roland are any match for Blane. He sings the title number and "Wait 'Til You See Paris."

Except for the Hit of the Week 78 noted above, the sound on all these records is excellent.

LINK to Martin, Blane and The Martins

Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane

In 1956, Hugh and Ralph put out a fine LP of them performing their own songs, appropriately named Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane.

I first posted this album in 2011, and have now remastered it in ambient stereo. It features their only recording of "Ev'ry Time," one of their best songs in a superb reading by Blane.

Details about this LP and the link can be found via the original post.

More Martin and Blane

In addition to the items discussed above, Martin and Blane songs can also be heard on the soundtrack to the M-G-M musical Athena. It's an odd one, but even so has several fine numbers, including "Venezia" and "Love Can Change the Stars." (Blane's ringing rendition of "Venezia" can be heard on Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane.) This too has been newly remastered in ambient stereo, and the harsh sound balance has been tamed.

Hugh Martin wrote the music for a television documentary on the painter Grandma Moses in 1951. His work was then elaborated and orchestrated by Alec Wilder into the Grandma Moses Suite, which was issued on a Columbia LP. I remastered the album in ambient stereo last year.