Jane Powell - The Verve Recordings

Jane Powell had the fortune or misfortune to become one of the last stars of the Hollywood musical. She became popular for her winsome appearance and distinctively appealing singing, starting in her teens in the mid-1940s through the downturn in musical films in the late 1950s - before her 30th birthday.

Powell made records for Columbia as a juvenile performer, then for M-G-M until her luck ran out in about 1956. At that point, a change of image was overdue - Jane was tired of playing overage adolescents.

The gamine began to mature with her new recording contract with Verve records in 1956, as exemplified by the cover of her LP for that label.

This post gathers together the 20 recordings she made for Verve in 1956-57 - the album above, two singles, and four songs from the television musical Ruggles of Red Gap (which also also released on singles).

Single: True Love / Mind If I Make Love to You

Powell's Verve recordings actually began with a cover version of two songs from the Cole Porter musical film High Society. The sonorous Bing Crosby moaned the hymn-like "True Love" to Grace Kelly in the film, which reading did well as a single. But so did Jane's summer 1956 entry for the Verve catalog, which was backed up by a (to me) even finer record, the beguine "Mind If I Make Love to You." 

Powell was always much more skillful with lyrics than is sometimes acknowledged. And in this single, her voice and phrasing have added a welcome maturity.

LP - Can't We Be Friends?

The single was a portent of what was to come in Powell's first and only Verve LP, which came out in late 1956. There, the selections were even more varied from her teen-operetta image, including both easygoing and harder swingers among the well-chosen standards. In the first song, "My Baby Just Cares for Me," her prominent vibrato is still in evidence, but much more relaxed than on previous records. Her phrasing, flexible even as a youngster, is notably well done in "For Every Man There's a Woman."

For these - and all her Verve recordings - she contends with arranger Buddy Bregman, never the most subtle of craftsmen. His blasting brass assaults on the first few songs are not all that helpful to projecting a more sophisticated approach.

Bregman is more under control in the ballad "Imagination," very nicely done by all parties, perhaps excepting the plaintive viola solo. Lovely song, so well handled.

Buddy Bregman

The Arlen-Robin "Hooray for Love" gets a relaxed interpretation with Bregman thankfully muting the brass. For "I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)," Bregman even indulges in some Ellingtonian wind colorations. Jane is not Ivie Anderson, but she is nonetheless convincing here.

Side 1 closes with a great song, the Martin-Blane "Ev'ry Time," handled with the requisite poignance - and including the seldom-heard verse, which is simply gorgeous. This is a high point of the LP.

Powell also is much more flexible with the standard "Comes Love" than the usual practice, including the verse. Bregman has the assault brass back for this one, but Jane belts right along with them, very well, too.

"Let's Face the Music and Dance" was introduced by one of Powell's former co-stars, Fred Astaire. She does him proud, and Buddy is all violins and winds - for a while, anyway. The bravura ending is too much from both of them.

"In Love in Vain" is not one of my favorites from Jerome Kern, even with Leo Robin's accomplished lyrics. Powell is not inside the song as much as in other numbers, although her coda is ravishing.

The Gene Austin-Roy Bergere oldie "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?" is a good choice for Jane, allowing her to move deftly from being aggrieved to aggressive, with sound backing from Buddy.

The album's title song is Kay Swift's greatest hit - "Can't We Be Friends?" - a marvelous torch song with lyrics by her then-husband Paul James (James Warburg). It was introduced by Libby Holman, but not done more effectively than here.

What better to close with than "The Things We Did Last Summer," the universally liked Jule Styne-Sammy Cahn song. Jane could be more rueful here as the leaves of summer fade.

Single: What Gives? What Goes? / Till the Next Time

Jule Styne (Bregman's uncle) was to be involved in the balance of Powell's Verve recordings. First was a follow-up single, with the composer's one-off song "What Gives? What Goes?" being the A-side. The lyrics are by "Kahn" according to the label, but I believe that is Sammy Cahn rather than the long-deceased Gus Kahn.

(Note: Dave Weiner tells me, "The 'Kahn-Styne' composer credit on one of the Jane Powell singles are Stanley Styne, Jule's son, and Donald Kahn, no relation to Sammy Cahn. They also wrote 'A Beautiful Friendship,' which Ella Fitzgerald recorded for Verve.")

It's an undistinguished song, so I chose to give pride of place to its B-side, the unknown-to-me "Till the Next Time," a mid-tempo song that's enjoyable despite the rote lyrics.

Songs from Ruggles of Red Gap

Powell was back in the musical spotlight for a televised version of the play Ruggles of Red Gap, with music by Styne and lyrics by Leo Robin. It appeared on television to little acclaim in February 1957, with an album issued at the same time.

I haven't seen the production, but apparently Powell played the love interest to the butler Ruggles, played stiffly by Michael Redgrave. An odd couple, to be sure.

I've included Powell's four songs from the album, which is enough considering she was the only real singer in the production. Styne and Robin gave her two skillful if hardly weighty songs, "A Ride on a Rainbow" and "I Have You to Thank," which she dispatches neatly, no thanks to the superfluous chorus.

Peter Lawford serves Imogene Coca and Jane Powell

The other two songs were shared with the leaden Michael Redgrave, who could carry a tune but not so as you would want to hear him do it. They are "It's Terribly, Horribly, Frightfully Nice" and "I'm in Pursuit of Happiness." The latter song only comes to life when Powell sings. The notorious non-singer Peter Lawford also is heard on that one, alas.

(Note: Geoconno tells me, "'I'm in Pursuit of Happiness' was a rewrite of a song called 'Why Did I Have to Wait So Long?' with an unfinished lyric by Sammy Cahn for an unproduced film. The tune was used again in Gypsy with the Sondheim lyric 'You'll Never Get Away from Me.'  Sondheim was unaware that the melody had been used in Ruggles of Red Gap.")

I have been assmbling Jane's earlier Columbia and M-G-M recordings - many of which have already appeared here - and hope to produce a follow-up to this post later on.

LINK to Jane Powell - The Verve Recordings