Ray Anthony Causes a Rumpus on Campus

I wanted to post a Ray Anthony record, and I will admit that I chose this one for its fun and very much of its time cover.

Also, it goes very well with a previous Anthony upload called Houseparty Hop, which took place at a rather more rumbustious fraternity house (see below).

The older LP has been newly remastered for this occasion. You can find it and my musings about the cover goings-on in this post from 2017.

Houseparty Hop was a 10-inch LP with recordings from 1951. Campus Rumpus started out as a 10-incher in 1952, but today's version is the 12-inch variety from a few years later.

Younger readers may be wondering what a "rumpus" was or is. Well, actually I gave a clue a few paragraphs above by using the related archaic term "rumbustious," which means pretty much what it sounds like. "Ruckus" is somewhat similar - noise and celebration.

That's what you will find if you examine the LP cover at top. An enormous fraternity house - Alpha Omega Phi (presumably a slightly reordered Alpha Phi Omega) - is holding a dance, with the clarinetist wailing away above the crowd. (You would think it would have been a trumpeter in honor of Ray Anthony.) Joe College can't wait - in his rush he is just about yanking Betty Co-ed's arm out of its socket.

Joe is dressed in his best Ivy League attire - a camel hair blazer, bow tie, argyle socks and saddle shoes, all of which are wildly out of style today but were still in vogue when I was a young fellow in the 60s. (Well, maybe not the bow tie.)

On the second floor, while the left hand room appears to house two drinkers, the right hand window shows the only person who is actually doing what college is for - studying. This was true to life then and probably is today, with the possible exception of the studying.

BMOC

Well, Buster, what about the music, I hear someone asking. It's very much in the vein of other such records. Anthony's band was less R&B than Ralph Marterie's and not as jazz oriented as Les Brown and especially Sauter-Finegan. Ray had a straightforward, chrome-plated dance band.

The songs are a combination of standards and semi-standards with originals by Anthony and George (the Fox) Williams, who was Ray's arranger at the time. (George has been featured here a few times under his own name - The Fox in Hi-Fi, with a cover that has to be seen to be believed, and Rhythm Was His Business, which actually has another outrageous cover. Both are newly remastered and well worth hearing.)

George Williams

The standards on the Anthony record include "The Continental" (Con Conrad and Herb Magidson), "They Didn't Believe Me" (Jerome Kern), "Walkin' My Baby Back Home" (Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert), "Deep Night" (Charlie Henderson), "True Blue Lou" (Leo Robin-Sam Coslow-Richard Whiting), "It's De-Lovely" (Cole Porter) and "Dancing in the Dark" (Dietz and Schwartz).

A special mention of Gene Gifford's "Smoke Rings," which he wrote for Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra, and which became that band's theme. An extensive post is coming up on the Casa Lomas, assuming I ever get it written.

Now that the music's out of the way, let me provide my deconstruction of the back cover.

On this side, Joe and Betty have disembarked from a hot road/jalopy whose wheels have serious camber issues. The vehicle appears to be a 1932 Ford minus bumpers and fenders, and with a fox tail on the radio antenna. (I don't think this vulpine affectation was a thing in the 50s; rather the 20s, if then.) Everyone else seems to have the same Model A, although some examples have fenders. In the 60s, in contrast, the fashion was not for old beaters but for small sports cars - MGs and Triumphs. No one wore bow ties - but then they didn't in the 50s either.

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