The Complete 'By the Light of the Silvery Moon'

After the success of 1951's On Moonlight Bay, the Warner Bros. brought back stars Doris Day and Gordon MacRae for another go at a story loosely based on Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories. The result was 1953's By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Once again, the songs were vintage and once again there was no soundtrack album because Day recorded for Columbia and MacRae for Capitol.

So today, we bring you the two "songs from the movie" LPs the stars produced separately, along with the actual songs from the soundtrack transferred from an ancient bootleg album. Both of the stars' records were of the 10-inch variety, the waning standard for pop LPs at the time. Within a few years, 12-inch LPs would crowd out their smaller siblings.

Day and MacRae were exceptionally charming on film and their albums are just as worthwhile. Plus there is plenty to like in the period songs, with a few exceptions. In this film, MacRae had just come back from serving "over there," so the setting is circa 1918.

Doris' Columbia LP

Day started off her LP with the title song, "By the Light of the Silv'ry Moon." (Note that the song title was also rendered without the elision, which version Warner Bros. adopted for the film's title.) Gus Edwards and Edward Madden wrote the tune for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909. Edwards himself was the subject of a biopic, 1939's The Star Maker, with Bing Crosby as his celluloid replica. "By the Light" may be the composer's best song.

Doris Day, Gordon MacRae, Rosemary DeCamp, Leon Ames

"Your Eyes Have Told Me So" was a 1919 effort by Walter Blaufuss, Egbert Van Alstyne and Gus Kahn. It's a fine ballad, done winningly by the amazing Day.

She also is excellent in "Just One Girl," with sterling assistance from the Norman Luboff Choir and Paul Weston's orchestra. The waltz, dating from 1898, is by Lyn Udall and Karl Kennett.

One of the best remembered numbers from the score is "Ain't We Got Fun" from 1921. The authors were Richard Whiting, Raymond Egan and Gus Kahn. Doris is good and the choir is OK, but this is better performed as a duet.

In the film, "If You Were the Only Girl" also was sung by the two principals. Here it's a solo and still a winner. It's a 1916 English song by Nat Ayer and Clifford Grey, and a particularly melodious one.

In contrast, Doris can't do much with the awful "Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee." She is alternately coy and declamatory, and the Norman Luboff Choir is no help. The song works much better as a playful duet, such as on the MacRae LP, or in the film where Day is partnered by MacRae's rival, Russell Arms. Henry Marshall and Stanley Murphy wrote the piece in 1912.

The heartfelt Day solo "I'll Forget You" is much better. Ernest Ball and Annelu Burns composed this lovely ballad in 1921. The song is a high point on both albums.

The final song is Day's specialty "King Chanticleer," originally a 1912 instrumental by Nat Ayer that was recorded  by Prince's Band and many others. At some point A. Seymour Brown added words, and this is the basis of a barnyard opera as arrayed by Doris in the picture and on the cover above. It's too hectic for my taste, but musicals need variety, I suppose.

Gordon's Capitol LP

For his Capitol LP, Gordon MacRae had the significant advantage of a singing partner in the person of June Hutton, who was then making records for Capitol, generally accompanied by her husband, Axel Stordahl, a skillful former Dorsey staffer who was at the helm for most of Frank Sinatra's Columbia recordings.

June Hutton

It might be helpful to have a brief explanation of all the various Huttons who made records and films back then. June was the sister of bandleader Ina Ray Hutton. They were no relation to the movies' Betty Hutton and her sister, Marion, once of the Glenn Miller ensemble. None of them were born as Huttons; they adopted the name, presumably because of the popularity of "poor little rich girl" Barbara Hutton.

June followed Jo Stafford as the female voice in the Pied Pipers, going solo in the late 40s. She was quite a good singer. I expect to post the rest of her complete Capitol recordings soon.

Gordon is just home from the war and Doris is ready for marriage

MacRae of course was famous for his appearances on records, radio and films. The record starts off with his solo, "My Home Town Is a One Horse Town (But It's Big Enough for Me)," written by Alex Gerber and Abner Silver in 1920. Appropriately it's a march, with Gordon's character just home from the war.

June and Gordon pair for "Your Eyes Have Told Me So" and the saccharine "Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee." They perform the latter as if it were a vaudeville song, and it works better than the Day reading. 

Hutton had a much less extroverted manner than Day, which shows in "I'll Forget You." She is just as effective, however.

MacRae does wonderfully well with "Just One Girl," conveying his exhilaration irresistibly. He and Hutton then take on the title song, followed by "Ain't We Got Fun." Their two characters are middle class; shouldn't they have corrected the title to "Don't We Have Fun?"

Gordon and June also do well with "If You Were the Only Girl in the World," although Day is uniquely affecting in this number. 

I've added a non-film duet for Hutton and MacRae - "Coney Island Boat," which comes from another exercise in nostalgia, the 1954 Broadway show By the Beautiful Sea. It's the only other song that the two recorded together, also the only Capitol recording that June made without her husband; instead Van Alexander was in charge. The song is by Dorothy Fields and Arthur Schwartz, and was introduced by the talented and versatile Shirley Booth.

The Soundtrack Recording

As mentioned, the soundtrack recordings come from a long-ago bootleg. After some ministrations, the sound isn't bad at all.

The competing "songs from" LPs encompass all the songs on the soundtrack LP, so this is just provided as an alternate (and the original). The film does include other music from the time (save the anachronistic "La Vie en rose"), but I believe it is all instrumental background except for a vocal by Leon Ames (playing Doris' father) on "Moonlight Bay," a reference to the first film in the series.

The sound on the Columbia and Capitol albums is more than adequate. All these recordings, except for the "Coney Island Boat" single, are from my collection.

LINK

Gisele MacKenzie with Pop Hits of the 50s

My previous posts of music by Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie have been remarkably popular, leading me to observe that you blog followers like her even more than I do.

Not that I disdain MacKenzie's gifts, which were considerable - she sings in tune, with excellent diction, and always commands attention. It's just that she doesn't go below the surface very often, a quality I value in vocalists.

Fortunately, the repertoire for this new post doesn't call for much depth. It consists of pop hits dating from 1951-55 - the kind of fare that MacKenzie confronted on a weekly basis as one of the stars of the television program Your Hit Parade. That program required her to master all types of music - from Broadway tunes to novelty items to crossover R&B and country material. She could do justice to such varied content, as demonstrated by this particular collection, although I suspect she was weakest at blues-based songs, which are not represented here.

What you will find is offerings derived from the stage and screen ("Hey There," "Unchained Melody," "Stranger in Paradise," "The Song from 'Moulin Rouge'," "Theme from Picnic/Moonglow") other pop hits ("Too Young," "Answer Me, My Love," "Learnin' the Blues," "Ebb Tide," "Blue Tango") and C&W tunes ("Slow Poke," "Half as Much") - all handled in a most pleasing manner.

MacKenzie's accomplice in this program is the veteran arranger/conductor Axel Stordahl, who is mostly known for his superb work with Frank Sinatra throughout the Voice's stint with Columbia Records. I believe Stordahl was the conductor for Eddie Fisher's Coke Time TV show when these sessions were held. His arrangements here, while proficient, are not of the quality he routinely achieved with Sinatra.

The date of the Gisele sessions is unclear. While RCA Victor first issued this LP in late 1958, I believe it may have been taped somewhat earlier. First, as mentioned, the program is of recent hits, but the latest item is from 1955. Second, the excellent portrait of MacKenzie by illustrator Jon Whitcomb was first used for the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in November 1955 (at right; she is facing west instead of east, as on the record cover). I'm not sure when stereo recording of pop artists began, but I recently posted George Siravo stereo material dating from mid-1957. RCA was recording classical music in stereo as early as 1954 and issuing it on tape starting in 1955.

Fortunately, RCA's mike manipulators did better work for Gisele than for George. The results here are reasonably well-balanced, although the sonics for the band were distinctly brighter than those for the singer. It was almost as though the engineer had thrown a blanket over MacKenzie on some cuts. (Perhaps the studio was chilly.) I have compensated for this effect, with some success, I hope.

This was the only MacKenzie LP that originated on the RCA Victor label. Her other albums first came out on the Vik subsidiary. RCA folded that imprint in November 1958.

In common with many other singers in the post-war era, MacKenzie endorsed cigarettes (see below - click to enlarge). If she actually did smoke, it did not affect her pipes.

Axel Stordahl

Let's start a new series devoted to the vanished genre of easy listening records. This genre was a major factor in the LP era; it was sort of a hybrid of light classical and big band music, and its major practitioners would veer into one or the other depending on the record and their own proclivities and backgrounds.

Morton Gould has been featured several times already on this blog; he put out quite a string of easy listening items in the 10-inch LP era. Another exponent was Paul Weston, Jo Stafford's husband and accompanist.

Most of the easy listening items you find on the web are from its later phases, when it adopted hip and funky trappings that many people like these days (not me; that stuff makes my skin crawl).

But back in the postwar era, easy listening really was easy - so easy, it could lead to "Dreamtime," as this Axel Stordahl item is titled. It was pretty music for relaxation. Sort of like the function of new age music these days, I guess.

Stordahl, a former Tommy Dorsey arranger, made his name as Frank Sinatra's arranger during the Voice's first great era, when he recorded for Columbia. Stordahl's arrangements for Sinatra were consistently inventive and gorgeous, and he maintained a remarkably high standard throughout that period.

This album is not quite on that level, to my ears; just as Nelson Riddle's work on his own was not as consistently inspired as it was when he worked for Sinatra. Not sure why this should be the case, and perhaps I am over-generalizing.

Stordahl died young, at age 50 in 1963, soon after one last recording session with Sinatra, for the Capitol album Point of No Return.

This post is in response to a request by Mel. Sorry, there are a few sonic burbles in the mix, but it's generally quite listenable.