Cy Coleman Plays and Sings Arlen's 'Jamaica'

Pianist and songwriter Cy Coleman also was a talented singer. Still, most of his records showcase his piano playing, where he was a virtuoso, rather than his vocal skills, where his natural gifts were modest. The most notable exception to this rule was a 1966 Columbia LP of his own compositions, which is quite wonderful, with his gift for wry interpretation on full display.

There are a few other examples of his way with a lyric, and today we have the first vocal recordings he made, per the superb Coleman biography, You Fascinate Me So, written by friend of the blog Andy Propst. Those four vocals are found on a LP of songs from the Arlen-Harburg musical Jamaica.

Ricardo Montalban and Lena Horne

When the record came out in 1957, Jamaica had just opened on Broadway. It was the second consecutive Arlen musical to take place in the Caribbean; his 1954 House of Flowers had a Haitian setting. Today the earlier musical is better remembered - it has the superior score - but Jamaica ran for much longer, possibly due to the star power of Lena Horne in a leading role. The production was not without its problems - here is a good article on the backstage dramatics.

Before Jamaica's opening, record companies lined up to exploit this potential blockbuster of a show by presenting their own takes on the Arlen score. There were four such LPs, per Andy's book, including jazz interpretations by Phineas Newborn Jr. and Don Elliott, along with Coleman's effort for the small Jubilee label.

It might seem odd to task Coleman with singing the score's quasi-patois lyrics, but he does well with Yip Harburg's topical and ironic words, supported by a vocal group. The vocal numbers are "I Don't Think I'll End It All Today," "Napoleon," "Little Biscuit" and "Push De Button." Oddly, the LP does not include "Ain't It the Truth," one of the best known songs from the score.

The cover notes get a few spellings wrong, so let me list the backing musicians. On the vocal numbers they are Romeo Penque, flute, Skeeter Best, guitar, Aaron Bell, bass, and Osie Johnson, drums. On the instrumentals, Barry Galbraith and Dan Perri replace Best. The arrangements are by Coleman and Bell.

The young piano prodigy,
courtesy You Fascinate Me So

As a bonus, I've added two of Coleman's early singles. "Sabia" and "Caprice" come from his first recording session, in March 1950. "South" and "In a Little Spanish Town" are from two years later. All show off Coleman's bristling piano technique. The first two items appeared on the blog several years ago in an LP compilation. These particular transfers come from the original 78s and have better sound. They were remastered from lossless originals found on Internet Archive. The sound from the LP, sourced from my own collection, is fine as well.

The cover presents one minor mystery - Coleman is shown against a backdrop of the Shubert Theater's marquee, but IBDB says the show was staged at the Imperial.

Andy's biography tells us that this LP came at a turning point for Coleman - he was just about to embark on a career as a composer for the stage, working with Carolyn Leigh. His greatest successes were yet to come.

By the way, Andy's latest book, The 100 Most Important People in Musical Theatre, just came out a few months ago.

Cy Coleman's Broadway Pianorama

I am once again indebted to my friend StealthMan for a valuable contribution to the blog, in the form of this Cy Coleman LP from 1962.

As with previous Coleman posts, the focus here is on his piano prowess, as he takes on the usual LP complement of 12 tunes, all from Broadway shows.

Coleman was important Broadway tunesmith, but on this program he limits himself to just one of his own songs, "Tall Hope" from 1960's Wildcat - not one of his best-known works. He was preparing the superb score for Little Me at about the time this LP was being recorded, so it's a little surprising he didn't include one of that show's songs, such as "The Other Side of the Tracks" or "I've Got Your Number."

Nancy Andrews and Cy Coleman during Little Me rehearsals

But what is here is very well done in the pianist's usual locked-hands, multi-noted style. By the early 60s he had also incorporated the then-fashionable soul jazz sound into his approach. The producers saw fit to add a cooing vocal chorus at times, but you can ignore their effusions - Coleman seems to do so.

Good sound on this one - thanks again to StealthMan!

Cy Coleman Jazz Trio, Plus Reups

The main event today is an upload of the Cy Coleman Jazz Trio's Why Try to Change Me Now LP from 1959, but this post also includes several remastered reups, one of which inspired the new Coleman transfer.

First, the fresh item. When I wrote about Coleman's Benida LP a while back, I ventured the opinion that Coleman, while a virtuoso, was not a jazz pianist. But here, as a riposte, he is presented with a "jazz" tag and in the company of two certified jazz artists, bassist Aaron Bell and drummer Ed Thigpen.

And in fact the trio does produce something very like jazz, although it is impossible to know how much of the notes you hear were worked out in advance - Coleman was, after all, a well known composer. On the plus side, the group swings effortlessly; on the minus, the pianist relies far too much on the locked hands approach for my taste.

Cy Coleman

The program is largely standards, including Coleman's title song, associated with Sinatra' superb recording (which, I might note gratuitously, is almost the same song as another Frank specialty, "Everything Happens to Me," written by another blog favorite, Matt Dennis, way back in 1940).

If it seems like I am down on Coleman, let me add that I am an admirer both of his instrumental and compositional skills. To prove it, I am also uploading one of his earliest records on my long-neglected singles blog, where he performs with a vocal group called the Cytones. (He should have had then all wear masks of his face and called them the Cyclones.)

The sound here is good, but highly directional early stereo, with the piano on the left and rhythm right. My pressing is clean, except for some surface noise on the title tune.

Now on to the reups, the first of which inspired the new Coleman post.

Night Out Music for Stay-at-Homes. This is a Decca compilation from the 1950s presenting unusual items from Coleman (his first record), Matt Dennis, Erroll Garner, Billy Taylor, and Nat King Cole.

Southern Gospel on RCA. A compilation of singles issued by RCA Victor in 1956-57, with the Blackwood Brothers Quartet, the Statesmen Quartet with Hovie Lister, Stuart Hamblen, George Beverly Shea, and the Johnson Family Singers.

Blackwood Brothers - Own Label 78s. I also went ahead and revisited my post of a few records that the Blackwoods issued on their own label circa 1948 and 1952, which appears on my singles blog. This includes the tremendous "Working on the Building."

Torch Song. This early M-G-M LP presents music from the 1953 Joan Crawford vehicle Torch Song, with singer India Adams dubbing Crawford's vocals and pianist-composer Walter Gross doubling for Michael Wilding's blind pianist, whose unselfish love redeemed La Crawford's temperamental diva character. Touching!

The reup links can be found in via the comments to the original posts linked above, or go to the comments to this post.

Early Cy Coleman

Before he became famous as a Broadway composer, Cy Coleman was a fixture in the better clubs with his piano trio - even as a very young man.

This obscure 10-inch LP is from 1955, when Coleman was either 25 or 26. (The back cover says 24, but news accounts from 1950 had him as 22, so that's unlikely.)

This was not Coleman's first record - he had a contract with Coral as early as 1950 - but it may be his first LP.

The young Cy Coleman

Coleman was a very effective pianist. The back cover says he offers "an almost symphonic form of jazz," which is nonsense: he was not really a jazz artist. Although he offers his own takes on some very familiar tunes, little here sounds improvised.

Coleman's cohorts were jazz players, though. Bassist Ernie Furtado had stints with Bill Evans, Chuck Wayne and Morgana King. Drummer John Cresci played with Helen Merrill and Lena Horne, later, oddly, with Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield.

By the time this LP came out, Coleman had already written such songs as "Why Try to Change Me Now." The only song here that may be his work is the opener, "One-Two-Three."

The cover makes it look like Coleman played the accordion, but there's none of that here.

My singles blog has a post of one of Coleman's greatest hits - "Playboy's Theme" - along with his own vocal on "You Fascinate Me So."

[Note (June 2023): The piano on this LP has a plonky sound, probably because it was recorded too closely. I've remastered the record in ambient stereo with a small amount of natural reverberation to help counteract this effect.]

Night Out Music for Stay-At-Homes

I transferred this circa 1956 LP for the Matt Dennis songs it contains, but I thought some of you might enjoy the complete contents, which feature a number of other pianists.

First, about the three Dennis songs. "Black Lace" and "Just a Girl That Men Forget" were coupled on a Coral single in 1950 or 51. As far as I can tell, "The Lonesomest Whistle" is otherwise unissued. I believe these were the only recordings the singer-pianist made for Coral.

I don't have access to my Dennis LPs at the moment, but I think he may have recorded "Just a Girl That Men Forget" for another label. Seems hardly worth recording once.

The LP starts off with two songs that Nat Cole recorded for Decca very early in his career, with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince. "Sweet Lorraine" - a classic - comes from December 1940, and "Slow Down" is from March 1941. The latter was written by singer-songwriter-publisher Redd Evans, a friend of Cole's. (Evans has appeared as singer on my other blog.) This transfer seemed to be about a half-step flat, so I've adjusted it accordingly.

The three sides by Erroll Garner are among the four he recorded for Signature in March 1945. I am not an admirer of Garner's pianism, so have little to say about these records, except that "Loot to Boot" appears to be based on "Nola" - at least Garner quotes the earlier tune.

Pianist Billy Taylor also makes an appearance with two standards: "My Heart Stood Still" is from January 1950; "Darn That Dream" could be from the same session. They first came out on a Coral single, and are pleasant.

Finally, there is pianist, later composer and sometime singer Cy Coleman, a favorite of mine. He recorded these two songs circa 1950, when he was just 21. The transfers of "Sabia" and "Caprice" seemed to be very sharp, so I have taken them down a full step.

The more records I work on, the more I realize that record companies often mucked with the speed of their transfers, for whatever reason. I have compensated for this phenomenon on many occasions, and have been taken to task (sometimes rudely) by commenters for missing other off-speed recordings. My collection contains one recording so out of kilter that I can't even produce an acceptable transfer. So this LP is by no means an anomaly for the period.

The recorded sound is variable, and my pressing had a few issues, hopefully not too distracting.

The cover is characteristic of the time, when the proportion of men smoking pipes and women in negligees was far higher on record covers than it was anywhere else, other than Hugh Hefner's publications.