The Young David Allyn - 1946-49

Two recent posts here celebrated the vocal artistry of David Allyn - presenting one of his best LPs, from 1959, and his earliest recordings, from 1940-45. Today we complete the survey of Allyn's work in the 1940s, including work with Boyd Raeburn, Johnny Richards and others dating from 1946-49 - 24 sides in all.

These include all his commercial discs from that period (to my knowledge) along with a number of transcriptions. These came from my collection, with a few additions from Internet Archive.

As I wrote about Allyn in the first installment of this series, "He was a warm, flexible and intelligent artist who was as comfortable with ballads as he was with jazz ensembles." In short, he was one of the finest vocalists of the 20th century, still too little known.

With Boyd Raeburn, Part 2

We start with seven circa 1946 transcriptions with Boyd Raeburn's band, and it's immediately clear that the 27-year-old Allyn had already become a secure artist, comfortable at all tempos and with varied material. The first item, "I Don't Care Who Knows It" is a standard pop song of the time, but Allyn puts it across convincingly, with the assist of a good boppish chart from an unnamed arranger.

We do know who did the next chart - 20-year-old prodigy Johnny Mandel handled "If I Loved You" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's new show, Carousel. It's proficient work, but the real interest is in Allyn's caressing vocal, warm and wistful. The bass sax solo is by bandleader Raeburn (shown above on tenor sax, accompanying Allyn).

David Allyn

George Handy returns with one of his best-known songs, "Forgetful," heard in the first set in its commercial recording. As I wrote before, "'Forgetful' is not a good tune, but Allyn puts it across with authority."

Allyn was to return to Handy's hipster "Where You At?" in 1963 with Bob Florence, but here is supported by a good chart from the composer, a vocal from Ginny Powell (sounding like Peggy Lee), and a trumpet solo from Ray Linn.

Next is the excellent Arlen-Mercer song, "Out of This World," introduced by Bing in 1945 and a hit for Jo Stafford. Considering the title, Handy's surrealistic arrangement may be appropriate, but how Allyn could sing so beautifully with such distracting backgrounds is a mystery.

"Picnic in the Wintertime" also was included in the first collection in a live recording. This transcription is mercifully without that version's Ernie Whitman announcements.

"Blue Echoes" appears in this set in two versions - first the transcription and then a commercial recording for Jewel made in June 1946. It's not a great song, especially with a Handy arrangement that seems to throw in effects at random. Both editions use the same chart, but the Jewel performance is smoother.

The Jewel side is taken from an album called Innovations. The cover below is an amusing period piece, with Boyd shown in the center with a plant thing coming out of his head and the bearded Handy next to him. You are welcome to examine this artwork for any meaning you can derive from it.

The more straightforward inside cover below has several excellent photos of the band. That's Raeburn on the lower left with his wife, Ginny Powell.

The final Jewel single was recorded in February 1946. "I Only Have Eyes for You" has a relatively restrained Handy arrangement (still loud but with not as many peculiar interjections) and a sensitive Allyn interpretation. 

The First Solo Singles

The Raeburn band was to break up late in 1946, but by then Allyn had begun recording as a single artist for small labels.

Atomic records issued four songs under Allyn's name. Bandleader Frank Devenport and label owner Lyle Griffin collaborated on the first composition, "Chinero." It's an OK song, with better melody than words (e.g., "Like the stars shining in the heavens above, you shine"). The record features good guitar work by Al Hendrickson, himself a singer who later recorded an LP as Tommy Hendrix. The other star of this date was tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, one of the best instrumentalists of the time.

Lucky Thompson

"Sweet and Lovely" is another song Allyn later returned to, although with an up-tempo interpretation. It's on a 1964 Everest album that also contains a revival of "Forgetful." Here he and Thompson take their cues from the song's title, with satisfying results. 

"Snowbound" is a fine song by Lyle Griffin and bassist Red Callender. The tenor obbligato is by Thompson. The pianist for these sides is one "G. Style." The speculation is that Mr. Style is actually Dodo Marmarosa, who was more or less Griffin's house pianist at the time.

"Penthouse Serenade," a popular song of the time that has become a standard, gets another heartfelt reading with celeste by Devenport. Thompson and "Style" lay out for this one.

Allyn also recorded two sides with Griffin as leader and trombonist. "Deep in the Blues" is a terrific record with a quasi-R&B sound and growl trumpet from Al Killian. Hal McKusick received a label credit for his alto work.

"It Shouldn't Happen to a Dream" is a conventional ballad, with the love object traipsing through the singer's dreams, a la "It's the Same Old Dream," recorded by Frank Sinatra at about the same time. 

Also in 1946, poet Fran Kelly engaged Allyn to record two songs for her Fran-Tone label. Arranger Tom Talbert brought in everyone but an ophicleide player for the date, including (according to one source) oboist Ray Still (later the Chicago Symphony principal), hornist Vince DeRosa (a Hollywood studio stalwart) and pianist Erroll Garner. 

Kelly's songs are more interesting than you might expect. "Black Night and Fog" is a film-noirish essay in loneliness, with an appropriate early-exotica backing by Talbert. "Please Let Me Forget" is another downer, but again with a chart worth hearing. Allyn was not in particularly good voice for this date.

With Johnny Richards and Paul Smith

Allyn did not record in 1947 or 1948. (The latter year was lost to a musicians union strike.) Things picked up in 1949, with two dates for the Discovery label.

For the first date, in September, Allyn was in excellent voice and backed by a large ensemble led by arranger Johnny Richards. His rendition of "It Never Entered My Mind," one of the greatest Rodgers-Hart songs, is definitive vocally, and the busy arrangement is not too distracting.

Another Rodgers and Hart standard, "Wait Till You See Her," gets a sensitive reading, if lacking the sense of exhilaration implied by the lyrics. Harry Bluestone fiddles like he is in a salon orchestra.

Johnny Richards

Allyn is appropriately impassioned in Max Steiner's "Wrong" (formally, "It Can't Be Wrong") from the recent film Now, Voyager, with lyrics added by Kim Gannon.

The final number was "When Love Comes," a good song by arranger Phil Moore that gets a superior vocal from Allyn and a hyper arrangement from Richards.

Paul Smith, the pianist on the Richards date, led the second Discovery session, held in late December and devoted to three standards.

Paul Smith

"The Touch of Your Lips" is an excellent Ray Noble song first recorded by the composer with Al Bowlly in 1936. Allyn's version is ardent, backed by the fluent Smith piano. This session also featured a Novachord, a sort-of electric harpsichord that polluted the occasional record in the 1940s.

Also from the 1930s is "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking," a 1933 hit for Harry Revel and Mack Gordon. Not one of my favorites, but here in a good reading.

Allyn's 1940s recordings ended with Jimmy McHugh's 1926 "I Can't Believe that You're in Love with Me," with both Allyn and Smith in high spirits and the Novachord under control.

Despite the excellence of these 1949 vocals, Allyn did not venture back into the studios until the late 1950s. For him this period was marred by drug addiction and a prison sentence for forging prescriptions. He rose above these troubles and was to make many excellent records in the years to come.

The Young David Allyn - 1940-45

Vocalist David Allyn (1919-2012) is a particular favorite of mine. He never achieved great success, but was a well-respected artist among his peers, often being termed a "singer's singer." To me, that implies he can only be appreciated by other vocalists, but that's not the case. He was a warm, flexible and intelligent artist who was as comfortable with ballads as he was with jazz ensembles.

Most of Allyn's reputation rests on several LPs he recorded for World-Pacific, Warner Bros. and Everest in the late 50s and early 60s, but his career began much earlier. He was recording with the great trombonist Jack Teagarden at age 21 or so, and worked in the recording studios fairly regularly throughout the 1940s.

Today's post and a successor will cover all of his commercial recordings from that period (to my knowledge), adding in some transcriptions and live performances captured on airchecks. These come largely from my collection, with some additions from Internet Archive sources. This first installment includes 21 songs from 1940-45. The follow-up will offer 25 recordings covering 1946-49.

To demonstrate how far Allyn progressed from his early days until his late 50s record contracts, I recently posted his Warner Bros. LP from 1959. His singing there is spectacular.

The Jack Teagarden Recordings

Big T in the studio

Big T was both a wonderful instrumentalist and singer, but his big band never achieved much success. It was a good group even so, as demonstrated by the 1940 recordings he made for Varsity. "Now I Lay Me Down to Dream" is his first side to feature new singer David Allyn, who sounds mature but heavily under the influence of Bing and the Eberle(y) brothers.

On this song and the succeeding four, the arranger is the well-known Phil Moore. "Wait Till I Catch You in My Dreams" and "River Home" are run-of-the-mill pop tunes, smoothly done but not memorable.

At the beginning of 1941, Teagarden was the first artist to be issued on the short-lived Viking label, which quickly became known for its miserable pressings. Allyn is featured on two songs, "Here's My Heart," which isn't bad, and the terrific "It All Comes Back to Me Now." Even here, he has not really found his own style, dipping into the Crosby mannerisms here and there. The latter song has an excellent Teagarden solo.

On these early sides, Allyn is credited as "David Allen." He didn't switch spellings until c1945, and even so his surname would be spelled "Allen" periodically throughout his career. (His real name was Albert DiLella.)

In May and June 1941, Tea was in the studios making Standard Transcriptions, where Allyn can be heard to good effect, none the least because the technical quality was much better than Viking could provide. Dick DuPage is the arranger on the first two numbers. Allyn's first solo is "You're All That Matters to Me," which is done well, save for an ill-advised falsetto ending.

His next recording was a duet with the fantastically shrill Marianne Dunne, "Made Up My Mind." Much better was the fine song, "Blue Mist," one of Allyn's best early efforts (it also has a wonderful solo by the leader).

In June, Teagarden gave him two undistinguished pop tunes to handle, "These Things You Left Me" and "A Star Told a Story." Allyn does well, although he is not yet distinctive, nor entirely comfortable. 

October's "Sing a Love Song" is more of the same. Alec Wilder's "Soft as Spring" is a much better song. Its unconventional melody gives the vocalist some trouble initially, but he finishes well. 

For his final recordings with Teagarden, Allyn did "No Need to Be Sorry," followed by "This Is No Laughing Matter." On the latter, the Teagarden-Allyn duo is as good as most other versions I've heard of this current pop tune.

Allyn went into the Army when the war began, and was medically discharged a few years later.

Fellow on a Furlough

Bob Chester

By 1944, Allyn had become a much more polished and personal singer. There are no commercial recordings or transcriptions from this period, as far as I can tell, but we do have an excellent broadcast aircheck of the wartime "Fellow on a Furlough" with Bob Chester's band. Allyn's legato is much improved and he seems more into the material.

With Boyd Raeburn

Allyn's time with bandleader Boyd Raeburn, starting in 1945, was one of the high points of his career. The earliest performance in this set is another aircheck, this one from San Francisco dating from June 1945. On "There Must Be a Way," the singer sounds more relaxed than before, doing a smooth duet with Claire Hogan.

Boyd Raeburn

The next aircheck is from the following month, same locale. Allyn handles the then-new "Laura" beautifully, in the face of the band's fussy arrangement. Those odd, supposedly advanced charts were a defining feature of Raeburn's band.

George Handy

An August aircheck has a overly elaborate George Handy arrangement that does Allyn no favors, but he puts across the superior ballad "Out of This World" superbly, even so. He seemed to thrive on these challenging environments, and his lovely singing stands out even more as a result.

Also worthy is the following aircheck, from August, of another outstanding song, "There's No You." This also sounds like Handy, and his chart is even more distracting. Blasting, staccato brass incongruously leads into Allyn singing, "I feel the autumn breeze, it drifts cross my pillow as soft as a will o' the wisp." A good alto solo, possibly by Hal McKusick, also mitigates the odd arrangement.

Next we move into commercial recordings with one of Raeburn's most famous efforts, "Forgetful," a Handy composition with a chart that seemingly incorporates the Woody Woodpecker laugh, although this was a few years before that song became popular. "Forgetful" is not a good tune, but Allyn puts it across with authority. This is from the band's first date with the small Jewel label, in October 1945.

Another notable Raeburn song from this period is "Picnic in the Wintertime," here in a broadcast from Hollywood in late December 1945. A pleasant number, not helped by the showy Handy arrangement, or the bombastic Ernie Whitman announcements.

We'll complete Allyn's Raeburn sojourn in the second installment of this collection, then move on to his other commercial recordings and some airchecks from the late 1940s.

David Allyn's 'I Only Have Eyes for You'

For some time, I have been planning a survey of the early career of the great singer David Allyn (1919?-2012). But it might be best to first post one of the LPs from his greatest period, the late 1950s, when he was making records with the likes of Johnny Mandel and Bill Holman.

This Warner Bros. album from 1959 is less celebrated than those two immediate predecessors, but even so represents a level of achievement attained by just a few popular singers in the 20th century.

David Allyn

Before I discuss the album, let me address the matter of his name. Throughout his career, Allyn was known alternately as "David Allen" or "David Allyn." For his best LPs, such as this one, it was "Allen." But usually it was "Allyn." No matter, his real name was Albert DiLella.

As a singer, Allyn/Allen had it all: total involvement, superb intonation and diction, and great warmth. Many vocalists have been termed a "singer's singer," but he was truly worthy of the title.

The selections on this LP mix favorite standards ("You Go to My Head," "When Your Lover Has Gone") with less often heard, but well chosen selections ("Soon," "Ev'ry Time," "With Every Breath I Take," "You're Laughing at Me"). My favorite is the Burke-Van Heusen "It's Always You," possibly done in tribute to Allyn's early idol, Bing Crosby.

The lush backings are by David Terry, a Kostelanetz arranger who accompanied many singers of the time and made several instrumental LPs of his own. This transfer is from an excellent stereo pressing in my collection.

As a bonus, I've added Allyn's second single on the Warner Bros. label, comprising "Pleasant Dreams," a song he wrote with Steve Allen, and the rhythm tune "Here's the Way It Is." His first Warner single was "Drifting," which is included on the LP under discussion.

A good overview of Allyn's career can be found in the two-part interview he did with Marc Myers for the JazzWax blog. Incidentally, Myers claims that Allyn was 90 in 2009, when the interview took place. This would mean that he was born in about 1919 rather than the usually cited 1923. The earlier birth date does make sense - Allyn joined Jack Teagarden's band in 1940, and he told Myers that he didn't get serious about singing until he was 18 or 19.

The download includes several reviews and ads.

My upcoming two-part survey of Allyn's early career compiles his recordings with Teagarden and Boyd Raeburn  with all his solo efforts of the 1940s. 

Bronislaw Kaper's 'Auntie Mame' Score, Plus Bonuses

I came to post this LP via a circuitous route. First I was going to offer a selection of the 1940s recordings by vocalist David Allyn. But then I realized not many people know him and his early efforts might now be the best introduction to him.

Then I thought I would post a few of his later singles, which are more representative of his best work. One of them was "Drifting," which is the vocal version of Bronislaw Kaper's theme for the delightful 1958 film Auntie Mame. I wasn't happy with the sound of the 45, so I went downstairs in search of the soundtrack LP.

I remembered that I liked the album, decided to transfer it, and when I was done I thought to myself, "Hey, this is from 1958, I wonder if it came out in stereo." It did, and Internet Archive had a copy, so I cleaned it up and here it is.

Willard Waterman, Rosalind Russell, Coral Browne

In the process I discovered that Allyn's "Drifting" actually doesn't appear on the Auntie Mame LP, so I plucked a stereo version off an Allyn LP and included it.

"Drifting" is a heartfelt, moody piece, and as far as I can tell, even the instrumental version does not appear in the film as such. The LP (and the flip side of Allyn's single) present the serious version as "Auntie Mame" after the finale. Kaper does use the theme (which represents Mame) in a light-hearted manner several times in the film score.

The musical cues for Auntie Mame are abbreviated; they only take up one side of the album. The second side contains the serious "Auntie Mame" treatment, along with four of Kaper's greatest hits - "On Green Dolphin Street" from the movie Green Dolphin Street, "Invitation" from Invitation, "Take My Love" from The Glass Slipper, and "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo" from Lili. (The latter has appeared here and is still available.)

These are all well worth hearing, and make for a most enjoyable (and well recorded) LP. Please note that this material is not direct from the soundtrack; it from a separate recording session and is billed as the "Original Film Score." Both the soundtrack and LP recording were led by Ray Heindorf.

Rosalind Russell

Auntie Mame started off as a novel by Patrick Dennis, then became a 1956 Broadway show with book by Lawrence and Lee, before hitting the big screen. Rosalind Russell is spectacularly good in the title role; she must have been wonderful on stage.

David Allyn

Also spectacular is David Allyn's singing in "Drifting," an exceptional and little known record. The vocalist started off in big bands while still a teen, notably with Jack Teagarden and Boyd Raeburn, then set out on his own. It wasn't until the late 1950s that he came into his own - "Drifting" was recorded when he was about 35. I'll have more from him soon.

The download includes many Auntie Mame posters, lobby cards and stills.

Two David Allyn Singles

Several bloggers have been drawing attention to the work of the great singer David Allyn, and this is my small contribution to the effort.

Allyn, who I believe is still active, began as a band singer, with Jack Teagarden and the legendary Boyd Raeburn ensemble. Although he is renowned among vocal aficionados as a ballad singer (with a beautiful voice and infinite sensitivity), he has always been associated with jazz as well. These two records, from the early and middle years of his career, concentrate on ballads.

The later item is a non-LP single he made for Warner Bros. circa 1959. (He was spelling his name "Allen" rather than "Allyn" at the time.) Allen/Allyn co-wrote the A-side above with another Allen, the prolific comedian/musician Steve Allen. The B side is an obscurity called Here's the Way It Is.

The earlier single below is from about 1945, and features tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson (a Raeburn colleague) on Snowbound. Penthouse Serenade, which Allyn also recorded later in his career, is the flip side. Some of you may already have this single from Bill Reed's blog The People vs. Dr. Chilledair; but I did want to share it here because it is a favorite of mine.

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