Music from Movieland

Despite what the title may suggest, Music from Movieland is not music from movies. It is easy listening music as played by a studio orchestra - in this case the Columbia Pictures Studio Orchestra conducted by the studio's music director, Morris Stoloff, one of the great promoters in a town built on promotion.

Stoloff was honored with three Academy Awards although his list of actual scores written over at Soundtrackcollector is very few - quite a trick! He also made many records, and on a few soundtrack LPs that have been featured here, his name is so prominent that it gives the mistaken impression that he wrote the music.

Be that as it may, this is a good record with excellent arrangements put across by a superb band. But to me its key distinguishing characteristic is the spectacular cover. A showgirl en deshabille inexplicably transported to a street corner set and accompanied by symphony orchestra? Is this really the way they filmed and recorded things in Hollywood circa 1951? Well, it's a nice fantasy anyway and fun to look at - and hear.

Baxter Blue

Les Baxter is known these days as one of the high priests of exotica, but he also made many records in the closely related easy listening genre. Here are two EPs, Blue Tango and Blue Mirage, that present some of those early sides, along with the first recording of exotica's greatest hit, Quiet Village.

I am an easy mark for early-50s instrumentals, so April in Portugal, Ruby, and some of the other pieces here are big favorites. The harmonica player in Ruby is unidentified; I think it might be Leo Diamond, but that is just a guess.

Some of these songs feature a chorus; Baxter started out as a singer.

Capitol recycled a few of these recordings on later 12-inch LPs, some more than once.

Sooner or later I'll prepare a batch of Baxter's uncollected Capitol singles.

Early Gordon Jenkins

I've begun featuring albums by some of the leading easy listening maestros whose output was a significant presence in the early LP days.

Here's one by one of the most influential arrangers of the time, Gordon Jenkins. This Capitol 10-inch album presents what I suspect are a group of singles he made during the 1940s following his 1947 success with Maybe You'll Be There. Many of these follow a formula of orchestral introduction, a ruminative statement of the melody in the piano's lower register, and vocal chorus, all to a danceable beat (thus the title of the LP).

The album features singers Connie Haines, Martha Tilton, Johnny Johnston, and Bob Carroll. I like Carroll, who was never a big star, and will have a post devoted to him down the road.

Jenkins of course had big hits with the Weavers, and went on to work off and on with such singers as Nat Cole, Judy Garland, and Frank Sinatra. The latter made superb recordings of the Jenkins compositions PS I Love You, This Is All I Ask, and Goodbye.

NEW LINK

Neal Hefti Plays Friml

Here's a tribute to the arranger-conductor Neal Hefti, who died last month. Hefti was best known for his charts for the Basie band and for his TV and movie work, perhaps the most notorious being the Batman theme from TV.

This 10-inch record from circa 1953 is like none of those pieces. Instead, it is in a semi-easy listening mode that Hefti also adopted for several albums in the 1950s. In these, he used wordless vocals as an instrumental choir, a little like Ray Conniff or even Esquivel. Here, he applies the concept to the operetta tunes of Rudolf Friml. The result is not as cloying as you might think - and I am someone who lunges for the off switch when they start with the "doo-doo-doody-doo-doo" business.

On the bright side, the sound is good and the record is rare.

NEW LINK

Manhattan Moods by Gould

In the first easy listening post, I mentioned Morton Gould, so here he is with one of his innumerable easy listening records, and a very enjoyable one at that.

Called Manhattan Moods, it contains music inspired by the city, but even more so, by George Gershwin. Two ("Manhattan Serenade" and "Manhattan Moonlight") are by songwriter Lou Alter, who wrote many pieces with a New York theme.

Morton Gould

The Nocturne is by Thomas Griselle. "Park Avenue Fantasy," by songwriter-bandleader Matty Malneck, became known as "Stairway to the Stars" after it acquired lyrics. Gould wrote "Big City Blues."

Probably the best known composition is "Street Scene," from the music that Hollywood's Alfred Newman produced for the 1931 film of the Elmer Rice play, which is set in New York.

The recording was made in June 1950, possibly in Columbia's 30th Street studio in New York. It is quite resonant. I wonder if this in an example of "stairwell reverb."

The cover is by Alex Steinweiss.

LINK (June 2024, new remaster in ambient stereo)

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.