Lee Wiley Sings Harold Arlen

Here is the third in our exploration of the composer songbooks recorded by the great Lee Wiley from 1939-43. The earlier posts were devoted to Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart. The R&H article provides background on the singer.

This time, Wiley does wonders for Harold Arlen, a distinctive composer whose songs are suited to her vocal manner.

Lee Wiley Sings Songs by Harold Arlen dates from 1943 and was issued by the Schirmer label, in succession to the Liberty Music Shop (Gershwin and Cole Porter) and Rabson's (R&H). 

Along with the Schirmer album, for this collection I've added five other Wiley recordings of Arlen, dating from both earlier and slightly later in her career.

Wiley's Cole Porter recordings will be next in this series.

Shirmer's Lee Wiley Sings Songs by Harold Arlen

As with the previous songbooks, for the Harold Arlen album the vocalist is accompanied by a group of like-minded musicians, led in this case by guitarist Eddie Condon.

Eddie Condon

The album starts off with a jaunty version of "Down with Love," with a intensely swinging Billy Butterfield trumpet obbligato that plays off Wiley's vocal perfectly. She is in excellent voice here, and the session is notably well recorded. A strong opener.

Billy Butterfield

"Down with Love" comes from the 1937 musical Hooray for What, where Arlen worked with his frequent partner, lyricist Yip Harburg. Introducing the song was Jack Whiting, June Clyde and Vivian Vance.

The contrasting next number is "Stormy Weather," which was premiered by Ethel Waters and Duke Ellington in the 1933 Cotton Club Parade revue, but could have been written for Wiley. Her combination of weariness and wistfulness is ideal for the song. Butterfield is again a standout. Ted Koehler wrote the famous lyrics for this one.

Ernie Caceres

Lee sings the verse for many songs, including "I've Got the World on a String." Her vocal quality and presentation do wonders for the song. The clarinet soloist here is the versatile Ernie Caceres, who was at the time the baritone saxophonist in the Glenn Miller band. The song, again with Koehler lyrics, dates from the 1932 Cotton Club Parade.

"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is another celebrated number with a relatively unfamiliar verse, which sets off the chorus nicely. It comes from a 1931 Cotton Club show, again with words by Koehler. Ernie Caceres is featured.

Bobby Hackett

For the second set of four songs, the band is augmented by three trombones, with Billy Butterfield succeeded by Bobby Hackett, who also wrote the arrangements for the first two songs. The busy pianist you hear is Dave Bowman.

"Fun to Be Fooled" is a strikingly good song that is not heard often enough. It comes from the 1934 revue Life Begins at 8:40, where Frances Williams introduced the number. Yip Harburg and Ira Gershwin were the lyricists.

The earliest song in the set is "You Said It," from the 1931 college musical of the same name, with book and lyrics by Jack Yellen. It has an ecstatic element that is well suited to Lee's vocal quality.

"Let's Fall in Love" is another Ted Koehler collaboration from a 1933 film of the same name. Ann Sothern sang it on screen. This is another favorite song of mine, and Wiley does it well. She does not include the distinctive verse, though.

One of the least known songs in the Schirmer set is the final one, "Moanin' in the Mornin'," another number from Hooray for What, sung on Broadway by Vivian Vance. It's an extraordinary piece, one of the most attractive songs in Arlen's catalog. Wiley is superlative; Hackett too is memorable in this fine composition.

Harold Arlen

More Arlen Songs

We have five additional Arlen songs that Lee recorded both before and after the Schirmer album, starting relatively early in her career. The first song comes from a 1933 Dorsey Brothers date that remained unissued until decades later, when it turned up on a Epic LP set devoted to 1930s recordings.

The young Dorseys

The song is "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues," from a 1932 Earl Carroll Vanities. It is very much suited to Lee's talents and temperament. She is in splendid voice and already a full formed artist at age 24. The obbligato is by Bunny Berigan. I've also included an alternate take that has appeared on bootlegs over the years, but it doesn't differ markedly from the Epic release.

During the 1940s, Eddie Condon promoted a variety of jazz concerts, at times with Lee as vocalist. A second version of "Down with Love" is taken from a March 31, 1945 date at the Ritz Theater in New York. It uses the same arrangement as the Shirmer recording, and even the same trumpeter - Billy Butterfield. Unsurprisingly, it's just as good a performance.

Jess Stacy

A few months later, Lee was in the Victor studios with her erstwhile husband, pianist Jess Stacy, and a relatively large ensemble. The subject was one of Arlen's most familiar songs, "It's Only a Paper Moon." That number was written for the 1932 play The Great Magoo, where it was known as "If You Believed in Me." The next year, it was interpolated into the screen version of the musical Take a Chance. A number of artists recorded it at the time, including Paul Whiteman.

In 1944, Nat Cole revived it and had some success, which apparently stimulated other recordings, perhaps including the Stacy-Wiley session. The easygoing arrangement features Stacy's idiosyncratic pianism, followed by Wiley's equally idiosyncratic singing. In truth, Russ Case's chart is not all that suited to either pianist or vocalist, but it's well played even so.

Dick Jurgens

Finally, we have a second version of "Stormy Weather," taken from a 1948 aircheck of the Dick Jurgens band. This large ensemble is very good indeed - and Lee is too - but she is best in a small group setting.

These selections for this post are taken from Internet Archive needle drops and my own collection, cleaned up for listening. The sound is generally splendid.

LINK to Lee Wiley Sings Harold Arlen

Harold Arlen Sings Harold Arlen

Harold Arlen himself was a singer who began making records in the 1920s and was still at it in the 1960s. As a performer, he was sly, witty and attuned to conveying the meaning of the lyrics. He had everything but a great voice, but even so is fun to hear. I've gathered 13 of his 1930s recordings in a new post on my other blog.

Lee Wiley Sings Gershwin

I introduced Lee Wiley to the blog a few months ago with her two Rodgers and Hart albums. That post was a great success with readers, so today we have a follow-up in the form of the singer's 1939 Gershwin set, augmented by three additional tunes from the 1940s.

That first Wiley post provided background on the vocalist, and an introduction to the songwriter-focused albums that came out on small labels in the late 30s and early 40s. Today's Gershwin album was issued by the Liberty Music Shop, which specialized in cabaret music and society bands but also had a hand in jazz.

Lee Wiley

Most of Wiley's records from this period were made in the company of the Chicago-style musicians whose gutsy sound suited her down to the ground. The striking cover above - by John De Vries, who inspired these various sets - depicts the some of the musicians: from bottom, Joe Bushkin (piano), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Max Kaminsky (trumpet), George Wettling (drums) and Eddie Condon (guitar).

This Liberty Music Shop album was the first in the series of songwriter collections done by Wiley. It came out just a few months before the first Rodgers and Hart album covered in my earlier post. As with the R&H set, the Gershwin recordings are ascribed to Max Kaminsky's Orchestra or Joe Bushkin's Orchestra seemingly at random - the personnel mostly remained the same.

Max Kaminsky, Lee Wiley, Joe Bushkin

In his windy liner notes, Ernie Anderson asserts that four of the eight songs in the Gershwin set were first recordings. That seems to be true for three of them - "I've Got a Crush on You," "But Not for Me" and "How Long Has This Been Going On?" (The fourth, "My One and Only" was recorded several times after its 1927 introduction in Funny Face.)

Bud Freeman

But let's run down all the songs on the Liberty Music Shop album, starting with "How Long Has This Been Going On?" The label claims it comes from Funny Face, which is true, although it was cut from that show in the run-up to Broadway, and then used in 1928's Rosalie, where it was sung by Bobbe Arnst. Apparently this brilliant song did not merit a recording until Wiley and company entered the studio 11 years later. The rendition has a nice Bushkin accompaniment, a ripe Freeman tenor solo and some annoying clattering by Wettling.

"My One and Only" did indeed originate in Funny Face, where Fred Astaire, Betty Compton and Gertrude McDonald premiered it. The Wiley performance is distinguished by the inclusion of the excellent verse, which has a clever verbal segue to the chorus. The instrumental break with Kaminsky and Freeman is in double time.

"I've Got a Crush on You" was featured in two Gershwin shows - Treasure Girl of 1928 and Strike Up the Band of 1930. But it was otherwise ignored until the Wiley recording. Why was this so? Here are some thoughts from the University of Michigan's Gershwin Initiative:

Musicologists such as Walter Rimler have said that “Crush”’s failure was originally because Treasure Girl and Strike Up the Band were received so poorly; however, others, such as Howard Pollack and Philip Furia, have said that Wiley’s version became so beloved because she turned the song into a ballad . . . [She] softly cooed the words, rather than punching them, as was the style in Treasure Girl and Strike Up the Band.

Lee changed the verse's opening lines from "How glad the many millions of Annabelles and Lillians would be to capture me" to "How glad the many millions of Toms and Dicks and Harrys would be . . .", which doesn't scan. Today, female vocalists usually replace "Lillians" with "Williams." 

Note that the pianist on "Crush" was apparently Fats Waller, who also appears on the next selection in the guise of "Maurice" the organist. 

Fats Waller, aka Maurice

The song is "Someone to Watch Over Me," which Gertrude Lawrence first sang in 1926's Oh, Kay! (You can find her recording and others from the time here.) Wiley includes the verse - which for once is not a novelty, being heard on many other disks. Waller was a tremendous musician, but Lee misses the rhythmic backbone that the full ensemble lent her. She would return to the song five years later, as is discussed below.

The seldom-heard "Sam and Delilah" was premiered by none other than Ethel Merman in 1930's Girl Crazy. This number is in the vein of "Frankie and Johnny," although it is a much better song. Wiley and her backing musicians are perfect in the piece. Surprisingly, the first recording was by Duke Ellington, with a Chick Bullock vocal.

"'S Wonderful," unlike some of these tunes, was popular with recording artists pretty much from the time that Adele Astaire and Allen Kearns first sang it in Funny Face. Wiley's reading is a remarkable one, not least because she includes the verse and has sympathetic piano backing, by Joe Bushkin, I believe.

Ira and George Gershwin

A song that is not heard as often as it might be is "Sweet and Low-Down," the earliest number in this collection, dating from 1925's Tip-Toes. It did merit a recording at the time by the Singing Sophomores, but then not often until Lee took it up, after which it again receded into something like obscurity. The verse begins with brief, mournful solos from Kaminsky, Freeman and Bushkin, followed by Ira's superb intro, which Lee handles beautifully. The ensemble then switches into mid-tempo mode for this rousing piece - "Professor, stomp your feet!" Lee commands. Max Kaminsky has a fine muted solo.

Ginger Rogers and Willie Howard sang "But Not for Me" in Girl Crazy, but it doesn't look as though a commercial recording appeared before Wiley's. Thereafter, it hasn't lacked for admirers - there have been more than 700 recordings since Wiley took it up, including another by Lee that we will discuss in a moment.

So, this is truly a exceptional album. It is memorable artistically, it started the fashion for songwriter-themed albums and it revived several excellent Gershwin songs. It even has a striking cover, a year before Alex Steinweiss supposedly "invented the album cover" - one of the most nonsensical boasts ever to take hold in the music industry.

Eddie Condon with album cover

Now let's turn to the three additional Gershwin songs that Wiley recorded in the 1940s. The first two come from a George Gershwin Jazz Concert that Decca issued under the name of Eddie Condon in 1944, with many of the same musicians who appeared in the Liberty Music Shop set - Wettling, Kaminsky, Bushkin and clarinetist Pee Wee Russell. Wiley sang two songs - "Someone to Watch Over Me," a repeat of the LMS repertoire, and "The Man I Love."

Bobby Hackett

Both are sung well, but a bit more impersonally than on the LMS date, perhaps because this session was not focused on her. "Someone to Watch Over Me" benefits from not having Maurice's organ accompaniment, but the Bobby Hackett trumpet obbligatos are too loud and intrusive for Lee's sensitive vocal. Jack Teagarden's solo is more apposite.

The engineer dialed Hackett back for "The Man I Love," which has solos from Teagarden and baritone saxophonist Ernie Caceres. This song suits Wiley so well, it could have been written for her. For such a famous song, it had the dubious honor of being cut from Lady, Be Good, inserted in Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town, and rejected for Rosalie.

Lee Wiley and Jess Stacy

"But Not for Me" returned via a 1947 date with a band led by pianist Jess Stacy, during his tempestuous and short-lived marriage to Wiley. Again, a good performance, but not a match for the LMS version. It appeared on several labels, but first on Majestic, I believe.

Wiley and Hackett would turn to another of the LMS songs - "I've Got a Crush on You" - for their 1951 album Night in Manhattan, with backing by a Joe Bushkin ensemble. I hope to present that LP later in this series - but first will come her sets devoted to Harold Arlen and Cole Porter, and then perhaps a selection of her early recordings.

These recordings have generally vivid sound, remastered in ambient stereo from Internet Archive originals.

LINK to Lee Wiley's Gershwin recordings

Marion Harris

Finally, let me mention that Buster's Swinging Singles has a new post of three early Gershwin recordings by the sadly neglected singer Marion Harris - "Nashville Nightingale," "Somebody Loves Me" and "The Man I Love." These are very much worth hearing.