Ray Anthony, Billy Eckstine and Christmas Seals for 1954 and 1957

A Christmas Seals appeal from 1954

Here's a second set of holiday materials from the Christmas Seals people, from both 1954 and 1957. From the former year, we have bandleader Ray Anthony in a Christmas show, another selection of Christmas Seals promos from the celebrities of the day, and the official Christmas Seals song, as presented by Kitty Kallen.

For 1957, there is the Christmas Seals song for that year as presented by Billy Eckstine along with several lead-in promos, and additional renditions by George Beverly Shea, Sister Rosetta Sharpe and the Statesmen Quartet with Hovie Lister.

Christmas Seals materials from both 1954 and 1957 have appeared her before. From 1954, we've had programs from Eddie Fisher and Tennessee Ernie, along with celebrity spots (find these here), and last year's post of shows featuring Julius La Rosa and Jack Benny (which are here). From 1957, we have had shows starring Lena Horne and Gordon MacRae (here).

The Ray Anthony Show

Ray Anthony completes my cache of Christmas Seals shows from 1954 (well, except for Guy Lombardo, which I haven't transferred). Ray was riding high in 1954 with one of the most popular bands in the land.

His program for Christmas Seals was one of those where the celebrity just spins his current records, with no pause for Christmas music. For Anthony, this went so far as programming his hit "The Bunny Hop." (Perhaps he thought he was doing an Easter Seals show?)

A how-to on the Bunny Hop (click to enlarge).
Don't get so carried away that you knock over the Christmas tree.

Two of Anthony's other selections were dances, too - "Cat Dancin'" and "Dance My Heart." Finally, he added "Say Hey" - a tribute to center fielder Willie Mays, overshooting the baseball season by a few months.

The performances are good (they are Ray's Capitol recordings) and the sound is, too.

LINK to Ray Anthony Show

More Celebrity Spots from 1954

This group of 10 celebrities is composed mainly of actors, with the addition of Eartha Kitt and Eddie Fisher, best known as singers.

Robert Stack, Eartha Kitt

Once again, the notables make their support of Christmas Seals known, in spots that last from 20 seconds to a minute.

Here is the complete roster of participants: 

• Robert Stack
• William Bendix
• Mona Freeman
• Eartha Kitt
• Eddie Fisher
• Celeste Holm
• George Murphy
• Gene Raymond
• Barbara Stanwyck
• Loretta Young

Celeste Holm, William Bendix

LINK to Celebrity Spots

The 1954 Christmas Seals Song

The official Christmas Seals song for 1954 didn't get much traction in the market and is little remembered, although it was written by one of the finest songwriting duos of the time - Matt Dennis and Tom Adair.

Kitty Kallen had the honor of recording the number, but on the picture sleeve above, Decca oddly decided to emphasize the flip side, "Baby Brother (Santa Claus, Dear Santa Claus)," issuing the song in its children's series, to boot.

I suppose Kallen was chosen because her child-like voice was suited to "Baby Brother," but this could have and should have been much better.

I have shared this record before, but this version is newly refurbished.

LINK to 1954 Christmas Seals song

The 1957 Christmas Seals Song

For 1957, Christmas Seals adopted an existing song, "If I Can Help Somebody," written by Alma Bazel Androzzo in 1946 and recorded soon after by Turner Layton, a songwriter ("After You're Gone, "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans") and cabaret performer.

Alma Bazel Androzzo

Androzzo (1912-2001) was born in Tennessee but lived a good part of her life in Pennsylvania. "If I Can Help Somebody," her most famous song, was taken up by such luminaries as Mahalia Jackson and Martin Luther King, Jr. A recording by tenor Josef Locke enjoyed some success in 1951.

Billy Eckstine

For Christmas Seals, there were at least two versions of the song in the market and on radio shows. The first is what is being featured today - the recording by the sonorous Billy Eckstine. Mr. B is strikingly fine in this version, sincere and convincing.

Mercury promotional cover

Mercury sent the record out to radio stations with four different promotional messages to introduce the record - by Sarah Vaughan, Patti Page, Eckstine himself, and bandleader David Carroll.

My friend Ernie alerted me that there was another promotional version issued at the same time, this one by gospel singer George Beverly Shea. I don't have the promotional material, but I have added Shea's rendition to the package.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe, George Beverly Shea

The song's simple but inspiring message was taken up by many other gospel singers. I've also added the contemporary recordings by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Statesmen Quartet with Hovie Lister. The Statesmen performance features their tenor, Rosie Rozell.

Here are the opening lyrics of the song, which demonstrate why the work was appealing to the Christmas Seals people, and to many singers through the years:

If I can help somebody, as I travel along

If I can help somebody, with a word or song

If I can help somebody, from doing wrong

No, my living shall not be in vain

LINK to 1957 Christmas Seals song 

Christmas Hymns with George Beverly Shea

This lovely nostalgic image heralds the first Christmas album from the beloved bass-baritone, George Beverly Shea.

RCA issued this LP in 1953, only a few years after Shea had come to prominence with Billy Graham's crusades and recorded his first record for the label.

George Beverly Shea

The collection includes four of the most popular hymns of the season, together with two songs that were then somewhat unusual on a Christmas record - I Wonder as I Wander and Go Tell It on the Mountain - and two other even less familiar items - Thou Did'st Leave Thy Throne and There's a Song in the Air.

Bev Shea has appeared here twice before, but this is the first full LP from him that I've presented. The choir and orchestra accompanying him are unnamed but the pianist is Tedd Smith and the organist Paul Mickelson, both of whom were associated with Billy Graham. The sound is excellent.

Southern Gospel on RCA

Throughout the early LP era, the major record companies were looking to broaden their business by expanding into genres that had previously been the province of smaller companies - and by borrowing the best material from these genres to provide potential hit songs for their mainstream artists.

Today I'll present a selection of items from the 1956-57 RCA Victor catalogue to illustrate some of the exceptional southern gospel acts that the label had signed in an attempt to broaden its artist roster, and the repertoire they were recording.

Blackwood Brothers

Like many pop genres, many southern gospel songs fit into a limited number of "types," and this first number quickly demonstrates two of them. The first is the upbeat "lesson" song, in this case "The Good Book," which was taken from a Producers' Showcase original television musical called "The Lord Don't Play Favorites," starring Louis Armstrong, Dick Haymes, Buster Keaton, Robert Stack and Kay Starr. (I am not making this up - TV was very different in the 50s.) The quite remarkable performance here is by one of the greatest southern gospel groups - the Blackwood Brothers Quartet. (Read more about their history here.) RCA had signed them as early as 1952, and in 1954 - in a bid to broaden their appeal - placed them on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV program, a contest program that the Blackwoods won. The flip side of this record (actually the second song on this promotional EP) was an example of a straight gospel song, "Give Us This Day."

I am very fond of the Blackwood's sound - it's flamboyant and garish, like much pop music since then, but also virtuosic and utterly sincere, unlike much of that same music. I've also included a second single of theirs that combines two songs by one of the best-known writers in the genre, Mosie Lister: "Then I Met the Master" (a famous record) and "The Touch of His Hand."

The Statesmen Quartet

The Blackwood Brothers often toured with the second group I'm presenting here, the Statesmen Quartet with Hovie Lister. That's Hovie, the group's leader and pianist, in the front in the photo at right. (Hovie and Mosie Lister were not related.) Just like the Blackwoods, the Statesmen appeared on (and won) the Talent Scouts program in 1954. They are represented in the playlist by another lesson song, "Practice What You Preach," which features their outstanding bass singer, Jim "Big Chief" Wetherington (far right in the photo). The other Statesmen song is "Brand New Star," a maudlin death song, another common song type. You can read more about the Statesmen here.

When the Statesmen Quartet appeared on Talent Scouts, they performed "This Ole House," a song by Stuart Hamblen, which became a tremendous pop hit in the version by Rosemary Clooney (with a mighty assist by the great bass Thurl Ravenscroft). A former cowboy star and country singer, Hamblen had turned to gospel music after a conversion experience at a 1949 Billy Graham revival on the West Coast - at a time when he was on the country charts with a song called "I'll Go Chasin' Women." Changing his act and life around completely, Hamblen soon had recorded one of his most enduring songs, "It Is No Secret (What God Can Do)" and was on the radio with a program called The Cowboy Church of the Air.

Hamblen at a Graham rally

One of Hamblen's biggest records was not issued under his name - it was "Open Up Your Heart (and Let the Sunshine In)," a 1955 hit for the Cowboy Church Sunday School, essentially the Hamblen family. Hamblen recorded the song at a very slow tempo, then sped up the master to make his daughter, who sang lead, sound much younger. As an extra added item, the download includes the issued version as well as a pitch-corrected version, so you can hear what it should have sounded like without the manipulation. (The original isn't my transfer and the sound isn't that good.)

Open Up Your Heart was a Coral record. Hamblen then moved on to RCA, where he and his family recorded his songs "Dear Lord, Be My Shepherd" and "Beyond the Sun," under their own names. These are the Hamblen selections in today's playlist.

George Beverly Shea

Our next artist also was associated with Billy Graham, and has appeared on this blog before, on the soundtrack LP from Graham's film, Oiltown, U.S.A. He is the beloved baritone, George Beverly Shea, who is heard here in the spiritual "Take My Mother Home" and the song "There's a Time," which was co-written and conducted by Charles Grean, who was an RCA A&R man.

Grean provides the segue to our next artist, the Johnson Family Singers, who have been featured before on this blog. He not only was the manager of Betty Johnson at one time, he was married to her. He also managed Jim Lowe, who wrote the Johnsons' first song in this set, "You Take Your Road," another one of those bouncy lesson songs. (This song contains one of my all-time favorite mixed metaphors - "You take your road and I'll take mine / And we'll all get to heaven at the very same time / The ladder doesn't matter / it's the way that you climb.") The final song in our set is the Johnsons' "May God Be With You."

Like Stuart Hamblen, the Johnsons had their own radio show for quite some time. The download includes examples of both programs.

The sound on these records is fairly good. They all were sourced from RCA's unique promo EPs, like the one depicted at top.

Johnson Family Singers

Oiltown, U.S.A.

Oiltown, U.S.A. was one of the first films made by the organization of the popular evangelist Billy Graham. This 1953 film was set in Houston and was the story of a hard-driving oilman who finds God.

Graham was set on using the popular arts as a publicity tool for his ministry, and he was able to get RCA to issue this 10-inch LP containing several musical numbers and one of his addresses.

On hand for the music was George Beverly Shea, a bass-baritone who has been associated with Graham since 1944 and who is still with us at age 100. Shea made many records for RCA in the 50s. Two of his songs here, accompanied by Paul Mickelson at the mighty Wurlitzer, are a bit somnolent, but the final tune with Ralph Carmichael's chorus and orchestra is well worth hearing.

The music also features Andy Parker and the Plainsmen, a Western group that had recorded for Capitol and appeared in films and on the radio. They back Redd Harper on one song, and, most notably, Cindy Walker on her own composition Christian Cowboy. Walker was one of the greatest country music songwriters, but somehow her performing talent escaped my notice until now. Here she shows herself as a superb singer (although with a lazy-S that I find oddly reminiscent of the young Wayne Newton). Christian Cowboy is a derivative of Riders in the Sky (recorded by everyone from Bing to Buckethead); instead of cowboys who have been damned to chase cattle across the sky, in Walker's version they are born-again riders who are roping souls.

Graham starts his sermon by telling the listeners (apparently a group of businessmen) that he isn't there to tell jokes or clever stories (which makes me wonder how many business groups would engage an evangelist to come in to tell jokes and clever stories). His remarks have an anti-Communist spin that put me in the mind of Bishop Fulton Sheen, heard in an earlier post; much different from the Bible-based comments of fellow evangelist Myron Augsberger, who made an appearance here not long ago.