The Songs of Dana Suesse

Dana Suesse in 1932

For today's post we examine the songs of Dana Suesse (1909-87), who wrote popular works while maintaining an interest in classical music, which her success in pop music later allowed her to pursue.

Suesse was versatile: her best known piece is "You Oughta Be in Pictures," but also popular is the gorgeous, moody "My Silent Love," which began as an instrumental.

We have recordings of both works, along with many more worthy songs in this collection of 21 of her compositions dating from 1929 to 1954.

About Dana Suesse

Like many songwriters, Dana did not start out to compose popular music. Classical music was her inspiration and aspiration. But in the 1930s, there wasn't much of an appetite for her "serious" works.

"I had arrived in New York with a trunk full of instrumental music ... I quickly found that there was no market for them; publishers didn’t want things like that. They were too expensive to publish and they simply were not going to be popular with the public. So I looked around and saw that people were making money writing popular songs."

She found out she was good at it, too, and began working with noted lyricists such as Edward Heyman and Leo Robin. But her initial efforts were focused on instrumental music.

"At that time popular instrumentals were in vogue, sort of a hybrid between a serious piece and a pop tune. Duke Ellington, Lou Alter, and Rube Bloom were writing these kinds of works. There was a very distinctive, certain style and form to this kind of melody."

Our collection starts with just such a composition.

1929-32 Recordings

"A Syncopated Love Song" was the title of the first recording in the set, a 1929 work that is listed as a collaboration between Suesse and Nathaniel Shilkret, although it's not clear how much of it was Shilkret's work. Even so, he was an proficient musician who was director of light music for Victor and a prolific recording artist.

It's a strikingly well-wrought piece, with a memorable main strain. Dana presumably wrote that melody, for the credit to Shilket was nowhere to be found a few years later when it was turned into the torch song "Have You Forgotten?" with lyrics by Leo Robin and recorded by Ruth Etting.

Rudy Vallée

Also from 1931, "Whistling in the Dark" has another catchy melody and words by Allen Boretz, whose later claim to fame was writing the hit farce Room Service. Presenting the song was bandleader Rudy Vallée, who hadn't much of a voice, but did have a polished band, fine taste in music and a record contract. He must have liked Dana's songs - he appears later in the collection as well.

George Gershwin, Paul Whiteman and Dana Suesse

Suesse continued to compose works that were the classical-jazz hybrid that George Gershwin favored. In 1932, Gershwin champion Paul Whiteman commissioned her to write a "Concerto in Three Rhythms" for one of his concerts. The New Yorker proceeded to dub her the "girl Gershwin.” You can hear the piece on YouTube.

Loyce Whiteman

With "Ho Hum!" Dana attracted the attention of another important figure, bandleader Gus Arnheim, who engaged vocalists Loyce Whiteman and Bing Crosby for the record. Whiteman was then 19; it was her first record. This is the first song in this collection with lyrics by the young Edward Heyman, a distinguished figure with whom Suesse would work extensively. 

"Jazz Nocturne" is a second instrumental that would become a popular song. Nathaniel Shilkret is again the leader but does not share the songwriting credits for this one. With Heyman's lyrics, the work turned into "My Silent Love," an exceptional song. We will get to it later in this collection.

Edward Heyman

1933-35 Recordings

For our first selection from 1933, Rudy Vallée returns with "Free," a good pop song with one of the bandleader's better vocals. Heyman was again the lyricist.

Also from 1933, we have a recording of "Moon about Town," written for the Ziegfeld Follies production that opened in early 1934. It's not one of lyricist Yip Harburg's best efforts, although the song is occasionally revived. 

Another song from the same show, introduced by the same singer, Jane Froman, is "You Oughta Be in Pictures." An irresistible combination of clever words and cheerful music, it became a huge hit.

As far as I can tell, Froman did not record either song. Our version of "Moon about Town" is the one for Columbia by society bandleader Emil Coleman with a vocal by Jerry Cooper. 

For "You Oughta Be in Pictures," we return to Rudy Vallée for his popular recording. One oddity is that Vallée's Victor label says the song is from a film called New York Town. I can't find evidence of such a film from that year, nor of the song being used in another movie of the time. Also, IBDB does not list "You Oughta Be in Pictures" as being part of the 1934 Follies, which may mean it was added after the opening. In any case, Vallée's disc was not recorded until March 5, 1934, a few months into the run of the 1934 Follies.

"Missouri Misery" from the Dorsey Brothers is much different. Pianist Peter Mintun, who edited a collection of the composer's works, said that "Suesse preferred this over any other commercial recording of 'Missouri Misery.' She liked the bluesy treatment rather than the danceable versions." Singer Bob Crosby, who was working with the Dorseys at the time, did not care for the record; he thought the key was too low for him. Harburg was the lyricist.

Another miniature concert piece is next, with Dana on piano accompanied by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. It's the highly enjoyable, Gershwinesque "Blue Moonlight."

The next two songs come from a 1935 film called Sweet Surrender, filmed in Astoria, New York, and featuring radio and stage personalities such as Frank Parker and Tamara. It's a shipboard musical with a labyrinthine story line and seven numbers from Suesse and Heyman.

First we have the Jan Garber band and singer Lee Bennett with "The Day You Were Born," a predictable song in a grainy pressing. Much better, musically and technically, is "Love Makes the World Go Round," which may not have been the first time that was used for a title and certainly wasn't the last.

The Al Donahue Band; the leader is up front with violin

Even so, it's a pleasing song in a creditable performance from the Al Donahue band and singer Tommy Norato.

1936-37 Recordings

In 1936, Suesse spent three months in Fort Worth, Texas, composing the music for impresario Billy Rose's Casa Mañana, an attraction for that city's Frontier Days Celebration, which was designed to compete with Dallas's concurrent Texas Centennial Celebration. Casa Mañana was a 4,000-seat outdoor dinner theater and stage show that turned out to be very popular.

The big hit from the show was one of Dana's greatest songs, "The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful," with lyrics by Rose and Irving Kahal. The story is told that Rose ran into Kahal in the lobby of his Fort Worth hotel and convinced him to stay and write with him and Suesse.

Our first version of "The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful" comes from Jan Garber, this time with vocalist Russ Brown. It starts off with a martial cadence, for some reason, but Garber quickly turns things over to the overripe saxophones and choppy brass that were favored by the sweet bands of the time. Brown is a little too ripe himself, but this period piece nonetheless has its charm. We'll have a better performance later in the program.

Jolly Coburn

Also from the Casa Mañana show is "Gone with the Dawn," from the Jolly Coburn band, with a vocal by the pleasant Bill Hawley, who sounds like he could have been from Texas himself. Coburn hailed from New York, where his band played at the Rainbow Room.

There is a 20-minute short with excerpts from the Casa Mañana show on YouTube.

The Aquacade on Lake Erie

Rose next turned his attention to the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, where he dreamed up an "Aquacade," another dinner amphitheater, this time with a water show along the shores of Lake Erie. "Happy Birthday to Love" comes from the score, heard here in the version by Tommy Dorsey with the talented Jack Leonard on the vocal. Dana worked with four different lyricists to concoct this number.

Post 1937 Recordings

Bob Allen and Hal Kemp

Rose transported his Aquacade concept to the 1939 New York World's Fair, bringing Suesse along to provide the music. She worked with the impresario and lyricist Ted Fetter on "Yours for a Song," the Aquacade theme, which we have in a recording by Hal Kemp and his orchestra. The vocalist is Bob Allen, who had replaced Skinnay Ennis the year before. Kemp was to die in an auto accident the following year.

Dick Todd

For our next number, we greet the sonorous Dick Todd, "Canada's Bing Crosby," as he was called, with a fine recording of "A Table in a Corner," which Dana wrote with the experienced Sam Coslow. Todd was in the midst of his brief heyday, when he recorded prolifically for Bluebird.

Next is one of Dana's most accomplished songs in one of the standout performances in this set - "Time for Me to Put My Heart Away," in a Liberty Music Shop disc from the esteemed cabaret singer Greta Keller, with backing by a Cy Walter band.

Greta Keller

In addition to the music, Suesse apparently wrote the lyrics for this song, which she seldom did. "Lyrics, I think are very difficult," she once said. "It took me approximately 20 years of apprenticeship to write what I’d term a presentable lyric. What I mean is, a lyric that satisfied me, that was up to the standard I felt a lyric should be. I learned a great deal from Billy Rose, and I worked with some extremely competent and gifted writers such as Yip Harburg, and the wonderful, creative Ira Gershwin."

The Viennese Keller had come to the US in 1938 and was already a feature in some of New York's top locations. Her voice may remind you of Marlene Dietrich; that's because Dietrich based her singing on Keller. Whatever you may think of her voice, her identification with the lyrics is total.

"This Changing World" was one of the composer's own favorites. "In 1940, I wrote a song called 'This Changing World,' with a wonderful lyric by Harold Adamson," she said. "The song is so relevant even today, and the lyric, as well as the melody, was ahead of its time. It had a strong harmonic progression, although simple in structure, but the song didn’t go anyplace. There were several recordings, but it just didn’t hit the charts the way I had hoped." The fluent performance is by Ginny Simms with the Kay Kyser band.

In the 1940s, Dana continued her association with Billy Rose, writing songs for his Diamond Horseshoe club, which operated from 1938-51 in New York's Paramount Hotel. Following the war, she studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris for three years.

Dick Haymes, who appears to be orbiting the moon

I wanted to include two later recordings of Suesse songs that were discussed above. First we have Dick Haymes' disc of "My Silent Love," made in 1947 with the backing of Gordon Jenkins. The second is Ray Anthony's 1950 recording of "The Night Is Young and You're So Beautiful," with a sterling vocal by Ronnie Deauville.

Finally, two recordings of the theme song from the hit stage production of The Seven Year Itch, which opened in late 1952 with incidental music by Suesse. First "The Girl Without a Name," performed by pianist Art Lowry and his orchestra. The published version lists lyrics by Dana and Scott Olsen, but I haven't found a recording of that version. The Lowry record credits "Engvick" presumably lyricist William Engvick, along with Suesse, but it's an instrumental.

There's yet another version of the tune. Eddie Bracken, who had succeeded Tom Ewell in the leading male role on Broadway, wrote his own words for  Suesse's music and recorded it under the name "That Girl" for the R&B label Chance, where he and Barbara Cooke coo to one another. (Update: my friend Geoconno informs me that "Barbara Cooke" is actually the wonderful Barbara Cook, in what must be one of her first recordings.)

Most of these recordings were remastered from Internet Archive 78s.

LINK

More by Dana Suesse

In 1941, Dana contributed to an album of "Modern American Music" put together by then radio conductor Meredith Willson. Her composition was "American Nocturne," a lovely piece somewhat tentatively played by the ensemble. You can hear the work - and the entire album - newly remastered via this post. "American Nocturne" is a different composition from the "Jazz Nocturne" above.

Finally, I am preparing a post of recordings by the short-lived jazz harpist Casper Reardon that will include Suesse's suite "Young Man with a Harp." I hope to finish that project soon. 

Rodgers and Hart's 'Too Many Girls' - the Early Recordings

For this latest in a series of early recordings from 1930s and 40s musicals, we return to Rodgers and Hart from Cole Porter. The subject is the pair's 1939-40 success Too Many Girls, a typically contrived college caper with a typically tuneful score.

Too Many Girls did not have as many hits as some Rodgers and Hart musicals, but it did boast one enduring favorite ("I Didn't Know What Time It Was") and several other songs that achieved some popularity or at least attracted the recording companies. This collection includes 10 selections, two of them in alternative versions.

From the stage production

The show, combined with the subsequent film, made stars of Desi Arnaz and Eddie Bracken. Marcy Westcott, the heiress on stage, turned into Lucille Ball in the film, and Ball and Arnaz turned into a famous couple. The two other main female roles were taken by Mary Jane Walsh and Diosa Costello on Broadway, Frances Langford and Ann Miller in the movie. (Walsh also can be heard here in songs from Cole Porter's Let's Face It!)

Arnaz, Bracken, Richard Kollmar (Richard Carlson in the film) and the wonderful dancer Hal Le Roy played football players who were hired to watch over the heiress while she was at Pottawattamie College. But none of those performers were asked to make records - nor was Marcy Westcott - so it fell to the cast's Mary Jane Walsh and Diosa Costello to do so.

Marcy Westcott, Diosa Costello and Mary Jane Walsh tend to stricken Desi Arnaz

As was common back then, a minority of the musical's songs attracted the attention of the record labels. Seven R&H songs were heard in the stage show before one was selected for a recording - "Love Never Went to College." Westcott sang the tune on Broadway, but Columbia turned it over to Walsh.

The Smoothies - Charlie Ryan, Arlene Johnson, Little Ryan

Walsh's version (with anonymous backing) is a good one, but I also wanted to include the sophisticated Victor recording by Hal Kemp and His Orchestra, with a vocal by the Smoothies. The latter group was earlier known as Babs and Her Brothers, even though there were a series of "Babses" and none of them was a sister to Charlie and Little Ryan, the other members of the group.

Diosa Costello and Desi Arnaz

Diosa Costello, who was Puerto Rican and apparently known as "the Latin Bombshell," had appeared with Arnaz in nightclubs before being cast in Too Many Girls. She performed "All Dressed Up (Spic and Spanish)" on stage as a solo, reprising it with the ensemble. The small Schirmer label engaged her to record it with a band led by Vladimir Selinsky. I don't know for sure if Hart intended the title to be a play on the ethnic slur, but I do believe the term was in use as such back then.

One of the best known songs from the score is "I Like to Recognize the Tune," which Mary Jane Walsh cut for Columbia, again with anonymous backing. On stage this was done by an ensemble that included Walsh.

Costello and Arnaz handled "She Could Shake the Maracas" on Broadway, but Costello recorded it for Schirmer solo, again with the orchestra of Vladimir Selinsky.

Margaret Whiting

The best song in the score is surely "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," sung in the show by Marcy Westcott and Richard Kollmar, but for Columbia by Mary Jane Walsh. Over the years the number has attracted many good recordings, and was interpolated into the Sinatra film of Pal Joey along with three other Rodgers and Hart favorites. One of the best readings is Margaret Whiting's 1946 single for Capitol. If anything, the Whiting aircheck in this collection, from a 1949 Carnation Contented Hour, is even better. She is backed by Ted Dale's orchestra. (The single version is available on this blog in her Rodgers and Hart collection.)

Mary Jane Walsh and ensemble

The final song from the stage production in this set is "Give It Back to the Indians," which Walsh introduced on stage and then cut for Columbia.

Too Many Girls ran on Broadway for six months, then its director, George Abbott, turned it into a film, where Diosa Costello somehow turned into Ann Miller, and Mary Jane Walsh into the well-known vocalist Frances Langford.

Frances Langford serenades Lucille Ball and Richard Carlson 

Rodgers and Hart added one enduring song to the filmed version - "You're Nearer," introduced by Trudy Erwin dubbing Ball, and reprised by Langford and others. Langford's label, Decca, asked her to record the song, backed by Victor Young.

Ann Miller and Desi Arnaz

I've also added the Arnaz-Miller version of "All Dressed Up (Spic and Spanish)" from the soundtrack. This is for archival purposes only - Desi really could not sing.

Hal Le Roy

Finally, I did want to draw attention to the great dancer Hal Le Roy, even though he recorded nothing from the score. He can be seen in a clip from the film online. All his films are worth seeking out - his dancing in them, anyway.

The sound on these items, remastered mainly from Internet Archive needle-drops, is good. The download includes more production photos and ephemera, along with Brooks Atkinson's New York Times review. He found the show "humorous, fresh and exhilarating," but was less impressed by Mary Jane Walsh and Diosa Costello.

Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers