Remembering Anita Kerr

Anita Kerr achieved a great deal of acclaim for her singing, arranging and productions during her long career, but even so remains insufficiently recognized.

Kerr, who died last week at age 94, was for 15 years one of the strongest influences on the Nashville sound. But she has never been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Although Kerr is associated with C&W, she spent most of her career in Los Angeles and Europe, and the recordings under her own name are largely straight-ahead pop - even many of those made early in her career when she was resident in Music City.

Kerr's vocal recordings and arrangements -  elegant, understated and even a little melancholy - influenced many other artists. At a time when group vocals could be blaring (the Four Lads) or overtly hip (Lambert, Hendricks and Ross), hers were subtle. Bland? At times.

Her earliest records are from 1950, when she was a session organist for several Victor artists, starting with Eddy Arnold. Her first vocal break in Nashville was recording gospel songs with Red Foley in 1951, and virtually all her earliest records are in that genre, one to which she would often return.

During most of her early years, Kerr was a Decca artist. Later in 1950s she recorded her only album for that company. It is the first of two Kerr recordings transferred for this post, which I believe are her two first LPs. You will note that on both LPs, there is nothing that sounds identifiably country or Nashville. Her own records are squarely in the pop realm, and she would become a very successful mainstream recording artist in the 1960s.

Voices in Hi-Fi

Kerr's groups were generally called the Anita Kerr Singers. That name was on her early Red Foley records and most of her work after she moved to Los Angeles in 1965. Today's LPs, however, came from the Anita Kerr Quartet. 

The Singers were originally an eight-voice ensemble, but Kerr trimmed the group for a 1956 appearance on the television show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. She took that Quartet that into a New York studio a year later for the Decca release Voices in Hi-Fi. The sessions were in May and September 1957.

The vocalists, who I believe recorded with her throughout much of her time in Nashville, were Dottie Dillard, alto, Gil Wright, tenor, and Louis Nunley, baritone - along with Kerr's soprano.

Most songs on the LP are standards, with a few well chosen exceptions such as "With the Wind and Rain in Your Hair," a very good 1940 pop song. Perhaps the only misfire is "Rockin' Chair," where the group cooing "Fetch me my gin, son, 'fore I tan your hide" doesn't really work.

The instrumental arrangements are by Jack Pleis and Ralph Burns. Both are facile arrangers from the big band tradition. Oddly, in his "For You" arrangement Burns uses a riff also heard prominently in Sinatra's "Witchcraft" - even though the Kerr song was recorded a few weeks before Nelson Riddle conducted the Sinatra session. They both may have borrowed the riff from the same source.

Decca's sound is very good. Their cover is dorky, as usual with that company, with the singers staring wonderingly at the back of a woofer.

Velvet Voices Through the Night

The second offering by the Anita Kerr Singers is Velvet Voices Through the Night, made circa 1959 for the publishing rights organization SESAC and sent to radio stations. Another such LP, by the Elliot Lawrence band, recently appeared here.

All songs on the record were handled by a SESAC-affiliated publisher. SESAC was much smaller than ASCAP or BMI, so that limited the compositions that would qualify. As a result, five of the 12 songs were classical adaptations and presumably newly republished, with a sixth a folk-derived tune.

Kerr is credited with the Beethoven adaptation ("Moonlight"), the Offenbach ("Wondrous Night') and the folk song ("All Through the Night"). The Schubert ("All My Life I've Dreamed of You") is not attributed. It's likely that Kerr handled the instrumental as well as the vocal arrangements for the LP, but the cover is ambiguous on that point.

Of the non-classical items, the best known piece is Heinz Provost's "Intermezzo," from the 1939 film of the same name.

The performances are all very fine, aided by three Nashville colleagues of Kerr - trumpeter Karl Garvin, guitarist Hank Garland and keyboard player Mary Elizabeth Hicks. SESAC's sound, however, is not that good, with slight distortion at climaxes and a great deal of vocal sibilance, which I've tamed to an extent. My pressing was faulty, so I had to resort to lossless versions for most of the first song on each side. The sound is better elsewhere on the record.

There is more about Kerr's career in this New York Times obituary. I hope to devote another post to her later recordings.

The Anita Kerr Singers after moving to RCA in the early 1960s

'All the Way' with Sammy, Plus Bonus Singles

I haven't featured Sammy Davis, Jr. here much before, so I hope today's post makes amends. It includes his 1958 LP All the Way . . . and Then Some! with a substantial bonus of nine relatively rare single sides, also from Davis' time at Decca.

I transferred the LP for my friend John Morris, who is assembling all Sammy's recorded output. I then added the singles from lossless needle drops on Internet Archive that I remastered.

My previous Davis post involved his brief contribution to a PanAm promotional LP.

All the Way . . . and Then Some!

In the time-honored record company practice, the title of this LP is different from front cover to back cover to liner notes to label. (That's OK, I'm not entirely consistent myself.) I'm going with the front cover title, with standard capitalization.

The LP consists of the usual 12 tracks, assembled from six 1957-58 recording session with five different arrangers - Morty Stevens, Sonny Burke, Dick Stabile, Russ Garcia and Jack Pleis. In other words, it's not the sort of cohesive entity that Davis' great friend Frank Sinatra was putting out at the time. Usually when this is the case with an LP, the tracks are collated from previously released singles. But all of these songs were first issued on this LP and contemporary EPs.

I don't mean to signal that it's a bad record - far from it. Davis was almost as engaging on record as he was on stage - and he was famed as one of the world's greatest live entertainers. That said, it's hard to convey Sam's multiple talents on record - dancing, playing drums and trumpet, impressions and comedy along with the singing. But Davis did incorporate his gift for mimicry onto the occasional record, to the extent of producing an All Star Spectacular of impersonations for Reprise in 1961.

This particular LP starts off, in fact, with a credible impression of Frank Sinatra singing his then-current hit, "All the Way." After finishing the song, "Frank" dismisses conductor Nelson Riddle with the wish that he "sleep warm" (the title of a Sinatra-Riddle single and LP track). Davis then enters in his own voice and asks Frank to leave the band behind so he can do his own version of the song - which is more uptempo.

The LP follows "All the Way" with "Look to You Heart," a Sinatra song from several years earlier. Davis then leaves the Voice's repertoire behind in favor of an unlikely resurrection of Jane Powell's "Wonder Why" from the 1953 film Rich, Young and Pretty. It's good!

The balance of the songs are standards, with the possible exception of 1934's "Stay as Sweet as You Are," a Revel-Gordon tune from College Rhythm. As usual, Davis is effective whether in lyric or swinging mode.

Sammy Davis and Eartha Kitt in Anna Lucasta

The recording of the first track here ("They Can't Take That Away from Me") took place just as Mr. Wonderful, the Broadway show that had been written for Davis, was closing in February 1957. The last song recorded was "All the Way" in May 1958, after which Davis left for California and a starring role in the film Anna Lucasta, opposite Eartha Kitt. Later that year, he was Sportin' Life in the film version of Porgy and Bess.

Decca Singles

Unlike the LP's material, the songs from the singles are largely unfamiliar. I chose singles that the online Davis sessionography says haven't had an official re-release.

First up is "The Red Grapes," a Ross Bagdasarian tune. This recording, from a 1954 session, came after Bagdasarian's first big success as a songwriter, "Come on-a My House," but before his hits with "Witch Doctor" and the "The Chipmunk Song." Sy Oliver is the maestro for the Sammy single.

The four succeeding songs, all dating from 1955, are directed by Morty Stevens. "A Man with a Dream" comes from Victor Young's short-lived Broadway musical Seventh Heaven. Next are two duets with Gary Crosby - "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive" and "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar," the Ray McKinley specialty. Sam and Gary have no special chemistry, but the results are not unpleasant, and Sammy manages to work in an excellent Louis Armstrong impression. These are the only two records that Crosby and Davis made together.

Frank and Sam

The final song from 1955 is notable as a Jimmy Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn song written for Sinatra that Frank never released. It is "The Man with the Golden Arm," a title song manque for the film of the same name that starred Sinatra. The music for the film was by Elmer Bernstein and was superb. The Van Heusen-Cahn song was designed as a promotional song for the film. Frank recorded it, but it went unreleased until the 90s. Odd - it's a good song, and Davis does it beautifully, a few intonation problems aside.

Mr. Wonderful: Olga James, Sammy Davis, Chita Rivera

As 1956 began, Davis was preparing the Broadway show that was built around his talents, Mr. Wonderful, which opened in March and ran for nearly a year. In the run-up to the opening, Decca had him record the Jerry Bock-Lawrence Holofcener-George David Weiss songs from the score, including "Jacques d'Iraque." This take is different from the one that appeared on the cast album. Morty Stevens - who also did some of the arrangements and conducted the Broadway show - is again the leader of the band.

Peter Cadby's "'Specially for Little Girls" is a sensitive song done beautifully by Sammy with Sy Oliver conducting. At about this time, Cadby scored a children's film sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. This song may be from that film.

"Good Bye, So Long, I'm Gone" and "French Fried Potatoes and Ketchup" are the final two songs in this set, both from May 1956. They are essentially R&B numbers that David handles very nicely, particularly the latter item, which also was done by Amos Milburn for Aladdin. Sy Oliver is again in charge of the band.

The sound both on the LP and the singles is more than adequate.