Buster and Ernie at the Ol' Ball Yard

Winter has turned to spring in this part of the world, and that means the advent of yet another baseball season. To get you in the spirit, blogging buddy Ernie and I are offering an unusual collection of baseball songs. (In the photo above, Ernie seems skeptical of my ballplaying prowess.)

Ernie was the mastermind behind most of the playlist, and he has selected some of the most obscure selections you can imagine - from comic monologues to tribute songs, from country to classics, stretching from as long ago as 1903 to 1957. There are tunes celebrating the stars of old along with the obscurities - adding up to 22 selections in all.

As usual, we'll cover these in chronological order.

Cal Stewart - Uncle Josh Playing Base Ball

Cal Stewart as Uncle Josh

The earliest piece comes from Cal Stewart, who visits the ball park in "Uncle Josh Playing Base Ball" from 1903. Actually Josh first goes to a football game and then on to the baseball field, where he joins the action with predictable consequences. Josh was a yuk-yuk-yuk hayseed character, and his routine is very much in the vein of his previous appearances here, when he encountered the big city department store and a cafeteria, except this one involves an angry goat.

Concert Band - Cubs on Parade

Tinker, Evers, Chance, and all the Cubbies

The Chicago Cubs were the hottest thing in the major leagues from 1906-8, when they won two out of three World Series. They then hit a fallow period for the next 108 years. In 1908, a generically named Concert Band came out with a lively march called "Cubs on Parade," which we presume was in honor of the baseball team rather than denoting something zoological.

Weber and Fields - Base Ball

Joe Weber and Lew Fields were huge stars in vaudeville, but only worked together sporadically by the time Columbia recorded their "Base Ball" routine in 1916. Their "Mike and Meyer" characters spoke in German dialect, here with one explaining the game to the other. This routine features our first instance of "kill the umpire" and ends with a joke at the expense of the long-gone and not very successful St. Louis Browns.

"Babe" Himself - "Babe" Ruth's Home Run Story

The Babe

In 1920 the biggest star in baseball was the Great Bambino, Babe Ruth, who had just moved over to the Yankees from the Red Sox and was busy setting home run records in both 1919 and 1920. This recorded monologue - "'Babe' Ruth's Home Run Story" - is a remarkably contrived and uninformative three minutes with the slugger detailing his triumphs in a laconic manner. Still, it's fascinating to hear his voice in his prime.

Les Brown and His Orchestra - Joltin' Joe DiMaggio

Let's jump ahead to 1941, where we're in a different world with Les Brown's swing band hymning the praises of a later Yankee - "Joltin' Joe DiMaggio." Singer Betty Bonney tells the story of the Clipper's 56-game hitting streak, which is still the record. Betty died recently, and her New York Times obituary gives the background of the song. 

From this time forward, most records found it obligatory to bawl "strike one" etc., and "kill the umpire," along with the crack of hickory on horsehide (or is it horsehide on hickory?).

Ferko String Band - Babe (Dedicated to Babe Ruth)

Joe Ferko formed the Ferko String Band more than 100 years ago to perform in Philadelphia's Mummers Parade on New Year's Day. In the late 1940s, the Ferkos made a series of records for the local Palda label, including our next selection, which is my own favorite in this group. It is a loose and lusty reading of "Babe (Dedicated to Babe Ruth)" by Charles Tobias and Peter DeRose. I believe this was recorded in recognition of Ruth's 1948 death from cancer. It is a joyous sing-along celebration of his life, accompanied by a ensemble that sounds like it is part marching band and part stage band - which is what the Ferkos were.

Johnny Mercer - The First Baseball Game

Johnny Mercer

A preacher delivering a sermon using baseball as a simile sounds like something that Johnny Mercer the songwriter would come up with, but it actually is a 1948 song by Don Raye and Gene de Paul called "The First Baseball Game" that Johnny the singer recorded for Capitol. Among the lyrics: "Ol’ Saint Pete was checkin’ errors / Also had charge of the gate / Salome sacrific’d Big John the Baptist who wound up ahead on the plate." Not sure what the lesson was, but the lyrics are terrific.

Count Basie and His Orchestra - Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?

Jackie Robinson

One of the great events in baseball history was in 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the Major League's color line by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. There was more than one song written to mark the occasion, the best-known being Buddy Johnson's "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?", here in Count Basie's 1949 recording. Ernie also uncovered a "Baseball Boogie" recorded in Robinson's honor by Brownie McGhee, but that 78 was quite noisy, so we opted for the better-known song.

Gene Kelly and Betty Garrett - Take Me Out to the Ball Game

There have been any number of films with a baseball theme; one notable example from the musical realm is Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which, with a title like that, just had to utilize Albert von Tilzer and Jack Norworth's 1908 classic "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." In the 1949 film, the song is allotted to Gene Kelly and Betty Garrett. Neither had a great voice, but they both radiated personality, so this is a fine record of perhaps the most famous baseball song of them all.

Michel Rosenberg - Getzel at a Baseball Game

Michel Rosenberg

Baseball has appealed to all facets of society and is an example of sport bringing us together. In the late 1940s, Banner was a well-known Yiddish and Hebrew label whose best known artists were perhaps Molly Picon, Myron Cohen and the Barry (Bagelman) Sisters. On this side, Borscht Belt comedian Michel Rosenberg does his "Getzel at a Baseball Game" routine. It's in Yiddish, but he does throw in the occasional phrase in English, e.g., "Gimme blintzes!" and "It's gonna be some game!"

Fat Man Humphries - Doby at the Bat

The first player to break the color line in the American League, Cleveland's Larry Doby, also was honored in more than one song. An earlier post includes Freddie Mitchell's "Doby's Boogie." And today's collection features Fat Man Humphries' "Doby at the Bat," a rough-and-ready, small-label R&B toast to a great player. It dates from 1950.

Glenn Young Orchestra - Harry Caray Polka

Harry Caray in St. Louis

Radio announcers were (and still are to an extent) the portals to baseball for avid fans who could not attend in person. They themselves became popular personalities. One of the most famous - and longest lasting - of this breed was Harry Caray, whose most notable assignments were for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs. Harry was quite a promoter, so my guess is that the idea for this rollicking "Harry Caray Polka" from 1950 originated with the man himself. It features his catchphrases "It might be ... it could be ... it IS a home run!" and "Holy cow!"

Johnny Vadnal - The Baseball Polka

Johnny Vadnal

Let's move on to another polka from the same year, this one from Johnny Vadnal, one of the leading lights of the very active Slovenian polka scene in Cleveland, whose best-known exponent was Frankie Yankovic. These ensembles tended to have a smooth sounding female trio offsetting the pronounced polka beat and decidedly choppy male vocals. Vadnal is choppier than most, at least in this "Baseball Polka," also from 1950.

Sugar Chile Robinson - The Bases Were Loaded

Baseball songs and stories have often adopted the pitcher-batter duel as a drama in miniature, starting with "Casey at the Bat." Here, juvenile boogie woogie pianist/singer Sugar Chile Robinson has it tougher than most, being called on a strikes by a pitch that beaned him - and that with the bases full. This drama can be found in a 1950 Rudy Toombs creation called "The Bases Were Loaded," which Robinson recorded for Capitol.

Helen Traubel - Take Me Out to the Ball Game

"Yo-ho-te home run!"

Wagnerian soprano Helen Traubel was a wonderfully good sport who liked to sing popular songs, including this splendid 1950 record of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," with Arthur Fiedler and orchestra. The performance is notable for including the seldom-heard - and very good - verse by composer Albert von Tilzer and lyricist Jack Norworth. The latter actually wrote two verses for the song - one in 1908 and a replacement in 1927. Traubel sings the latter. Here is an explanation for the alternative versions.

LeRoy Holmes and His Orchestra - Little League

Baseball for the young ones was only loosely organized when I was a kid - largely via the Little League and then high school teams. Now my 10-year-old grandson is on an organized team that travels all over. A harbinger of this professionalization of a kiddie pastime was this recording of "Little League," the Official March of Little League Baseball, as recorded by LeRoy Holmes back in 1951. It may have had something to do with the Little League World Series, which had begun in 1947. 

Jane Morgan - Baseball, Baseball

Jane Morgan and the All-Stars

What if you are not all that interested in baseball and the object of your affection is more obsessed by the box score than by scoring points with you? Such was the dilemma faced by pop singer Jane Morgan in her entertaining 1954 record "Baseball, Baseball." She eventually gets her revenge but has to go to extreme measures to do so. Old reliable George Barnes provides the backing.

Phil Foster - A Brooklyn Dodgers Fan

In the mid-1950s, longtime comic and actor Phil Foster styled himself as "Brooklyn's Ambassador to the U.S.A." He even did a series of shorts called "Brooklyn Goes to ..." with the destinations being such glamorous locales as Paris and Cleveland. In his amusing 1954 record "A Brooklyn Baseball Fan" he gives some insight into Dodger fandom. Just a few years later (see sheet music above) he was praying to keep Dem Bums in Dat Ebbets Field. It didn't work - they were off to LA in 1957.

Tom Anderson - Love Goes on Like a Ball Game

Billboard review, February 20, 1954

We've already heard a preacher using baseball as a simile; now here's country singer Tom Anderson claiming that his "Love Goes on Like a Ball Game." Anderson only made a few records, but he was a good singer, and his lament here shows that off well. I believe that he and the Deep Valley Boys were from Virginia.

Willie Mays and the Treniers - Say Hey

Willie Mays

A baseball great who was both the subject and the purveyor of a song was centerfielder Willie Mays of the New York (soon to be San Francisco) Giants. Like Joe DiMaggio above, Mays appears at the beginning of the tune, then gives way to the kinetic Treniers. The song is named for Willie's catchphrase "Say Hey." Mays and the arranger of this record, Quincy Jones, both died within the past year. Twins Cliff and Claude Trenier passed away some time ago.

The Voices of Walter Schumann - Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.

From a staging of Damn Yankees

In Douglas Wallop's 1954 novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, middle-aged Joe Boyd makes a pact with the Devil to be transformed into young baseball phenom Joe Hardy so that he can save the Washington Senators' season. Wallop's story became a Broadway musical and the subsequent film Damn Yankees. In the staging the Senators welcome the new hero in the number "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo." here in a spirited version from the Voices of Walter Schumann.

The Voice of Mickey Mantle and Teresa Brewer - I Love Mickey

Teresa Brewer and Mickey Mantle

Teresa Brewer's singing was a strange combination of Kay Starr and Betty Boop. I don't care for her vocalizing, but here she extols my childhood hero, slugger Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, so we just had to include the record. For some reason, Coral billed the Mick as "The Voice of Mickey Mantle," so as to assure us we weren't getting his ear or elbow on the record. The conceit here is that Brewer squeaks "I Love Mickey" and The Voice of Mickey responds, "Mickey who?" It goes on like that for a couple minutes. I'll stick with the Treniers.

That's all for today. But Ernie and I enjoyed doing this so much that, to paraphrase Ernie Banks, "Let's post two!"

Until then, as they say at your local Field of Misbegotten Dreams, "Play ball!"

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The Margaret Whiting Holiday Collection

The distinguished vocalist Margaret Whiting (1924-2011) made records for 50 years but never produced an complete album of holiday songs. This post collects the ones she did make, dating from 1947-93. By using a broad (very broad) definition of seasonal music, I've been able to corral 19 items in all.

Whiting was born into a musical family. Her father was the songwriter Richard Whiting, who wrote the music for many standards in his short life (he died when Maggie was 14) - including "Beyond the Blue Horizon," "My Future Just Passed," "She's Funny That Way," "Till We Meet Again," "Too Marvelous for Words" and "You're an Old Smoothie."

With Johnny Mercer

Maggie became a professional singer at a young age, and quickly showed that she had great talent - excellent intonation, clear diction, sensitivity to lyrics, lovely tone, and so on.

Her father's former co-writer, Johnny Mercer, brought her into the studios the day before her 18th birthday for a Capitol recording date that included her father's "My Ideal." It was the beginning of regular Capitol sessions, but it wasn't until five years later that Maggie set down a holiday song - and that's where our chronological review begins.

The 1940s

Frank Loesser's "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" was new when Whiting recorded it in May 1947. Hers was the first recording of this standard, and it's a good one, with backing by her frequent collaborator, bandleader Frank De Vol. Loesser did not intend his song to be a seasonal item - he pictured it being sung earlier in the year - but no one else seems to agree. This collection includes both Capitol's originally-issued take and an alternate.

With Frank De Vol

These days, "While the Angelus Was Ringing" is better known by its original title, "The Three Bells." It is a Swiss-French song, first a hit for Édith Piaf and Les Compagnons de la chansons as "Les trois cloches." In the US, "Angelus" was originally more popular than the competing "The Three Bells," but that was to change, particularly following the Browns' 1959 hit under the latter title.

In common with many other American artists, Whiting recorded "Angelus" in 1948. (On the record label, Capitol managed to mangle the title into "When the Angelus Is Ringing.") Under any name, the song's simplicity and sincerity make it well suited to the season. Whiting herself was to record "The Three Bells" years later - we'll get to that below.

Maggie set down another new Frank Loesser song in 1949, this one definitely seasonal - "Baby, It's Cold Outside," here in a duet with Johnny Mercer. Paul Weston conducted. It's a good, professional version; I prefer a little more nuance, a la the Pearl Bailey-Hot Lips Page rendition.

Later in the year, Whiting was to go to work on several seasonal songs, along with a special Capitol promotional record.

First is "(It Happened at) The Festival of Roses," which is a nice song but only the most generous of judges would consider it a holiday item. Fortunately I am just such a benevolent character. The song is by Al Goodheart and Dick Manning, the latter of whom also wrote the words for "While the Angelus Was Ringing."

Whiting's big Christmas coupling for 1949 was "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" along with the "Mistletoe Kiss Polka." The former, a Martin and Blane classic, came from the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis. Maggie is suitably sensitive. For the contrasting latter number, she is appropriately bouncy. Polkas were popular in the late 40s - this entry is unexpectedly by the Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, working with Constance Palmer. De Vol again is the bandleader, with the Mellomen as supporting vocalists.

"Season's Greetings from Capitol" was a fun promotional record from 1949 aimed at the jukebox operators of the nation. I first posted it last year; you can read more about it here.

The 1950s

Also in 1949, Whiting had begun recording with singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely. They were successful right out of the gate with a cover of Floyd Tillman's honky-tonk anthem "Slipping Around." The next year, Capitol decided to have them attempt some seasonal fare, and again the results were pleasing. One side was a cover of Livingston and Evans' "Silver Bells," which was written for the Bob Hope epic The Lemon Drop Kid. The Bing Crosby-Carol Richards recording of the song became a hit in 1950, well before the film's 1951 release.

Vocally, Whiting and the unassuming Wakely were well matched, and their "Silver Bells" is nicely sung. The backing is by yet another singing cowboy, Foy Willing, and his ensemble. It lacks impact and has little holiday flavor so the record was never a threat to Bing's disk.

Willing, Wakely and Jack Kenney collaborated on writing the flip side, "Christmas Candy," which is more lively. Musically, the song is strongly reminiscent of 1947's "Here Comes Santa Claus."

Whiting was to remain at Capitol for several more years, but no more Christmas songs were forthcoming from that label. However, let me add another "bells" number - 1952's "Singing Bells" by George Wyle and Eddie Pola, who were responsible for the Christmas classic "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." "Singing Bells" is sort of a clog dance, which you can do around your Christmas tree if you so choose. Lou Busch - then Whiting's husband - leads the band.

On the radio

Also from this period we have an aircheck of Maggie doing "It's Christmas Time Again," a very good song by Sonny Burke, Jack Elliott and James Harwood that was introduced by Peggy Lee in 1953. The Whiting edition likely comes from a 1953 or 1954 Bob Hope Show - she performed it both years.

Let's zoom ahead to 1959 and Maggie's new home at Dot records. There, she remade two of the songs discussed above. First was a version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with studio vocalist Bill Lee, a member of the Mellomen group that assisted on the "Mistletoe Kiss Polka." Lee was a talented singer, but he is too bland for this song. This cut comes from the LP Margaret Whiting's Great Hits. It's one of those early stereo affairs with extreme separation of the two voices. At one point, they change sides, which I imagine is supposed to suggest Bill Lee pursuing Maggie. Russ Garcia conducts.

Circa 1960

Next we revisit "The Three Bells," recorded in the wake of the Browns' chart success. The Whiting version, which comes from the LP Ten Top Hits, includes the tolling bells vocal backing ("bum, bum, bum, bum") identical to the Browns and similar to Les Compagnons de la chanson on the original. Milt Rogers was arranger and conductor.

Later Recordings

Maggie was to produce no more seasonal records for another 20 years. For her 1982 album Come a Little Closer she included the obscure (and depressing) "After the Holidays," where she implores her mate to stay with her for one more season. As a downer, it is right down there with Gordon Jenkins' "Happy New Year."

Circa 1980s

Whiting contributed two numbers to pianist Loonis McGlohon's 1990 album We Wish You a Merry Christmas - "White Christmas" and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town." McGlohon was an excellent musician and these are accomplished readings, although Maggie's voice is not as fresh as it once was.

Loonis McGlohon

McGlohon's follow-up was 1992's A Christmas Memory. Whiting is heard on a remake of "Silver Bells," thankfully without Foy Willing.

The following year, Maggie recorded "The Christmas Waltz" for the album A Cabaret Christmas. Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote the piece for Frank Sinatra. Whiting's rendition includes a bridge that sounds improvised; the entire performance is quite free, interestingly so. Her music director, Tex Arnold, is the pianist.

That's all we have from Maggie's sporadic holiday output. It's a shame there was no seasonal album from such an accomplished artist. This collection was assembled from a variety of sources, including Internet Archive and my collection. The sound is generally very good.

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