Mary Kaye's Lone (and Excellent) Solo LP

This fine LP was requested by gimpiero, a motion seconded by woolfnotes. I've had it in the queue for transfer since my previous upload of the Mary Kaye Trio nine years ago. (I work slow.)

Gimpiero and woolfnotes have good taste - to me, this is a superior product but is fairly unknown. It is the only solo album by Mary Kaye, the singer-guitarist and namesake of the trio that was a fixture in the Las Vegas lounges of the time. All her other LPs were made with the trio and include as much ensemble as solo singing.

Mary Kaye

The trio was an excellent act, but that may have masked the real skills of Kaye, who was at once an assured and technically skilled singer with a great deal of emotional depth.

As bandleader/producer Sonny Burke writes in his liner notes, "Her timing, invention, phrasing and delivery are beyond reproach... [She] sings the words with exactly the feeling that the lyricist had in mind when he added his thoughts to the music." 

In the first song, "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," you may note the influence of Sarah Vaughan in her phrasing at the beginning of the number. But reflecting Kaye's Las Vegas background, she then seamlessly changes tempos so that the torch song turns into a swinger. 

Even so, Mary Kaye's approach can be more inward than Vaughan - striking in someone who made a living in Las Vegas lounges. Sarah herself made notable early recordings of two of the songs herein - "You Taught Me to Love Again" and "You're Mine, You."

The first side of the LP is composed of standards, with more adventure on side 2, which starts off with the terrific and not-often-heard "Real Love" by the team of Matt Dennis and Don Raye. The singer continues her salute to her peers with Mel Tormé's second biggest hit, "A Stranger in Town," which benefits from a particularly fine interpretation.

"Old Maid in April Weather" is a bit of a peculiar song by Mary's brother Norman, and the singer herself adds "I Must Have You," written with John Kruglick. "When I Go, I Go All the Way" is another unusual item, penned by arranger Russ Garcia and Bob Russell.

The LP benefits from charts by Jerry Fielding, which are worth hearing on their own. Decca's sound is very pleasing on this 1958 release.

Jerry Fielding

Bonus Items

I've added two items as bonuses - an RCA Victor single from 1954 along with one of Mary Kaye's earliest recordings, which gives a clue to her background.

The RCA single couples the dramatic "Almost," with music by Fred Spielman and lyrics by the father-daughter team of Ogden and Isabel Nash, with "Don't Laugh at Me," the theme song of English comedian Norman Wisdom. Not sure how they came up with this coupling, but these offbeat items are done very well. Hugo Winterhalter conducts.

The earlier recording is a selection from a 1947 Apollo album, when Mary Kaye's act was known as the Mary Ka'aihue Trio. She and her brother had been in show business from an early age, performing in her father's act, Johnny Ka'aihue’s Royal Hawaiians. The trio's first records were of Hawaiian music, including "Hooheno No Beauty" (The Beauty Hula) and "Makalapua" (Your Eyes Are Like Flowers), which were coupled on one of the three records in the Apollo set. Mary and Norman soon changed their last name to Kaye so that people would not assume they only performed the music of Hawaii. 

Both the RCA and Apollo records were cleaned up from Internet Archive needle drops. The Victor sound is good; the Apollo is a bit noisy.

There is more about Mary Kaye and her act in this 2013 post. Also you can hear her (and, separately, Julie London) sing the title song from Boy on a Dolphin.

Hugo Friedhofer's 'Boy on a Dolphin' Score

Here by request by reader woolfnotes is Hugo Friedhofer's score for the 1957 film Boy on a Dolphin.

Hugo Friedhofer

This the first Friedhofer LP to appear here. He was known for his skill as an orchestrator, making his name in that realm before composing film scores in his own right. Friedhofer was prolific - Boy on a Dolphin was one of three films he scored in 1957 alone. The others were An Affair to Remember and The Sun Also Rises.

Although it is Friedhofer's score, he based the main musical cue on a melody by the Greek composer Takis Morakis, who is barely noted on the cover. Add Paul Francis Webster's lyrics, and you have a attractive pop song featured over the opening and closing titles.

Mary Kaye

Here things get a little murky. On the LP, the song is handled (and very well) by Decca vocalist Mary Kaye, previously featured here on this blog. She does not appear, however, on the soundtrack itself, where the singer is an uncredited Julie London.

Why the change? Most likely because London was contracted to Liberty Records, which did put out her rendition as a single. It's not the soundtrack version; on the 45, the singer is backed by a solo guitar played by Howard Roberts. Decca belatedly came out with a competing version from Kaye. Neither were particularly successful, although both are excellent. I've added the London single to the download as a bonus.

Apparently co-star Sophia Loren also sings the tune in the film, but I don't have that one. That's Loren on the cover,  looking distracted as Alan Ladd bends over to either kiss her shoulder or sniff her armpit. This is one of a long line of awful Decca covers from the period.

Friedhofer's music for the film is atmospheric and very enjoyable, making effective use of Marni Nixon's wordless vocals at times. The orchestrations are by Edward B. Powell, and Lionel Newman conducts the band. The sound is very good.

Billboard ad

The Mary Kaye Trio

The Mary Kaye Trio was a staple of Las Vegas nightlife for many years. Mary Kaye herself was an expressive singer with a superb voice. Those skills are in evidence here as well, although they are subordinate to the vivid, larger-than-life presence that the Trio exhibited in its day-to-day battle to be heard above the din of a lounge bar, where they made their name and living. That means elaborate and sometimes explosive vocal arrangements where subtlety was not a consideration. A few generations of cocktail lounge groups copied the trio's approach.

1948 ad (click to enlarge)

The Mary Kaye Trio is sometimes said to have invented the lounge act in Las Vegas in the early 1950s, which seems unlikely. The ad at left in fact shows them as appearing in the Theatrical Grille in Cleveland in 1948, and the Theatrical certainly was a lounge bar. Mary, her brother Norman Kaye and Frankie Ross were probably no different from many other acts that appeared on the nightclub circuit, sometimes appearing solo and sometimes as an opener to a bigger act. What is likely is that the trio was the first to be booked into a Las Vegas lounge as overnight entertainment for the drinkers and gamblers who didn't want to go home. And it is there that they found a following.

As you will note in the ad, the Mary Kaye Trio was originally the Mary Kaaihue Trio. The Ka'aihues were Hawaiians, supposedly of noble extraction, although I couldn't tell you if that was truth or publicity. Their father played the ukelele professionally, and they followed him into the musical trade. They must have had Hawaiian music in the act at the beginning, and made an album of it for Apollo in 1947. The trio filmed a Soundie in 1946, but I couldn't find it on YouTube.

What can be found on that site is their appearance in the 1957 film Bop Girl Goes Calypso doing "Fools Rush In" using the same arrangement that is on Music on a Silver Platter. This then segues into a piece of their act, with clowning from Frankie Ross and a Liberace impression from Norman. Next is "Calypso Rock," mercifully not on the LP. I don't think that Mary was the bop girl who went calypso; that was the talented but short-lived Judy Tyler.

1956 ad

"Calypso Rock" may be as close at the trio ever got to rock 'n' roll, although Mary Kaye somehow became known as the "First Lady of Rock 'n' Roll," at least in the Fender guitar promotional materials. The group appeared in a 1956 Fender ad, and the model guitar shown was later named for Mary Kaye. Nonetheless, she usually played D'Angelico guitars, as she does in the YouTube clip.

Music on a Silver Platter (what came first: the title or the awful cover concept?) was their second Decca LP. They had recorded earlier for Columbia, Capitol, M-G-M and RCA Victor, as well as Apollo, and would go on to Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, if I recall correctly. The Silver Platter songs were probably intended as singles, although I have only been able to trace a few of them having been issued that way. There are arrangements by Jud Conlan and Russ Garcia (including the trombone-heavy "Fools Rush In"), but most are anonymous. The sound is reasonably good. This is presented by request.