The Obsolete Collection (Retail Division)

The recent post of "The Obsolete Collection" on my singles blog met with favor, so I decided to do a sequel. I've moved this new post over to the main site in the hopes that more people will see it, and perhaps investigate its predecessor.

The first "Obsolete Collection" covered songs having to do with lamplighters, kerosene lamps, steam locomotives, trolleys, rumble seats, telegrams, telephone party lines, cuckoo clocks, milkmen and typewriters.

This time we explore the retail trade, broadly considered, looking for records that have to do with formats that have had their time in the sun and are now looking a bit withered. Let's start off with that mainstay of my youth, the big city department store.

The Department Store

Macy's Herald Square, New York, back when there were horses and streetcars on the street, and the 6th Avenue El up above

Department stores have been around for more than a century, but seem to be experiencing a agonizingly slow death. Instead of the giant Macy's you see above, for example, the chain is now opening small format stores that would have fit in a old Macy's rest room. And that chain is one of the few survivors.

We can go back even to the 19th century and find records about the department store. The vaudeville comedian Cal Stewart made a living off his rural character Uncle Josh encountering city institutions, including the big store. Stewart first starting recording his "Uncle Josh in a Department Store" routine back in 1898, for the Berliner company. He took the same act over the Victor folks in 1901, then to Columbia and Zonophone before finishing up shortly before his death in 1919.

Our "Uncle Josh" version comes from a 1902 Victor session. Tastes were different then, and his yuck-yuck-yuck routine soon becomes annoying. 

I don't think the "country bumpkin" character was novel even back then, but it influenced comics up through Cliff Arquette and his "Charley Weaver" in the late 20th century.

As a bonus, I've included some "Radio Hucksters Store Spots," with a vocal group and combo limning the praises of notions, linens and so on. Each spot starts with a vocal, followed by a instrumental interlude designed so that local stores could add their specific plugs ("Yes, head on down to Blatnik's Boston Store, and find bargain after bargain ..." etc.), with a brief vocal outro.

The Five-and-Dime

This circa 1940 Phoenix postcard focuses on Woolworth's, but also helpfully points out its five-and-dime competitors Newberry's and Kress

The department store's less flossy cousin was the five-and-dime - Woolworth, Kresge, W.T. Grant and so on. These vendors tried to keep the prices low, but still had a wide variety of goods. The one near me when I was young had everything from birds to records. Some sold china and peanuts, and that's where our featured record comes in. It's one of the best known tunes in the set - "I Found a Million-Dollar Baby (in a Five-and-Ten Cent Store)." I've selected the 1931 hit version by Waring's Pennsylvanians, with a sincere vocal by Clare Hanlon and a trio. It also includes the seldom-heard verse, which was new to me.

Billy Rose found two million-dollar babies

But wait - there are two such "million-dollar baby" songs. An earlier one, with the same theme and title but different music and lyrics, had come out in 1926. Both seem to be the handiwork of lyricist-promoter Billy Rose, working with Fred Fisher on the earlier song, and with Harry Warren and Mort Dixon on the latter.

The 1926 song is represented by a snoozy Victor recording by tenor Henry Burr, apparently a John McCormack fancier. The peppier approach taken by Waring's band works much better.

The Pool Hall

Ya got trouble ... watch out for the guy with the meat hooks

Do pool halls exist nowadays? I haven't seen one lately. But they were an urban favorite way back when. The picture above (it's a pool room in Washington Court House, Ohio) is roughly contemporary with the time period of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, which set in 1912 in "River City," Iowa (a stand in for Willson's home town, Mason City). The 1957 musical includes the magnificent spiel "Ya Got Trouble," where con man "Professor" Harold Hill proselytizes the townfolk about the depths of de-gra-day [tion] involved with the forthcoming transformation of the genteel billiard parlor into a wicked pool hall.

The song was introduced on Broadway by the magnetic Robert Preston, but I thought you might like to hear Willson's own version, which comes from one of those "And Then I Wrote" LPs. He's almost as good as Preston. FYI - the LP was in awful early stereo with Willson's voice seeming to come from the far right of the sound stage. He needs to be front and center, so I've moved him there.

The Nickelodeon

A circa 1910 nickelodeon

A "nickelodeon" was a cheap place to watch the early silent films. Entrepreneurs would take over a storefront, add some chairs, a screen and a projector, and voila, the Comique in Toronto (above), which was one of the fancier operations, by the looks of it. 

The word "nickelodeon" is a portmanteau of "nickel" (the price of admission) and odeon (from the Greek word for a covered theater). But somehow, the term "nickelodeon" transmigrated to also describe a coin operated player piano, and to some degree, what we would call a jukebox (which we'll get to next).

How do you improve a player piano? Add a drum, a cymbal and an accordion!

I haven't discovered any songs celebrating the original meaning of the word, but there is a well-known number that deals with the coin-op piano - "Music, Music, Music," aka "Put Another Nickel In" and "The Nickelodeon." Quite an elaborate set of titles to describe a simple melody with a bridge swiped from Franz Liszt.

The big hit of this song was by Teresa Brewer, a record I have detested since I was a small child. So I've included the original version, by one Etienne Paree with Eddie "Piano" Miller, whose playing is so metronomic it sounds appropriately mechanical. Actually this version is as bad as Brewer's, and Etienne is a little creepy.

The nickelodeon as theater was supplanted by movie palaces as the audience for films grew. I've recognized the days of silent films by including a snatch of stereotypical "chase music" ("The Chase") as played on a theater organ such as you might heave heard in one of the more elaborate showplaces..

As for coin-operated player pianos, you may be able to find one in your local museum.

The Juke Box

Wurlitzer would have had you believe that even a rural hideaway could afford its fancy model 1015

When we think about "putting another nickel in," those of us of a certain age think of the jukebox, that coin-operated marvel where you could watch the machine grab the record, put it on a turntable and bring the tonearm down so the music would flow.

Jukeboxes are not extinct, but there was a time when they were ubiquitous. So to celebrate them, let's begin with perhaps the most famous such record - the Glenn Miller version of "Jukebox Saturday Night," from 1942. The vocalists are Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke and the Modernaires. The original includes an impression of Harry James' "Ciribiribin" and Ralph Brewster's droll send-up of the Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care."

Two of the Modernaires' three recordings of "Juke Box Saturday Night"

The Mods knew they were onto a good thing, so they made a Soundie version in 1944, remade the single record for Columbia in 1946 and put together a "New Jukebox Saturday Night" for Coral in 1953. I've included the latter in the package - it features their takes on Don Cornell, Les Paul and Mary Ford, the Four Aces and Johnnie Ray.

Juke boxes were still the thing later in the 1950s, when Perry Como treated us to Joe and Noel Sherman's "Juke Box Baby." Mr. C continued the Modernaires' habit of name checking other songs, including any number of current hits in passing.

This ditty, which shows off Perry's keen sense of rhythm, was on the flip side of another famous Como epic, "Hot Diggity." You will realize this is an old record when Perry complains to Juke Box Baby, "You don't dig Latin like ya dig that crazy sound." Latin? Talk about obsolete! Mine was probably the last generation that had to relieve Caesar's Gallic Wars.

The Road House

A "swanky" road house

Now, where did one find these juke boxes? Well, they were common, but certainly one place would be at the old road houses, a bar or club out on a country road. These sometimes were venues where you could find gambling and other once or still-illegal pastimes. 

Road houses have inspired several excellent songs. We'll start off with the wonderful "Road House Boogie," a 1949 R&B opus by Big Jay McNeely, with an uncredited vocal by (I believe) Ted Shirley. (Big Jay is the honkin' tenor sax player.) As always with these adventures, the singer ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. ("Saturday Night Fish Fry" is perhaps the most famous example.)

The next year brought another classic, this one from the honky-tonk giant Lefty Frizzell - "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time," his first record. Louche Lefty picks up a lady with some money, and tells her they'll drive out to all the hot spots and "dance, drink beer and wine." (He insists, "Bring along your Cadillac, leave my old wreck behind.") But, the denouement comes - "If you've got no more money, honey, I've got no more time."

The title is an example of country artists turning an off-color catchphrase into a song. Another was Hank Penny's "Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am!"

Finally, the more innocent "Down the Road Apiece," which Don Raye wrote in 1940 for him and Ray McKinley to sing with the Will Bradley Trio. Just a short while ago, we heard McKinley's remake with his big band, but today let's jump ahead a few decades to the insanely rocking version from the young Rolling Stones. In this reading, Mick Jagger rewrites the lyrics so that instead of calling on "Eight-Beat Mack" (i.e., McKinley), he calls out "Charlie McCoy, you all remember that rubber legged boy." Not sure how he came up with McCoy (or rubber-legged), but he's surely referring to the Stones' own drummer, Charlie Watts.

The Drive-In

Orange you glad you went to the Orange Drive-in?

If you were going to drive out to the sticks, you might want to take in a movie in the questionable comfort of your car. Drive-ins are still around, but they are not as popular as they once were. Back in 1964, they were still the place for a couple to canoodle in the dark. The Beach Boys immortalized the drive-in experience on their "Drive-In," which was a cut on their All Summer Long LP.

The term "drive-in" also encompassed the type of restaurant where you ordered from your car and the uniformed attendant brought you your food. These spots are still around, but again, not nearly as plentiful as they once were. Where I lived many years ago, there was a drive-in restaurant right down the street from a drive-in theater, so that was convenient on a Saturday night.

Joe - er, Dolores' - Drive-In 

In 1947, veteran singer-songwriter Seger Ellis praised "Joe's Drive-In" as the place to head after seeing a show, "so I can feed this face of mine." A fun record from the author of "Little Jack Frost, Get Lost" (written with Al Stillman) and "You're All I Want for Christmas" (with Glenn Moore).

The estimable Nelson Riddle also put out a record called "Drive In." I don't know whether the title refers to the film or food variety (presumably not drive-in banks or churches), so I've parked it in between the Beach Boys and Seger Ellis.

The Gas Station

Service with a smile, but try not to drip from your nozzle

Now, if you were going on a road trip, presumably you would have needed gasoline, so let's memorialize these palaces of petroleum before they are replaced by charging stations.

Gas stations are still common on the roadways, but they are much different enterprises from when I would gas 'em up, change the oil, sell you tires, replace your muffler, do a tune up or brake job, etc. That was nearly 60 years ago when gas stations were self-styled "service stations." Today they are a combination of convenience store, fast food vendor, THC emporium and car wash. And no one but you pumps the gas (in most places).

To recognize the old days, we have a lively piece called "Gas Station Mambo" by the fabulous Pérez Prado and his band, from 1953. In this station, the proprietor greets you by shouting "uh!" and "dilo!" The band sings about something or other, but I don't habla español. (I studied Latin, remember.)

And to get you in the mood to hang around the old grease rack, as I once did, we have a "Filling Station Effects" transcription featuring a very loud grease gun followed by the racket of an old-school gas pump, complete with periodic dings. The gas pump sounds like it could have used some lubrication itself. I would not recommend that you have this one on repeat play.

The Motel

Circa 1940s postcard 

We finish our survey with the motel, also still around, but much different from what it once was. A case in point is the Lazy Acres Motel above, once a modest motel, today primarily an RV park. And it's a survivor. Most of these rural retreats are long gone.

Lazy Acres did some radio advertising back circa 1950 on the Los Angeles radio program of Western Swing's Spade Cooley. We have a promotional record appropriately titled "Lazy Acres Motel." The song is performed by the Prairie Schooner Boys, who suggest you "take Route 99 and look for the sign - Lazy Acres Motel." Note that author of the song is one "Stan Feberg," probably the future musical satirist Stan Freberg.

I've heard worse promos - the department stores spots above, for example.

Bonus Track - "The Lamplighter's Serenade"

Dave Federman asked me if I would try to resuscitate a song that I could have included in the original "Obsolete Collection" - "The Lamplighter's Serenade." 

In my collection, I had chosen the slightly later "Old Lamplighter," but the Serenade is a fine record, too, written by Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster.

I was familiar with the Miller and Sinatra versions, but Dave has uncovered a first-rate example by Woody Herman in an uncharacteristically mellow mood.

I found two copies of the 1942 78 on Internet Archive, but neither was in particularly good shape, offering an explosion of noise punctuated by peak distortion. I've taken the best parts of each disc, moderated the noise and mostly ameliorated the distortion so that the record now sounds acceptable.

The selections in this post came from IA and my collection. The sound is generally very good, even for Uncle Josh and his 1902 visit to the big city.

LINK to The Obsolete Collection (Retail Division)

The Almost Complete 'Orchestra Wives'

About eight years ago I prepared what I described as the "almost complete Sun Valley Serenade," which involved wrangling the soundtrack recordings to the Glenn Miller band's first movie. They had appeared piecemeal across a few different releases over the years.

Today I am doing the same for Miller's second and final film, Orchestra Wives, an uneasy amalgam of musical and melodrama, with a score just as glorious as the first Miller film. And again, the recordings have been cobbled together from several sources.

Meanwhile I've revamped and added to the Sun Valley Serenade post, which you can find here. The music from both films is available in sterling ambient stereo.

The primary sources for both films are the RCA Victor albums that came out in 1954, timed to the release of Hollywood's Glenn Miller Story, and the 20th Century Fox LPs that were issued about five years later. Each set contains materials that can't be found on the other. For this go-round, I've added an alternate take for each film, derived from a long-ago bootleg.

Here are the details of the Orchestra Wives recordings. This second Miller film comes from 1942, just a year after Sun Valley Serenade. The bandleader was to enter the Army soon after its completion. Two years later his plane disappeared over the English Channel.

The Orchestra Wives score opens with a brief version of Miller's theme, his own composition "Moonlight Serenade," heard over the titles. This is an alternate version that adds a swirling harp opening.

Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Ray Eberle and the Modernaires tighten their belts

Respecting its wartime setting, the next song, "People Like You and Me," is half sentiment and half patriotism, concluding with a "let's pitch in" stanza:

We'll have to roll up our sleeves, 

Tighten our belts,

But through the dark we'll see
The lady with the liberty light for
People like you and you and you,
And people like me,
People like you and me!

As with many Miller performances, what makes the song work so well is the brilliant arrangement (by Jerry Gray or George Williams) and the meticulous execution by the band and the vocalists - Marion Hutton, Ray Eberle, Tex Beneke and the Modernaires. The song itself is a highly professional effort by the stellar Hollywood team of composer Harry Warren and lyricist Mack Gordon. They also wrote most of the Sun Valley Serenade songs.

The next number is an instrumental, "Boom Shot," which the band plays at a dance in Iowa and which kicks off the plot. (Per a blog post by Miller expert Dave Weiner, the title relates to the overhead camera technique used during the sequence.) This is a Billy May original with a George Williams arrangement.

Pat Friday

"At Last" is one of the most enduringly popular songs in the Miller canon, not least because of Etta James' 1960 cover version. But the performance in the film is perfect in its own right. The song is one of Harry Warren's best, with a fine Mack Gordon lyric, and a powerful vocal by Pat Friday dubbing for Lynn Bari's viperish band singer. Friday's excellence is matched by Ray Eberle, in fine voice, the Modernaires, and a crack chart by Jerry Gray and Bill Finegan. (Miller at the time employed several famous arrangers - Gray, Finegan, George Williams and Billy May).

"At Last" was actually written for (and cut from) Sun Valley Serenade (available here), where Friday also dubbed for Lynn Bari. Her partner that time was male lead John Payne, who sang for himself but was no match for Eberle. The Orchestra Wives version is more romantic; it also has a slightly revised melody line.

"American Patrol" is a joyous swing march, an arrangement by Jerry Gray of F.W. Meacham's "American Patrol March" of 1885. As with all these songs, the playing is flawless.

Moe Purtill

"Bugle Call Rag," which dates from 1922, is from the New Orleans Rhythm Kings band book. This spirited version, arranged by Miller himself, has a feature for the band's flashy drummer, Moe Purtill.

"Serenade in Blue" is one of the Miller band's best known songs. Written for the film by Warren and Gordon, it receives an almost impossibly romantic treatment by Billy May and Bill Finegan, vocalists Pat Friday and Ray Eberle, the Modernaires, cornetist Bobby Hackett and tenor saxophonist Tex Beneke. This version from the RCA release is much longer than what is heard in the film; notably it has a moody instrumental opening that is a marked contrast with the balance of the song.

Following this swooning number is the jaunty specialty (also by Warren and Gordon) "(I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo." It was an entirely successful attempt to replicate the popularity of Sun Valley Serenade's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." Once again, Beneke is on the move to see a girl in another town, and again he is interrogated by the Modernaires in the process. Instead of "Hi there, Tex, what you say?" we get "Hi there, Tex, how's your new romance?" The performance is polished and the Jerry Gray arrangement is most effective.

The amazing Nicholas Brothers

As with "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "Kalamazoo" was the basis of an extended dance sequence featuring the astonishing Nicholas Brothers. The extended version of the song, with the brothers' contribution, only appeared on the RCA Victor release.

Marion Hutton

Now for three songs that were cut from the film, but appeared on the later 20th Century Fox LPs. The first is a feature for Marion Hutton, a personable singer who was not quite as explosive as her sister Betty. "That's Sabotage" makes use of a wartime concern to admonish a wayward suitor - "If you've been untrue, that sabotage!" Hutton insists.

Glenn Miller and Chummy MacGregor

"Moonlight Sonata" is a Bill Finegan arrangement of Beethoven featuring pianist Chummy MacGregor and Beneke on tenor sax. It is better than the usual run of such things. Miller expert Dave Weiner says that it probably was meant as a feature for Cesar Romero, who played a pianist in the film. Miller had recorded a commercial version of the song in 1941.

George Montgomery, Cesar Romero, Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Lynn Bari

The final unused song was "You Say the Sweetest Things, Baby," a song that Warren wrote for the Alice Faye film Tin Pan Alley. Here, a subset of the Miller troupe parodies the overripe sound of a society band until it is interrupted by a raucous trumpet solo. Dave Weiner says this was apparently supposed to be the soundtrack of a scene in which trumpeter George Montgomery, the film's lead, interrupts a square ensemble with his hip playing. The trumpet you hear is Billy May.

To close the set we have an alternate take of "Serenade in Blue." This one has a different moody intro to the main melody, a modified arrangement and no vocals. Please excuse the noise and pitch wobble on this decades-old bootleg.

Why do I call this the "almost complete" Orchestra Wives? I believe there may be a snippet or two I don't have that can be found on a limited edition of the soundtrack.

Several of the musicians mentioned above have appeared elsewhere on this blog: arrangers Jerry Gray, Bill Finegan and George Williams, vocalists Pat Friday (here and here) and the Modernaires, cornetist Bobby Hackett and tenor saxophonist/vocalist Tex Beneke.

The photo below of the band on set shows three actors in place of the real musicians: Cesar Romero is at the piano for Chummy MacGregor, Jackie Gleason is on bass instead of Doc Goldberg, and George Montgomery is at the left in the trumpet section, replacing Johnny Best - who is in the photo as well.

The Sounds of Les Baxter Selling Spark Plugs

This is one of my occasional posts devoted to promotional records, usually ones literally singing the praises of some mundane product line. In this one, we get to hear Les Baxter and three vocal quartets intone hymns to spark plugs and oil filters.

The Sounds of Selling was a 1962 effort from the AC plugs and filters people aimed at the good folks who retailed their products. The object was to convince them that AC was putting some advertising muscle behind their wares, the better to drive demand to the retailers' doors.

From AC's 1963 print campaign

Today, of course, you could send the merchants a link to a website where they could watch and listen to the ad spots. Sixty years ago, you sent them a record, which worked well enough for the radio spots. The TV commercials, however, were missing the visuals so required some explanation of what was going on, which was inevitably clumsy.

Cy Harrice

Fortunately, AC - or more accurately, its ad agency - employed the distinctive voice of Cy Harrice as the voice of the product line. Harrice had been a radio announcer and newscaster for many years, becoming best known for his commanding delivery of the final line of the commercials for Pall Mall cigarettes - "And they are mild!" Later on, his voice became just as associated with AC's wares.

On this record, he introduces three TV spots, two for spark plugs and one for oil filters. The latter tries to interest women in the health of their oil filters by mocking stereotypical "female" behavior - gossip, etc. I can't imagine why the agency thought this was a good idea. These TV ads were set to appear on the TV's Laramie, one of the then-popular Westerns.

Also on the LP are three radio spots featuring vocal quartets - the Modernaires, who began in the 1930s; the Sportsmen, who started in the 40s, and the more up-to-date if hardly hip Kirby Stone Four. The nostalgic approach is understandable - adults were buying spark plugs, not kids. The pleasant results all present some variation on AC's "Action Song."

Les Baxter in action

Vocalist-turned-arranger Les Baxter provided the musical background for these spots, or at least he arranged for the arrangements to come into being. He was notorious for not writing the charts ascribed to him, farming them out to others.

The AC spots take up one side of the record. The other is devoted to half of Baxter's latest LP, Voices in Rhythm. By this time, Baxter had abandoned the mood music/exotica realm for an impossibly bland, Ray Conniff-style vocal approach to such fare as "Pennies from Heaven." The results aren't especially good. I did replace the mono tracks found on The Sounds of Selling with stereo versions derived from my copy of the Voices in Rhythm LP.

Bios and photos are on the back of the Sounds of Selling album (below and in the download).

Click to enlarge

Buddy Clark on OKeh, Columbia and Varsity

Buddy Clark

My friend Morris asked me to transfer a batch of Buddy Clark records - ones that are not often encountered. Not that you find too much of the singer's output around these days, save for his late 40s Columbia hits such as "Linda" and "I'll Dance at Your Wedding." Too bad - I consider Clark one of the finest pop vocalists of the last century.

Clark's career began in the 30s as a band and radio vocalist. He made some recordings early on for Vocalion and other companies.

Today's selections begin with two songs Clark did for the Varsity label in 1939. "In an Old Dutch Garden" is a Mack Gordon/Will Grosz song from Earl Carroll's Vanities. "Leanin' on the Old Top Rail" is a Nick and Charles Kenny song recorded by both country and pop artists in 1939 and later years.

"In an Old Dutch Garden" was also included in a batch of Varsity singles I uploaded several years ago. That bundle also includes a bonus of a 1936 Melotone single of "Lost" and "The Touch of Your Lips."

Clark moved on to the OKeh label in 1941 with a revival of "Lamplight," an attractive song that its composer, James Shelton, introduced in the 1934 revue New Faces. The flip side, "G'bye Now" comes from the long-running Olsen-Johnson revue Hellzapoppin'. The writers were Sammy Fain and Charles Tobias.

Also on OKeh were the great Martin-Blane song "Ev'ry Time" from Best Foot Forward. It was backed by "It Happened in Hawaii," which had the remarkable bad luck to come out in early December 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

After war service, Clark joined the main Columbia label. I believe that all the songs on that label in this group were recorded in 1947. The first effort is "I'm Waiting for Ships that Never Come In," a nice tune by Abe Olman and Jack Yellen that was seemingly inspired by "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" from 1917 - which was definitely "inspired" by Chopin.

On the other side, Buddy covers Bing's version of "The Emperor Waltz" from the film of the same name. And yes, it is a vocal version of the waltz by Johann Strauss II, and no, the new lyrics aren't very good, e.g., "Deep in your heart, joy seems to dwell / Like poets say, it's perfectly swell."

For these and the other Columbia singles below, Mitchell Ayres leads the orchestra, unless otherwise noted.

Recording with Mitchell Ayres

Showing his versatility, Clark then turns to the catchy Latin tune "It's Easy When You Know How," where he is paired with Xavier Cugat. He even brings the bandleader in for a brief vocal interlude, but Cugie should have stuck to waving a baton and holding a Chihuahua.

"I'm a Slave to You" is a good if formulaic torch song that Mitchell Ayres had a hand in. The other side of the single is the soupy "Where the Apple Blossoms Fall," backed by organ.

Billboard ad from December 1948

I posted the final coupling on my singles blog several years ago, but here in a new transfer are "Gloria" and "The Money Song." Leon René's "Gloria" became a doo-wop favorite in the 1950s, but in 1948, it was a pop song recorded by a number of crooners. "The Money Song" came from the Harold Rome revue That's the Ticket, which closed in Philadelphia before making it to Broadway. You may have heard the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis version of the song. If so, don't be put off by that monstrosity. Clark does much better by this mock calypso. On both songs, he is backed by the Modernaires and the Skylarks.

These discs are from my collection, and all are in vivid sound. See my other blog for a new post of the four Clark songs on V-Disc that aren't just dubs of his commercial recordings. These include two airchecks, one alternate take from a Columbia session, and a "Fluffs at a Record Session" recording where Clark makes up his own lyrics then launches into a Jolson imitation.

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The Nearly Complete Sun Valley Serenade

For some time now, the erudite Dave Weiner has been providing session-by-session commentary on the civilian recordings of the Glenn Miller band on Dave's blog, Community Swing.

This has been a real pleasure for me, a Miller fan since I was 10, and when Dave recently covered the songs from the 1941 film Sun Valley Serenade, I decided to do a post of my own. This for two reasons: one, these were among the first Miller items I owned myself, and two, the soundtrack recordings exist in a variety of versions, which Dave neatly straightens out, enabling me to assemble a coherent and nearly complete package.

We start with RCA Victor's 10-inch soundtrack LP, which belatedly came out in 1954 as part of the blitz of Miller recordings that RCA reissued in the wake of The Glenn Miller Story. In 1959, 20th Century Fox issued a Miller soundtrack set that included some but not all of this material - and added one item that isn't found on the RCA edition.

The RCA LP is unusual in that it includes the first version of the gorgeous Harry Warren-Mack Gordon ballad "At Last" (yes, the Etta James song), cut from this film only to turn up in the second Miller pic, Orchestra Wives. Here's Dave: "It’s a great arrangement by Jerry Gray and Bill Finegan, done here as a rhythm ballad, vocalized by Lynn Bari and John Payne. Payne sings for himself, rather reedily and Bari is doubled, as usual, by Pat Friday." I might add that Pat Friday was a superb singer who unfortunately is quite unknown these days. The Pat Friday-Ray Eberle version of "At Last" in Orchestra Wives is even better than this one. Friday, Payne and the Modernaires also do another beautiful Warren-Gordon ballad, "I Know Why" in Sun Valley Serenade.

The RCA LP includes the complete eight-minute "Chattanooga Choo-Choo." It starts with the familiar Tex Beneke-Modernaires vocal, followed by a long section featuring Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. This is as seen during the film, but minus the sound of the brothers' tap dancing. (Their routine is astonishing, by the way.)

Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers

The album contains what Dave calls the best-ever version of Miller's famous "In the Mood," among several outstanding band features, including Jerry Gray's terrific "The Spirit Is Willing."

But as I mentioned, the RCA LP is not complete. It did not contain the snatch of Miller's theme "Moonlight Serenade" as heard in the movie. So I have added that song from the Fox soundtrack album (which did not contain this first rendition of "At Last" and had truncated versions of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and "I Know Why").

Another song, "The Kiss Polka," appears in the film but is not played by the Miller band. However, the band did make a commercial recording of it that I have appended to the download.

I say my version is "nearly complete" because there is one song that was cut from the movie and has never been released. It is called "The World Is Waiting to Waltz Again." Dave, however, has somehow come up with the recording, and it can be heard via his blog post discussing Sun Valley Serenade.

The RCA LP has excellent sound, and is better than the Fox edition, which adds unneeded reverb. The soundtrack also is superior to the Victor commercial recordings of the early 40s. One final note for those who might be curious: the strange whistling sounds heard under the muted trumpet solos during "The Spirit Is Willing" are on both the RCA and Fox records.

Note (July 2023): I have now added an alternate take of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" to the download, cleaned up from a long-ago bootleg. You will note that Tex's whistling intro is different from the version used in the film. Please excuse the pitch instability and noise on this outtake. Also new in the download is a long document about the film from the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Below, the Miller band as seen during the film, with Lynn Bari as vocalist, John Payne as pianist, the sections all mixed up.