The Early Jackie Paris

It's been nearly 20 years since the death of jazz singer Jackie Paris (1924-2004), who didn't achieve the acclaim he deserved in his lifetime, and has not fared much better since.

That neglect is hard to understand. As Will Friedwald wrote before Paris' death, "He was and is an uncompromising jazz singer who happens to have an enormous - albeit unrealized - pop appeal ... Here is a musician saturated with the virtues of modern jazz - the harmonic sophistication, the cool attitude, the bright clean tone - who never sounds like he's doing anything way-out or complex."

One of the early posts on this blog 14 years ago was devoted to Paris' first LP, the 10-incher That "Paris" Mood on Coral. It was followed in 2010 by a selection of his early singles. Today, we greatly expand those offerings by combining all the songs on the 10-inch LP and its 12-inch successor, Skylark, with the bulk of the singles that Paris produced from 1947-55. All told, there are 33 selections in this set.

I hope to follow this post with another that will include Paris' EmArcy LP of 1955-56 with a few other songs issued by that company.

1947-55 Singles

We start with Paris' first record, a 1947 78 released by M-G-M and coupling "Your Red Wagon" and "Skylark" (which he later remade for Coral). This first effort shows off the two sides of his vocal personality - the hip and forceful singing on "Red Wagon," and the intense sincerity and sweetness of "Skylark."

Paris first became popular in jazz circles after the war while appearing on New York's 52nd Street. He had a trio at the time with pianist Deryck Sampson and bassist William Lalatte. Although they certainly were influenced by the King Cole Trio (and Sampson by George Shearing), they also were paying attention to the Page Cavanaugh Trio, as can be heard in the next M-G-M single, "I've Got a Way with Women," backed by the standard "I've Got a Crush on You."

Paris moved on in 1949 to National, which announced his arrival with the ad below for his debut single, coupling "The Old Master Painter" and a "surprise rendition" of "Goodbye Sue." I hope I am not spoiling things by telling you that the surprise is a spoken interlude in hipster lingo in which Paris tells Sue "I dig you the most!" among other entreaties for her to come back. Billboard dug this not, however, calling the spoken section "silly hip talking." (I think it's fun.)

During this same 1949 session, Paris cut the first vocal rendition of Thelonious Monk's bop anthem, "'Round Midnight," with Bernie Hanigan's lyrics. It eventually came out on EmArcy; I'll include it in the subsequent collection devoted to Paris' work for that label.

Friedwald tells us that Paris was the favorite singer of bassist-composer-bandleader Charles Mingus, who had worked with him in Lionel Hampton's band circa 1949. Mingus wrote several compositions for the vocalist in 1952, which were among the first things Mingus released on his Debut label.

Will wrote, "Mingus could devise as much formless abstraction as he liked - for example the entrancingly meandering 'Portrait' - knowing that Paris could 'sell' the number as convincingly as Sinatra could put over a Cole Porter show tune. Likewise 'Paris In Blue' veers off into all kinds of odd directions. Yet Paris effectively anchors all narrative and melodic motion to the blues framework that the piece begins and ends with." Today's set also includes the flip side of "Paris in Blue," "Make Believe."

Later in 1952, Paris did a one-off single for RCA Victor with a mannered singer named Tamara Hayes, who made some other records for RCA at the time. The record coupled the old R&B hit "I Miss You So" with "Chance of a Lifetime."

Paris moved on to Decca's Brunswick and Coral labels in 1953. A session for Coral with Norman Leyden produced a few singles that later appeared on the Skylark album below, along with an affecting revival of Harry Warren's beautiful "I Know Why (and So Do You)," written for Glenn Miller's film Sun Valley Serenade.

Paris' efforts for Brunswick are represented here by live versions with a Terry Gibbs combo of "You Go to My Head" and "Cool Blues." The former is one of Paris' best records. The latter is wonderful swinger, at least until Paris indulges in that reprehensible jazz custom, scat singing. Although these two tracks did appear on a single, I have transferred them from a various artists LP called Jazztime USA, Vol. 3.

Back on Coral, Paris recorded a few songs with clarinetist Tony Scott (not included here), then a solo on "When I Lost You," the beautiful and affecting Irving Berlin waltz, which is another of Jackie's finest records. It was backed by the lesser "Idle Gossip," which was included on the Skylark LP discussed below, as were most of the other songs he cut for Coral in 1953-54.

One of the songs orphaned from the LP was a remake of the 1940 Mills Brothers hit, "Java Jive," well suited to Paris' style. The flipside is an odd reworking of "O Sole Mio" as "True," which Paris plays straight. The backing is by Neal Hefti.

The final Coral single - and the last in this collection - was 1955's "Love Is a King" and "I Need Your Love." Not great songs, but graced by Paris' sincerity.

That "Paris" Mood/Skylark

Coral brought Paris into the studio in June 1954 to record his first album, That "Paris" Mood. It mainly consisted of standards, with the exception of two songs. "Detour Ahead" is a good ballad perfectly suited to Paris' style, with his emotions under control but near the surface. Bassist John Frigo wrote it in 1948 (with two bandmates co-credited). The best song is "Who Can I Turn To?", not the Anthony Newley piece but an elegant 1941 item from composer Alec Wilder and lyricist William Engvick.

Otherwise, the standouts are Johnny Green's great "You're Mine You," even though Jackie gets carried away by the "I own you!" line. He's so intense, it's a little frightening. Paris also does well with the Cahn-Style classic, "The Things We Did Last Summer."

The whole LP is beautifully done, but Charlie Shavers would not have been my first choice to play the trumpet obbligatos, which are at times intrusive, at other times off-mike.

By 1957, 10-inch albums had become passé, and many labels were expanding their inventory of little LPs into the 12-inch variety. Decca accordingly turned That "Paris" Mood into the 12-inch Skylark, in the process switching it from Coral to the Brunswick marque.

It wasn't a straight expansion, however. "The Things We Did Last Summer" was left off the Skylark bill of fare, while five songs were added. These all had previously been issued as singles: the second version of "Skylark," "Only Yesterday," "If Love Is Good to Me," "Idle Gossip" and "I Had a Talk with a Daisy." Today's collection includes all songs from both albums. 

"Skylark" was a song dear to Paris, and the single had achieved some success, so it became the title song of the 12-inch LP. Also semi-successful as a single was "If Love Is Good to Me," which showed off Paris' talent for the near-miss. As the singer explained to Will Friedwald, "I introduced that song [on Brunswick] and my record had just started to sell. The next thing I know, Redd [Evans, the composer] told me, 'Listen, Nat Cole wants to do the song and I can't turn him down.' Cole had already made hits out of a half dozen Evans songs. So Nat recorded it, and though Cashbox picked mine over his. Nat's record became the biggest record in the country."

The cover displays Decca's penchant for dorky photographic assemblages. I don't know what kind of bird that is on the cover, but I don't believe it is a skylark. As far as I know they are colorless creatures that would not be as photogenic perched on a RCA 77-DX microphone.

Returning to the subject, it is a shame that Paris never achieved fame commensurate with his great gifts. The download includes a long 1996 interview with the singer in which he recounts his career. 

Most of these records came from my collection, helpfully augmented by Internet Archive materials. The sound is generally vivid, except for some rustle on the 78s.

Coming up are a second Paris collection, plus posts devoted to two of my other favorite vocalists, David Allyn and Ronnie Deauville.

"How to Murder Your Wife' and Other Fatal Attractions

Titling a film How to Murder Your Wife is probably not a maneuver that would succeed today, but in 1964 it was just fine as the name of a farce with Jack Lemmon as the prospective perpetrator and Virna Lisi as the intended victim.

Neal Hefti

Accompanying the action was an entirely characteristic but highly enjoyable, light-hearted score by Neal Hefti. This is the third such '60s score from his pen that has appeared here, following Sex and the Single Girl and Harlow. I'm posting it in response to a suggestion by longtime blog follower woolfnotes.

To fill out today's program, I've added nine "fatal attractions" - singles with "murder" (or in one case, "killing") in the title. Unlike Hefti's swingin' sixties motifs, these numbers from earlier decades cover the blues, jazz, Western swing, vocals and big bands - and even include another "murder" soundtrack theme.

How to Murder Your Wife

Lobby card

As you might expect, the How to Murder Your Wife proceedings were more innocent than the inflammatory title would indicate. The plot is more labyrinthine than I care to explain, but it involves Lemmon as an improbably rich cartoonist - with Terry-Thomas as a valet, no less - who ends up inadvertently married to the amazingly good-looking Lisi. The latter starts spending all his hard-drawn earnings and demanding constant sex, which wears Lemmon to a frazzle. He did have it tough, eh?

Terry-Thomas, Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi

Anyway, his fantasies of getting rid of her make it into his cartoon strip "Bash Brannigan," which star characters that look suspiciously like Lemmon and Lisi. I believe it all works out in the end, although Hefti finishes his score with the dirge, "Requiem for a Bachelor."

Bash Brannigan's fiendish plot

This all reflects the Playboy ethos of the time, and is so dated as to be seeming to come from another world. But there are compensations: Lemmon is always good, Terry-Thomas is perfect, and Lemmon's lawyer is played by the wonderful Eddie Mayehoff, he of the pop eyes and massive underbite. Also, Lemmon's enormous bachelor pad is not in the least dated - it would be in perfect taste even today, almost 60 years later.

Jack Lemmon and Eddie Mayehoff

Hefti's music is well suited to this Richard Quine comedy. You will immediately recognize its resemblance to his other scores of the period, including pre-echoes of the theme to The Odd Couple - another Lemmon opus.

The Other 'Fatal Attractions'

As usual with such compilations, I'll present the constituent parts of the "other fatal attractions" in chronological order.

First we have "Murder in the Moonlight (It's Love in the First Degree)," a contrived title if ever I've heard one, courtesy of the unknown to me but impressively named Ray Nichols and His Four Towers Orchestra, with its nasal vocalist Billie Hibberd. Nichols started recording as far back as 1925; this waxing comes from his final session, in 1935.

Lil Armstrong

"It's Murder" comes from the pen, piano and vocal chords of Lil Hardin Armstrong, by this time (1936) a veteran recording artist, here with her Swing Orchestra. This is a enjoyable piece from Armstrong, soon to be divorced from husband Louis.

Speaking of good music, it doesn't get much better than "She's Killing Me" from Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, with a classic lineup including vocalist Tommy Duncan, fiddler Jesse Ashlock, trumpeter Everett Stover and pianist Al Stricklin, all of whom Wills name checks. The disc is a cover of a 1931 Nichols Brothers effort. Wills recorded his version the day after Hardin's session (September 28, 1936), also in Chicago.

Tommy Duncan and Bob Wills

We move over to London for a 1937 date by American clarinetist Danny Polo and His Swing Stars, a group selected from Ambrose and His Orchestra, where Polo was ensconced in the reed section. "Blue Murder" is a Dixieland-tinged instrumental, a style that Polo and Ambrose's high-toned musicians handle pretty well.

J.B. Marcum

"The Murder of J.B. Markham" is an unusual outing for songwriter-singer Johnny Mercer. This folk ballad was apparently inspired by a field recording captured by Alan Lomax earlier that same year (1937). That was based on the true story of crusading attorney J.B. Marcum, who had been assassinated on the steps of a Kentucky courthouse in 1903. Mercer's record is the only one of our 78s that concerns itself with a real, as opposed to a figurative or fictional murder. His reading is lively but inappropriately jaunty.

From 1941 we have a hard-swinging instrumental, "Murder at Peyton Hall," from the big band of Charlie Barnet. The leader's alto is featured throughout the riff tune, with Cliff Leeman's powerful drums also much in evidence. Neal Hefti later would do arrangements for Barnet (notably "Skyliner"), but this chart is by the bandleader himself. The title's significance, if any, is a mystery to me.

Charlie Barnet serenades his pet Herman

Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh wrote "'Murder,' He Says" as a specialty for the hyper-kinetic Betty Hutton to introduce in the 1943 film Happy-Go-Lucky. Introduce she did; record she did not, at least not until this 1951 version with Pete Rugolo. By that time, the hep lingo had dated, but Hutton's knock-'em-down performance had not. She is far more lively than such genteel vocalists as Dinah Shore, who recorded the song back in 1943. You really only get the full Hutton effect from a video, by the way.

Dimitri Tiomkin

A much different experience is provided by Dimitri Tiomkin's "Theme from Dial 'M' for Murder," the film where Ray Milland tries to murder Grace Kelly (go figure). This Coral single is all that was recorded of the score at the time (1955). It was backed by the composer's far more popular "Theme from The High and the Mighty," which benefited in the film from Muzzy Marcellino's iconic whistling. The hit versions of the latter tune were by Les Baxter and LeRoy Holmes; the composer's own recording (not included here) was a late entry.

St. Louis Jimmy Oden

To complete our "fatal attractions" we have "Murder in the First Degree" by the veteran blues musician St. Louis Jimmy Oden, who was actually from Nashville and worked in Chicago. On this circa 1956 Parrot release, Oden is backed by the band of drummer Red Saunders, who in those days was a busy musician in the Chicago studios.

The How to Murder You Wife LP is from my collection; the 78s are courtesy of Internet Archive with restoration by me. The sound on all the singles is very good, except for some surface noise on Lil Armstrong's record. How to Murder Your Wife had the slightly shrill sonics that afflicted many 60s recordings. I've tamed that tendency a bit.

Neal Hefti - 'Sex' and the Coral Singles

This is a soundtrack requested by my friend Ernie, I suspect as much for the star of the film, Natalie Wood, as for the music.

Neal Hefti

Even so, it's a good record with music by blog favorite Neal Hefti. It's also notably short - barely 30 minutes. So I've added six songs that Hefti recorded for the Coral label in the early 1950s that have not had an official re-release, as far as I can tell.

The title of the 1964 film, Sex and the Single Girl, is far more suggestive than the final product turned out to be. The movie derived its name from the book that Wood and Tony Curtis are coyly perusing on the album cover. That 1962 tome, written by ad copywriter Helen Gurley Brown, was a notable best-seller, and the author went on to be the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.

Helen Gurley Brown

Wikipedia tells us, "In the 1960s, Brown was an outspoken advocate of women's sexual freedom and sought to provide women with role models in her magazine. She claimed that women could have it all - 'love, sex, and money' ... Her work played a part in what is often called the sexual revolution." I remember all the hubbub about the book and the movie; unfortunately, I was slightly too young to participate in what is often called the sexual revolution.

Natalie Wood

So while the Sex and the Single Girl title might lead you to think that the movie was a sex manual of sorts, I believe it was actually your standard farce of the time. Some of it is knock-off of Pillow Talk, with Curtis taking the Rock Hudson impersonation route to deceive Wood. And apparently Tony ends up in drag at one point (see below), reprising his Some Like It Hot antics (and those of Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby 25 years earlier).

Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood

The score, too, is not terribly original, although entirely pleasant. "Legs" is a smooth swinger, very early 60s, as is "The Game," with piano, strings and woodwinds led by flute played by jazz standout Buddy Collette. "Midnight Swim" has a twist-frug beat and an organ lead, which was then becoming popular. Hefti reused the "City Style" riff in his 1968 theme for The Odd Couple. "I've Got Love" sounds like any number of soul-jazz anthems.

Fran Jeffries

One oddity is that the title song was written by Richard Quine, the producer. The vocalist on that piece and Jolie's "Anniversary Song" was singer-dancer-actor Fran Jeffries, who appears in the film. A fine entertainer, she was married at the time to blog favorite Dick Haymes.

Coral Singles

Frances Wayne

The Coral singles all date from 1951-53. Three of the six feature a vocal by Frances Wayne, who, I will admit, is not a favorite of mine. The first cut is, by chance, "Regular Man," the Jeri Sullivan song that recently appeared here as interpreted by its author. Wayne's externalized reading is less pleasing that Sullivan's simpler approach. The backing is "You're the Only One I Love."

The single above was issued under Wayne's name. On "Lonesome and Blue," Wayne and Hefti are listed as co-leaders of the orchestra. Its flip side is a Hefti instrumental, "Why Not?", which he also arranged for Count Basie, who recorded it at about the same time.

Bunny Briggs

The final two songs have vocals by the excellent dancer-singer Bunny Briggs - "Cecilia" and the traditional New Orleans number "Eh! La Bas," here credited to Maddy Russell. Very enjoyable stuff!

Briggs appeared with several big bands. I plan to feature a few of his records with Charlie Barnet on the singles blog.

The sound on all these items is excellent.

Two 'Harlow' Scores, from Hefti and Riddle

Screen siren Jean Harlow had been dead for nearly three decades when Hollywood suddenly decided that her story was so compelling it demanded two separate "Harlow" biopics, which reached theaters about a month apart in 1965.

Neither film was very successful, although the second and glossier version, with Carroll Baker in the lead, fared better with critics than the quickie that cast Carol Lynley as the ill-fated star.

Fortunately for us, the separate producers (who reputedly hated one another) saw fit to engage two of the best musicians then working, Neal Hefti and Nelson Riddle, to handle the scores. Today's post provides the resulting soundtrack LPs. Both are highly enjoyable.

Lobby card

Hefti helmed the Carroll Baker film, producing a characteristic score that does not attempt in any way to capture the musical styles of the 30s, at least in the cuts heard here. The LP goes so far as to include 60s-esque tunes titled "Carroll Baker A-Go-Go," with prominent electric guitar and organ, and "Lonely Girl Bossa Waltz."

But then, the LP is labelled "Music from the Score of the Motion Picture," so what we hear on the record may be at some distance from what moviegoers experienced. For example, Bobby Vinton sang the theme song over the titles, where here on the album it is handled by a chorus. The lyrics were by Livingston and Evans, a fact only mentioned on the label. Side note: Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote two songs for the picture, "Harlow" and "Say Goodbye," which weren't used.

The best known tune on the record is "Girl Talk," which achieved some renown as a pop song after acquiring Bobby Troup's notoriously sexist lyrics. The LP version is instrumental, so as a bonus I have added Tony Bennett's superb rendition, also arranged and conducted by Hefti. Here, as elsewhere in the score, the composer achieves memorable results from simple, repetitive riffs.

Lobby card

Nelson Riddle had no such pop success with his competing score for the Carol Lynley "Harlow." His efforts were not notably improved by a few flowery songs from pop producer Al Ham, with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. The vocal versions of the songs are beautifully done by Mary Mayo, Ham's wife.

Riddle's own material is gorgeous as always, notably "Come to Me." He uses some period effects in the score, although he undershot the mark with "Wake Up." Its wah-wah trumpet and banjo are more reminiscent of the 20s than the 30s.

If neither musical score recaptured the time in which Harlow lived, the same may be true of the films themselves. Baker and Lynley were beautiful women and accomplished actors, but neither captured Harlow's unique look, with penetrating eyes set off by platinum hair, arched eyebrows and bow lips, nor her charisma. Those were Harlow's alone.

Baker, Harlow, Lynley

Neal Hefti on Coral

Neal Hefti hasn't made many appearances on this blog, but his bands, arrangements and compositions are favorites of mine (well, maybe not the "Batman Theme").

Hefti made his name by composing and arranging for Woody Herman and other bands in the 40s. He directed a few sides for Mercury and Clef, but his first major contract was with Decca and its subsidiary Coral label, starting in 1951.

The young Neal Hefti

Hefti's initial output came out on singles, many of which were assembled on this 10-inch LP in 1953. It takes its title from "Coral Reef," the first instrumental the composer recorded for the label.

All songs therein are Hefti originals, mainly straight-ahead swingers that display the considerable skill and drive of his studio band. There aren't many solos, but you will hear contributions from Billy Taylor's piano and the leader's trumpet.

12-inch LP cover

Hefti moved on to RCA's new Label "X" at about the same time as this LP came out. (See my post of his Rudolf Friml album here.) But such defections don't deter record companies from capitalizing on their back catalogs, so in 1956 Coral repackaged Swingin' on Coral Reef as a 12-inch LP called The Band with Young Ideas by adding four songs from the same 1951-52 sessions. Two of these are Hefti compositions - "Waltzing on a Cloud" and "In Veradero." "Sahara's Aide" is one of the many classical Frankensongs that were popular about then, and "Charmaine" was a cover of Mantovani's British hit of the time. The latter has a vocal by the Cavaliers. I've transferred these added tunes from my copy of the 12-inch record, and have included them in the download.

Count Basie

During this time, Hefti was consolidating his reputation as a freelance band arranger and composer. He contributed "In Veradero" to the Stan Kenton band, and began his long association with the so-called "New Testament" Count Basie band. Among the first recordings for his reorganized band, Basie included Hefti's "Why Not?" and "Sure Thing," also assayed by the composer himself for this group of Coral sides. I've added the Basie recordings to the download so you can hear the considerable contrast between the two bands. The Basies are not my transfers, but I have remastered the sound.

Coral's sonics are well-balanced, but with a fair amount of reverb, which distances the band. You may notice the difference when you come to the Norman Granz-produced Basie sides. [Note (June 2023): These recordings have now been remastered in vivid ambient stereo.]

By the way, I believe the photo of Hefti on the 10- and 12-inch LPs is the same. Looks like they flopped the photo for the Coral Reef album, judging by the part in his hair.

The Brief Success Story of Adler and Ross

Richard Adler and Jerry Ross should have been one of the greatest Broadway success stories – and for a brief time, they were. The composer and lyricist, respectively, of two of the biggest musical hits of the 1950s – The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees – their rapid ascent was stopped only by the early death of Ross, at age 29 in November 1955, just six months after Damn Yankees opened.

Adler and Ross teamed up in 1950. Until The Pajama Game debuted, there was little in the duo’s output to suggest the range and skill displayed in that score. They did enjoy one big hit, Tony Bennett’s version of “Rags to Riches” in 1953, and they put together a good partial score for John Murray Anderson’s Almanac late that same year. Less distinguished was the work they did for the hyperactive R&B troupe, the Treniers, with their contribution of “Poon-Tang!”, a title derived from a vulgar American term referring to women as sex objects. (I should add that said title is the only racy thing about the song.)

(From left) Richard Adler and Jerry Ross demo their songs for director George Abbott (I believe) and Columbia Records honcho Mitch Miller

So when The Pajama Game opened in May 1954, it was a revelation. Every song was superb on its own and in context, and the music was complemented by an excellent book from co-director George Abbott and novelist Richard Bissell, a tremendous cast including John Raitt, Janis Paige, Reta Shaw, Eddie Foy Jr., and Carol Haney, direction from Abbott and Jerome Robbins, and choreography by Bob Fosse. The cast, with the wonderful Doris Day replacing Paige, repeated their performances for the 1957 film version.

Damn Yankees was hardly less successful, once again with a strikingly fine, if not as varied a score. I am less fond of this show, perhaps because the film is not as successful, with Tab Hunter (!) replacing Stephen Douglass as Joe Hardy, who makes a deal with the devil to become a baseball star and lead the Washington Senators to victory over the hated New York Yankees.

In the 1950s, songs from Broadway shows were still a major contributor to the repertoire of pop singers. The publishers would cajole the record companies into having their artists record songs from the upcoming shows as part of the pre-opening promotional push. These would first be issued as singles, then may have been repackaged as a compilation EP or LP, often in the low-price bracket.

Today’s offering is an example. It combined some of the hits from The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees as a tribute to Adler and Ross, and was issued in Epic’s budget-priced 10-inch LP series just before Ross’ untimely death. The record company was then a relatively new offshoot of Columbia Records. The artists, the Mello-Larks and Jamie, Dolores Hawkins and Neal Hefti, were on its roster at the time.

The Mello-Larks: Bob Wollter, Joe Eich, Jamie Dina, Tommy Hamm

The Mello-Larks started off with the Tex Beneke band in the post-war period, making a number of singles at the time. The original female singer in the group was Ginny O’Connor (who was to marry Henry Mancini). By the time these sides were made, the lead singer was young Jamie Dina, who was so accomplished and such an attraction her name was appended to the group’s own. Dina was married to group founder Tommy Hamm for a brief time, leaving him and the group for another musician, Joe Silvia. Together they founded the J’s with Jamie, who have themselves appeared on this blog.

The Mello-Larks were often on television and are quite polished in an entirely conventional manner. For some reason, arranger Neal Hefti takes a very square approach to “Once-a-Year Day,” treating it like a polka rather than the exuberant romp conveyed by the lyrics. The prominent trombone choir isn’t a help. “Whatever Lola Wants,” a vocal feature for Jamie, is much better.

The other featured singer is Dolores Hawkins, a very good vocalist who is particularly effective on “Hey There,” although she does not radiate the charisma of John Raitt (or Sammy Davis, Jr., for that matter).

For “Small Talk,” one of the best Adler-Ross songs, Hawkins is joined by contract artist Bill Heyer, a sonorous baritone reminiscent of Bob Manning.

Composer Adler never recaptured the magic of his collaboration with Jerry Ross, although Doris Day had a hit with his “Everybody Loves a Lover,” and his scores to Kwamina (for Broadway), and The Gift of the Magi and Olympus 7-0000 (for television) were released on LP.

The sound on the LP at hand is vivid. Backing Dolores Hawkins on her songs is Artie Harris. Don Costa leads the band for “Whatever Lola Wants.”

A note about the way that record companies would repackage material: Epic issued six-cut LPs by the Mello-Larks and Jamie and by Dolores Hawkins, both of which include two of the songs here. The record company also had an EP of hits from The Pajama Game with all three Hawkins tunes on this LP along with the Four Esquires’ version of “Steam Heat.”

Note (October 2024): This LP has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

Neal Hefti Plays Friml

Here's a tribute to the arranger-conductor Neal Hefti, who died last month. Hefti was best known for his charts for the Basie band and for his TV and movie work, perhaps the most notorious being the Batman theme from TV.

This 10-inch record from circa 1953 is like none of those pieces. Instead, it is in a semi-easy listening mode that Hefti also adopted for several albums in the 1950s. In these, he used wordless vocals as an instrumental choir, a little like Ray Conniff or even Esquivel. Here, he applies the concept to the operetta tunes of Rudolf Friml. The result is not as cloying as you might think - and I am someone who lunges for the off switch when they start with the "doo-doo-doody-doo-doo" business.

On the bright side, the sound is good and the record is rare.

NEW LINK