Jolson and Levant on the Radio

We have heard a lot of Oscar Levant in recent months in his guise as piano virtuoso. Let's explore another aspect of his persona - the comical sidekick.

Today Levant is known for his roles as filmic friend to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, but he also filled that role on radio. From October 1947 to May 1949, he was the comedic accomplice and musical accompanist to the erstwhile "World's Greatest Entertainer," Al Jolson, on the latter's weekly radio appearance hosting the long-running Kraft Music Hall.

Jolson was enjoying a late career renaissance sparked by the success of the 1946 film biography, The Jolson Story. Larry Parks played the singer in the film, with Al dubbing the vocals himself. He had lost none of his musical swagger over the years, and is in great vocal shape on the radio program, his voice having deepened over the years into a remarkably resonant bass-baritone.

Oscar and Al with Groucho Marx

Levant was never a great actor, and here his line readings are even stiffer than they were in films, a trait that is endearing or annoying depending on how you feel about him. Neither he nor Jolson are particularly well served by the material: half of of the jokes take aim at the host's supposed great age (he was in his 60s), the other half at his musical illiteracy when compared to Levant.

But the singing is good and Oscar is a surprisingly sympathetic and fluid accompanist, more evidence that he was at home in many genres.

This Decca record of excerpts from the Jolson radio show dates from the 1950s (correction - Randy writes to say it is from 1961), and according to producer Milt Gabler is the result of one thousand hours of work. Considering that Jolson only taped 35-1/2 hours of material, it's hard to figure how Gabler spent so much time selecting the songs that appear here. But they are well chosen, showing a good bit of Jolson's repertoire.

We cannot recapture what made Jolson special in the early decades of the last century. He was by all accounts a riveting live performer, but there are only traces of that kinetic presence here. Jolson died in 1950.

Levant Plays Rubinstein and Liszt

There has been a revival of interest in Oscar Levant's recordings on the music blogs and sharing sites lately, and I've done my part with a number of posts already. Today that continues with Levant's rendition of Anton Rubinstein's Piano Concerto No. 4.

The Rubinstein work has the dubious distinction of being of being perhaps the best-known of the "forgotten" Romantic war-horse concertos. Seldom if ever performed live, it has nonetheless been the subject of at least 10 commercial recordings, beginning with this  March 1952 date with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New Yorkers. It was followed in just a few months by a Friedrich Wührer session in Vienna for Vox.

Caricature by David Levine

In truth, the concerto does deserve its semi-renown. It boasts a number of memorable themes, which the composer give a vigorous if not rigorous workout. Levant is just the right keyboard athlete for the task, betraying not a hint of the irony that was integral to his public personality on the radio or in films.

As a bonus I've included two pieces from the pianist's 1955 Liszt collection - the Sonetto del Petrarca No. 104 and the Valse Oubliée No. 1 in F-sharp Minor. My transfer comes from the 1960s Odyssey reissue of the Rubinstein concerto, where they were included as filler. (The 1955 LP, which I do not own, also included a selection of Hungarian Rhapsodies.)

For the Rubinstein, I transferred the first two movements from the original pressing, and switched to the reissue for the third movement because of groove damage on the earlier disc. The first issue is marginally more present in sound, but there isn't much difference, and overall the sonics are excellent, as is often the case with recordings from Columbia's 30th Street Studios in New York.

Gershwin from Levant, Kostelanetz and Rodziński

Times Square, 1945

By the time the Warner Bros. had released their romantic biopic of George Gershwin in 1945, the late composer had ascended to a crescendo of fame that endures to this day. His most notorious musical advocate, Oscar Levant, wasn't far behind.

Initially, Levant's popular renown came not from musical performance but from radio appearances. As Life magazine put it in a 1940 profile, "Until about a year and a half ago, Oscar Levant enjoyed a limited fame as a composer of one smash-hit tune, Lady Play Your Mandolin, and as an interpreter of George Gershwin's serious piano music." That was before his triumphant tenure as enfant terrible on radio's Information Please, and the publishing of his amusing first memoir, A Smattering of Ignorance.

So when it came time for Warners to cast their Gershwin movie, Levant was a natural choice not only to play himself, but to dub Robert Alda's Gershwin character at the piano.

1943 ad

Columbia Records had begun pairing Levant with Gershwin's music as early as 1941 with the Three Piano Preludes, and then in 1942 with the Concerto in F, backed by Andre Kostelanetz and the New York Philharmonic. The production of the film Rhapsody in Blue was the impetus for Levant to take on the composition of the same name, with backing by the Philadelphians and Ormandy in June 1945 sessions.

Earlier LP cover

Levant's efforts were only part of Columbia's tie-ins to the film, however, They engaged the New Yorkers and music director Artur Rodziński for An American in Paris, and brought in Kostelanetz for an album of Gershwin show tunes. These were released at the same time as the movie.

All are superb recordings that are more than worthy of their long life in the catalogue. I recently transferred them for my own amusement, and thought some of you might like to hear them as well. Today we have an excellent 1957 LP version of the concerto, Rhapsody and An American in Paris. Later on I'll present the Kostelanetz collection.

FYI - in 1949 Columbia had Levant in the studio to set down the Second Rhapsody and the Variations on "I Got Rhythm" with Morton Gould and a New York orchestra, issuing them on a 10-inch LP with Levant's classic set of the Preludes. I recently reuploaded my transfer of this superb album.

1957 cover

Levant Plays Popular Moderns, Plus Reups

Pianist/actor/personality Oscar Levant continues to be well known today, at least among lovers of the great Hollywood musicals. He didn't appear in that many of them - but he (or his agent) had a knack for picking enormous hits.

Starting with Rhapsody in Blue in 1945 and continuing through The Band Wagon in 1953, his typical role was as the best friend and jocular companion to the likes of Fred Astaire (twice) and Gene Kelly.

1945 ad

Rhapsody was a loose biography of George Gershwin, and Levant was chosen because of his close association with the songwriter/composer, who had died in 1937. Similar to Gershwin, the pianist had one foot in pop music, one in classical. He can be seen as far back as 1924-25 in the piano chair of the Ben Bernie band as the boys rip through a medley of the day's hits, including Gershwin's "Lady Be Good."

Through the years, he became as much known for his neurasthenia and astringent personality as for his penetrating piano technique. First on radio, then in the films cited above and finally on the sofas of the nation's televised talk shows, his biting one liners were and still are widely quoted ("I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin").

1946 ad

Levant nonetheless wanted to be taken seriously as a piano talent, and he deserves such consideration. Fittingly, he began his recording career with Gershwin's Three Piano Preludes in 1941 and later followed that with the composer's concertante works (see below). But Columbia also allowed him to record Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Copland, Debussy, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Schumann.

The pianist's first album (M-508) was A Recital of Modern Music, with the Gershwin preludes, Debussy, Shostakovich, the short-lived Russian Valery Jelobinsky (Zhelobinsky) and a selection from Levant's own Sonatina. That line-up did incline toward the lighter side, as did its follow-up, Oscar Levant Plays Popular Moderns, recorded in 1944-45, and the subject of today's post, which contains the 10-inch LP version of a set originally issued on 78 as M-650.

Cover of 78 set

Of course, there is nothing here that we would consider modern, with the program consisting of Falla, Lecuona, Poulenc, Debussy and Albéniz. Then again, we are much further away in time from Levant's recording dates than those sessions were from the death of Debussy, for example.

Levant performs these varied works with striking sympathy. His work in the more reflective pieces may come as a surprise to those who know him only from the finger-busters that were his normal filmic fare.

Indeed, Levant did become identified with the steel-finger specials that came off best on the big screen. He had a hit with a transcription of Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" in 1948, which then was interpolated into The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, along with some of the Tchaikovsky first concerto, which he had done with Ormandy in 1947.

Columbia thereafter placed him into the virtuoso repertoire, including concertos by Khachaturian and Rubinstein. But he also somehow recorded the Honegger Concertino, and as late as 1958 was taping Chopin, Debussy, Mompou, Prokofiev, Ravel, Cyril Scott and again Shostakovich. He does well by such varied fare, as can be heard in the present collection.

Reups

Gershwin - Second Rhapsody, I Got Rhythm Variations, Preludes (Levant, Gould). Along with this new issue, I've revisited my two previous posts of Levant's work. The first is an important collection of Gershwin compositions, including the Second Rhapsody and the Variations on "I Got Rhythm." Trust me when I write that these could hardly be more brilliantly performed (or recorded) by the pianist along with the great Morton Gould and a New York orchestra. These sessions are from 1949, and are joined on the 10-inch LP by Levant's classic set of the Preludes.

Humoresque (Waxman OST with Levant and Stern). Levant appears along with violinist Isaac Stern in a Waxman adaptation of music from Tristan und Isolde, which the film composer turns into a quasi-concerto for this 1946 pot-boiler. A curiosity, to be sure.

Cyrano de Bergerac (José Ferrer). Issued in conjunction with this 1953 film, this potted version of Cyrano with its great exponent, José Ferrer, was actually based on a stage production and included incidental music by Paul Bowles. Reupped by request.

Christmas Chimes (James Blades). A belated contribution to the season, this collection of music for chimes was recorded by the great English percussionist James Blades in 1952. Also reupped by request.

The links above lead to the original posts. Download links to all items are in the comments. All except the Christmas item have been remastered and have much improved sound.

Levant in 1940

Humoresque

Here's one of those movies from the 40s that used classical music (or classical music by-products, anyway) in the service of melodrama.

Like our last venture into Golden Age Hollywood, this was a Joan Crawford vehicle. Fresh from her Mildred Pierce triumph, she was paired this time with smoldering prole John Garfield. I like the IMDB summary: "A classical musician from the slums is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite."

Well, you can probably imagine what happens with that plot (as IMDB says, "Tragedy ensues"). But you may find it hard to imagine what happens in the score when Franz Waxman decides that Wagner's Tristan and Isolde really needs the assistance of Isaac Stern and Oscar Levant in solo roles. What ensues is not exactly tragic, but it's not exactly Wagner either. Waxman, Stern, and Levant were all wonderful musicians, but this was not a good idea.

Stern has better luck with Waxman's arrangements of Dvorak's Humoresque and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble-Bee. Waxman also does an arrangement of Sarasate's arrangement of themes from Bizet's Carmen (if that makes sense). For some reason, he left Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen alone.

This record must have been aimed at the market for fiddlers (Stern was then an up-and-comer) because it has a nice drawing of the violinist rather than a photo of Garfield or Crawford on the cover. Thank goodness the result looks nothing like the gaudy movie poster.

Gershwin by Levant and Gould

Most Gershwin fans are aware that there was and is a Second Rhapsody (the first being Rhapsody in Blue). Many have heard it and even may have a recording. I doubt that they will have heard this version by the wit/actor of sorts/author/pianist/Gershwin associate Oscar Levant with a Morton Gould led band. It is witty, scintillating (that's one of those words you write but never use in conversation), and fantastically well played by Gould's group.

If anything, the I Got Rhythm Variations are even better done. This is just great stuff, and the Three Preludes are a classic performance of one of Gershwin's finest pieces. Too little known for such a famous composer.

Like Levant, Morton Gould had many talents. He wrote concert pieces in a mostly accessible vein, light music, musical comedy, and film music, and conducted a long string of easy listening records. He also was president of ASCAP for several years. We'll be linking to some of his own music in a little while.

This item has a cover by Alex Steinweiss, one of the most famous LP designers. This one uses the contrasts of typeforms and the posteresque techniques characteristic of his work. He used the cover as a point-of-sale ad; that is one of the LP's most endearing features and one reason why they will continue to be collected when CDs are dumped into bioundegradable piles of silver and plastic.