More Transcriptions from Doris Day

A little over a year ago I posted a memorial to Doris Day than mainly consisted of transcriptions that she recorded in 1952. Those recordings are still available here.

That post, however, did not include all the transcriptions she made in the early 1950s. Now longtime friend of the blog Giampaolo (aka Rio Veneno) has supplied this missing sides, and I have done my best to fix the pitch problems that seem to plague previous releases of these recordings. Last time, it took some help from reader Mac to get it right, so please let me know if these do not sound correct to you.

On these sides, Day is supported by either the Page Cavanaugh Trio or an orchestra led by Van Alexander. The selections are a mix of standards ("Embraceable You," "I've Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)") and the hits of the day ("Slowpoke," "Because You're Mine"). I do know that the song "I've Gotta Sing Away These Blues" also had a commercial release, appearing on the flip side of Day's giant hit, "Que Sera, Sera," from the 1956 film The Man Who Knew Too Much. Not sure if it's the same recording, however.

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A few more items that may be of particular interest for those of you who like vocalists:

First, frequent contributor Bryan Cooper has unearthed a studio disk of Mary Healy singing "Star Dust" on the soundtrack of the 1940 film of the same name. This is a welcome addition to the recent post of her commercial and Second Fiddle soundtrack recordings that Bryan contributed. Thanks, Bryan! You can find "Star Dust" on my singles blog.

Also, reader Eric kindly left a link to the four Tony Martin songs that could be found on the 12-inch version of (A Stroll Through) Melody Lane but were missing from the double-EP edition that I posted. Please see the comments to the post for his link. Thanks, Eric!

Finally, reader Simon Buckmaster is sending us a real find - several unpublished demo disks made by Jeri Sullivan, probably sometime in the 1940s, along with a few commercial recordings I did not know about. These are superb - very much worth hearing, and a welcome addition to the Jeri material we have already published on this blog and the singles blog (with thanks again to Bryan). I hope to bring you Simon's contribution soon.

The Great Doris Day

Doris Day was one of the great singers, but never received the respect she deserved.

A few reasons for this come to mind. First, she was very good looking, so was invited to make movies while still singing with Les Brown, and turned out to have so much talent, she became famous as a film star.

While she kept making records - and was remarkably prolific at it, at least for 25 years or so - the quality of her material was distinctly variable. Will Friedwald notes that she deferred to Mitch Miller and husband Marty Melcher in repertoire. Both wanted the hits to keep flowing, so the likes of "Rickety Rackety Rendezvous" ended up on the music stands.

Still, there was considerable depth of feeling in her singing from the beginning. It shows clearly in her first hit, "Sentimental Journey" with Les Brown. (I've uploaded a V-Disc version of the song on my other blog, in company with all her other V-Discs.) In his incredible book A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, Will quotes singer Mary Cleere Haran as saying, "She's so sunny and bright, but she's different when she sings. She can be dark and mysterious, and there's a wistfulness and yearning in her voice." When allied to her excellent intonation and superb rhythm, you have the makings of a superior singer. And that she was.

When Day started making movies, the
endorsements came rolling in. From 1949.

Day was prolific, but virtually all of her output is in print. So as a tribute, I decided to bring you some more unusual stuff - the 21 songs she recorded for Standard Transcriptions in about 1952. These are relaxed, swinging and altogether wonderful. What wasn't so wonderful was the sound on the bootleg that compiled them many years ago. I acquired it when it came out, and was dismayed to discover sound that was considerably off-pitch with the tonal balance wildly awry. Back then, while I could adjust those characteristics, it was a hit-and-miss proposition. I wasn't too happy with the results.

Today, I took another crack at the source material, and the resulting sound picture is much more pleasing. The pitch is spot on and the frequency response is very reasonable. The sound is now good enough for you to enjoy an excellent set of current songs in the compact renditions that were normal for radio transcription companies. [UPDATE: reader Mac gently suggested that far from being "spot on," I had the pitch wrong on this set. After listening, I am sure he is right. I didn't compensate enough! There is a link in the comments to the repitched version.]

The first 10 tunes were done with the Page Cavanaugh Trio, a favorite of this blogger, which has appeared here several times. One of Page's specialties was accompanying singers, and he does well here. The rest of the numbers were backed by orchestra or combo, all quite adequate. But the star is Doris' singing, as always.

I've also remastered a five-year-old post of songs from her 1951 film On Moonlight Bay. The download includes a promo disc that has Day introducing four of the songs, and offering opening and closing remarks. (I do love promos.)

Finally, as mentioned, I posted her 12 V-Discs, recorded both with Les Brown and under her own name. This is a treasurable collection with several rarities. It's now on the singles blog.

After listening, I only hope you enjoy Doris' singing half as much as I do.

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Jeri Sullivan, Part 2: 'A Song Is Born' and the 1950s

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I looked into the early life and career of Jeri Sullivan, including her radio program, the controversy about "Rum and Coca-Cola" and her Signature records releases.

Part 2 examines her brief career as a movie dubber, then the rest of her career as I've been able to discover, including one of the records she made under the name Jenny Barrett.

First, let's go into some depth about her first dubbing assignment, the 1948 film A Song Is Born, because it is musically interesting even aside from her participation.

'A Song Is Born'

Sullivan had had a screen test, but never had appeared in films except for a 1942 short titled "You'll Have to Swing It," I assume for the song sometimes called "Mr. Paganini," a hit for Ella Fitzgerald in 1936. I haven't been able to locate a copy of this short.

Late in 1947, Sullivan became involved in a feature film for the first time - but not on the screen. She was engaged to dub the singing voice of Virginia Mayo, one of the leads in the Goldwyn musical, A Song Is Born.

A Song Is Born is a remake of the better-regarded Ball of Fire from 1941. Instead of Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck as leads, you get Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. In the excerpts I viewed on YouTube (links below), Mayo is better than I remembered, but Kaye is at his most fidgety. The plot is insanely dumb, so I'll not try to explain it. Suffice to say that Benny Goodman, with plastered-down hair and a moustache, is cast as classical clarinetist Professor Magenbruch, who learns to loosen up from such swing savants as Louis Armstrong and Charlie Barnet.

I don't know if the movie's plot does more violence to classical music or pop, but it does manage to introduce several interesting musical interludes that involve Benny, Louis, Lionel Hampton, Mel Powell, Barnet and Page Cavanaugh - and Jeri Sullivan's singing voice.

In 1948, Capitol Records issued a three-record 78 set called Giants of Jazz containing songs from the film (included in the download). The title song ("A Song Is Born") is an edited version of what appears on the soundtrack, but the others were made in the Capitol studio a few months before the film was released in late 1948.

"A Song Is Born," written by Don Raye and Gene de Paul, is a good tune, although clearly inspired by "The Birth of the Blues," a 1926 DeSilva-Brown-Henderson song that was revived for the Crosby film of the same name in 1941.

You see Virginia Mayo; you hear Jeri Sullivan

The album version of "A Song Is Born" is double-sided, but even so was significantly shortened from what appears in the film. On screen, Kaye introduces the Golden Gate Quartet as presenting a "pure Negro spiritual" - which turns out to be a setting of the principal theme of the Largo from Dvořák's Ninth Symphony, which is almost certainly not based on a spiritual (although it was later reworked into the quasi-spiritual "Goin' Home" by one of the composer's pupils). This passage is eliminated from the two-sided 78 version, so when Tommy Dorsey reprises the "Goin' Home" music as his solo, it comes out of nowhere. The film sequence also features drummer Louie Bellson at his most Krupa-esque. And Jeri Sullivan makes her first vocal appearance; she's perfect as Mayo's double.

Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman
and Louis Armstrong

Harry Babasin, Mel Powell, Virginia Mayo and Lionel Hampton
stare in disbelief at Benny's moustache

The next song in the album is a Benny Goodman take on "Stealin' Apples," a song he first released in 1940. The film version of "Stealin' Apples" is in the swing idiom, using Lionel Hampton and Mel Powell as soloists in addition to Benny. By the time Capitol got around to making its recording a year later, Goodman had tentatively embraced the newest jazz fashion, and the version in the album has a bop arrangement, with soloists Wardell Gray and Fats Navarro (identified on the label as Theodore Navarro). Benny fits right in, although his licks are not different from what he might have played in a swing arrangement. This appears to be the only session where Benny employed the very bop-oriented Navarro. Gray was with Benny from May 1948 off and on until late 1949 or 1950.

"Muskrat Ramble" (not on YouTube) is a highly effective Dixieland workout, led by pianist Mel Powell. As early as 1939, Powell was working with Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, and Zutty Singleton, as well as writing arrangements for Earl Hines. He joined Goodman in 1941, then was assigned to Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band from 1943 to 1945. From 1948 to 1952 he studied at Yale University with classical composer Paul Hindemith, and subsequently became a well-known educator and composer himself, winning a Pulitzer Prize while continuing to play and occasionally record jazz. Powell's technique is rooted in the 1920s, but he has his own take on the older style. "Muskrat Ramble" includes lively contributions from the gusty Clyde Hurley and Lou McGarity.

Charlie Barnet appears with a tune called "Redskin Rhumba" (not on YouTube), which he had been using as his band's theme song. It is a Latin version of Ray Noble's "Cherokee," a hit for Barnet in 1939. Here the song is ascribed to Dale Bennett, which I believe is a Barnet pseudonym. Barnet's solo is characteristically noisy.

Now back to Jeri Sullivan. The big number for her (and Mayo) is a fun Don Raye-Gene de Paul song written for the film called "Daddy-O." Sullivan is backed by Page Cavanaugh and his trio in the film and on record, with Al Viola on guitar and Lloyd Pratt on bass. Cavanaugh recorded a different version for Victor backing vocalist Lillian Lane, which can be found on YouTube.

"Daddy-O" bears some resemblance to "Shoo Shoo Baby," a Phil Moore song that was a hit for the Andrews Sisters in 1943. Sullivan's manner is a bit reminiscent of Ella Mae Morse's vocal on her single of "Shoo Shoo Baby," although Jeri's approach is not as down-home as Ella Mae.

The download of the album has been considerably remastered from the version on Internet Archive. I do own the Sullivan record of "Daddy-O" (which was backed by the Barnet side), but was too indolent to transfer it when I had another rip in hand.

The 1950s and 'Jenny Barrett'

Sullivan did so well as a vocal double that you would think more opportunities would have come her way. But only one did - in 1950, she was engaged for the film Love That Brute, dubbing Jean Peters in "You Took Advantage of Me" - and doing it exceptionally well.

Meanwhile, her nightclub career was at a standstill. A Billboard article in 1950 noted that she had started making personal appearances again "after several years of inactivity." In 1952, she could be seen at the Gatineau Country Club in Ottawa (right).

As far as I can tell, her Capitol and Signature releases of 1948 had been her last. Then, in 1953, she made the curious decision to change her professional name to Jenny Barrett - making a fresh start, I suppose.

The newly named singer did snag a record contract with a fledgling firm - Vogue Records (not the picture-disc company nor the French jazz label). Vogue tried to make a splash but didn't last long. Its other artists included Geno Rockford and Fred Darian, so not a well-known roster.

Jeri/Jenny's contribution to the Vogue catalogue - as far as I can determine, her only issue - was a coupling of "He Loves Me" and "Do Me a Favor." I was able to locate a transfer of "He Loves Me" and have remastered it for the download. It's not a successful record, but is fascinating even so. The singer carries on an internal monologue with herself throughout the song, a year before Richard Adler and Jerry Ross were to employ a similar device for "Hey There" in The Pajama Game. But in "He Loves Me," it turns into an overdone and distracting gimmick.

"He Loves Me" was a Sullivan composition, one of several that I've discovered. She also worked with Bob Carroll (possibly the singer) on some songs, and other writers. Guy Lombardo recorded her "('Round the) Christmas Tree at Home" in 1951; it appears on his Jingle Bells LP.

Vogue apparently did not have enough money to stay in business, but it did give Jenny Barrett a fair amount of promotion. She appeared on the cover of the industry publication The Cash Box in July 1953, and was promoting Soundcraft recording tapes at about the same time, looking notably ill-at-ease in both situations. Her photo was also on the "He Loves Me" sheet music.

Post-Vogue, Jenny moved on to the Coral label for four sides that I don't have and that don't seem to be online.

I hate to end with an anti-climax, but I don't have any more information about Jenny Barrett. The only later Jeri/Jerri Sullivan/Sullavan entry that I could locate was in a publisher's Billboard ad from 1960, which has a Jerri Sullivan recording Steve Allen's "This Could Be the Start of Something" for Mark 56 records (right). Is she our Jeri Sullivan? It's hard to say.

Why couldn't Sullivan build on her early success? We can only speculate. One theme, though, is that she seems more relaxed when she is not "out front" - her movie dubbings are much more persuasive than her Soundies, for example. A theme that runs through the early reviews of her nightclub act is that she was not engaged with the audience - although if later reviews are to be believed, that did improve.

The most likely explanation, though, is simply chance. There isn't much that separates a talented singer whose career sputters from a star who achieves lasting fame.

I enjoyed doing this deep dive into the career of a relatively unknown singer. I want to thank two of my friends, musicologist Nick Morgan and author Andy Propst, for inspiring me and suggesting research tools. You were right, Nick - newspapers.com is addictive.

Coda to my last post: our great friend David Federman has concocted a "Rum and Coca-Cola" collection for all of us, with the toast, "Let's all drink to imperialism!" He includes the versions by Lord Invader and Wilmoth Houdini (and their follow-up records), plus the likes of Abe Lyman and Louis Prima, among others. See the comments to the last post for a very limited-time (five days) link.

Page Cavanaugh Special

I've written often, although not recently, of my admiration for the late, great pianist-vocalist Page Cavanaugh. A few recent requests for reuploads of some Page LPs also motivated me to share more of his obscure output, in the form of four Navy recruiting transcriptions he recorded in the early 1960s.

But first, the re-ups. All of these are my original, mp3-only transfers from several years ago. Don't expect sonic splendors. The links below take you to the original post. Direct links to the downloads are also in the comments section of this post.

Page Cavanaugh: After Hours

Page Cavanaugh: Keyboard Kings

Page Cavanaugh Trio

Now on to the new material. These are four 15-minute transcriptions from a series called "The Navy Swings". Page and trio perform on each program and also back obscure vocalist Kay Cee Jones. Announcer George Fenneman pushes careers in the U.S. Navy.

Kay Cee Jones

Kay Cee Jones was perhaps most notable for singing with Western swing legend Spade Cooley in the 1950s. She made a few assorted singles on her own, and I have included one of them as a bonus item. She's not bad on the 45, although the material is. On the Navy shows, she can be overbearing.

The transcriptions don't indicate who is accompanying Cavanaugh. His classic trio, depicted below, included Al Viola on guitar (left) and Lloyd Pratt on bass (right), but I doubt they are present on the Navy shows.

The transcriptions are on 16-inch discs, as were many radio programs back then. I don't have a transcription turntable, so I had them dubbed onto cassette tape many years ago. Unfortunately the person who did the work transferred the sound at far too low a level, so the results lack definition, although they are certainly listenable. And listen you should, if you like great pianism and stylish singing.

The classic Page Cavanaugh Trio

Page Cavanaugh, Part 3

A great musician died yesterday - pianist-singer Page Cavanaugh, whose work has already been featured here on two occasions. Page was 86.

Here is a fine example of his talents - an MGM album from the early 50s. The emphasis here is on the piano, and just as much on the guitarist, who may be Al Viola (no credits on this one).

I learned about Page's death from Bill Reed; please go to his blog, the People vs. Dr. Chilledair, to learn more about this fine artist.

NEW LINK

Page Cavanaugh, Part 2

Back at the beginning of this blog, one of the first recordings we featured was by the Page Cavanaugh Trio, a particular favorite of mine. It's time for Page to return, this time with an album on the "X" label, the RCA Victor subsidiary we discussed a few records ago.

I believe this album collects some of the singles that Page recorded for RCA in the 1940s - including The Three Bears. That Bobby Troup song is his signature piece, and it also appeared in a slightly different version on the Vaya LP below. Hey-baba-re-bear, Page!

This record displays Cavanaugh's tremendous pianistic skills - rhythm, touch, imagination, taste - it's all there. And the unison singing seldom sounded better. Speaking of the sound, it's pretty good, but I suspect the RCA transfer engineer couldn't help but add some reverb (they must teach that in transfer engineer school) so the ambiance is just a little fuzzy. But overall, this is most enjoyable.

NEW LINK

Page Cavanaugh, Part 1

Most music lovers have no idea who Page Cavanaugh is. Odd, considering he has been active and highly visible for 60 years, has made many records, including one of the most frequently found thrift store items, has backed everyone from Frank Sinatra to Doris Day, and appears in some well-known movies (some awful ones, too).

Page was and is a virtuoso pianist and singer. I prefer him in his classic trio setting, such as on this 10-inch album with bass and guitar.

Cool stuff, as signified by this sharp cover. The odd detail of the pan figure on the edge of the piano is the symbol of Vaya Records, which issued this item circa 1950.