Sing a Song of Stainless Steel

I couldn't resist the alliteration in the headline above, but in truth there aren't any vocals on this record - although it does "sing the praises" of stainless steel.

What we have here is a 1960 promotional LP issued by Republic Steel. It spends 15 minutes telling the listener about the glories and many uses of stainless steel. Republic  thought that manufacturers were sleeping on the potential of its product - and thereby on its potential for steel company profits.

On one side, the LP presents the soundtrack of a Republic film called "The New World of Stainless Steel." The other has the score from the film sans narration and sound effects. Presumably the promo flick would be projected at trade shows and other sales events, and the LP given away at the same time. I imagine the records also found their way into the hands of Republic's personnel.

By the way, I have no idea what the object on the cover above is supposed to represent. Looks like a rocket-powered snail.

Republic's film showed how stainless steel could be used to make boxy office buildings and dangerous sculptures

The Chicago Film Archive has rescued the film from obscurity; you can see it via Internet Archive or the Film Archive's Facebook page.

The movie and LP came from Wilding Studios, a major, Chicago-based producer of industrial films, shows, exhibits and ads. Wilding is no longer in business, but at the time was cranking out dozens of such industrial productions every year.

Lloyd Norlin

One of Wilding's leading lights was composer Lloyd Norlin, who was its music director from 1950-58. Norlin contributed the music to this film and many others. I suspect that the music heard on this LP was actually a stock music bed that Norlin penned for Wilding's library.

If you have seen any promotional films from the period, you will know what kind of music to expect - peppy, upbeat sounds rooted in the big band era. Much if not all of it involves a brass choir and rhythm section. (Expect to hear a lot of trombones.) Even though the music was not intended to be an end in itself, it does make for pleasant listening.

Norlin was a very good tunesmith. I've been able to locate a few other pieces by him to include in the download, as described below.

The Young Adults (Hamm's Beer)

Norlin wrote his song "The Young Adults" for the 1965 Hamm's Beer centennial meeting, memorialized on an elusive souvenir LP  - "Hamm's '65 - Bursting with freshness!" - that I would love to own. Since I don't, we'll have to make do with this highly enjoyable number, which is courtesy of a long-ago post on WFMU's site. It exhorts Hamm's distributors and sales people to get out there and sell more to young people, who apparently weren't drinking enough beer.

The J's with Jamie

The artists are unidentified, but it's virtually certain that they are the J's with Jamie. That group was active in Chicago at that time, and the lead voice of Jamie Silvia is all but unmistakable. Checking the back cover of the LP, the J's (there called the Jays) and Jamie were given as the vocalists on several of the ad tracks, although not this piece, which was intended for the distributors' ears, not the consumers'.

The J's with Jamie are favorites of mine - they have appeared on two LPs that are available here. Jamie with her previous group, the Mello-Larks, was featured in this post.

An Academy Award Nominee

One of Lloyd Norlin's greatest successes was his first - he wrote a song called "Out of the Silence" that somehow made it into the 1941 film All-American Co-Ed, where it was introduced by Frances Langford. The tune was nominated for an Academy Award that year.

It's a good song, even though it never was commercially recorded to my knowledge. I've included the audio from Langford's film performance in the download. It's derived from a YouTube clip.

It's not clear why Norlin didn't get more opportunities in Hollywood. He spent almost all his working career in Evanston, IL, where he had a piano studio and where he was an instructor at Northwestern University, in addition to his commercial work.

Northwestern and 'To the Memories'

Students at Northwestern have been mounting a musical or musical review annually since 1929. Norlin was involved with the show during his time on campus; his notable contribution was the song "To the Memories," which traditionally concludes the program, and has become a well-known school song.

The Waa-Mu Show, as it is called (it was founded by the Women's Athletic Association and the Men's Union), has a remarkable roster of alumni. The 1945 show, for instance, featured Paul Lynde, Charlotte Rae and Cloris Leachman.

The download includes a 1954 recording of "To the Memories" by the Northwestern Band. This was cleaned up from a noisy transfer on YouTube.

This post is the latest in a very occasional series presenting industrial promotional records - the most recent involved Les Baxter selling AC Spark Plugs; other posts have included records extolling the products of Budweiser, Schlitz, Westinghouse, Ford, Edsel, Yolande lingerie and Warner bras.

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

Rome by Sophia, Lingerie by Yolande

Sophia cover

American television viewers in 1964 were treated to a travelogue of Rome courtesy of Sophia Loren and sponsor Chemstrand, makers of nylon. Sophia Loren in Rome had a score by the illustrious John Barry, which Columbia promptly issued on LP.

Yolande cover

Sponsor Chemstrand decided to issue a promotional LP with excerpts from the Sophia Loren music on one side and the soundtrack of a Chemstrand-sponsored industrial film on the other. The latter was called The Bride Wore Yolande. Yolande was and perhaps still is a purveyor of lingerie made of Chemstrand nylon. You can see its products displayed on both sides of the album cover at right, one devoted to Sophia, one to Yolande. Despite the implication of the top cover, what you see is not Sophia Loren in her nighty.

More about both sides of this promotional LP below.

Sophia Loren in Rome

Sophia Loren in Rome was a follow-up to the successful Elizabeth Taylor in London program of 1963, which also offered a John Barry score.

Along for the ride in Rome was Marcello Mastroianni, who had been paired in a number of films with Loren.

Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren

As is usual with soundtracks, although there are 12 selections, there are only six themes. "Secrets of Rome" comes around four times - versions with large orchestra, small orchestra, a vocal by Loren and a waltz treatment. "Sophia," "Arm in Arm" and "Marcello" are heard in both large and small orchestra form.

When you net all this out, the abridged version of the score on the Chemstrand LP only leaves out one theme ("The Aggressors"). Nonetheless, I don't want anyone to feel short-changed, so the download includes a lossy transfer of the entire commercial LP, which I have remastered. It, like the Chemstrand album, is in mono, but in both cases the sound is pleasing.

Unsurprisingly, Loren showed off the fountains
of Rome during the program

The Bride Wore Yolande

The Bride Wore Yolande had the good fortune to employ the talents of the kinetic Helen Gallagher, who had a very long career on Broadway, winning two Tonys, and on television, winning several Emmys.

Her first song on the LP assures us that, "With the right nightgown, a woman can rule the world!" I am not sure this explains the rise of such women rulers as Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, but it does make for a catchy ending to her first song, "Live the Life of Yolande." Gallagher's second song, "They Did It with Yolande," expands on this theme, informing us in the process that Salome "got a head" with veils made by Yolande.

Helen Gallagher

For the final two Yolande songs, Gallagher yields the stage to Jill Bartholomew, who admonishes us that "You Shouldn't Have Done It" before assuming the title role of the bride in "What Shall I Wear Tonight." In real life, Bartholomew was the spouse of actor Joseph Campanella, and most of her IMDb credits are game show appearances with her husband. She was also in the ensemble of the short-lived Mary Rodgers-Martin Charnin Broadway show Hot Spot in 1963.

The LP provides no information on who wrote the music or lyrics for this show, other than it was a production of Spectrum Associates.

1963 Yolande ad

Those who like Helen Gallagher may be interested in her previous appearances on this blog. Both of those were in RCA's 1953 "Show Time" series of potted Broadway shows. She belts out "I Got Rhythm" on the Girl Crazy set, and four Cole Porter songs from Anything Goes, including a duet on "You're the Top" with Jack Cassidy.

Neither Sophia Loren in Rome nor The Bride Wore Yolande are on YouTube, but both can be found on DVD. The LP originally included a booklet of fashion drawings entitled "Yolande - Designer's Sketch Book of Lingerie Fashions of the Future," but my copy is missing that insert, sorry!

If you like industrial musicals or other promotional records, I've previously featured The Going Thing for Ford from 1970, The Shape of Tomorrow: A Musical Introduction to 1958 Westinghouse Appliances, the Edsel Dealer Announcement Show, also from 1958, The Real Joy of Living for Schlitz Beer from the late 50s, the Where There's Life Budweiser tie-in from 1960, Warner's Color TV Fashion Show from 1956, and The Two Sides of the J's with Jamie, with that group's commercial work from the early 60s. All can be found via this link.

Where There's Life, There's Beer - and Music

These days, the big beer brands sell mainly via ads that punctuate the televised exploits of professional athletes. But sixty years ago, easy listening music was part of the marketing mix, as this 1960 LP demonstrates.

It represents a promotional tie-in between Anheuser-Busch, brewers of Budweiser beer, and RCA Victor, purveyors of vinyl records. The LP is titled Where There's Life..., which happened to be the first part of Budweiser's tag line, "Where There's Life, There's Bud." And the awkwardly posed model seems to be eagerly anticipating the frothy Budweiser being offered. Either that or the off-camera male has no pants on. It's hard to tell, no pun intended.

Magazine ad

Other than the label on the bottle, there is no other mention of Budweiser or Anheuser-Busch on the album. Even so, the brewery went all out in support of the LP. Billboard reported that it pushed out 40,000 display cards, 12,000 streamers and 4,000 coasters, plus it sprung for a big ad buy in the major magazines of the time, with all items featuring the album art. There even was a promotional single.

But what of the music, you may ask, this being a music blog and all. There is a melodic tie-in as well - the first song is "Where There's Life," which turns out to be (no surprise here) a glamorized version of the then-current Bud jingle. All the other tunes have "life" in the title as well.

The proceedings were under the direction of Russ David, who it turns out, wrote the Bud jingle back in 1956 with arranger-conductor George Cates, Lawrence Welk's music director and a mainstay of the Coral catalog. Cates recorded "Where There's Life" first, on a 1957 Coral single that went nowhere, probably because it didn't benefit from 40,000 display cards, etc. George is nowhere in evidence on the LP, and his name is spelled "Catz" on the songwriter credits. I've included Cates' single in the download.

Russ David as radio personality

David did not have a national presence - this is his only LP, as far as I can tell - but he was well known in St. Louis, the home of Anheuser-Busch, where he had radio and television shows and where he led a band. I get the sense that he also did other work for A-B through the years.

The record is a credible affair, with David doing a Gordon Jenkins-style single-note solo over the opening of "Where There's Life," accompanied by accordion, followed by clarinet, tenor sax and trombone. It's all very pleasant, even if several years out of style in 1960.

On other songs, David brings in a vocal group and a terrific female soloist, who remains unnamed. I wish I knew who it is - I first thought it might be Jamie Silvia of the J's with Jamie, but comparisons suggest that it is not her. The vocalist is particularly good in her "Give Me the Simple Life" solo spot, but then I am partial to that Rube Bloom-Harry Ruby composition. Less effective is the male vocal chorus on "There's a Lull in My Life," which has a peculiar robotic quality.

Cover of 1957 promo

As I mentioned, the Budweiser jingle dated back to 1956. I've included a Bud promotional record from 1957, with seven ads in different musical styles. The first one, to my ears, features the same female vocalist as on the Russ David record. Also included are a waltz, a Dixieland arrangement, a Glenn Miller-style rendition, and a lounge version a la Jackie Gleason's records with Bobby Hackett on solo trumpet. (The latter arrangement is  reminiscent of Gordon Jenkins' style. David was apparently a fan - I am assuming David did these charts.) No rock 'n' roll on the LP or the promo record, though. Bud was not aiming to be up-to-date or hip at the time.

The LP is my transfer; the other items are courtesy of the web although remastered by me. RCA's sound is very good, although lushly reverberant in the style of the times.

This post is a result of a discussion that I had with my pal Ernie not long ago, where we differed on which RCA record had a beer on the cover. I opted for this one, although I said it was by Larry David, while acknowledging that couldn't be right. Ernie claimed it was a Boston Pops record. It turns out we were both right - there is a two-LP Pops set, "Everything But the Beer," that has two Anheuser-Busch beer steins on the cover. I have that album as well.

To go back to the Where There's Life cover, it is an example of the "Droste effect," that is, a picture within a picture of itself. It's not perfectly executed, though.

If you want more beer music - and who doesn't - a decade ago I uploaded a Schlitz promotional record with Nelson Riddle at the helm and featuring Jamie Silvia on vocals. Riddle turned the Schlitz jingle "The Real Joy of Good Living" into "The Joy of Living," the title tune of a 1959 LP. So the Milwaukee brewer or its ad agency had the idea first. The Riddle record is still available if you haven't had enough brew for the evening.

The Going Thing 1970

In the not too distant past, I've posted a few industrial musical productions, which celebrated a new Westinghouse appliance line and Ford's ill-fated Edsel automobile.

Both came from the 50s. By the late 60s, marketers were learning there were easier and cheaper ways to liven up sales meetings, promote the brand and even connect with young audiences.

Today's LP is one of the notable examples of that trend. It is the last of the three albums recorded by the Going Thing, a musical group founded by the Ford Motor Co. to promote its products. The LPs were apparently internal giveaways.

From reading various accounts on the web, it seems likely that The Going Thing was the creation of Ford's ad agency, J. Walter Thompson, who contracted with the young studio singers John and Tom Bahler to put the group together in 1967 or 1968.

The Bahler brothers put out three LPs as the Love Generation, a pop-rock ensemble whose music, not surprisingly, resembles that of the Going Thing. It's what today would be termed "sunshine pop" - optimistic lyrics, simple melodies and soaring harmonies.

Adapting that musical formula to industry was designed to appeal to young people. The agency used the Going Thing to promote such models as the sporty Mustang, which is front and center in this ad showing the group in performance. Thompson also used the phraseology as a tagline ("Ford Is the Going Thing") in addition to the existing "Ford Has a Better Idea" campaign. The ad weaves the two together, including both the "Going Thing" and "Better Idea" tunes.

The ad is contained on the LP at hand as the last cut, and it is certainly the best thing on the record. The other selections include what is very likely the opening song that the group used at sales presentations and other appearances - "Hey, You in the Crowd" - followed by a version of Sly Stone's "Dance to the Music," which allows the vocalist (I believe it is John Bahler) to introduce the members of the ensemble. Or at least the male members. The women are only identified by their first names.

The men are Mitch Gordon, drummer, Terry Shannon, guitar (a Love Generation alumnus), Tom Bahler, bass, Larry Carlton, guitar (he has become a well-known musician), and Steve Flanagan. The women are only identified as Susie, Jackie, Janis and Carolyn. Janis is Janis Hansen, who had been in Sergio Mendes and Brazil '66, and who sang lead on "The Look of Love." Susie and Jackie are probably Susan Teague and Jackie Berry.

The rest of the LP is largely composed of material the group may have performed to entertain at sales meetings and perhaps other promotional events - "Hey Jude," "For Once in My Life" and "The Sound of the Sixties," which pays tribute to everyone from the Beatles to Ray Charles.

Only one cut was apparently aimed directly at an internal sales and management audience - "Happiness Is," which I quote in full:

Happiness is selling a T-Bird, loaded with options
At the list price!

Happiness is "he wants a Mustang," "she wants a wagon" -
Selling 'em twice!

Happiness is no covered service on warranty
And stamping out those bugs from overseas.

Happiness is a 10-day report that gives Chevrolet a stroke!

Yes, happiness is on the day, the very day we learn
That GM went broke!

A Musical Salute to Kitchen Appliances

The big news on Broadway in 1957 may have been West Side Story and The Music Man, but in Columbus, Ohio they were singing about kitchen appliances rather than Jets, Sharks or 76 trombones.

The occasion was the annual meeting of the Westinghouse dealers, and the centerpiece of their August gathering was a musical tribute to the new line of fridges, stoves and mixers, as documented in today's post, The Shape of Tomorrow: A Musical Introduction to 1958 Westinghouse Appliances, a souvenir LP from the meeting.

Click to enlarge

The Shape of Tomorrow is one of the prime artifacts from the heyday of the industrial musical, designed to amuse attendees at boring meetings while creating enthusiasm for the sponsoring company and its product assortment. I've already posted a notable example - Once in a Lifetime: the Complete Musical Score from the Edsel Dealer Announcement Show, which dates from the same month as the Westinghouse production.

Green in G&S costume

If anything, the Westinghouse show was more elaborate than the Edsel spectacular. The large cast was led by Martyn Green, perhaps the most famous Gilbert & Sullivan specialist of the 20th century, who had moved to the U.S. after leaving D'Oyly Carte in 1951. The other performers are less noted, but their work is uniformly good.

The show has a fine score by John Wyman, of whom I can find no information, with lyrics by Herb Kanzell, an actor and writer who went on to do many such shows for clients including International Harvester, Dulux, British Rail, Oxo and British Airways. The BBC interviewed him as recently as 2012, but that clip is unfortunately not online.

Wyman and Kanzell concocted a variety of tunes, including a patter song for Green, "Nightmare," patterned after a G&S specialty, where his character has horrible dreams about unwashed dishes and similar domestic catastrophes that would ensue without Westinghouse appliances. My favorite is the calypso, "He Got No Westinghouse Franchise," where Green sings about war heroes such as Pershing, Eisenhower and Wellington, lamenting that "Him won the war but he got no store, and that's why the tears they dim his eyes. He got no Westinghouse franchise!"

Green is cast as J.W. Butterfield, Westinghouse dealer extraordinaire, who has a customer base so exclusive that "We only condescend to sell to upper-crusted clientele - and never the lowly bourgeoisie!" A man to emulate for the dealers in the audience, no doubt.

Click to enlarge

The staging of the show was by Buff Shurr, who was in a few Broadway musicals and was to be assistant choreographer on The Roar of the Greasepaint. He eventually directed more than 150 industrial shows, for companies including RCA, GM, Ford, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper and Frito Lay. As recently as last year he was associated with Garland Summer Musicals in Texas.

Besides Green, the best-known member of the troupe was orchestrator and conductor Ted Royal, one of the finest Broadway arrangers, whose credits include Brigadoon, Where's Charley?, House of Flowers, Flahooley and Mr. Wonderful.

Peter Muller-Monk

Why would Westinghouse spend so freely for this product introduction? It may have been because the new models represented a major change for their appliances. Styles had been modulating throughout the 1950s from the rounded moderne forms of the 1930s and 40s into the straight, clean modernist lines that had already influenced architecture, furniture and automobiles. Westinghouse's 1957 products had been stuck in the old style, so it was time to get in tune with the times.

The company hired Peter Muller-Monk, a Pittsburgh-based industrial designer, to remake the look of its products. Together they came up with The Shape of Tomorrow, a motto and symbol reminiscent of The Forward Look, which Chrysler and Virgil Exner had introduced a few years before. Muller-Monk was a talented designer; his work was an artistic success that wears its 60 years well. I've included an article on him in the download.

Unlike many promotional LPs, the sound from this example is very good.

A Musical Celebration of the Edsel

When the Ford Motor Company introduced its new Edsel line for 1958, it expected a winner. What it got was a catastrophe.

The Edsel (named for a son of Henry Ford) quickly became another word for failure - a product scorned for its inability to live up to its advance promotion as a new kind of car. It turned out to be a fancy Ford with an ugly snout, overpriced and unreliable. Within three years it was dead.

This 10-inch record is a souvenir of the pre-release euphoria. An Edsel fan site explains, "In August 1957, Edsel Division staged the Dealer Introduction Show for Edsel dealers. Presented in five regional cities (and later in 24 more performances with touring companies) the production was billed as the first all-musical automobile introduction. The program cost $250,000 to stage and featured a 12 member chorus. Holding together the various presentations by Edsel Division executives, was a thin story line about 'Adam and Eve', the first Edsel customers. Looking back, the lyrics are quite ironic, depicting, as they do, unbridled optimism and visions of great success for the Edsel automobile."

"Once you've seen it, you'll never forget it": how true

As often happens with such industrial musicals, there are no credits on the sleeve or label, but the product is highly professional, with cheery if generic music and lyrics.

Don't expect much of a story. "Adam and Eve," perhaps reflecting FoMoCo marketing confusion, don't have much of an idea of what they want in a car, nor what the Edsel offers them. Side two switches perspective; we hear from a proud Edsel dealer, as well as his wife, who celebrates the status attached to being the spouse of an Edsel retailer. Their hauteur that would be short-lived, to be sure.

I enjoy industrial musicals and have a number of examples of the genre. This is one of the rarer items, although mp3s can be found elsewhere on line. My transfer is lossless, if that makes a difference to you.

Back cover: scenes from the Edsel spectacular

The J's with Jamie Sing and Sell

Not long ago, a reader asked me to reup a Nelson Riddle promotional record made for the Schlitz Brewing Company in the late 1950s. That contained the Schlitz ad, "The Real Joy of Good Living," as sung by Jamie Silvia of the group the J's with Jamie. (You can read more about the record on the original post.)

After working on that reup, I decided to pull out my collection of J's with Jamie records. The group was along the most successful specialists in commercial work of the day, for good reason - they were superb. Comprising Jamie and Joe Silvia, Don Shelton (or Marshall Gill) and Len Dresslar, the group recorded hundreds of ads, and several LPs.

This present album presents their "two sides" - one side of the commercials of the day (early 1960s), most of which I remember, and one of their recordings for Columbia.

If I prefer the ads, it may be for nostalgic reasons, but there is no denying that their craftsmanship was remarkable. Listen, for example, to their dead-on hootenanny routine during the Alka-Seltzer spot. You will hear ads for vanished products (Plymouth, Valiant and Corvair cars, Northwest Orient Airlines), items that are no longer advertised in this way (three different cigarette brands), and a number of brands that are still around 50 years later.

The ads are knit together by a clunky Dragnet-style narration. I believe the anonymous narrator may be Ken Nordine. The LP was probably made for distribution to both advertising agencies and clubs.

The Columbia selections are drawn from the group's two albums and handful of singles. The best cut is probably the single "Everybody Says Don't," from the contemporaneous Stephen Sondheim musical flop Anyone Can Whistle. The ensemble also recorded two LPs for ABC records under the name Jamie and the J. Silvia Singers.

The J's with Jamie went out of business in 1968. Thereafter, the Silvias concentrated on production work. Shelton (who had been in the Hi-Lo's) went on to form the Singers Unlimited with Dresslar, fellow Hi-Lo's alum Gene Puerling, and Bonnie Herman, another vocalist who specialized in commercial work.

Bernstein and the NYPO in Venice, 1959

A while ago, I wrote about the original musicals presented on US commercial television in the 1950s. Classical music also had a presence on commercial TV back then, and its face and voice were those of Leonard Bernstein, then the music director of the New York Philharmonic.

I remember seeing Bernstein on the television program Omnibus when I was just a wee Buster. He later made a series of programs sponsored by Lincoln and then Ford. Four of the programs in that series were issued on promotional LPs by Ford's advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt. The particular program represented by this record was presented on CBS in November 1959.

The agency didn't do such a good job with the record production, though, and the sound is subfusc. Little Buster with his 3-inch tape recorder might have done as a good a job taping the thing off his parent's Philco. Big Buster has done his best to compensate in the transfer, and the results are at least listenable.

As I know from personal experience, having met him once, Bernstein was a magnetic personality, and that comes through on this record. He is an eloquent speaker, convincing even when superficial - and I dare say that goes for his music-making as well. Here you get a bit of the Marriage of Figaro overture and two-thirds of a Mozart piano concerto, along with as much commentary from the conductor.

While Bernstein is not a favorite of mine, his influence and importance are undeniable and his charisma unmistakable.

REMASTERED VERSION - MARCH 2015

The Real Joy of Living Is . . . Beer?

Back in the late 50s, the Schlitz Brewing Co. came up with a slogan insisting that you could "know the real joy of good living" by drinking its beer. A dubious proposition to be sure, but one that was powerful enough to propel to the top of the beer market for some years.

Schlitz's agency turned the slogan into a jingle, as was the practice back then, and then the jingle was turned into a song. Or maybe it was the other way around - I'm not sure. But whether chicken or egg came first, eventually Nelson Riddle got involved and a number of records ensued.

What we have here is a Schlitz promotional EP featuring Riddle, with the commercial jingle and the song, Know the Real Joy of Good Living, featuring chorus. As far as I know, these Riddle arrangements are otherwise unissued. Riddle did include the song on his Capitol LP, the Joy of Living, although in a completely different, instrumental version. The Schlitz EP depicted the cover of the Riddle LP on its back (see below).

The flip side of the EP contained two Riddle instrumentals that are not on the Joy of Living LP. I'm not sure if they were otherwise released, although I would assume they were. The download includes all the material from the promotional EP and the instrumental version from the Joy of Living LP.

One parenthetical note: singing on the commercial is Jamie Silvia, of the J's with Jamie, one of the leading commercial voices of the time. A superb singer, she, her husband Joe and their group first became well known for their commercial work, and then began making records for Columbia in the 1960s. I have an LP they self-issued that is half Columbia material and half commercials. Also in the group was Len Dresslar, who later made many records (and commercials) with the Singers Unlimited.

REMASTERED VERSION

Warner's Color TV Fashion Show

This is one of the more unusual LPs I own. It is a promotional record sent to stores in advance of a television program that was broadcast on September 22, 1956 and called Warner's Color TV Fashion Show. It was a musical presentation to promote women's undergarments made by Warner's (which was and I think still is a manufacturer of said undergarments).

The idea was that stores should play the record in advance of the TV show with the thought that people would come into the store to watch the program, which was in color - quite a novelty back then. The premise sounds unlikely to me, but then what do I know about it. Maybe it sold a lot of brassieres. TV promos seem to work for Victoria's Secret even today.

Unlike the Victoria's Secret extravaganzas, I don't think this program showed the undergarments at all, and it's not as though this record has music in praise of girdles on it. What it does have is music involving "famous figures" - the Empress Josephine, Sheherazade, and the Ziegfeld girl. The music is by Michael Brown, perhaps best known for composing a song about Lizzie Borden ("Lizzie Borden took an ax/And gave her mother 40 whacks"). At least I assume it is the same Michael Brown, who did music for industrial shows and cabaret reviews, among other purposes. The music is tuneful enough, although some of the lyrics are clunky. Josephine pining away for the absent Napoleon? ("There's nothing here you have to win/For I'll surrender; I'll give in.")

The cover says the program's plot involves "a young artist and his search for the ideal figure" in the company of his "devoted secretary." This sounds a little creepy. And did artists have secretaries in 1956?

The singers are Jack Haskell, who was on TV a lot and made records, and Margot Cole, who is new to me. Skitch Henderson directs the small ensemble. The TV program itself apparently used different singers - the cover mentions Broadway stars William Tabbert as the young artist and Doretta Morrow as the devoted secretary. Jinx Falkenburg entered into the proceedings, as well.

One final note - this is the only single-sided 10-inch record I've ever seen. It's very short as a result.