The Recordings of Martin, Blane and The Martins

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin

I've devoted several posts to the music of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, including a number that presented them singing their own songs and those of others. Today, I'm gathering them all: consolidating the performances by Blane, Martin and their singing group The Martins - including a few new songs - and linking to a refurbished version of the 1956 LP Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane. Also included are the songs from the films Athena and The French Line, and Martin's music for a documentary on the artist Grandma Moses.

First, the 16 songs by Martin, Blane and The Martins are discussed in chronological order, making liberal use of my previous descriptions of the recordings.

Background

The songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were successes from the beginning of their partnership, which began with the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward. That was a typical campus comedy, enlivened by a spectacular series of songs, ranging from the wistful "Ev'ry Time" to the raucous "Buckle Down, Winsocki." (The Winsocki Military Academy was the site of the proceedings.)

But the team didn't start off as songwriters. Both were singers, who met in the chorus of 1937's Hooray For What?, a Lindsay and Crouse show with songs by Arlen and Harburg.

Not long after, the two formed a singing group called The Martins, adding two female voices. They eventually became a featured act on Fred Allen's popular radio show, then were added to Irving Berlin's 1940 musical Louisiana Purchase, for which they wrote the vocal arrangements. In the show, The Martins sang the title song with Carol Bruce and "(Dance with Me) Tonight at the Mardi Gras." There is no cast album, but Bruce's own recordings of two songs from the score can be found here.

The Martins: Ralph Blane, Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers, Hugh Martin

By the time of Louisiana Purchase's opening, the sister combo of Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers were the female voices in The Martins. A labored article in the April 1941 issue or Radio Parade, surely the work of a publicist, depicted this lineup. (The piece is included in the download.)

Earliest Recordings

Even before they formed The Martins, Hugh and Ralph had made a few records separately. The earliest I have found is a 1937 recording by Kay Thompson, Her Orchestra and the Rhythm Singers. The Singers included Martin. Thompson herself was not a great vocalist, but she was an influential vocal arranger who certainly influenced both Martin and Blane, who sang with her at various times.

The Thompson record is "Carelessly" by Nick and Charles Kenny and Norm Ellis. It's not a great record - or song, for that matter, even though it was recorded by many artists at the time. Thompson is as subtle as a jackhammer, and Martin's contribution is limited to singing in the chorus. An inauspicious beginning to our collection, but a beginning nonetheless, and a recording newly added to this set.

The earliest recording of Ralph Blane that we've found (thanks to reader Jeff M.) very likely dates from 1939. It contains two Arlen-Harburg songs from The Wizard of Oz, which was released in that year: "Over the Rainbow" and "The Merry Old Land of Oz." Actually, Blane also recorded "If I Only Had a Brain" and "Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead" at the same time, but we haven't located a copy of the latter single.

Surprisingly, "The Merry Old Land of Oz" comes off better than "Over the Rainbow." Blane's jauntiness suits the former, but he seems uncomfortable with the wistfulness of the latter. He generally sings well, although his pitch is not always accurate. The bandleader is Franklyn Marks, who also conducted some of the singles discussed below. I believe Blane had a radio show at the time of these recordings.

Singles by The Martins

Of the five recordings by The Martins that I've located (thank you, Internet Archive), two are devoted to the same song.

The Martins' first recording (at least of the ones I've located) is probably an obscurity on the Hit of the Week label. It is under the name of Leighton Noble, a hotel bandleader who made recordings sporadically from 1938-50, with a "vocal refrain" by The Martins.

The song is "Skip to My Lou," almost certainly a feature of the group's act. The song is attributed here to Hugh Martin, probably reflecting his arrangement of the piece. It is, however, a folk dance song dating to the 1840s at the latest. ("Lou" is thought to be a corruption of "love.")

I was surprised to find this song on the Hit of the Week label, which I thought had disappeared in the Great Depression. I haven't found any information on this later incarnation. The label says it came from the Holyoke Plastics company, whose product in this instance was chewed up by the heavyweight tone arms of the time. (In other words, you get some noise with the music. In this new remastered version, I've managed to improve the vocal sound so it isn't so buried.)

We don't know the exact date of the Hit of the Week record, but we can date the result of The Martins' output. Columbia brought the group into its studios for an August 1941 session, in the run-up to Best Foot Forward's October opening.

The first release resulting from the session was two sparkling songs from the musical, "The Three B's" and "Just a Little Joint with a Jukebox." The second 78 coupled "Watch the Birdie" from the film version of Hellzapoppin' (sung there by Martha Raye and the Six Hits) and a second recording of "Skip to My Lou," virtually identical to the Noble version. 

About the same time, the group made a Soundie of "Skip to My Lou" with the foursome cavorting in a barn. It's the same arrangement (again) and could well be the same recording. An excellent transfer of the Soundie can be found on YouTube.

The Martins skip to their lou(s)

Martin and Blane also managed to work this piece into their superb 1944 score for Meet Me in St. Louis, in a somewhat similar arrangement that translates beautifully to the screen.

The orchestra leader for the Columbia recordings was Franklyn Marks, who is also said to have done some work on the Best Foot Forward orchestrations.

Solo Singles

Ralph Blane

Despite being yoked together as a songwriting team, Martin and Blane also worked separately - and even were reputed to work separately on the songs attributed to them as a team. In his later years, Hugh Martin asserted that he was the main creative force in the duo, and that may well have been the case. 

"I was never jealous of Ralph except for two things: 'Buckle Down, Winsocki' and his glorious voice," said Martin a few years before his death. Well, "Buckle Down" is indeed a grand march and Blane did indeed have a glorious voice.

As far as I know, Blane's second set of recordings as a solo vocalist were a 1944 Johnny Green date, where he assayed the composer's "Out of Nowhere" and "I'm Yours," the latter perhaps more elegantly than the former. These were two of the eight songs that Green recorded at the time for a projected album, which in the event did not come out until 1947. Three of the eight involved the Kay Thompson Singers, who almost certainly included Blane. The set is available here in a newly augmented version that includes two additional songs recorded at the same time but not in the album.

Blane's solo recordings continued with a one-off Artie Shaw date for Musicraft where he sang Martin and Blane's "Connecticut." The piece had been written for an Army show in 1946, at about the time Shaw and Blane recorded it. Martin's view of the writing credits are as follows: "Meredith Willson asked me to write a song about 'Connecticut,' which I did, words and music." Regardless, is a clever song, nicely done here.

Hugh Martin

Martin wrote the music and lyrics for the 1947 Broadway show, Look Ma, I'm Dancin', a vehicle for Nancy Walker. Even though he was not in the cast, he sang one of his songs for the original cast album - "The Little Boy Blues." Joining him for the number was Sandra Deel. The explanation on a reissue album was that "a threatened musicians union strike made it necessary to cut the album while the show was still in rehearsal." On stage, "The Little Boy Blues" was done by Virginia Gorski (later Gibson) and Don Liberto. Deel was in the show, but did not sing this number. Regardless, it's a charming song, charmingly done, and new to this collection.

Bandleader George Cates brought Blane in for the vocals on two floral tunes recorded in 1950 for the relatively new label Coral. These included the then-new "American Beauty Rose," a remarkably bad song that Sinatra somehow recorded twice, and "Roses," an attractive country ballad written by Tim Spencer. The latter was apparently a follow-up to Spencer's big 1949 hit, "Room Full of Roses," which was a top-ten country hit for both George Morgan and Spencer's former group the Sons of the Pioneers.

Our final Blane release came out on the short-lived American label in 1953. It offered two songs from the Blane-Bob Wells-Josef Myrow score for Jane Russell's musical The French Line. The soundtrack to that film has appeared here (and is now newly remastered in ambient stereo), but believe me, neither the tolerable Russell nor toneless co-star Gilbert Roland are any match for Blane. He sings the title number and "Wait 'Til You See Paris."

Except for the Hit of the Week 78 noted above, the sound on all these records is excellent.

LINK to Martin, Blane and The Martins

Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane

In 1956, Hugh and Ralph put out a fine LP of them performing their own songs, appropriately named Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane.

I first posted this album in 2011, and have now remastered it in ambient stereo. It features their only recording of "Ev'ry Time," one of their best songs in a superb reading by Blane.

Details about this LP and the link can be found via the original post.

More Martin and Blane

In addition to the items discussed above, Martin and Blane songs can also be heard on the soundtrack to the M-G-M musical Athena. It's an odd one, but even so has several fine numbers, including "Venezia" and "Love Can Change the Stars." (Blane's ringing rendition of "Venezia" can be heard on Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane.) This too has been newly remastered in ambient stereo, and the harsh sound balance has been tamed.

Hugh Martin wrote the music for a television documentary on the painter Grandma Moses in 1951. His work was then elaborated and orchestrated by Alec Wilder into the Grandma Moses Suite, which was issued on a Columbia LP. I remastered the album in ambient stereo last year.

Singles from The Martins and Ralph Blane

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin

The songwriting team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were successes from the beginning of their partnership, which began with the 1941 musical Best Foot Forward. It was a typical campus comedy, enlivened by a spectacular series of songs, ranging from the wistful "Ev'ry Time" to the raucous "Buckle Down, Winsocki." (The Winsocki Military Academy was the site of the proceedings.)

But the team didn't start off as songwriters. Both were singers, who met in the chorus of 1937's Hooray For What?, a Lindsay and Crouse show with songs by Arlen and Harburg.

Not long after, the two formed a singing group called The Martins, adding two female voices. They eventually became a featured act on Fred Allen's popular radio show, then were added to Irving Berlin's 1940 musical Louisiana Purchase, for which they wrote the vocal arrangements. In the show, The Martins sang the title song with Carol Bruce and "(Dance with Me) Tonight at the Mardi Gras." There is no cast album, but Bruce's own recordings of two songs from the score can be found here.

The Martins: Ralph Blane, Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers, Hugh Martin

By the time of Louisiana Purchase's opening, the sister combo of Jo-Jean and Phyllis Rogers were the female voices in The Martins. A labored article in the April 1941 issue or Radio Parade, surely the work of a publicist, depicted this lineup. (The piece is included in the download.)

Today's post includes five songs recorded by The Martins, and seven by Ralph Blane as a soloist.

Singles by The Martins

Of the five recordings by The Martins that I've located (thank you, Internet Archive), two are devoted to the same song.

The Martins' first recording (at least of the ones I've located) is probably an obscurity on the Hit of the Week label. It is under the name of Leighton Noble, a hotel bandleader who made recordings sporadically from 1938-50, with a "vocal refrain" by The Martins.

The song is "Skip to My Lou," almost certainly a feature of the group's act. The song is attributed here to Hugh Martin, probably reflecting his arrangement of the piece. It is, however, a folk dance song dating to the 1840s at the latest. ("Lou" is thought to be a corruption of "love.")

I was surprised to find this song on the Hit of the Week label, which I thought had disappeared in the Great Depression. I haven't found any information on this later incarnation. The label says it came from the Holyoke Plastics company, whose product in this instance was chewed up by the heavyweight tone arms of the time. (In other words, you get some noise with the music.)

We don't know the exact date of the Hit of the Week record, but we can date the result of The Martins' output. Columbia brought the group into its studios for an August 1941 session, in the run-up to Best Foot Forward's October opening. 

The first release resulting from the session was two songs from the musical, "The Three B's" and "Just a Little Joint with a Jukebox." The second 78 coupled "Watch the Birdie" from the film version of Hellzapoppin' (sung there by Martha Raye and the Six Hits) and a second recording of "Skip to My Lou," virtually identical to the Noble version. (Martin and Blane also managed to work this piece into their superb 1944 score for Meet Me in St. Louis, in a somewhat similar arrangement that translates beautifully to the screen.)

The orchestra leader for the Columbia recordings was Franklyn Marks, who is said to have done some work on the Best Foot Forward orchestrations.

You may detect the influence of Kay Thompson in the vocal writing. Both Martin and Blane were associated with her; Martin sang in her group even before he met Blane, and Blane sang with her even at the peak of their Meet Me in St. Louis fame.

Singles by Ralph Blane

Ralph Blane

Despite being yoked together as a songwriting team, Martin and Blane also worked separately - and even were reputed to work separately on the songs attributed to them as a team. In his later years, Hugh Martin asserted that he was the main creative force in the duo, and that may well have been the case. 

"I was never jealous of Ralph except for two things: 'Buckle Down, Winsocki' and his glorious voice," said Martin a few years before his death. Well, "Buckle Down" is indeed a grand march and Blane did indeed have a glorious voice.

The pair did just one LP - Martin and Blane Sing Martin and Blane from 1956, which I featured here many years ago, and which is still available. It includes Blane's recording of "Ev'ry Time" (one of my favorite songs), which they did not otherwise record.

As far as I know, Blane's recordings as a solo vocalist began with a 1944 Johnny Green date, where he assayed the composer's "Out of Nowhere" and "I'm Yours," the latter perhaps more elegantly than the former. These were two of the eight songs that Green recorded at the time for a projected album, which in the event did not come out until 1947. Three other songs involved the Kay Thompson Singers, who almost certainly included Blane. The set is available here.

[Update: reader Unknown has found an earlier Blane single - you can find it on my other blog.]

Blane's solo recordings continued with a one-off Artie Shaw date for Musicraft where he sang Martin and Blane's "Connecticut." The piece had been written for an Army show in 1946, at about the time Shaw and Blane recorded it. Martin's view of the writing credits are as follows: "Meredith Willson asked me to write a song about 'Connecticut,' which I did, words and music." Regardless, is a clever song, nicely done here.

Bandleader George Cates brought Blane in for the vocals on two floral tunes done in 1950 for the relatively new label Coral. These included the then-new "American Beauty Rose," a remarkably bad song that Sinatra somehow recorded twice, and "Roses," an attractive country song written by Tim Spencer. The latter was apparently a follow-up to Spencer's big 1949 hit, "Room Full of Roses," which was a top-ten country song for both George Morgan and Spencer's former group the Sons of the Pioneers.

Our final Blane release came out on the short-lived Pan-American label in 1953. It offered two songs from the Blane-Bob Wells-Josef Myrow score for Jane Russell's musical The French Line. The soundtrack to that film has appeared here, but believe me, neither the tolerable Russell nor the toneless Gilbert Roland are any match for Blane in the title song and "Wait 'Til You See Paris."

In addition to the items mentioned above, Martin and Blane songs can also be heard on the soundtrack to the odd M-G-M musical Athena.

Except for the Hit of the Week 78 noted above, the sound on all these records is excellent.

Athena

This post of the soundtrack to Athena was inspired by nothing more profound than me watching the film the other day, and deciding to transfer the record for my own amusement. (I believe I have an expanded soundtrack CD around here someplace, but who knows where that is.)

Athena was a most peculiar movie, with Louis Calhern as the patriarch of a physical culture sect that included his daughters Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds as well as (among others) future sword-and-sandal stalwart Steve Reeves. This was certainly the only musical from Hollywood's heyday that featured a body-building contest as part of the plot.

The film provides love interests for Reynolds and Powell in the persons of crooner Vic Damone (who really does wear that set of carmine-colored tails in the movie) and the dour Edmund Purdom, who dumps Linda Christian for a somewhat-addled Powell during the proceedings. Purdom had much better chemistry with Christian, to the point of later marrying her in real life.

Powell and Reynolds were among Hollywood's most charming commodities and the film is fun to watch - and listen to, with its fine score from the distinguished Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. The studio may not have thought much of the tunes, however, for they brought back the team's "The Boy [here, Girl] Next Door" from Meet Me in St. Louis for an encore. I find it most enjoyable, with wonderfully relaxed and effective performances of the gorgeous "Love Can Change the Stars" and "Venezia" from Damone, and the terrific "Imagine" from Damone and Reynolds. On the other hand, Powell's waltz feature "Vocalize" was surely inspired by her breakthrough performance of "It's a Most Unusual Day" in A Date with Judy. And Reynolds's hectic "I Never Felt Better" is reminiscent of "I Cain't Say No" from Oklahoma!

Lobby card

The program concludes with Powell's version of "Chacun le sait" from Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment. In truth, she is a little squally, and the track has several clumsy splices.

For some reason, M-G-M ceded rights to the soundtrack to Mercury, which provided its usual gravelly pressings for this 1954 10-inch LP. The sound is perfectly fine, nonetheless.

Note (June 2024): I have much improved the sound for this version, removing the high frequency glare and mastering it in ambient stereo.

LINK

Johnny Green, Kay Thompson and Ralph Blane

In 1944, composer-pianist-bandleader Johnny Green, vocalist-arranger Kay Thompson and composer-vocalist Ralph Blane were all among the great array of talent that had been assembled to make musicals at M-G-M.

All had achieved a measure of fame before going to Hollywood; the relative anonymity of the studio would chafe on Green and Thompson, who had been headliners; perhaps less so on Blane, who was content to sing in ensembles with Thompson's singers even as he was co-composing (with Hugh Martin) the songs for Meet Me in St. Louis, one of the greatest musicals ever.

Kay Thompson

The three were friendly, and when Green was commissioned in 1944 to produce an album of his own songs by Decca, he called on the others to help. The resulting eight-song set includes three vocals by Thompson and her group (which almost certainly includes Blane), two by Blane, an excellent singer, two by the obscure Barbara Ames, and one instrumental featuring Green's piano.

Ames, who appeared in a few movies as a singer - although not at M-G-M - actually is not a bad singer at all. Blane is particularly persuasive in "I'm Yours," although "Out of Nowhere," a tough melody to sing, isn't his finest moment. And Thompson's outings are a delight, particularly "The Steam Is on the Beam". Green wrote that song for a short-lived Broadway musical in 1942. This version was in effect a demo for a version of the song filmed for (but not used in) Ziegfeld Follies.

Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin

The cover notes say that the musicians on the date were from Hollywood studios. It seems likely that they were from the M-G-M orchestra. No arranger credits are given, but the orchestrations are very reminiscent of those heard in M-G-M musicals of the time, and I like to imagine that people like Conrad Salinger and Wally Heglin may have been involved.

Although these songs were projected as an album from the start, they actually did not appear in assembled form until September 1947, although most of the items had been issued as singles by then. This transfer is from the 10-inch LP issued in 1950.

Note (June 2024): The August and September 1944 sessions in Los Angeles actually yielded 10 songs - the eight on the LP and two other Green compositions, "Serenade to a New Baby" and "Hello, My Lover, Goodbye." I've now included the latter two in the download, transferred from a Decca single. All songs have been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK to remastered version

Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane

The death of composer Hugh Martin the other day started me thinking about what I could post as a tribute. Records of the shows and movies he did with Ralph Blane are now on CD – including Athena. Even the vocal LP they did in 1956 – once rare – is on CD.

Well, I decided to go ahead with the latter anyway, because a have a nice vinyl copy and because it is one of my favorite vocal LPs of the era. And if this turns out to be as much or more a tribute to Ralph Blane than Hugh Martin, that’s OK, too, because Blane was a remarkably good singer.

Martin and Blane had an unusual working relationship in that they both wrote words and music, and evidently worked separately on songs, bringing them together to produce the full score. In later years, Martin would claim to have written "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by himself, even though both men’s names were on it.

Whatever the working relationship, they were a very talented pair, being responsible for, among other works, Best Foot Forward, Look Ma, I’m Dancin’, Make a Wish, and Meet Me in St. Louis.

The strength of their songwriting shows in this collection, which includes songs from several of these scores. Most songs are presented by Blane, an exceptional vocalist who is particularly good on the great song "Ev’ry Time." His rendition includes the rarely-heard verse. Martin also is a good singer who is highly effective here as well.

Unsurprisingly, they started out as singers, and Martin appeared with Kay Thompson’s Rhythm Singers in the 30s. You will hear the Thompson influence on their vocal arrangements right from the first song of this LP. They had their own vocal group, the Martins, in the 40s, and there is an unidentified group by that name assisting on this record.

Kay Thompson Singers, 1936 - from left, Ken Lane,
Hugh Martin, Al Rinker, John Smedburgh

When the LP was announced, it was to come out on a label called Elf. Producer Bob Bach and Richard Kollmar must have thought better of that name – it was eventually issued on Harlequin. The Billboard article on the record says that the composers were working on a musical called Three Tigers for Tessie – a title so unlikely that I thought they were pulling the reporter’s leg. But I have since seen other references to that project, although as far as I can tell, it wasn’t ever produced.

The unusual cover has the pink-shirted Blane (left) and Martin surrounded by well-known 50s personalities. Too bad I don’t know all of them! From left we have “The Man in the Hathaway Shirt” (I believe he was Baron George Wrangell), Sammy Davis Jr., model Suzy Parker (I think), unknown man, Blane, columnist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen (Bach was the producer of her TV show, What’s My Line), Martin, Steve Allen, unknown woman, another unknown woman (Lena Horne? she introduced "Love," one of the songs on this LP), Bert Lahr.

The sound on this LP is quite good, and so are the Ralph Burns orchestral arrangements.

UPDATE: Thanks to swift responses from Dave Weiner and Progress Hornsby (two of the better informed people I know), we know have complete IDs for the cover personalities: from left they are “The Man in the Hathaway Shirt” (I believe he was Baron George Wrangell), Sammy Davis Jr., model Suzy Parker, producer Richard Kollmar, Blane, columnist and TV personality Dorothy Kilgallen (Bach was the producer of her TV show, What’s My Line, and Kollmar her husband), Martin, Steve Allen, Rosalind Russell, singer Sallie Blair, Bert Lahr.

Note (June 2024): this LP has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

The French Line

Movies in 3D are not new - there was a short vogue for the format in the 50s. They had the right idea back then, too. Why waste screen time on cute cartoon creatures or spurting blood when you can have Jane Russell's bazooms thrusting out at you?

And that was one of the main attractions of the RKO musical called The French Line, from 1953. As a reviewer on IMDb, who has seen the 3D version, writes, "When the posters outside of the theatre proclaimed 'JR in 3D!', they really meant what they said. During several musical numbers, when she would turn from profile and face the camera with her chest thrust out: watch out! You almost felt you should move away from the screen."

Of course, the soundtrack LP has no such advantages, and we are left with the vocalizations of Russell and Gilbert Roland. While both of them can sing, neither of them is a singer, if you catch the distinction. The songs here are by Josef Myrow (music) and the team of Ralph Blane and Robert Wells (lyrics). We have encountered Myrow here before with his songs for I Love Melvin. Blane is known for many films (Meet Me in St. Louis) and shows (Best Foot Forward). Wells' greatest hit was "The Christmas Song."

The results from this distinguished group are pleasant if hardly compelling. The best tune is probably "Wait Till You See Paris," but in this item Roland manages to be colorless and overwrought at the same time.

Oh well - it's a fairly rare LP, and I imagine connoisseurs of this kind of thing will enjoy the experience.

Note (July 2024) - This has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK