The Early Sylvia Syms, Vol. 3

Following her spells at Atlantic and the small Version label, vocalist Sylvia Syms moved up to a major - Decca, where she would spend four years producing LPs and singles, along with a few guest appearances. Today we will present her first Decca LP (from 1955), arranged by the estimable Ralph Burns, her two guest vocals on Steve Allen albums (from 1954), and - on my other blog - her complete singles from 1956. These posts encompass all her 1954-56 recordings - 21 songs in all.

The biggest collection of tunes is on the LP, so let's start there.

Sylvia Syms Sings

The labels could not help themselves when naming Sylvia's LPs - Atlantic came out with Songs by Sylvia Syms and Decca with Sylvia Syms Sings. Alliteration must have been big back then.

But the important point is not the name on the package, it's the music, and that's excellent. Arranger Ralph Burns had made his name with the Woody Herman band, and was in demand for records until switching over to Broadway in the 1960s and then Hollywood. Burns has been featured on this blog previously backing Teddi King, Lee Wiley, Portia Nelson, the Anita Kerr Singers and Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. For this LP, Burns and Syms came together for three recording dates in August 1955.

Ralph Burns

Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin wrote the brilliant song "My Ship" for the 1941 musical Lady in the Dark. Burns' pastoral arrangement is lovely, even enchanting, but there's nothing here - or in Syms' singing - to signify the neuroses that marked Liza Elliott, the "lady in the dark." Sylvia and Ralph also are of two minds about the pacing.

She seem happier with Burns' harp and flutes in "Then I'll Be Tired of You," another airy arrangement of a fine Arthur Schwartz-Yip Harburg song dating from 1934.

"I Am the Girl" is just perfect, from the devastating verse through the rueful heartbreak that permeates the song. This LP apparently was the first recording of the James Shelton song.

Shelton's other relatively well-known song is "Lilac Wine" - which "makes me see what I want to see; be who I want to be." It's another futile love song, which Sylvia did exceptionally well. I believe this number was first recorded by Eartha Kitt.

"I Don't Want to Cry Any More" is another tale of lost love, handled brilliantly here. It's a great song, composed by the multi-talented film director Victor Schertzinger in 1940.

In later years: Kaye Ballard, Mabel Mercer, Sylvia Syms, Tony Bennett

Vernon Duke and John Latouche were the authors of the sly "Honey in the Honeycomb," which they produced for 1940's Cabin in the Sky, where it was sung on Broadway by Katherine Dunham.

Victor Young and Ned Washington wrote "A Woman's Intuition," possibly for Lee Wiley. (It in the Columbia collection I posted a while back.) These are all superior artists, but the song doesn't amount to much.

Cole Porter wrote the characteristic "Experiment" in 1933 for Nymph Errant. "Be curious, though interfering friends may frown / Get furious, at each attempt to hold you down."

"Let Me Love You" is one of Bart Howard's best-known songs (although overshadowed by the success of "Fly Me to the Moon"). Syms does it well. The song also in on the extensive collection of Howard's songs taken from Portia Nelson's albums, which can be found here.

Harry Woods' "We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye" was a hit in the 1930s - there's a memorable Boswell Sisters recording, for one. Sylvia doesn't quite have the elan of the sisters, but that may be because the tempo is slower than it should be.

"I'm So Happy I Could Cry" was the handiwork of comic Milton Berle (it says here) and pianist Nat Jaffe, with lyrics by Buddy Feyne, who also wrote lyrics for "Tuxedo Junction" and "Jersey Bounce." It's not a bad song, but Syms doesn't sound convinced.

The final song is that great Arlen-Harburg effort, "Down with Love." Sylvia sings the verse, which I don't think I've heard before. She's is in tune with the number, but the beat in her voice is noticeable here.

It may be worth noting that when this LP was released, Decca also came out with Ella Fitzgerald's Sweet and Hot, Jeri Southern's In the Southern Style and Carmen McRae's By Special Request. Tough competition for Syms on her own label!

Two Songs with Steve Allen and Friends

The comic-pianist-songwriter Steve Allen issued two LPs with traditional jazz bands in 1954, recorded live at New York's Manhattan Center. Sylvia fits in well with the two groups - she could be brash and brassy as required. 

She performs one tune with the Lawson-Haggart Jazz Band, the other with a Billy Butterfield band.

With the former aggregation, she sings "Love Me or Leave Me," the Walter Donaldson-Gus Kahn song from 1928, written for Ruth Etting. It's good, but the real attraction is the second song - Sylvia's own composition, "The Only Man Blues," which she handles with great panache.

These songs came out on two LPs - Steve Allen's All Star Jazz Concert, Vol. 1 and 2 - which otherwise contain instrumental numbers that are not included here. The bands sound under rehearsed, but Syms seemed to like appearing with this type of backing - also true, for example, of Lee Wiley.

LINK to Sylvia Syms Sings and two songs with Steve Allen et al (corrected link)

The Complete 1956 Singles

As mentioned, in 1954, Sylvia recorded two songs with Steve Allen and in 1955 the LP Sylvia Syms Sings. For 1956, Decca had her record seven songs for release on singles, which I have collected on my other blog. Fortunately for Syms, her first single was a big chart hit - her take on "I Could Have Danced All Night."

Here's a link to that post:

LINK to the complete 1956 singles

Teddi King - the RCA Victor Singles

After making recordings for Atlantic, Coral and Storyville, the vocalist Teddi King landed at RCA Victor in 1956 - and was immediately successful.

These blogs have already chronicled some of her earlier career:

• Her 1952 dates with George Shearing, along with a few of her earliest recordings with Nat Pierce's band

• Her 1954 Brunswick EP, which recently appeared on my other blog

Now I've gathered together all her singles issued by RCA from 1956-58 - 16 selections in all. Teddi was fortunate that her first record was a hit. Victor continued to give her relatively good material to record over the next few years.

Hugo Winterhalter

Here's a rundown of the RCA sides, which are conducted by Hugo Winterhalter unless otherwise indicated.

In 1956, one of the big openings on Broadway was a showcase for Sammy Davis, Jr. called Mr. Wonderful. Unusually, the title tune was about him, not by him. Olga James had the honor of introducing "Mr. Wonderful" the song, written by Jerry Bock with his early collaborator Larry Holofcener and George David Weiss. King's single release of the song did so well that RCA took out a full-page trade ad proclaiming her "one of the world's great women." Not sure about that, but she did show signs of being one of the world's great pop singers.

"Mr. Wonderful" was backed by the country-tinged waltz "Are You Slipping Thru My Fingers" Not bad, but not "The Tennessee Waltz."

My transfers of the two songs above and the two that follow come from the RCA promotional EP (at left), issued by General Electric to promote its flash bulbs. For any of you young pups out there, indoor photography at the time was illuminated by disposable bulbs, rather than a flash built into your camera or phone. These bulbs had a tendency to explode, which added an air of danger to the process.

The EP's second side was taken up with another successful single coupling. The better known was Steve Allen's "Impossible," a memorable song even if the lyrics are a little contrived. I can't imagine that Steve was unhappy with King's effort.

The final song on the EP was Irving Gordon's "I Can Honestly Say It's a Lie," one of those "sure, we went dancing, but there was no romancing" songs, and a good example of the species.

The always-reliable Ralph Burns provided the orchestral backing for those two songs.

Ralph Burns

The next single was yet another success. Teddi is completely convincing in Gordon Jenkins' "Married I Can Always Get." This paean to female independence came from the composer's newly augmented Manhattan Tower, which was the subject of a television show and a Capitol LP, the latter of which you can find here, freshly remastered.

The single's flip side was another fine item - "Traveling Down a Lonely Road," Nino Rota's theme from the film La Strada, with English lyrics by Don Raye.

Next, we have a surprising recording of an obscure Rodgers and Hart song - "There's So Much More," introduced in 1931's America's Sweetheart, which was only a moderate success. Teddi will have you thinking it's lost gem. Two better known songs from America's Sweetheart - "I've Got Five Dollars" and "We'll Be the Same" - can be found here in recordings made at the time of the production.

Jack Kane

Teddi is at her best in the next song, a standard for once: "Say It Isn't So." This number and the next two are in the hands of Canadian arranger Jack Kane, who had been brought to the US by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. His arrangement is very much like the work of Nelson Riddle.

Kane leaves the Riddle sound behind for "A Ride on a Rainbow," a good new song written by Jule Styne and Leo Robin for the 1957 televised musical of Ruggles of Red Gap, where it was sung by Jane Powell. (Her recording is here.)

King and Kane pull a surprise with the next item - an R&B/R&R song called "Should I Ever Love Again." Kane's backing is the usual simplistic rock 'n' roll formula heard on many records of the time. Teddi, however, has seemingly assimilated many of the R&B vocal techniques of the day, and is almost entirely convincing in her effort.

We're back in pop territory with "Every Woman (Wants to Make Her Man Over)," a cocktail jazz piece by composer Don Gohman and lyricist Mort Goode. It's very much of its time, but even so a good song that is done superbly by King.

"Then It Starts Again" leads off with a quasi-Rachmaninoff piano intro. The key is a bit too high for Teddi; she sounds uncharacteristically ill at ease in this grandiose piece.

The next song is by Gloria Shayne and Noel Paris (possible Shayne's husband Noel Regnery). It's a rollicking piece called "I Was a Child Until Tonight," with a bravura performance by King. Shayne later had hits with "Goodbye Cruel World" and "The Men in My Little Girl's Life."

Teddi is at her best with Johnny Parker's "A Lot in Common," an enjoyable catalog song that finds King sounding exhilarated with her new love. She also gets to show off her imitations of labelmates Perry Como and Harry Belafonte.

Speaking of Perry, King's next song was written by the authors of "Catch a Falling Star," one of the Groaner's greatest hits - Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance. King's "Baisez-Moi" was not among their other hits, but for an assembly-line tune, it's not bad and Teddi is fine, even some with Patti Page-style vocal doubling. [Addendum: friend and francophone Ravel writes the following: "the song «Baisez-moi» is a terrible translation. It should have been something like «Embrassez-moi»... as the other title means «F*** Me» in French... I'm not kidding :-)"]

"Say a Prayer (and Light a Candle)" is very much of its time, a quasi-religious item with King backed by a heavenly choir. The singing is good, but Hugo Winterhalter doesn't seem to know what to do with the simplistic melody.

These transfers are from my collection of King singles; the sound is generally excellent.

LINK

Lee Wiley - The RCA Victor Recordings

If you asked me to choose my favorite Lee Wiley records, her various circa 1940 songbooks would be the winners. But these 1956-57 discs would not be far behind.

Today's post includes all the 26 songs she recorded for RCA Victor during those years. The singer was for the most part in prime form; it is regrettable that she made no more records for 15 years thereafter - and those were disappointments.

The Victors include two complete albums and part of another:

• West of the Moon with Ralph Burns, from 1956

• A Touch of the Blues with Billy Butterfield, from 1957

• Two songs from a 1956 jazz miscellany issued under the name of TV host Dave Garroway. (The LP is included in full. It also has contributions from Barbara Carroll, Deane Kincaide, Helen Ward, Tito Puente and Peanuts Hucko.)

I've added a bonus EP, issued to promote a 1963 fictionalized television drama based on incidents in Wiley's life.

All items are from my collection. We'll start with the complete LPs, then circle back to the Garroway collection and the EP. 

West of the Moon

Wiley is in mostly commanding form throughout West of the Moon. She is surprisingly compatible with modernist arranger-conductor Ralph Burns, whose charts support her well - although I can't help but note that she seemed more attuned to the collective improvisations of the groups that backed her on the songbooks.

And in fact, she starts off with a song beloved of those throwback groups - "You're a Sweetheart," which I was intrigued to learn she had not recorded before. To me, Burns' repetitive arrangement is a disappointment, but the vocal is excellent.

Lee moves on unexpectedly to Kurt Weill's "This Is New," where she sounds uncomfortable with the melody line; a shame, it's a magnificent song from the score by Weill and Ira Gershwin for Lady in the Dark.

She's in more compatible territory with the bouncy "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," a movie song from 1938 by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. There are good solos by Billy Butterfield and Peanuts Hucko.

Lee does the highly sophisticated "Who Can I Turn To?" soulfully, an apt tribute to a 1941 piece by Alec Wilder and William Engvick. It is the first song they wrote together.

Burns wrote a lovely chart for Richard Whiting's "My Ideal," and Wiley graces it by including the wonderfully contrasting verse. This would be near perfection except that Lee was not in prime voice.

She is great, however, in "Can't Get Out of This Mood," which Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh wrote for Ginny Simms and the 1942 film Seven Days' Leave. But be sure to hear Sarah Vaughan's 1950 Columbia recording.

Ralph Burns and Lee Wiley

"East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)" was the biggest hit for short-lived songwriter Brooks Bowman, who composed it for a Princeton show. Burns' gentle arrangement is just right for this song, which is usually done as a rhythm number.

Lee reached back to the 1920s for the Sammy Fain-Irving Kahal "I Left My Sugar Standing in the Rain," almost never heard these days. She includes the verse, which I'm not sure I've heard otherwise. The song has contrived lyrics, but a memorable melody. The singer is near ideal, and the backing is sympathetic. There's a notable solo by Lou McGarity on trombone.

"Moonstruck" is a high quality song written for Bing to warble in 1933's College Humor, but forgotten these days. It is characteristic Crosby material from the time - but Lee is persuasive as well. The arrangement for the Arthur Johnston-Sam Coslow song is subtly done.

Like "This Is New," "Limehouse Blues" was introduced by Gertrude Lawrence. She performed it with Jack Buchanan in the 1921 West End revue A to Z. It's a fascinating song, although wildly dated, and Burns can't resist including the usual chinoiserie. The song is set up beautifully by the seldom-performed verse.

Wiley and Burns also use the verse to good effect in "As Time Goes By" - again, it leads into the the famous chorus very well.

The LP is rounded off by a return to a Dixieland-type arrangement on Fats Waller-Andy Razaf's perennial "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now," an upbeat end to the proceedings.

The recording captures Wiley's voice truthfully, but the engineers did swaddle the band in too much reverb.

LINK to West of the Moon

A Touch of the Blues

I will admit to preferring the second album, A Touch of the Blues, on all counts - the arrangements by Al Cohn and Bill Finegan, Wiley's singing, the material and the quality of the sound.

Most of the songs are not standards, but are all the more welcome because of it. The first three selections date from as long ago as 1909.

Al Cohn

"The Memphis Blues" is a W.C. Handy song with lyrics by George Norton that is seldom if ever heard these days. Lee and the swinging Al Cohn chart make an strong argument for it.

"From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water" is another case. One of Charles Wakefield Cadman's Indianist works, it's a period piece that should have been left in the period. Wiley was of Native American descent, but the material is not suited to her.

When I first saw the title "The Ace in the Hole," I thought of the Cole Porter song that Mary Jane Walsh introduced in Let's Face It. But this is an earlier piece, and an interesting one at that. James Dempsey and George Mitchell were the authors.

Bill Finegan

Louis Armstrong was the fellow behind "Someday You'll Be Sorry," a good tune not often heard. Bill Finegan's arrangement is entirely supportive. Most enjoyable, with Lee at ease.

"My Melancholy Baby" is certainly well known. Dating back to 1912, it was written by Ernie Burnett and George A. Norton (although Ben Light claimed he was the composer). By the time Wiley recorded it, the piece had become something of a punch line because of its use in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born, where a drunken heckler yells for Judy Garland to "sing Melancholy Baby." (Ex-vaudeville trouper William Frawley - Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy - claimed to have introduced the number. For the curious, his recording has appeared here.) As often on these records, Wiley graces the song by including the verse.

Billy Butterfield

She does not do so, however, for "A Hundred Years from Today," although the composition does have a beautiful introduction by trumpeter Billy Butterfield, who leads the band on the LP. This fine song is the handiwork of Victor Young (Lee's early mentor), Ned Washington and Joe Young.

I really enjoy Benny Carter's "Blues in My Heart," which suits Wiley perfectly. Finegan's sparse arrangement is tailored to the subject matter. Butterfield has a striking obbligato.

"Maybe You'll Be There" is one of Rube Bloom's best songs, with a sensitive lyric by Sammy Gallop. Cohn provides a simple arrangement. The present recording is good, but it will not make you forget Sinatra's recording of the same year, made with Gordon Jenkins.

"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," a celebrated number by Arlen and Koehler, is nicely done. This cut is marred by the strangely pinched sound of the muted trumpets.

Frank Loesser and Jule Styne were eminent musicians, but "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" was most effective in its period as a war song. Wiley doesn't seem all that involved.

"Make Believe" is one of the last songs I would have identified with Lee; it's a soaring, quasi-operetta piece that is one of Kern's greatest creations. She does pull it off, but she, Cohn and Butterfield never seem completely happy with the material.

The title song is another matter altogether. "A Touch of the Blues" is a lost gem from Eddie Wilcox, the pianist of the Jimmy Lunceford band, with words by Don George. A good Cohn arrangement, too.

The sound is generally very good, widely spaced early stereo.

LINK to A Touch of the Blues

Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz

The name of this 1956 various artists LP, Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz, was suggested by Garroway being the host of a television show called Wide, Wide World. And the songs do all relate to world locales.

The title is misleading, though, in that it presents a narrow view of jazz, with the exception of Tito Puente's presence. The other artists were from the vocal, Dixieland, swing and piano trio subgenres, and the same musicians play on most of the selections.

Lee Wiley was allotted two of the numbers, both accompanied by Deane Kincaide's Dixieland Band, which also performed two other songs sans vocal.

Deane Kincaide

"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?", a late example of the longing-for-the-South genre that was so common in the first half of the 20th century, is an excellent song, here in a knowing performance by Wiley and Kincaide's forces. The piece comes from 1946, Louis Alter and Eddie DeLange.

We're back in the South for "Stars Fell on Alabama," a 1934 composition by Mitchell Parish and Frank Perkins. Lee is mostly relaxed and effective, although she strains to hit the highest notes. I do enjoy the arrangement, presumably by Kincaide. The vocalist is at her best in these surroundings, I think.

A few words about the other performers and songs:

Deane Kincaide's Dixieland Band - Kincaide's band has lively outings with Jelly Roll Morton's "Chicago Breakdown" and "Kansas City Stomp." Note that the "Dixieland Band" includes Billy Butterfield, Cutty Cutshall, Peanuts Hucko and Lou Stein, who also are in Hucko's Swing Band, discussed next.

Peanuts Hucko

Peanuts Hucko's Swing Band - I don't mean to imply that Hucko's band is bad - far from it. They have spirited outings with the Gus Kahn-Isham Jones "Spain" and Frank Loesser's "Wonderful Copenhagen" (written for the Danny Kaye film of Hans Christian Anderson). I enjoy this band, and may work up a post devoted to the LP that it recorded with Helen Ward.

Helen Ward

Helen Ward - Hucko's band backs ex-Goodman, James and Hal McIntyre singer Ward on two numbers: Louis Alter's "Manhattan Serenade" and the Gershwins' "A Foggy Day." Ward was a characterful singer whom I enjoy, although her intonation and control here were not impeccable.

Tito Puente

Tito Puente - It's good that Victor included Tito Puente under the jazz rubric, because he did profess to produce "jazz with a Latin touch," had just produced an LP called Puente Goes Jazz, and employed many jazz musicians, including Bernie Glow and Dave Schildkraut on this date. The songs are "Flying Down to Rio" by Youmans and Kahn and arranger Chico O'Farrill's "Havana After Dark."

Barbara Carroll

Barbara Carroll - The fluent pianist and her trio do well with "California, Here I Come" and Carroll's own "Paris Without You." She made several LPs for Victor in this period.

Most of these songs were otherwise unreleased, to my knowledge. "Flying Down to Rio" does appear on Puente's 1957 Night Beat LP, and "A Foggy Day" can also be found on Peanuts Hucko's With a Little Bit of Swing, released in 1958.

The sound is excellent on this LP.

LINK to Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz

Something About Lee Wiley

Events in Wiley's life were the subject of the 1963 television drama Something About Lee Wiley, an episode in the NBC anthology series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre.

Piper Laurie played Wiley, with Joy Bryan dubbing her singing voice. I haven't seen the show, but it apparently deals with the time Lee fell from a horse and was temporarily blinded, and with her acrimonious marriage to pianist Jess Stacy.

Chrysler put out a promotional EP for the program. Rather than including songs from the episode, it contains two numbers from the West of the Moon LP - "East of the Sun" and "Can't Get Out of This Mood" - contrasted with two of Lee's earliest sides, both made as a band singer with Leo Reisman - "(Got the) South in My Soul" from 1931 and "Time on My Hands" from 1932.

LINK to Something About Lee Wiley

Portia Nelson Sings Bart Howard

Bart Howard made his living as a cabaret pianist, but he also was a talented songwriter. His "My Love Is a Wanderer" has been heard here in versions by Betty Clooney and Shannon Bolin, but I wanted to offer a more expansive selection of his songs. The best way to do that is via cabaret legend Portia Nelson (1920-2001), who devoted an entire LP to Howard's work, and included his songs on her other two albums. This post gathers those 17 recordings together.

You may never have heard of Howard (1915-2004), but you surely have heard his best known song, "Fly Me to the Moon." Nelson was among the first to record that song, under its original title, "In Other Words." It's on her 1956 LP Let Me Love You: Portia Nelson Sings the Songs of Bart Howard, which forms the basis of today's post.

Bart Howard and Mabel Mercer

Bart Howard (born Howard Joseph Gustafson) left his Iowa home at age 16 to tour with a dance band. He made it to New York in the late 1930s as a café pianist. Café singer Mabel Mercer was the first to sing his songs, and he served as her accompanist from 1946-49.

Portia Nelson (born Betty Mae Nelson in Brigham City, Utah), worked in Hollywood studios as a young woman while singing in night spots on the side, encouraged by the likes of Jane Russell. The co-owner of Manhattan's Blue Angel (or perhaps it was a Columbia exec, sources differ) caught her act and invited her to New York, where she moved in 1950. There, she met Howard, who soon would become the pianist and music director at the Blue Angel night spot, where Nelson often performed.

Nelson quickly attracted notice of influential people. Columbia Records' Goddard Lieberson invited her to make her first LP, 1952's Love Songs for a Late Evening, while featuring her in the label's excellent series of studio cast recordings, including albums devoted to On Your Toes, Roberta and The Boys from Syracuse.

Let Me Love You

By 1956 Nelson was so associated with Bart Howard's songs that she recorded a whole album devoted to them - Let Me Love You - Portia Nelson Sings the Songs of Bart Howard. This came out on the New Sound label, which as far as I can tell, only issued two other LPs, one a classical recital, the other by a singer calling herself "the sweetheart of Sigmund Freud."

Ralph Burns

Fortunately, New Sound had enough wherewithal to employ the talents of the noted arranger Ralph Burns. His scores called for a rhythm section and harp on all numbers, adding flute on some songs, and on others a larger ensemble that included cellos, winds, bass, bongos and celesta. These subtle settings set off Nelson's scrupulous approach to Howard's songs.

Nelson's voice is best described as precise - in phrasing, intonation, rhythm and care for both the words and the melody. This is not a sound that you would hear today outside of a few cabarets. Describing this record in High Fidelity, Robert Kotlowitz wrote that she "has one of the coolest sopranos around, and she handles it with a fresh, probing intelligence." Down Beat reported that she "is a singer of controlled intensity and delicacy of tone, emotional maturity, and musical intelligence."

Let Me Love You includes Howard's best known numbers - the title song, the exhilarating "On the First Warm Day in May," "Let Me Thank You for a Wonderful Summer," "Let Me Love You" and of course "In Other Words." Nelson was one of the first artists to record this famous song. Kaye Ballard got there first - in 1954, when both she and Portia were in the Broadway cast of The Golden Apple.  Also in the cast was Shannon Bolin, whose replacement was the redoubtable Charlotte Rae.

It wasn't until the early 1960s that Peggy Lee, who had included "In Other Words" on her 1960 LP Pretty Eyes, convinced Bart Howard to change the title to "Fly Me to the Moon." Sinatra caught up to it in 1964 for his album with Count Basie, and he and the powerful Quincy Jones arrangement made it famous.

Nelson's recording of "In Other Words" includes the seldom heard verse.

Two Songs from Love Songs for a Late Evening

Also included in the download are the two Howard songs that can be found on Nelson's first LP, recorded for Columbia in late 1952. "Who Wants to Fall in Love" and "My Love Is a Wanderer" are among Howard's best and best-regarded songs,

Portia's backing on this LP and the album below was provided by the Norman Paris Trio, like the singer and composer well known for their work in the clubs of New York. The picture below was taken from an LP recorded at the Blue Angel backing Dorothy Loudon.

The Norman Paris Trio

Three Songs from Autumn Leaves

Nelson's final LP as a cabaret singer was 1957's Autumn Leaves, again with the Norman Paris Trio. Here the singer includes three of Howard's best songs, although they are less well known as some others - "One Look at You," "Alone with Me" and "Take Care of Yourself," a touching song in a sincere, affecting performance.

Autumn Leaves was the product of another short lived label, Dolphin, which specialized in cabaret performers - Nancy Walker, Jane Wilson, Elaine Stritch, Greta Keller, Julie Wilson and Hermione Gingold. Though the label was small, as with the New Sound LP above, the results are impressive in production quality and sound. (All three LPs, in fact, sound great.)

These recordings all come from my collection. I transferred the Dolphin songs from a 1970s reissue. The download includes scans from all three LPs, reviews and photos.

Nelson made only one other LP - the strange Lady Nelson and the Lords, a quasi-rock album from 1968. Portia does not sing on this one, rather plays the electric organ. The disc intersperses her own songs with the hits of the day - "Monday, Monday" and the like.

The decade of the '60s did represent a turning point, both for the singer and for Bart Howard. She moved to Los Angeles and pursued a career as an actor, with some success. Her roles includes Sister Berthe in The Sound of Music, and Sarah in Dr. Doolittle. She was on television quite a bit, notably in All My Children. She also was an author, a writer of musicals, a vocal coach, and a stage actor in such productions as the original cast of the ill-fated The Baker's Wife.

When Howard perhaps unexpectedly became successful, he no longer had to play the piano in cabarets, being able to live on the significant income provided by "Fly Me to the Moon" and his other songs. Perhaps his last big success was "The Man in the Looking Glass," included by Sinatra in his autumnal LP of 1965, September of My Years.

Nelson's final recording was 1996's Portia Nelson: This Life: Her Songs and Her Friends, with Portia, Margaret Whiting, Ann Hampton Callaway, Amanda McBroom, Nancy Lamott and William Roy performing her songs. Quite a life!

Portia Nelson and Jane Russell

Remembering Anita Kerr

Anita Kerr achieved a great deal of acclaim for her singing, arranging and productions during her long career, but even so remains insufficiently recognized.

Kerr, who died last week at age 94, was for 15 years one of the strongest influences on the Nashville sound. But she has never been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Although Kerr is associated with C&W, she spent most of her career in Los Angeles and Europe, and the recordings under her own name are largely straight-ahead pop - even many of those made early in her career when she was resident in Music City.

Kerr's vocal recordings and arrangements -  elegant, understated and even a little melancholy - influenced many other artists. At a time when group vocals could be blaring (the Four Lads) or overtly hip (Lambert, Hendricks and Ross), hers were subtle. Bland? At times.

Her earliest records are from 1950, when she was a session organist for several Victor artists, starting with Eddy Arnold. Her first vocal break in Nashville was recording gospel songs with Red Foley in 1951, and virtually all her earliest records are in that genre, one to which she would often return.

During most of her early years, Kerr was a Decca artist. Later in 1950s she recorded her only album for that company. It is the first of two Kerr recordings transferred for this post, which I believe are her two first LPs. You will note that on both LPs, there is nothing that sounds identifiably country or Nashville. Her own records are squarely in the pop realm, and she would become a very successful mainstream recording artist in the 1960s.

Voices in Hi-Fi

Kerr's groups were generally called the Anita Kerr Singers. That name was on her early Red Foley records and most of her work after she moved to Los Angeles in 1965. Today's LPs, however, came from the Anita Kerr Quartet. 

The Singers were originally an eight-voice ensemble, but Kerr trimmed the group for a 1956 appearance on the television show Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. She took that Quartet that into a New York studio a year later for the Decca release Voices in Hi-Fi. The sessions were in May and September 1957.

The vocalists, who I believe recorded with her throughout much of her time in Nashville, were Dottie Dillard, alto, Gil Wright, tenor, and Louis Nunley, baritone - along with Kerr's soprano.

Most songs on the LP are standards, with a few well chosen exceptions such as "With the Wind and Rain in Your Hair," a very good 1940 pop song. Perhaps the only misfire is "Rockin' Chair," where the group cooing "Fetch me my gin, son, 'fore I tan your hide" doesn't really work.

The instrumental arrangements are by Jack Pleis and Ralph Burns. Both are facile arrangers from the big band tradition. Oddly, in his "For You" arrangement Burns uses a riff also heard prominently in Sinatra's "Witchcraft" - even though the Kerr song was recorded a few weeks before Nelson Riddle conducted the Sinatra session. They both may have borrowed the riff from the same source.

Decca's sound is very good. Their cover is dorky, as usual with that company, with the singers staring wonderingly at the back of a woofer.

Velvet Voices Through the Night

The second offering by the Anita Kerr Singers is Velvet Voices Through the Night, made circa 1959 for the publishing rights organization SESAC and sent to radio stations. Another such LP, by the Elliot Lawrence band, recently appeared here.

All songs on the record were handled by a SESAC-affiliated publisher. SESAC was much smaller than ASCAP or BMI, so that limited the compositions that would qualify. As a result, five of the 12 songs were classical adaptations and presumably newly republished, with a sixth a folk-derived tune.

Kerr is credited with the Beethoven adaptation ("Moonlight"), the Offenbach ("Wondrous Night') and the folk song ("All Through the Night"). The Schubert ("All My Life I've Dreamed of You") is not attributed. It's likely that Kerr handled the instrumental as well as the vocal arrangements for the LP, but the cover is ambiguous on that point.

Of the non-classical items, the best known piece is Heinz Provost's "Intermezzo," from the 1939 film of the same name.

The performances are all very fine, aided by three Nashville colleagues of Kerr - trumpeter Karl Garvin, guitarist Hank Garland and keyboard player Mary Elizabeth Hicks. SESAC's sound, however, is not that good, with slight distortion at climaxes and a great deal of vocal sibilance, which I've tamed to an extent. My pressing was faulty, so I had to resort to lossless versions for most of the first song on each side. The sound is better elsewhere on the record.

There is more about Kerr's career in this New York Times obituary. I hope to devote another post to her later recordings.

The Anita Kerr Singers after moving to RCA in the early 1960s

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