Stuart Foster with Tommy Dorsey, Part 2

This is the second half of our look at the complete Stuart Foster recordings with Tommy Dorsey. Both this and the first installment are courtesy of vocal aficionado Bryan Cooper, who was kind enough to compile all 50 titles for us.

Previously, we covered recordings from 1945 and 1946. Today, we pick up with some additional 1946 dates, then add the 1947 discs that were the last from Foster's stay in the Dorsey band. Those final recordings were on December 27, 1947, just a few days before the second American Federation of Musicians recording ban began.

Completing the 1946 Recordings

Our first selection comes from a July 1946 session that also produced "Gotta Get Me Someone to Love," the desperate-sounding tune that completed Part 1 of this survey. "That's My Home" is another one of the cowhand specialties that were popular then. Tunesmith Sid Robin's first hit was "Just Because," a 1938 country tune that was to become a massive hit for polka-meister Frankie Yankovic in 1948.

In August, Foster and Dorsey produced "There Is No Breeze (To Cool the Flame of Love)," from composer Alex Alstone and lyricists Roger Bernstein and André Tabet, the team that produced the successful "Symphony" in 1945. "There Is No Breeze" did not start the charts on fire, but even so it is a pleasant item, here in an excellent, romantic performance.

The B-side of "There Is No Breeze" was "This Time," a nice if non-memorable Paul Weston tune here in a sterling performance by Foster that is thankfully not undermined by Dorsey's sluggish tempo.

By this time, Dorsey and crew had moved lock, stock arrangements and trombones to Hollywood, where Tommy and brother Jimmy were starring in The Fabulous Dorseys. Tommy made only one commercial recording of music from the film: "To Me," an Allie Wrubel-Don George piece. It was sung by Janet Blair in the pic, but here is done by Foster. Blair, a former Hal Kemp vocalist, played a singer in the film.

Tommy Dorsey, Janet Blair, Stuart Foster

Foster appears in the film; he gets to play it straight throughout "Marie" in the face of that horrifying invention of the time, the band vocal. The whole film is on YouTube (see below); Foster's vocal starts at about 1:12:55. In the clip, you will see a reaction shot from Dorsey's mother, played by Sara Allgood, who within 20 years had gone from the lead in O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock to beaming at "son" Tommy as the band shouts, "Livin' in a great big way, MAMA!"

From The Fabulous Dorseys, we move on to another Irish clan, the McLonergans, and two songs from the splendid Yip Harburg-Burton Lane score for Finian's Rainbow. Foster's first item from the show is "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" The tempo is too slow, but still the performance has a lovely opening with a muted Dorsey, and a good vocal. Foster plays it straight; no dialect, thank goodness.

"Glocca Morra" is a wistful song, but "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" is both wry and sly. Too bad that Dorsey takes it much too slow, missing the humor in the piece.

The 1947 Recordings

For the first 1947 session, Foster tried his hand with two exceptional Cahn-Styne songs from Sinatra's latest film, It Happened in Brooklyn: "Time After Time" and "It Happens Every Spring." As was often the case, the tempo is too slow on both tunes. While these both have their moments, "Time After Time" needs more ardor and "It Happens" more snap.

Also from this January date came one of the less successful classical adaptations of the time - "A Thousand and One Nights" from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Both the arrangement and lyrics are undistinguished, but Foster and Dorsey do what they can.

The bandleader and singer were back in form for two songs recorded later in January. "My Love for You" has a pleasing melody that is right in Foster's sweet spot. But the better item is "Spring Isn't Everything," one terrific song, with a superior melody by Harry Warren and lyrics by Ralph Blane. It was written for Summer Holiday (filmed in 1946 but not released until 1948) but apparently not used. IMDb suggests there is an outtake with Walter Huston gargling the tune.

Acknowledging that the business was not what it once had been, Dorsey broke up his band early in 1947. But he would soon be back in business, and Foster would be with him.

After a several-month hiatus from recording, Dorsey returned in July with his new band and new vocal accomplices for Stuart Foster. They were the Town Criers, comprising four siblings: Elva, Lucy Ann, Gordon and Vernon Polk. Like the Sentimentalists, the Criers were a highly accomplished group, who already had worked with such bands as Kay Kyser and Bob Crosby.

The Town Criers flank Kay Kyser: Vernon, Elva, Lucy Ann, Gordon

After the Town Criers disbanded in 1948, Lucy Ann went on to become vocalist with Les Brown, and to make quite a few recordings. Our own Bryan Cooper, the savant behind these Foster-Dorsey posts, recently produced a superb two-CD set of all Lucy Ann's non-LP recordings. More information is here; you can order from Amazon.

Foster's first effort with the Polks was "I'll Be There," an OK Sam Stept song, taken (again) too slowly. Stept had had a recent success with "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."

Also from that July 1 session came "The Old Piano Tuner," "Deep Valley" and "Just an Old Love of Mine."

"The Old Piano Tuner" (any relation to "The Old Lamplighter" or "The Old Master Painter"?), is more light textured and spirited than some of the other songs in this compilation.

"Deep Valley" is taken from Max Steiner music from the movie of same name, with the addition of Charles Tobias lyrics. (I'm not sure if it was used in the film as such.) Deep Valley has quite the plot, in which Ida Lupino falls in love with an inmate workin' on a chain gang. The movie may have been melodramatic, but the song itself is more lively than much of the fare that Dorsey gave Foster to sing.

"Just an Old Love of Mine" is one of the best songs in the set: a Peggy Lee/Dave Barbour tune that they recorded for Capitol. Foster is impressive, as is Lucy Ann Polk in her solo chorus. An outstanding record.

"Old Chaperon" is in no way outstanfing, although it is well performed. This is one of the many ethnic items of the day, and Foster and Mae Williams enthusiastically adopt the appropriate (or inappropriate, depending on how you look at it) accents. This item has a spoken introduction by Dorsey, which Bryan lifted from one of Dorsey's radio shows. The bandleader had a regular spot on New York's WMCA at the time.

"Judaline" comes from A Date with Judy. It's an OK Don Raye/Gene de Paul song with a charming melody. The pitching is all over the place here.

In September, Dorsey recorded a six-song Tchaikovsky album, with Foster singing on four. Victor called the package Tchaikovsky Melodies for Dancing. I can't say I've had any desire to dance to the Pathetique Symphony, but Dorsey makes it work well enough.

"The Story of a Starry Night," the item derived from the Pathetique, is suited to Foster. "The Things I Love" is a reworking of a Mélodie Tchaikovsky wrote for violin and piano. Harold Barlow and Lewis Harris turned it into a catalog song, not especially well done lyrically.

The most popular of these adaptations was "None but the Lonely Heart," originally a setting by Tchaikovsky of a poem by Goethe, here wrung through the hands of Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. I do like the chugging dance beat, although it doesn't really go with the sentiment that "None but the lonely heart can know my sadness."

The final item was popularized by Larry Clinton, who had produced perhaps the first big-band classical hit with "My Reverie" in 1938. His 1939 follow-up, "Our Love," was adapted from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet. The 1947 Dorsey version starts with the bandleader's trombone, and Foster handles the superfluous words in good fashion.

The September sessions also encompassed a tune called "Let's Pick Up," a generic ballad with  rhyming-book lyrics, although in a good performance by the vocalist and band.

In contrast, the next recording session featured one of the best songs of the era. "Where Is the One," recorded in December, is a brilliant Alec Wilder song with a superior Edwin Finckel lyric. The Clark Sisters (billed as such, not under their former Dorsey name "The Sentimentalists") lead off. The Clarks are always welcome, but I am not sure it was the best idea to start the arrangement with them. That sets an impersonal tone for a very inward song. Foster is outstanding here, on one of his last dates with Dorsey.

The next item couldn't be more different. Dorsey and arranger Sy Oliver decided to have fun with the oldie "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." Some clipped phrasing from tightly muted brass lends an old-timey air to the proceedings. Foster plays it straight in the face of the dreadful vocal counterpoint from the band. There is a real, live instrumental solo on this side, perhaps the only non-TD chorus in this set. Too bad it's not one of the best I've heard from the usually reliable tenor Boomie Richman.

For Foster's final Dorsey record, Tommy sent him back into Sinatra territory with "The Miracle of the Bells," the theme music from one of Frank's least remembered films, in which he plays a priest (!), not as successfully as Crosby's forays into the same territory. The music here is by Pierre Norman, with words from Russell Janney, who wrote the story. Sinatra himself did not record the tune, turning his attentions instead to the torporific "Ever Homeward," one of Cahn and Styne's few stinkers.

That effort completes our survey of Foster's recordings with Dorsey. Thanks again to Bryan Cooper for his contribution, which allows us to hear this talented singer during the period of his greatest popularity. For more of Foster, please see this post covering his later singles - and of course the first installment in the Dorsey series.

 

Foster with vocalist Martha Wright and DJ William B. Williams

Stuart Foster with Tommy Dorsey, Part 1

Not long ago, I devoted a post to a fine, but now forgotten singer, Stuart Foster. That post covered much of his career, while leaving out the period of his greatest success, when he was Tommy Dorsey's band singer in 1945-47.

At that time, I glibly asserted that Foster's Dorsey oeuvre is well-known, which elicited a gentle riposte from friend and vocal maven Bryan Cooper, who has contributed to the blog over the past several years. He insisted that Foster's many Dorsey recordings are too little known, and offered to compile them for me.

This then, is the first installment of two devoted to Foster's vocals with Dorsey, which total 50 recordings. Today we have 25 records made in 1945 and 1946, compiled by Bryan and cleaned up by Bryan and me.

The vocalist was highly regarded during this period, but that didn't lead to solo success after he left Dorsey, unlike Tommy's previous star vocalists Frank Sinatra and Dick Haymes. But Foster's subsequent career was addressed in the previous post, and today is devoted to his excellent work with Dorsey's band. 

About Stuart Foster

A few notes from my previous post about this vocalist:

Stuart Foster (1918-68), is a former big-band vocalist who was not even that well known during his heyday, and recorded only sporadically under his own name. He was featured, however, on records by bandleaders as diverse as Guy Lombardo and Gordon Jenkins, and had a long career as a studio singer. Foster was much more talented than his reputation would suggest, as I hope you will agree after sampling his output.

Foster's first professional gig was as a singer for the Ina Ray Hutton band, starting in 1940. The download includes a May 1946 interview with George Simon of Metronome magazine, where Foster tells the story of his stage name. Born Tamer (or Tamir) Aswad to a Syrian-both father and American mother, he acquired the name "Stuart Foster" upon joining Hutton's band. She introduced him as such on a broadcast, neglecting to tell "Stuart" of his new name ahead of time. He went with it.

When Hutton disbanded in 1944, Foster joined Lombardo, then Dorsey in early 1945, where he stayed until 1948.

Foster had a strong voice, even throughout his range, excellent diction and superior intonation. While a forthright singer, he also was sensitive to words.

In this post, you will perhaps note that he was a polished singer from the beginning of his stay with TD, gaining more confidence as time went on.

Stuart Foster and family

The 1945 Recordings

Dorsey had run into trouble finding a steady male vocalist before Foster joined him in time for a March 8, 1945 recording date. That session produced a recording of "June Comes Around Every Year," an indisputable assertion from the team of Mercer and Arlen that was written for the film Out of This World. 

Unlike most of his Dorsey recordings, Foster is behind the beat here. He told George Simon that he had to learn to sing on the beat during his tenure with the decidedly choppy Lombardo band (an experience he did not enjoy), but here he had slipped into his old habits.

Stuart also recorded Out of This World's better remembered title song, although not until the following month. "Out of this World" is a beautiful song, here marred by an distracting Gus Bivona clarinet obbligato. In the film, Eddie Bracken, who played a band singer, had the good fortune to have his warbling dubbed by Bing Crosby. (The movie was a release from Paramount Studios, where Bing was king.)

To return to Dorsey's March recordings: Tommy and his new vocalist were back in the New York studios on March 9, a date that yielded the excellent "A Friend of Yours" and "Nevada." The former song was from a film that Crosby produced, The Great John L, which predictably had music by Burke and Van Heusen. In the movie, "A Friend of Yours" was assigned to Linda Darnell's character, dubbed by Trudy Erwin. Foster's singing is lovely, befitting this beautiful song and lush arrangement.

For some reason, Dorsey resurrected "Nevada" from a two-year old Freddy Martin film, What's Buzzin', Cousin. (We can be thankful that he did not choose "Three Little Mosquitos (Hitler, Tojo and Benito)" from that same score.) "Nevada," in contrast, isn't a bad song.

"Nevada" was Foster's first recording with Dorsey's vocal group, the excellent Sentimentalists, a name that Dorsey had given to the Clark Sisters upon adding them to his troupe in 1944. They replaced the Pied Pipers, who went solo. The quondam Sentimentalists later returned to performing under their family name, making four LPs in the 1950s. They had wanted to continue using the "Sentimentalists" name after they left his band, but the bandleader's felt the name was too associated with him; after all he was the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" and his theme song was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You." 

The Clark Sisters. This is from their 1959 barbershop-style LP Beauty Shop Beat, which explains the panoply of products

Switching back to the April session, "You Came Along (From Out of Nowhere)" is from the film You Came Along, sung there by Helen Forrest and Lizabeth Scott (herself a passable vocalist who later made an LP). Before the film came out, the song was called "Out of Nowhere" and had been introduced under that title by Bing in 1931. It's one of the best numbers that Johnny Green and Edward Heyman ever wrote. After You Came Along (the film) left the nation's theaters, "You Came Along" (the song) reverted to being called "Out of Nowhere."

"There You Go," from a May 14 session, is a little-remembered but pretty tune by Fud Livingston with words by Edna Osser. Livingston himself did the arrangement. He's best known for "I'm Thru With Love," while Osser's greatest hit was "I Dream of You (More than You Dream I Do)," which Dorsey had recorded in 1944.

Later in May, Foster was back before the microphones for "In the Valley," which Mercer and Warren wrote for The Harvey Girls, where it was performed by the incandescent Judy Garland. It's not the best remembered number from the film, but still a good one.

Billboard ad, October 6, 1945

In September, Dorsey and Foster were back in the land of Bing, with "Aren't You Glad You're You," a Burke and Van Heusen tune from Crosby's The Bells of St. Mary's. "Aren't You Glad," possibly a Bill Finegan arrangement, starts with a muted Dorsey. Unlike the recordings we've covered to this point, the bandleader did not employ strings or woodwinds on this date.

"Never Too Late to Pray" is another Fud Livingston tune. The words (from the "Mammy-Alabamy" school of faux-Dixie dislocution) are by Willard Robison, who apparently did not record the number. Foster plays it straight, thank goodness.

Also from this second September session is the fine "A Door Will Open" with music by John Benson Brooks, another one-time Dorsey arranger. Brooks' "Just as Though You Were Here" had been a hit for Dorsey and his then-vocalist Frank Sinatra. The lyricist of "A Door Will Open" was Don George. Although the arrangement does not utilize strings, the tinkling of a celeste and the contributions of the Sentimentalists give it a romantic feel.

"That Went Out with Button Shoes" is a novelty, in contrast with Foster's previous numbers. It employs 40s hipster lingo that is as quaint to us as button shoes were back then. It's not a bad song, actually. Foster shares it with Pat Brewster and the Sentimentalists.

The Dorsey Show Boat album cover

Next on the schedule were November 1945 sessions devoted to Dorsey's recordings of songs from Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat. Tommy did six numbers for an album produced in the run-up to the opening of Show Boat's 1946 Broadway revival. Four have vocals by Stuart Foster: "Make Believe," "You are Love," "Nobody Else But Me," and "Ol' Man River." Kern wrote "Nobody Else But Me" for the revival. It was to be his last composition; he died in November 1945, just a few weeks before Dorsey and Foster recorded this valedictory song.

Dorsey's Show Boat recordings are what you might expect from a dance band, but neither the arrangements nor Foster's vocals show this team at its best.

1946 Recordings

From Kern, Dorsey moved on to Louis Alter, a good songwriter whose instrumental compositions have appeared on this blog twice before. "If I Had a Wishing Ring," with lyrics by Maria Shelton, is pleasant, but not of the quality of Alter's best songs, such as "Nina Never Knew," "My Kinda Love" and "You Turned the Tables on Me." Andy Russell introduced "Wishing Ring" in the film Breakfast in Hollywood.

Billboard, February 16, 1946. Victor had apparently run out of Dorsey poses. (See ad above.)

Also during that January 1946 session, Foster recorded Ivor Novello's wistful wartime song, "We'll Gather Lilacs," from the composer's West End success Perchance to Dream. This gorgeous number was a deserved success for the Dorsey-Foster team.

Later in January, the band recorded a Cahn-Styne-Harry Harris song, "Where Did You Learn to Love," which was popular with many recording artists of the time. It's not one of the best known works from the prolific Styne and Cahn, but even so has a agreeable melody complemented by a good arrangement and vocals from Stuart and the Sentimentalists.

For March's "There's No One But You," Dorsey paired Foster with his small instrumental group, the Clambake Seven. That was quite a starry ensemble, boasting trumpeters Ziggy Elman and Charlie Shavers, clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and tenor sax Boomie Richman. Dorsey, however, did not give his sidemen much room to shine on the vocal numbers. This is a good Redd Evans song, and a worthy performance.

From April, "Like a Leaf in the Wind" is by Marjorie Goetschius. Her best known song is "I Dream of You," which Dorsey had recorded with Freddie Stewart. As usual, the Dorsey team's performance shows the song in its best light.

Billboard ad, June 15, 1946

A date later in April 1946 yielded three Foster vocals. "Remember Me" is not one of Harry Warren's greater efforts, but it is a much better song than I would have expected, being only familiar with it from the Hal Kemp-Skinnay Ennis recording from 1937. Eschewing Ennis' enervated phrasing, Stuart's romantic vocals flatter both the tune and its Al Dubin lyrics. The Dorsey single was occasioned by the song's use in the 1946 film Never Say Goodbye.

"That Little Dream Got Nowhere" is by Cahn and Van Heusen, and comes from the film Cross My Heart (not "Your Heart" as the label has it), where it was introduced by the hyperkinetic Betty Hutton. Foster can't match her energy, but can match her vocal skill. This is one of his best performances. Here (and elsewhere), you can hear echoes of his early idol, Bob Eberly.

"I Don't Know Why" is a nice performance of an old classic. It dates from 1931 when it was a hit for Wayne King among others. In 1946, it was featured in the movie Faithful in My Fashion and did well for Dorsey and company.

Allie Wrubel's "Gotta Get Me Somebody to Love" was featured in 1946's Duel in the Sun and recorded by many artists. It's a cowpoke song, but done well here. Foster was more convincing with this type of material than, say, Sinatra, although the champ was Crosby, who was an experienced tune wrangler. 

The recording comes from a July 1946 session in Hollywood. Tommy had moved out there to open a ballroom and to film The Fabulous Dorseys with his fabulous brother Jimmy. More about that film and the balance of Stuart Foster's Dorsey recordings in Part 2 of this collection.

These recordings come from several sources, some of them lossy, but the sound is generally very good. Beside quite a few contemporary ads, articles and reviews, the download includes a discography of Foster's Dorsey recordings, plus 1945 and 1946 Dorsey chronologies from Dennis Spragg of the Glenn Miller Archive.

Thanks again to Bryan for supplying these recordings! Part 2 soon.

Addendum: Bryan has sent along a photo of the Clark Sisters when they were Tommy Dorsey's Sentimentalists. See below.

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

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

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

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

'A Song Is Born'

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

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

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

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

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

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

You see Virginia Mayo; you hear Jeri Sullivan

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

Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman
and Louis Armstrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 1950s and 'Jenny Barrett'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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