Irish Songs from Dick Haymes

When I pulled my copy of this Dick Haymes LP down from the shelf, all I had in my hand was the cover. The disc had departed for places unknown. Fortunately, my friend John Morris supplied his transfer of this fine album of Irish songs, which then I cleaned up, adding scans of my forlorn cover.

To fill out the program, I've added three Irish numbers that Haymes sang in the 1944 film Irish Eyes Are Smiling, sourced from the soundtrack and V-Discs.

Dick Haymes

Although Haymes was born in Argentina, he was of Anglo-Irish descent, his mother having been born in Ireland. He made only this one album of Irish songs; it is quite a good one.

The back cover of the LP tells us that Decca decided to make an Irish-themed album with Haymes following the success of his recording of "How Are Things in Glocca Mora?", from the then-current Broadway show Finian's Rainbow. The "Glocca Mora" 78, which came out in early 1947, was coupled with "'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream." The balance of the LP was recorded late that same year, in time to beat the union recording ban that went into effect on New Year's Day 1948. I believe the set debuted as a 78 album in 1948, followed by this 10-inch LP in 1949.

The fare on the album is somewhat unusual - it avoided the popular favorites like "Galway Bay." Instead, Decca reached back to songs that had been recorded by John McCormack decades earlier, while adding one song from a then-current movie.

"Glocca Mora" and its discmate were arranged by Gordon Jenkins. The balance of the numbers were led by Victor Young. Here are a few notes on the selections.

"'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream" is a memorable song dating from 1916. It was the first hit for durable lyricist Al Dubin, working with John O'Brien and Rennie Cormack. The song was featured by Blanche Ring in the revue Broadway and Buttermilk. The song title has more recently lent itself to the book 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920. 

"There's a Dear Little Plant" is usually called "The Dear Little Shamrock," and was recorded under that title by John McCormack in 1910. It dates from the 18th century and has been attributed to Andrew Cherry.

"Eilleen Allanna" is another McCormack song, released in 1913. The song dates from 1873, and seems to have been written in America by J.R. Thomas and E.S. Marble.

"My Snowy Breasted Pearl," written by George Petrie, dates back to 1855. It was recorded by Paddy Reilly, The Wolfe Tones and McCormack, to name a few.

"The Blarney Roses" is another traditional song, with words by Alex Melville and music arranged by D. Frame Flint. It was recorded by George O'Brien in 1926.

"Hush-a-Bye (Wee Rose of Killarney)" comes from the 1947 film My Wild Irish Rose, where it was sung by Dennis Morgan. The music was by M.K. Jerome; lyrics by Ted Koehler.

"The Ould Plaid Shawl" dates to 1895, when it was published as by Francis Fahy and William Glancy. It was interpolated into the Broadway show Peggy Machree in late 1908 and recorded by McCormack the following year. At that time the song was credited to Fahy and Clarence Lucas. When Haymes got a hold of it, the credits were Fahy and Battison Haynes. Fahy wrote the words; the music attribution may relate to different arrangements of the same folk-derived tune, or even different melodies - I'm not sure.

Bonus Songs from Irish Eyes Are Smiling

I mentioned that the bonus items were all featured in Haymes' 1944 film Irish Eyes Are Smiling, a biopic about songwriter Ernest R. Ball. As far as I can tell (and I am no discographer), Decca only had the singer record "Let the Rest of the World Go By" from that film's songs. So my bonus selections of three Irish-themed numbers are from different sources.

The first item is Haymes' brief recording of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling," which comes from the soundtrack.

I have taken the other two from V-Disc sources. The first, "A Little Bit of Heaven," also is supposedly from the soundtrack - or so the label and V-Disc discography seem to indicate. However, IMDb suggests that Haymes did not sing the piece in the movie.

That also is true about the final selection, "Mother Machree," which comes from an unknown source per the discography. My guess is that both songs were taken from radio programs of the time.

The sound on all these items is reasonably good, although you may notice some background occasionally on the LP and V-Discs.

Thanks again to John for his transfer of the LP!

A 1946 ad in which Haymes, Jenkins and Helen Forrest
demonstrate their enthusiasm about spark plugs

Carl Fischer's 'Reflections of an Indian Boy'

Carl Fischer had a dream of finishing a suite of music reflecting his Native American heritage. He never was to fulfill that dream during his brief lifetime, but after his death, his powerful friends in the music business - Frankie Laine, Victor Young and Paul Weston - brought his ideas to life in the beautiful composition, Reflections of an Indian Boy, released by Columbia on LP in 1956.

Fischer (1912–1954) - who, despite his German name, was three-fourths Cherokee - was best known as Laine's pianist. He also was a talented composer, writing the songs "We'll Be Together Again," "Who Wouldn't Love You," "It Started All Over Again" and "You've Changed," all of which became popular. But his ambition was to compose a more elaborate work, and he had been working toward that end at the time of his death. The suite, however, had never been written down - it existed only in a piano recording made for composer Victor Young. After Fischer's death, Marvin Wright transcribed the tape, Young orchestrated it, and Laine set about arranging a performance. Only a few months later, he succeeded - a premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra during its summer season, Victor Young conducting.

Carl Fischer, Frankie Laine and a gold record -
I believe for their "We'll Be Together Again"

Reflections of an Indian Boy is a lovely piece of music, handled beautifully in this performance conducted by Paul Weston. The cover calls it a "tone poem," but it actually is a series of tone poems illustrating the young man's life, presumably "reflecting" the composer's own experiences. It does not use Native American musical themes, and there is little here that would be identified as stereotypically "Indian." It is most similar to the compositions of Ferde Grofé and reminiscent of film music, surely because of Young's orchestrations.

Columbia put its promotional might behind the LP, and it sold well. That said, far more people have heard it through its second life as the soundtrack to a popular outdoor drama, Tecumseh!, which has been performed for the past 45 years at the Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre in south central Ohio. The producer of Tecumseh! was familiar with Weston's record, and decided to use it as a backdrop to the outdoor drama he was planning on the life of the Shawnee leader. For this purpose, he enlisted Erich Kunzel, the longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, to make a new recording with the London Symphony, which is available today via Amazon and presumably other sources.

This post is the result of a suggestion (really more of a plea) from David Federman, and is a collaboration between me and my friend Ernie, who often contributes materials to the blog. The flawless transfer is Ernie's work; the scans are my doing. Columbia's sound is excellent.

Fischer and Laine at a recording session

The Young Carol Bruce

Today I want to look at the early career of Carol Bruce, a talented singer and actor who has appeared on this blog a few times before.

Born in 1919, she first gained notice as a teenage vocalist with Larry Clinton's band. Fortunately, YouTube has a good quality 1938 clip of her with Clinton in "Stop and Reconsider. Bruce had considerable presence even at that early age.



Nineteen-forty was a big year for the young performer. She made her Broadway debut in the Irving Berlin musical Louisiana Purchase, where she made a big splash with her number "The Lord Done Fixed Up My Soul."

Still from Louisiana Purchase, Bruce at center

Life Magazine was so impressed that it devoted two photo spreads to her that year - in addition to a separate article about Louisiana Purchase.

Decca records signed the young vocalist later that year, pairing her with arranger Harry Sosnik. Among her first records were covers of two English hits: "Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye," associated with Gracie Fields, and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," a Vera Lynn specialty. Bruce copes well with Sosnik's leaden two-beat arrangements.

For her next assignment, Decca changed tack by assigning Bruce eight Latin-flavored numbers, directed by one of the label's top talents, Victor Young. Decca then marketed the set as the Carol Bruce Souvenir Album that is the basis of today's post. (Note: the Discography of American Historical Recordings claims that Sosnik directed these sides. However, the Decca album and labels credit them to Young, and the arrangements sound nothing like Sosnik's earlier charts for Bruce.)

Bruce does well with this material, although she had not yet developed the abundant personality that shines through in her later recordings, such as her 1958 Tops LP, which first appeared here in 2011 and which I have newly remastered.

Today's download includes several bonuses, including the Decca recordings of "Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," as well as one of Life Magazine's features on the singer and two songs from Louisiana Purchase. While there was no cast album for the musical, Bruce recorded the title song and "The Lord Done Fixed Up My Soul" for the small Schirmer label. Perhaps fittingly, Bruce's rendition of her big number is reminiscent of the great New Orleans singer Connie Boswell. (I haven't been able to find out of Schirmer Records was associated with the publishing company of the same name. However, the songs from Louisiana Purchase were published by Berlin's own company, not Schirmer.)

In 1941, Paramount Pictures bought Louisiana Purchase as a vehicle for its big star Bob Hope, who took over the William Gaxton role. Victor Moore, Vera Zorina and Irène Bordoni repeated their stage roles. Paramount replaced Bruce with another singing actor, Dona Drake, but "The Lord Done Fixed Up My Soul" was only heard in instrumental form.

Meanwhile, Bruce did make it to Hollywood that same year, via a three-film contract with Universal Studios. She sang two songs in This Woman Is Mine, released in August, and another two in Keep 'Em Flying, a November release featuring the insufferable Abbott & Costello. Bruce's big number in the latter film was "You Don't Know What Love Is," a superb Don Raye-Gene de Paul composition that has since become a standard. Universal dropped the song from Keep 'Em Flying, but then included it in Bruce's third and final film for the studio, Behind the Eight Ball, where she was saddled with the nitwit Ritz Brothers.

Although Universal cut "You Don't Know What Love Is" from Keep 'Em Flying, it did put out a promotional record of Bruce's rendition, backed with a number from her co-star, Martha Raye, also dropped from the production. (At least the studio was consistent.) You can find that record on my companion blog.

As Mama Carlson

Bruce eventually had a long career in Hollywood, and today is far better known as an actor than a singer. She is well remembered as "Mama Carlson" in the American television show WKRP in Cincinnati (although not by me - I never watched the show).

Most of today's selections were found during my recent descent into the bottomless pit of Internet Archive, but all have been remastered and are in good to excellent sound.

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Getting Sentimental with Dick Haymes

I recently remastered an early Dick Haymes LP, and that experience was enough to motivate me to transfer another.

Here is the result: Sentimental Songs, a 10-inch album from 1951, although the recordings were taken from 1943-47 Decca singles. And while the title promises sentimentality, it would be more accurate to simply call them love songs.

Such ballads were a specialty of the artist, and no one did them better. His only peer was Sinatra.

1943 trade ad - Haymes was popular with record buyers,
moviegoers and hair product manufacturers

The earliest songs include "You'll Never Know," a giant seller for Haymes. On this and "It Can't Be Wrong," he was accompanied solely by a vocal group, the Song Spinners. The songs were cut during the first of two recording bans imposed by the imperious Musicians Union head, James Petrillo, meaning no saxes, strings or other instrumentalists. Just singers. Sinatra had a competing version with the Bobby Tucker Singers.

The accompaniment to the Haymes record is interesting. In it, the Song Spinners, a white group, adopted some of the stylistic cues of the contemporary black groups, notably bum-bum-bums from the bass and falsetto vocalise.

All other songs save one have backing by Decca's Victor Young. These include "Our Waltz" and "I Don't Want to Love You (Like I Do)" from 1944, and "Love Letters," "Till the End of Time" and "The Night Is Young (and You're So Beautiful)" from 1945. The impossibly romantic "Love Letters" is Young's own composition; it is the title tune from the film of the same name. Young also did a good Xavier Cugat impression with his arrangement on "The Night Is Young."

The final song in this collection is 1947's "What'll I Do," with a characteristic backing from Gordon Jenkins. It isn't far removed from the charts he wrote for Sinatra a decade later.

Please note that "Our Waltz" also appears on the Serenade album I recently reuploaded.

Excellent sound from this early LP. Hope you enjoy Haymes as much as I do.

Lauritz Melchior in 'The Student Prince'

Lauritz Melchior was renowned as the world's greatest heldentenor before he decided in the mid-40s to moonlight as a benevolent papa figure in Hollywood comedies, a la S.Z. ("Cuddles") Sakall.

Going Hollywood was the thing for the leading opera figures at the time. We have already explored the time spent in tinseltown by Ezio Pinza, who was more successful on the West Coast than Melchior.

Nonetheless, Melchior did make a few films, and I will have the soundtrack recording from one of them here soon. Today, however, we have one of his other side trips into non-Wagnerian roles - Sigmund Romberg's operetta The Student Prince.

Lauritz Melchior

This comes from 1950 - about the same time that Melchior was getting bounced from the Met after a disagreement with mercurial Met maestro Rudolf Bing about money, rehearsals or something. No benevolent papa was Bing.

Was Melchior as suited for Romberg as Wagner? Not really. He tends to overwhelm the songs, and his voice, while still huge and golden, is not as effortless as it once seemed. Still, I found this version very enjoyable. It features Jane Wilson, who appeared in a number of operetta records of the time, and Lee Sweetland, a fine studio singer. Directing the effort is Hollywood composer Victor Young, who uses his own orchestrations.

Jane Wilson

But Melchior's is the name above the title, and at this time he possibly was more interested in fame than art. Among his other exploits of the time were:

• Endorsing gasoline and after shave, hopefully not getting them confused. Also beer (see below).

• Singing "Open the Door, Richard" on the radio.

• Testifying in court that the Korn Kobblers produced music, not noise, after they were charged with disturbing the peace.

Melchior also made single records for M-G-M when he was making movies for that company's studio, and I have one of them coming up on my other blog. Also, as mentioned, music from one of Melchior's movies - Two Sisters from Boston - will be heard here at some future time.

LINK (May 2024 remastering in ambient stereo)

1948 ad

Night Music with Victor Young

Composer and arranger Victor Young made a long series of single records for Decca that were periodically compiled into LPs. This one, titled Night Music, is from 1954.

Many of those singles consisted of film music, and here we have, among others, Young's hit version of the theme from The High and the Mighty (Dimitri Tiomkin), Smile (Charlie Chaplin), the Rear Window theme (Franz Waxman), and Magnificent Obsession (Frank Skinner).

The High and the Mighty has an unearthly quality that, while suited to its theme of a imperiled transoceanic flight, also was quite common in post World War II music. Here it is conveyed by Muzzy Marcellino's eerily perfect whistling; more often it was embodied in celestial choirs or sopranos like Loulie Jean Norman. A similar influence could be seen in the commercial art of the time, and the back cover of this LP (below) is a good example. As for the film, the theme of coming through an ordeal safely - perhaps through the intercession of some higher power (or at least John Wayne) - was strong in a world that had endured the Great Depression followed by a world war and was very much imperiled by the threat of nuclear destruction.

REMASTERED VERSION

Written on the Wind; Four Girls in Town

One more in our ongoing series of Hollywood soundtracks from the 1950s on 12-inch LPs. This one brings together several of the biggest names in film scoring.

The music for Written on the Wind seems to have been written by committee. The main theme, here in a pseudoemotive version by the Four Aces, is by Victor Young, with words from that lyric machine Sammy Cahn. The "background music," which presumably means everything else, is by Frank Skinner. Everything, that is, except for the Nacio Herb Brown standard Temptation, which gets inserted here and there.

The real attraction, at least for me, is the other side of the record, which contains a composition called Rhapsody for Four Girls in Town, based on Alex North's music for the movie. The sleeve gives an orchestration credit to the young composer Henry Mancini. Playing the piano is yet another notable, Andre Previn. The music has echoes of everything from Bernstein's West Side Story music to Copland and Gershwin, all in the characteristic Mancini sound of the period. Most enjoyable.

Short technical note: this record says it was processed with the RIAA curve. True on the first side, but not on the second. That side sounds shrill when you play it back that way. I have corrected for that anomaly - clever, eh?

REMASTERED VERSION

Omar Khayyam; The Mountain

Continuing our series of film soundtracks on 12-inch records, here are two fine scores from 1956-57.

Victor Young is always terrific; in the Omar Khayyam score he is inspired by Borodin and Russian composers. Quite the cover illustration, too.

You don't hear much these days about Daniele Amfitheatrof, but The Mountain is an atmospheric score that is most enjoyable and must have fit the tale of a mountain rescue quite well.

This is in response to a request at Mel's place on Franklynot.

Victor Young - For Whom the Bell Tolls and Golden Earrings

These were the first recordings of Victor Young soundtracks to be issued. I am not certain, but I strongly suspect that For Whom the Bell Tolls appeared in a 78-rpm set soon after the 1943 film appeared, with the same being true after Golden Earrings came out in 1947. This LP issue is from 1949.

Both have memorable themes and a strong if slightly fusty atmosphere. Victor Young was a great talent; we've seen quite a bit of him around here, and will see more, no doubt.

I've transferred these sides as lossless files to preserve the character of the recordings. This post is in response to a request from some folks over at franklynot.

NEW LINK

The Brave One

Here is a terrific Victor Young score ripped from a pristine pressing. No idea who conducts this one - there is no conductor listed, although the orchestra is the Munich Symphony, which I think is a pseudonym.

Posting this as a result of a request from Princes Valiant over at Franklynot.

NEW LINK

Irene Dunne Sings Kern

I've very excited about this post. It contains seven of the eight commercial sides that Irene Dunne recorded. Six are from the 1941 Decca 78 album depicted above, with one from an LP reissue of a 1935 Brunswick record. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate the flip side of the latter record. I don't believe the Decca sides have been reissued.

The repertoire consists entirely of the music of Jerome Kern, notable because Dunne was one of the stars of the 1930s film versions of Roberta and Show Boat.

These days, Dunne is mostly remembered as the wonderfully funny lead in such screwball comedies as the Awful Truth, ironic because she started out as a singer and somewhat reluctantly veered into comic roles, at which she excelled. Also ironic because her persona remains compelling to us in those roles, even after 70 years, but as an interpreter of Jerome Kern, styles have moved on so drastically that it is easy to find her singing style unconvincing, even stilted - which is the last thing you would call her comic acting style.

As with all styles whose time has passed, you have to give up your preconceptions of how this music ought to sound and remember that this is the way (or at least one way) that Kern expected it to sound.

The accompaniments are by Victor Young on the Kern songs above, by Nat Shilkret on the final song.

SECOND NEW LINK

Ginger Rogers as Alice

At one time, Walt Disney contemplated a version of Alice in Wonderland with Ginger Rogers as a life-action Alice interacting with cartoon characters.

Well, that version never got made, but these records did, in 1944, featuring Rogers and the songs and other music that apparently had been written for the film by children's music specialist Frank Luther and composer Victor Young.

This information comes from an excellent Alice in Wonderland site, which shows the much more colorful artwork that was on the original 78 rpm album - artwork thatwas done by Disney. What you see here is the 10-inch LP reissue from 1949.

To portray Alice, Rogers seems to be doing a sort-of Shirley Temple imitation and speaking as rapidly as possible. An unusual approach. But what's more unusual is the voice of the White Rabbit - it is, with perhaps deliberate irony, Arthur Q. Bryan doing his Elmer Fudd voice. Children must have found this very confusing!