Gordon MacRae on Musicraft

Musicraft was a short-lived postwar label that had a starry roster while it was in business, including Duke Ellington, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaughan, Artie Shaw and the subject of today's post, Gordon MacRae.

These recordings were made in 1946, near the beginning of MacRae's career, and a few years after his first break, when he joined the cast of the hit Broadway play Junior Miss. They came before his first film role and his first popular recording success, which was with Capitol.

A contemporary reader of Billboard reviews would never have pegged him for stardom. The Billboard reviewers considered these Musicraft singles to be dull and uninspired. This prompted MacRae to write in, not to complain but to admit that the criticism was "sound". This was sporting of him, but unwarranted. Sure, he sounds like a combination of Dick Haymes and Buddy Clark, but there is nothing wrong with that. And sure, he could have been more involved with the material. But that's hardly unusual in this standard pop repertoire. To me, he sounds like someone with a lot of talent who had yet to find his own style.

You can judge for yourself by listening to this selection of MacRae's Musicraft output, helpfully collected for us by the folks at the Record Corp. of America, which re-issued these sides repeatedly on its budget labels in the 1950s. This particular transfer comes from a very clean copy of an issue on Allegro (cover below), and includes 12 of the 16 sides MacRae made for Musicraft.

Allegro's sonics left much to be desired - namely both high frequencies and low frequencies. Played on good equipment, the LP recreates the effect of what it must have been like to hear these records on an AM radio in 1946. Fortunately, I could adjust the frequency response to achieve a much more realistic sound - and I think the result is very good.

As mentioned, the repertoire is standard pop fare of the times, except for "Talking Is a Woman," an offensive Carl Sigman-Bob Russell quasi-calypso novelty. However, the rest of the set includes such gems as "It's Anybody's Spring", introduced by another of MacRae's influences, Bing Crosby. The backing on all sides is by pianist-composer Walter ("Tenderly") Gross, another Musicraft artist.

Musicraft foundered in late 1946. MacRae then made a few recordings for Apollo, and soon was on to success with Capitol and in Doris Day movies.

Walter Gross Returns

Longtime followers of this blog, assuming there are such creatures, may recognize the name Walter Gross from an early post of the music from a Joan Crawford film called Torch Song. Gross played piano on that LP, and accompanied singer India Adams.

Torch Song featured Gross' big song hit, Tenderly, and my friend Mel surprised me by saying he had been looking for that record for many years.

This one may also be a surprise to Mel - it's another Walter Gross record featuring Tenderly. This one is from 1950, and appeared in a series that Columbia called Piano Moods. Not that Gross was what you would call a moody pianist - the two side-long medleys on this record are quite chipper, in fact, and make a pleasant way to spend 25 minutes. This music is in a style that later would be called cocktail piano; Gross was a very good exponent of the genre.

Crawford in Torch Song

Torch Song is one of the great camp movies of all time. Or so I read on the various film sites. Me, I haven't watched it, although I did happen to see the clip of Joan Crawford galumphing around that appears in That's Entertainment III. I seem to have a horrible memory of it being done in blackface, which must have been in bad taste even in 1953.

Dear Joan plays a famous singer-dancer in this festival of unintentional comedy. She is quite the temperamental diva - that is until she is redeemed by the devoted love of a blind pianist played by Michael Wilding. They couldn't have been serious about this.

On to the music - this 10-inch LP presents songs from the movie as played by Walter Gross, who dubbed Michael Wilding's piano playing. Three tunes are performed by India Adams, who did the vocal dubbing for Crawford. The album doesn't say whether these items are from the actual soundtrack, but it doesn't sound like they are. The other musicians are guitarist Dave Gilbert and bassist Bob Shevak.

The music on this record is by a variety of people, including music director Adolph Deutsch and Walter Gross. Gross' big hit was Tenderly, which is one of the items here.