Bob Manning on Capitol

Big-voiced Bob Manning had some success in the 1950s, but not, perhaps, as someone of his vocal talents should have had.

Starting out (as most pop vocalists of the period did) with big bands, Manning struck out on his own in the early 1950s, and actually produced his only semi-hit record himself (The Nearness of You) and sold it to Capitol. That company proceeded to make an LP with him called Lonely Spell, which represents his best work.

Here I have gathered two Manning EPs, which collect some singles, and add another single and the flip side of The Very Thought of You, which appears on one of the EPs.

You are not alone if you find Manning to be a vocal double for Dick Haymes. There are people who dispute this but the similarity was apparent to both Haymes and Manning. Not that this is a bad thing. Manning had one of the finest pop baritones ever to be recorded.

That said, he is at his best on familiar material. His take on Goodbye predates Sinatra's. Like Frank's version, it has a Nelson Riddle arrangement and the two versions have some phrasing in common. Goodbye is one of Sinatra's best records; Manning's is also very fine.

However, Capitol also gave Manning some lesser material to record. In Venus di Milo, for example, he is made to lament "where are the arms and the heart of you?" (I prefer Love Is Just Around the Corner where the object of affection is cuter than Venus "and what's more you've got arms!") And this is not the worst of it. Manning tackles this material gamely, but his dignified voice seems to fight the clumsy lyrics and saccharine melodies.

Manning recorded with Ziggy Elman and Art Mooney before his Capitol work, and then made some singles for RCA and M-G-M and one LP (of wedding songs) for Everest.

Digression No. 17

I am sitting here looking at an obituary of guitarist Les Paul with the headline, "Les Paul, 'an architect of rock 'n' roll,' dead at 94." It comes with a photo of Les and Paul McCartney and a call-out from Terry Stewart of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame saying that "Without Les Paul, we would not have rock 'n' roll as we know it."

Well, many people were "architects of rock 'n' roll," but Les Paul was not among them. Anyone who has ever listened to a Les Paul record - either the early ones where he copied Django Reinhardt, or the enjoyable kitsch he made with Mary Ford - knows that his music has nothing to do with rock 'n' roll other than it includes an electric guitar.

This is yet another example of how we want to legitimize musicians in other genres by saying how important they were to rock 'n' roll - as I mentioned in the Edgard Varèse post below. Les Paul is an extreme example, because in his case, it isn't even true. It was something that came up because many rock guitarists used a Gibson Les Paul model, and Les, Les' publicists, or Gibson promoted the connection.

Early Varèse Recordings

These were among the first recordings of Edgard Varèse's iconoclastic music. They were made under his supervision in 1950 by a small New York label. Although the cover says this is Volume 1, it actually is the only volume issued.

If you haven't heard Varèse's music, think of the sonorities Stravinsky unleashed in The Rite of Spring and Petrushka, and then use those sonorities as the basis of a musical syntax. That will give you some sense of Varèse's sound world.

And as C.J. Luten noted in American Record Guide: "Other key points, it seems to me, are his music’s continual suggestion of the characteristic sounds of city life (that the composer says 'have been all our lives a part of our daily consciousness') and its close affinity with primitive expression."

In truth, although Varèse was certainly considered "out there" in his day, he was in a sense a forerunner of trends to come, and composers of timbre-centered music have become more common and influential since his time.

The record did get warily positive reviews. The acute critic-composer Arthur Berger wrote in Saturday Review: "The ingredients [of Varèse's music] are pure rhythm and color, organized astutely in terms more realistic on paper than to the ear... To my ears 'Intégrales' is like an obstinate wisp of blues reflected in one of those distorting mirrors in amusement parks. Like most of his music, it points to a sensitive ear and enormous knowledge of what instruments can do, and EMS did full acoustic justice to these gifts. Any work of Varese is intriguing indeed on first acquaintance, but shock is not, as it would seem, its aim. There is no doubt of its sincerity, and it is a pleasure to see this sincerity rewarded by some recognition at last."

The performance on the record were praised by the critics. Conducting was Frederic Waldman. The flute piece "Density 21.5" was performed by René Le Roy.

One person who was strongly influenced by Varèse was the late rock musician Frank Zappa. He wrote an article for Stereo Review in 1971 where he talked about his quest to find a copy of this very recording and to get in touch with the composer. It's an amusing article and some of it may actually be true, so I've included it in the download. My real reason for bringing it up is because it demonstrates just how difficult it was to get recordings of rare music until fairly recently. The wonders of the internet!

Zappa's article also mentions that the LP was considered a sonic spectacular in its day, although in truth some of the seemingly spectacular quality was produced (as it often is) by a strong bias towards the presence region. I have compensated for that bias, and the results, while still sounding vivid, are now more full bodied.

REMASTERED VERSION - APRIL 2024

Oiltown, U.S.A.

Oiltown, U.S.A. was one of the first films made by the organization of the popular evangelist Billy Graham. This 1953 film was set in Houston and was the story of a hard-driving oilman who finds God.

Graham was set on using the popular arts as a publicity tool for his ministry, and he was able to get RCA to issue this 10-inch LP containing several musical numbers and one of his addresses.

On hand for the music was George Beverly Shea, a bass-baritone who has been associated with Graham since 1944 and who is still with us at age 100. Shea made many records for RCA in the 50s. Two of his songs here, accompanied by Paul Mickelson at the mighty Wurlitzer, are a bit somnolent, but the final tune with Ralph Carmichael's chorus and orchestra is well worth hearing.

The music also features Andy Parker and the Plainsmen, a Western group that had recorded for Capitol and appeared in films and on the radio. They back Redd Harper on one song, and, most notably, Cindy Walker on her own composition Christian Cowboy. Walker was one of the greatest country music songwriters, but somehow her performing talent escaped my notice until now. Here she shows herself as a superb singer (although with a lazy-S that I find oddly reminiscent of the young Wayne Newton). Christian Cowboy is a derivative of Riders in the Sky (recorded by everyone from Bing to Buckethead); instead of cowboys who have been damned to chase cattle across the sky, in Walker's version they are born-again riders who are roping souls.

Graham starts his sermon by telling the listeners (apparently a group of businessmen) that he isn't there to tell jokes or clever stories (which makes me wonder how many business groups would engage an evangelist to come in to tell jokes and clever stories). His remarks have an anti-Communist spin that put me in the mind of Bishop Fulton Sheen, heard in an earlier post; much different from the Bible-based comments of fellow evangelist Myron Augsberger, who made an appearance here not long ago.

The Wild One

Put Brando on a motorcycle and you get instant icon, and also a pretty good score, as composed by Leith Stevens.

The Wild One was probably the original biker movie, a precursor to the cheesy genre items that were so common in the late 60s. Unlike those films, which were accompanied by what seemed like one long fuzztone guitar riff, The Wild One was backed by cool jazz as played by some of the best West Coast musicians, as noted on the back of the LP. The pseudonyms are not hard to decode: Roger Short for Shorty Rogers and Manny Shell for Shelly Manne. (Too bad Paul Horn wasn't on the gig.)

This rip is from the original 10-inch LP; it later was issued on a 12-incher with a different cover.

I'll be back with Destination Moon, another Stevens score.

Another James Dean Story

The second in my mini-series of James Dean exploitation records (and the second to be called The James Dean Story) is this paean written and partially narrated by Steve Allen. The other narrator is Cleveland DJ Bill Randle, whose concept this is.

What we have here are a number of Dean exploitation singles ("Jimmy, Jimmy," "His Name Was Dean," "James Dean" and "The Ballad of James Dean" - I think they have most of the possible titles covered), music from his films, and a poem written by a teenage fan, stitched together by narration.

Amazingly, the poem is not the worst thing on the record - the dreadful choral rendition of "The Ballad of James Dean" takes the prize of dishonor. The other ballads are done by country/pop singer Jimmy Wakely.

Roy Harris on M-G-M

The recent anniversary of the moon landing reminded me that I attended the premiere of Roy Harris' twelfth symphony, which although named for explorer Père Marquette was written for a ceremony in honor of the Apollo astronauts. I thought Harris' music was anachronistic then and I suspect most music lovers and almost all music critics think so today.

But when you listen to a record such as this, all you think about is how beautiful and vital it sounds. This is one of a fine series of classical LPs put out by M-G-M in the 1950s, and it contains two superb Harris works from that era in recordings made in his presence and involving his wife Johana as pianist. The M-G-M Symphony under Izler Solomon accompanies her in the gorgeous Fantasy, and Nell Tangeman is the fine mezzo voice heard in Harris' setting of the Vachel Lindsay poem Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight.

Lindsay was born in Springfield, and the poem, written in 1914, has a troubled Lincoln arisen from the dead and pacing about that town, fretting about the state of the world. It's a high-school conceit, but Harris made it into something moving.

Harris is one of the many composers who have used Lincoln as a symbol of American wisdom, including Harl McDonald and Aaron Copland, in works we already have encountered on this blog. Lindsay's work also was set by Charles Ives (General William Booth Enters into Heaven).

M-G-M's recording is excellent.