Jackie Paris Singles

One of this blog's first posts was devoted to The Song Is Paris, the first LP by the great vocalist Jackie Paris. Today we have 12 selections, including some of his first singles, most of which did not appear on his LPs.

We start with his first record, a 1947 78 released by M-G-M and coupling Your Red Wagon and Skylark (which he later remade for Coral).

After a few more sides for M-G-M, Paris moved on in 1949 to National, which announced his arrival with the ad below for his debut single, coupling The Old Master Painter and a "surprise rendition" of Goodbye Sue. I hope I am not spoiling things by telling you that the surprise is a spoken interlude in hipster lingo in which Paris tells Sue "I dig you the most!" among other entreaties for her to come back. Billboard dug this not, however, calling the spoken section "silly hip talking."

Paris cut a few more numbers for National, then turned up on Debut and, in 1953, on Brunswick. His Brunswick efforts are represented here by live versions with Terry Gibbs of If Love Is Good to Me and Cool Blues. In the latter, Paris indulges in scat singing, the worst vocal idea since singing in falsetto. (Makes me wonder - has anyone ever tried falsetto scat singing? If so, please don't send me the results.) Although these two tracks did appear on a single, I have transferred them from a various artists LP called Jazztime USA, Vol. 3.

In 1954, Paris did a one-off single for RCA Victor with a mannered singer named Tamara Hayes, who made some other records for RCA at the time. They did the old R&B hit I Miss You So, along with Chance of a Lifetime.

Also in 1954, Paris began making records for Coral. Here we have When I Lost You and Idle Gossip, his first Coral single, along with 1955's Love Is a King and I Need Your Love. (Idle Gossip actually appears on the Skylark LP, but I have included it for the sake of completeness, even though I had to fade it up shortly after the opening because of an edge chip on the 78.)

I hope this collection sheds some new light on Paris. He is a favorite of many people who have made his acquaintance already - if only there were more of us!

NEW LINK

More on Matt Dennis

There was quite a bit of interest in the Matt Dennis Capitol 78s that I posted below, so I did a bit more research on them in Billboard magazine.

Dennis was with Capitol for a year - from mid-1946 to mid-1947, leaving that company in a dispute over contract terms. I was not able to turn up any mention of Capitol recordings other than the ones in the post below, so they may be the extent of his Capitol output.

I enjoy preparing posts of 78s, but they pose a couple of challenges. They are time consuming to transfer, which prevents me from working on other projects. And my 78 (and 45) collection is almost completely unorganized, meaning that assembling what I need for a particular post can turn into a search and (sometimes, considering the fragility of the source material) destroy mission.

It took me quite some time, for example, to put together a group of Jackie Paris singles for my next collection. Every time I came across one, I put it aside until I had gathered enough for a respectable post. Even now, I wouldn't swear that I have found them all. Those singles should be making an appearance here in the next day or so.

Matt Dennis on Capitol 78s

These days, Matt Dennis is mostly known for his compositions - Angel Eyes, Violets for Your Furs, The Night We Called It a Day, Everything Happens to Me, all available in superb Sinatra renditions - but he also was one of the finest singers of the post-war era.

Dennis displayed his vocal talent throughout several LPs released in the 50s, all or almost all of which have been re-released. But before then he made a number of records with Paul Weston for Capitol, beginning in 1946. This post captures nine of those sides, as found in my collection of 78s.

None of these records contain Dennis' own compositions, although you will find contemporaries such as Hoagy Carmichael (above) and Johnny Mercer (below). Mercer, I believe, wrote the lyrics to (Love's Got Me in a) Lazy Mood, with the music by tenor saxophonist Eddie Miller, who plays on the record.

Dennis did not have the voice of many if not most pop singers - although anyone who once was a vocal coach for Jo Stafford and her sisters must have known something about singing - yet his style and sensitivity are very winning. He could handle songs of all types, including the A Trout, No Doubt, a nonsense song like Swinging on a Star, without the moral. The Trout is part of today's catch, and just to make sure you get its full effect, I have corrected its speed, which apparently was increased to get the song under three minutes.

Update: I've repitched and remastered all these sides.

Mid-Century Music from Colombia

This unusual record from Colombia presents contrasting works from that country's leading composers circa 1958 - Luis Antonio Escobar and Guillermo Uribe Holguín.

Uribe Holguín, born in 1880, was the senior composer by some 45 years, and was trained in the Schola Cantorum. While his music retained French influences over the years, he also became interested in folk forms. The Three Criollo Dances presented here are his interpretation of dance music from the Criollos - the social caste of native-born people of primarily Spanish ancestry. The composition dates from 1945.

Escobar's work, from just six years later, is in a much different idiom. He wrote it as a 26-year-old newly arrived in Germany to study with Boris Blacher. The soloist in this concertino for flute is Oscar Alvarez. In both works Olav Roots conducts the Sinfonica of Colombia.

In truth, neither the orchestral performances nor the recordings are especially refined, but the music is most attractive and very much worth your listening. This was the first in what may have been designed to be a series on Colombian composers.

LINK

Buddy Clark in 1939-40

About a year ago, I presented several posts devoted to the recordings of the short-lived popular singer Buddy Clark, who died in 1949. Those entries concentrated on Clark's late-40s recordings for Columbia, the period of his greatest success.

Today we examine records that Clark made in 1939 and 1940 for Varsity. Most of these sides were reissued in the mid-1950s on the Regent LP above.

The cover with its snappy pink 1955 Cadillac could not have less to do with the contents. Half of the items are songs written for the 1940 Disney movie, Pinocchio. These were actually recorded before the film was released, and include one song (The Old Music Box) cut from the movie. Beware, though: the songs from Pinocchio are accompanied by organ. I haven't been able to discover who is responsible for the accompaniments for these or any of the other songs on the LP.

I've added as a bonus a Varsity 78 not on the LP. Here, Clark is accompanied by an all-star Chicago-style jazz group, whose names are on the label below. Both of the songs are from the Rodgers and Hart show Higher and Higher.

As I've said before, I am a great admirer of this singer, so it's good to provide this glimpse of his work earlier in his brief career, when he already was a fully mature artist.

Music from Movieland

Despite what the title may suggest, Music from Movieland is not music from movies. It is easy listening music as played by a studio orchestra - in this case the Columbia Pictures Studio Orchestra conducted by the studio's music director, Morris Stoloff, one of the great promoters in a town built on promotion.

Stoloff was honored with three Academy Awards although his list of actual scores written over at Soundtrackcollector is very few - quite a trick! He also made many records, and on a few soundtrack LPs that have been featured here, his name is so prominent that it gives the mistaken impression that he wrote the music.

Be that as it may, this is a good record with excellent arrangements put across by a superb band. But to me its key distinguishing characteristic is the spectacular cover. A showgirl en deshabille inexplicably transported to a street corner set and accompanied by symphony orchestra? Is this really the way they filmed and recorded things in Hollywood circa 1951? Well, it's a nice fantasy anyway and fun to look at - and hear.

Leo Sowerby Orchestral Works

These days American composer Leo Sowerby is remembered best for his church music, but he also composed in other genres.

The works on this American Recording Society disk from the early 1950s were from relatively early in his career. Their titles - Prairie and From the Northland - may suggest that they come from the heyday of Copland-style populism in the 1940s, but they actually were written in the 1920s and stylistically are of that time. Burnet Tuthill (whose own music was featured in this blog's first post) says in the liner notes that Sowerby's style looks back to Brahms, but there is surely as much impressionism in these works. You also may hear similarities to the music of Howard Hanson, who conducted the professional premieres of both compositions.

The performances here - by an anonymous orchestra under Dean Dixon - are enthusiastic and as refined as you might expect considering the circumstances. The recording is vivid.

I'll probably offer more of Sowerby's music down the road apiece.