More Cor de Groot

After I posted Cor de Groot's recording of Beethoven's fourth concerto, my friend Fred of Random Classics told me he found de Groot's version of the fifth concerto on European Archive. So I thought I would go get that recording for you and post it here in a refurbished edition.

It's a beautiful rendition in vivid sound. De Groot benefits once again from the strong conducting of Willem van Otterloo, here leading the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague.

But that's not all (as they say in the ads). My newest blogger acquaintance, Satyr, has posted a couple of de Groot items on his excellent blog, 78 toeren en LP's - the Rachmaninoff second concerto, and Strauss' Burleske, transferred from 78s. Satyr has already posted many unusual and interesting items on his new site. He features Dutch musicians and composers, but not exclusively - the most recent post is of Sir Henry J. Wood. Please go visit him and leave a comment - the blog is in Dutch, but he speaks very good English.

The link to the Beethoven Emporer is below. My next de Groot post will be his recording of Morton Gould's Interplay, dedicated to my friend Mel, who requested it.

Southern Gospel on RCA

Throughout the early LP era, the major record companies were looking to broaden their business by expanding into genres that had previously been the province of smaller companies - and by borrowing the best material from these genres to provide potential hit songs for their mainstream artists.

Today I'll present a selection of items from the 1956-57 RCA Victor catalogue to illustrate some of the exceptional southern gospel acts that the label had signed in an attempt to broaden its artist roster, and the repertoire they were recording.

Blackwood Brothers

Like many pop genres, many southern gospel songs fit into a limited number of "types," and this first number quickly demonstrates two of them. The first is the upbeat "lesson" song, in this case "The Good Book," which was taken from a Producers' Showcase original television musical called "The Lord Don't Play Favorites," starring Louis Armstrong, Dick Haymes, Buster Keaton, Robert Stack and Kay Starr. (I am not making this up - TV was very different in the 50s.) The quite remarkable performance here is by one of the greatest southern gospel groups - the Blackwood Brothers Quartet. (Read more about their history here.) RCA had signed them as early as 1952, and in 1954 - in a bid to broaden their appeal - placed them on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV program, a contest program that the Blackwoods won. The flip side of this record (actually the second song on this promotional EP) was an example of a straight gospel song, "Give Us This Day."

I am very fond of the Blackwood's sound - it's flamboyant and garish, like much pop music since then, but also virtuosic and utterly sincere, unlike much of that same music. I've also included a second single of theirs that combines two songs by one of the best-known writers in the genre, Mosie Lister: "Then I Met the Master" (a famous record) and "The Touch of His Hand."

The Statesmen Quartet

The Blackwood Brothers often toured with the second group I'm presenting here, the Statesmen Quartet with Hovie Lister. That's Hovie, the group's leader and pianist, in the front in the photo at right. (Hovie and Mosie Lister were not related.) Just like the Blackwoods, the Statesmen appeared on (and won) the Talent Scouts program in 1954. They are represented in the playlist by another lesson song, "Practice What You Preach," which features their outstanding bass singer, Jim "Big Chief" Wetherington (far right in the photo). The other Statesmen song is "Brand New Star," a maudlin death song, another common song type. You can read more about the Statesmen here.

When the Statesmen Quartet appeared on Talent Scouts, they performed "This Ole House," a song by Stuart Hamblen, which became a tremendous pop hit in the version by Rosemary Clooney (with a mighty assist by the great bass Thurl Ravenscroft). A former cowboy star and country singer, Hamblen had turned to gospel music after a conversion experience at a 1949 Billy Graham revival on the West Coast - at a time when he was on the country charts with a song called "I'll Go Chasin' Women." Changing his act and life around completely, Hamblen soon had recorded one of his most enduring songs, "It Is No Secret (What God Can Do)" and was on the radio with a program called The Cowboy Church of the Air.

Hamblen at a Graham rally

One of Hamblen's biggest records was not issued under his name - it was "Open Up Your Heart (and Let the Sunshine In)," a 1955 hit for the Cowboy Church Sunday School, essentially the Hamblen family. Hamblen recorded the song at a very slow tempo, then sped up the master to make his daughter, who sang lead, sound much younger. As an extra added item, the download includes the issued version as well as a pitch-corrected version, so you can hear what it should have sounded like without the manipulation. (The original isn't my transfer and the sound isn't that good.)

Open Up Your Heart was a Coral record. Hamblen then moved on to RCA, where he and his family recorded his songs "Dear Lord, Be My Shepherd" and "Beyond the Sun," under their own names. These are the Hamblen selections in today's playlist.

George Beverly Shea

Our next artist also was associated with Billy Graham, and has appeared on this blog before, on the soundtrack LP from Graham's film, Oiltown, U.S.A. He is the beloved baritone, George Beverly Shea, who is heard here in the spiritual "Take My Mother Home" and the song "There's a Time," which was co-written and conducted by Charles Grean, who was an RCA A&R man.

Grean provides the segue to our next artist, the Johnson Family Singers, who have been featured before on this blog. He not only was the manager of Betty Johnson at one time, he was married to her. He also managed Jim Lowe, who wrote the Johnsons' first song in this set, "You Take Your Road," another one of those bouncy lesson songs. (This song contains one of my all-time favorite mixed metaphors - "You take your road and I'll take mine / And we'll all get to heaven at the very same time / The ladder doesn't matter / it's the way that you climb.") The final song in our set is the Johnsons' "May God Be With You."

Like Stuart Hamblen, the Johnsons had their own radio show for quite some time. The download includes examples of both programs.

The sound on these records is fairly good. They all were sourced from RCA's unique promo EPs, like the one depicted at top.

Johnson Family Singers

Cor de Groot

I'm starting on a new series of recordings by the outstanding Dutch pianist Cor de Groot. This 10-inch LP of Beethoven's fourth concerto was made at the height of de Groot's career, in 1955, four years before he lost the use of his right hand.

The pianist was 41 when this concerto was recorded; it was only 12 years after he had first come to prominence by substituting for Wilhelm Backhaus in Beethoven's third concerto.

This is a superb performance, displaying de Groot's gorgeous tone, flawless technique, sensitivity and elegance. The accompaniment by the Vienna Symphony and Willem van Otterloo also is quite good. And the disk is nicely recorded. One small issue is that the English Philips pressing has a persistent rustle in the first movement and some swish in the second. (De Groot seems to be pressing his own records in the photo at right, which I purloined from Rudolf Bruil's interesting site.) Enduring the slight noise is worth it to hear this fine interpretation.

I've been trying to recall what other de Groot recordings are in my collection and so far have located items by Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Morton Gould. I'll probably feature the Gould next because it is the least often heard.

Hope you enjoy this excellent artist.

Sheila Guyse

Last time out we were discussing the career of Billy Eckstine, and speculating that he could have had a second career in film or television except for the accident of his race.

This post concerns a much more obscure artist, but one who faced many of the same hurdles. Sheila Guyse was a singing actress who first came to some notice in the black cinema of the 1940s, appearing in such titles as Sepia Cinderella and Miracle in Harlem. (You can see her in Boy! What a Girl! via this link, but she does not sing in this film.)

Guyse was in the original cast of Lost in the Stars on Broadway in 1949-50, and appears on the cast album.

Being an African American singing actress at the time was almost a guarantee of little work, and so she had few credits for a number of years, and apparently some personal problems. After winning an Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts contest, she was signed to an M-G-M records contract and in 1958 made this LP with Leroy Holmes. There was some publicity at the time that told her story, including a Jet magazine cover story, included in the download (cover below).

Guyse is still with us, and there are a few effusive articles on the web that liken her to Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. No doubt that she was a good singer and a very good looking woman, but she was not on that level. As a singer, she doesn't always hit the notes squarely and tends to rush the beat. But she is enjoyable, and this LP is certainly highly collectible.

A note about Boy! What a Girl!: the plot of this Room Service gloss revolves around three different men falling for the well-known vaudeville comic Tim Moore in drag. (The film's strength was not its believability.) While this was at the end of Moore's stage career, he would go on to considerable fame as Kingfish in the televised version of Amos 'n' Andy - a role originated on radio by the white Freeman Gosden.

This post is in response to a request by my friend Jeronimo, who provided the link to Boy! What a Girl!

Mr. B Sings R&H with Riddle

Quincy Jones said of Billy Eckstine after his death that had the singer been white, he would have had a career in television and the movies, not just as a singer. This is quite possibly true, for Eckstine was a very handsome man and a style-setter. It's likely that his considerable mid-century popularity would have been even greater but for the accident of his race.

An article in The Crisis at the time notes that Eckstine and other African American artists appearing in Las Vegas in the early 50s could not stay in the hotels there. Nor was this unusual. It's remarkable to recall that strict segregation was pervasive even within my own lifetime.

That's why it is always interesting to me to read commentary that seems rueful that Eckstine left his jazz roots behind to become a pop singer; it's as if people wanted him to remain in his own niche and not try for broader success and fame, elusive though it might be.

Eckstine started out as the singer with the Earl Hines orchestra, then led his own big band that was an incubator of bop in the 40s. He began recording for M-G-M in 1947 and quickly began having hits with the highly romantic ballads that were then popular. He was at the height of his success in 1949 and 1950, not just selling records but winning magazine polls.

Billboard ad

By late 1952, when this record came out, he was still a success but the romantic style was giving way to new approaches. This record of Rodgers and Hammerstein songs apparently did not sell as well as Eckstine's earlier LPs, and today seems to be considerably scarce. I don't in fact have a copy of it myself, so I am grateful to Will Friedwald and David Lennick for making it available to me and readers of this blog.

It's particularly notable that the charts on this record are by Nelson Riddle, who had achieved some success already with Nat Cole and soon would start working with Frank Sinatra. This is Riddle at his most romantic, not Nelson the swinger. The songs are all familiar with the possible exception of So Far, which is from one of the least successful Rodgers and Hammerstein efforts, 1947's Allegro.

The album is a gorgeous collection from a singer who inspired a generation of virile baritones, including Johnny Hartman and Arthur Prysock. Thanks again to Will and David for making it available.

A Souvenir of Mitch, from Mitch

I've written before about Mitch Miller, the pop potentate whose first love was classical music, where he was Mitchell Miller, oboe and English horn virtuoso.

Mitch must have been proud of the recordings he made of classical and light music because he made his own CDs to give out to friends and acquaintances, among them Will Friedwald. I am making them available here in tribute to this important personality, thanks to Will.

Mitch had two different CDs. One was his recordings of Vaughan Williams, Cimarosa, J.C. and J.S. Bach, Mozart and Sibelius (The Swan of Tuonela), conducted by Leopold Stokowski and Daniel Saidenberg. The other was of light music fare recorded in the early 50s with Percy Faith, for Columbia (cover above).

We've encountered the Bach and Mozart items on this blog previously (courtesy of Joe Serraglio) - here. And my friend Fred posted the Vaughan Williams on his blog, Random Classics - here - along with a few other items that aren't part of this post. I believe I have seen the Cimarosa elsewhere; can't remember where. The Sibelius is new to me, and is excellent.

I haven't seen the light music LPs offered elsewhere - and actually had vague thoughts of presenting my own copies here. But here are both of them, courtesy of Will. It's So Peaceful in the Country features music of Jimmy Van Heusen and Alec Wilder (whose music Miller promoted for decades). There are two additional items by Wilder on Music Until Midnight - Ellen and Piece for English Horn. Both LPs are exceptionally fine examples of the genre.

Mitch Miller was an unusual combination of artist and pop entrepreneur. As he so often did, Al Hirschfeld captures his subject's spirit in pen and ink, on the caricature that Mitch himself chose to put on the cover of the CDs that he used as his own calling card. It wasn't the only time Mitch was depicted by a famous artist - see Fred's blog post for a wonderful, puckish Norman Rockwell portrait that originally was on one of Miller's Sing Along LPs (perhaps Family Sing Along with Mitch).

One of my first records was a kiddie 78 conducted by Miller, so I have been listening to his music literally all my life - and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience (well, maybe not the sing-alongs). A fond farewell to this important figure.

ADDENDUM - My friend Mel tells me the Percy Faith records were recorded in 1954 and 1955. And I really should have linked you to Will's article on Mitch - it's here.

Elgar with Sir Adrian

For years there has been something of a debate about who was the ultimate Elgarian conductor - Adrian Boult or John Barbirolli. They both had long careers and made many great records of Elgar's music. If forced to choose (and I am forcing myself via this rhetorical construction), I would point the critical finger at Sir Adrian. He's a particular favorite of mine.

So I am pleased to present this 10-inch LP of Elgar's lighter music in a 1954 recording with the London Philhamonic, which Boult led at the time. It comes to us through the good graces of my friend Don (aka Sacqueboutier), who offered this on Symphonyshare and simultaneously suggested it to me for presentation here.

The recordings were made in February and October 1954 in Kingsway Hall, one of the most famous venues of its time, with Kenneth Wilkinson engineering - one of the most famous engineers. A first-class production, to be sure.

These recordings also were issued on a 12-inch LP, which I have in my own collection, but which has previously been issued by my friend Fred on his blog Random Classics. There they were coupled with Malcolm Arnold's English Dances (which are delightful) - so if you want Boult's version of those pieces, go see Fred.

I've quite grateful to Don, who is a veritable transfer machine, because I am having trouble producing any posts whatsoever, having been working around the clock. I hope to enjoy some leisure (and music) soon.

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