The Complete Marian Bruce

I post the work of obscure vocalists from time to time, and here is one worthy of your attention. The singer's name is Marian Bruce, who had a relatively brief career in the New York cabarets, then went on to distinguish herself in the battle for civil rights.

Bruce's recording career lasted just a few years. I've only been able to find a single album, made in 1958 for Riverside, plus several numbers from 1957, one with Clark Terry and seven with Luther Henderson. I've assembled all these for this post.

The Halfway to Dawn LP

I transferred Bruce's Riverside LP, Halfway to Dawn, from a record in my collection. For that outing, she was backed by a talented group of jazz musicians - trumpeter Joe Wilder, pianist Jimmy Jones, guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Al Hall.

Her playlist is particularly well chosen, and likely reflects the repertoire she employed in such New York cabarets as Le Ruban Bleu and The Blue Angel. There are multiple songs by Rodgers and Hart/Hammerstein, the Gershwins and Duke Ellington. We also hear Bart Howard's "Let Me Love You," a favorite of the cabaret crowd, and the superb Coates-Attwood song "No One Ever Tells You." The latter is associated with Frank Sinatra, whom Bruce named her favorite singer. (I can't disagree.)

Joe Wilder

The set opens with the too-seldom-heard "Lucky to Be Me," a Bernstein, Comden and Green song from On the Town. Judging from Joe Wilder's solo, the trumpeter thinks that Lenny was inspired by the opening verse from "Stardust."

Closing the set is the wonderful "Don't Like Goodbyes," the Harold Arlen-Truman Capote song from House of Flowers that was introduced by Pearl Bailey. The song is certainly well done, but Bruce did not have the personality of a Pearlie Mae (who does?). and the result sounds cautious. But let's not make too much of this, because she was a talented singer, one with excellent diction who is often eloquent on her own terms.

Bruce had been introduced to Riverside records by trumpeter Clark Terry, then of the Ellington band and also a Riverside artist. Terry had used her on his Duke with a Difference LP, where she sang "In a Sentimental Mood." That effort is included in the download.

Songs with Luther Henderson

The distinguished arranger Luther Henderson was relatively early in his career when he recorded the Last Night When We Were Young LP in 1958. It appears to have been Henderson's first solo outing.

Luther Henderson

Henderson used Marian Bruce and Ozzie Bailey as his vocalists, Bruce on one side, Bailey on the other, with duets on two numbers. They are backed by an unidentified sextet.

Bruce's solo numbers are again similar to those you might have heard in a night spot of the period - "All in Fun," "Last Night When We Were Young," "Lonesomest Gal in Town" and "You Can Have Him," along with Henderson's "What Can I Say to You Now." On these selections, Bruce sounds more at ease than on her own LP. 

These numbers were remastered from lossless files found on Internet Archive.

Marian Bruce Logan and the Civil Rights Movement

Marian Bruce Logan and Coretta Scott King

Marian Bruce became a significant civil rights figure after her singing career ended. By that time, she was known as Marian Bruce Logan, having married Dr. Arthur Logan, an eminent surgeon and community leader in New York. 

Biographical information at the University of South Carolina notes that she first engaged in community work through the Student Emergency Fund, which helped African-American students make tuition payments. This effort came to the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who asked for her assistance in raising funds for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

She soon became the first Northern member of the SCLC board, remaining with the organization until 1969. She capped her career in 1977 when she was appointed as the Human Rights Commissioner of New York City by Mayor Abraham Beame.

Marian Bruce Logan died in 1993 at age 73. Her New York Times obituary is in the download, together with a few brief reviews of the LPs.

Constant Lambert Conducts Boyce, Rossini, Offenbach and Suppé

For some time, we've been presenting the works that Constant Lambert (1901-51) produced as composer, arranger and conductor. For today's post Lambert assumes the latter two roles. The main work is his arrangement of the music of the English baroque composer William Boyce for the 1940 Vic-Wells ballet The Prospect Before Us. Completing the program are his recordings of popular works by Gioachino Rossini, Jacques Offenbach and Franz von Suppé.

Boyce-Lambert - The Prospect Before Us

The Prospect Before Us - act drop

Lambert was a proponent of the music of his baroque-period predecessor William Boyce (1711-79). He edited Boyce's symphonies for publication and arranged his music for use in the comic ballet The Prospect Before Us, which opened in summer 1940 with choreography by Ninette de Valois.

The ballet was suggested by a 1791 print of the same name by the English caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), which depicts cavorting dancers on the stage of the Kings Theatre. (See below - I've brightened and clarified the faded original.)

Thomas Rowlandson - The Prospect Before Us

For the work, de Valois constructed a scenario pivoting on two rival theatrical managers who fight over the best dancers, with it all ending up with the calamity depicted on Roger Furse's act-drop at the top of this section.

Robert Helpmann

The download includes several of Furse's sketches for the costumes and a number of the publicity photos for the production. One such is Robert Helpmann's dance as one of the managers, shown above.

Lambert took the Sadler's Wells Orchestra into Abbey Road Studio No. 1 on August 1, 1940, less than a month after the ballet opened. The performance is as lively and high-spirited as the ballet must have been. The work was a popular success, serving as a diversion from the realities of wartime.

The download also includes reviews from The New Records and from The Gramophone, the latter of which provides a useful synopsis of the ballet.

Rossini - William Tell Ballet Music

Detail from 1939 Gramophone ad

Lambert also conducted his Sadler's Wells Orchestra in this 1939 Kingsway Hall recording of the ballet music from Rossini's opera William Tell. The sessions were not in conjunction with a Vic-Wells performance, as far as I can determine.

Some parts of this music may be familiar from having appeared in re-orchestrated form in Britten's Matinées and Soirées Musicales. Much of it is delightful, although the Gramophone reviewer drolly and accurately noted that, "There is a cornet solo of the kind beloved of the pier on Part 2." The music is very well performed and recorded, and as always, Lambert's touch is sure.

Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld Overture

Although he was the Vic-Wells music director, Lambert also recorded with orchestras other than the Sadler's Wells forces. Here, just a month after the Rossini recording, he was again in the Kingsway Hall, this time with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The session was again devoted to music from the opera - the delightful overture to Offenbach's comic masterpiece Orpheus in the Underworld.

That's not to say that Offenbach actually wrote the overture per se - it was apparently concocted by the Austrian Carl Binder for a performance in Vienna. Nor was the concluding "can-can" originally devised as such. This galop from the score was co-opted by the Folies Bergère folks for their famous dance well after Offenbach's death.

Perhaps needless to say, Lambert and the orchestra do this to a turn - although I will note that the LPO's playing is not superior to that of the Sadler's Wells band in the recordings above.

Suppé - Overture Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna

While two of Franz von Suppé's best known and most parodied works are overtures to two of his seldom-heard operettas (Poet and Peasant and Light Cavalry), the third was an early, stand-alone overture titled Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna. Like the others, it was used as the backdrop to a mid-century cartoon, in this case one of Bugs Bunny's conducting escapades.

Although I much admire Lambert, he did favor a few composers who leave me cold, notably Liszt but also Suppé, whose music strikes me as noisily insubstantial. That said, Lambert makes the most of the piece in this 1950 Kingsway Hall recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra, made near the end of the conductor's short life.

The transfers for all these works come to us through the good graces of Internet Archive, and were edited and remastered by me. The sound is uniformly excellent for its period.

Completing the Early André Previn Collection

My good friend Scoredaddy, one of this blog's earliest supporters, asked me for more early André Previn piano recordings. Specifically, he wondered if there were more items from Previn's years with RCA Victor (1947-53).

There were, and this post presents all such Victor recordings that have not previously appeared on this site, mainly drawn from two 10-inch LPs in my collection, Piano Program and Plays Harry Warren. Both albums came out in 1951, although the sessions were held mainly in the previous year. In addition to the LPs, we have two songs from a 1947 single that hasn't been offered here before.

As far as I can tell, if you combine this post with my previous efforts, you will have all of Previn's early piano sessions on RCA Victor. You also will have the even earlier recordings he did for the Sunset label, and a bunch of later material - a film score, songs, pop records and a classical date. Previn could - and did - do it all in the realm of music.

I also want to plug a related new post on my other blog - it consists of four live recordings released by the Modern label. These apparently came from a 1947 "Just Jazz" concert held in Pasadena. Also on the singles blog, you'll find an earlier post presenting several Previn V-Discs dating from 1946.

André Previn Piano Program

The André Previn Piano Program LP includes the following songs that will be new to those who have been collecting my Previn posts: "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," "Dearly Beloved," "I've Got My Eye on You" and "September in the Rain." The other two songs on the album also appeared on Camden reissues I've uploaded previously.

Previn's accompanying trio on the LP includes Bob Bain, guitar, Lloyd Pratt, bass, and Ralph Collier, drums. Several of the songs also have string arrangements, which Previn presumably wrote.

The cover above may look familiar to those who have followed these posts. One of my earlier collections included an EP that had the same busy graphics as this LP, but different contents. This is the opposite of the usual record company approach, i.e., the same contents with different covers.

André Previn Plays Harry Warren

By 1950, Previn was an old Hollywood hand, having worked in the studios since he was in high school. For this LP, he paid homage to another LA luminary, the songwriter Harry Warren.

For a renowned songwriter, Warren was unusual in that he wrote primarily for the movies. All eight tunes in this collection were first heard on a sound stage. The liner notes mention that Warren did not achieve the same fame as other leading songwriters, even though he had won three Academy Awards. But his compositions were known far and wide, as you will discover when you scan the contents for this disc.

The following songs have not appeared here before in a Previn version: "I Only Have Eyes for You," "I'll String Along with You," "Lullaby of Broadway," "I Know Why and So Do You" and "Jeepers Creepers."

Bain, Pratt and Collier again compose the backing trio, but there are no strings arrangements in this set.

"I Didn't Know What Time It Was" and "Should I"

Our final Previn record on RCA is a 1947 single coupling of "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" and "Should I." As far as I can tell, it has not been reissued.

The backing musicians are Al Viola, guitar, Lloyd Pratt or Chic Parnell, bass, and Jackie Mills, drums.

This record comes to us from Internet Archive, cleaned up for posting here.

To close out, let me add one more plug for the post of Previn's four 1947 live recordings issued on the Modern label, new on Buster's Swinging Singles.

Tor Mann Conducts Hilding Rosenberg

Hilding Rosenberg (1892-1985) has been called Sweden's first modernist composer, but there are strong links to tradition in his Symphony No. 3, presented here in a 1953 performance led by his contemporary Tor Mann (1894-1974).

When this recording came out, critics were divided. Harold Schonberg called it "pretentious academism." But Alfred Frankenstein praised "the dignity and refinement of the music, its strong lyric character, and its general sense of poise and technical accomplishment."

Far from being "academic" (a pejorative term in secular criticism), the symphony is deeply felt and absorbing to this listener, betraying the influences of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen (perhaps via Rosenberg's teacher Wilhelm Stenhammar) and Paul Hindemith.

Hilding Rosenberg

The Third Symphony bears the title, "The Four Ages of Man." There is no stated program to the work, although a brief exegesis is provided in the cover notes. For its first performance, the composer interspersed spoken excerpts from Romain Rolland's novel Jean Christophe, although those passages did not appeared in the score's initial published version in 1939. Rosenberg revised the score in 1943, then produced a replacement third movement in 1949. This final version is the one heard here.

The composer himself recorded the 1943 edition of the score in 1948, adding the recitations for a Swedish Society release decades later. The final version also has been recorded by the Stockholm Philharmonic twice, in performances conducted by Herbert Blomstedt and Andrew Davis. That ensemble also is heard here under its previous name of the Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra.

Tor Mann

The conductor of this recording, Tor Mann, was the director of the Stockholm orchestra from 1939-59 in its guise as the Swedish Radio Symphony.

The download includes the brief reviews referenced above along with the usual scans and photos.

I am indebted to my friend Maris Kristapsons for his generous gift of this LP. He also sent me a disc of the music of Gösta Nystroem, which will appear here at a later date.

Gordon Jenkins - The 1942 Capitol Recordings

By 1942, Gordon Jenkins was still only 32 years old, but had already enjoyed considerable success as a songwriter and arranger. He started contributing charts to the well-known Isham Jones orchestra when he was just 22, and began writing both music and lyrics for hit songs soon thereafter.

Jenkins had, however, made only a few records as a bandleader - I can only find four sides backing Martha Tilton on Decca in 1941. 

He finally came into his own as a recording artist with the founding of Capitol Records in April 1942. As one of the label's earliest signings, Jenkins led several sessions in June and July of that year, both under his own name and with his orchestra backing Capitol vocalists. This burst of activity was to be short lived - the first recording ban intervened, choking off most sessions from August 1942 to November 1944. Jenkins eventually ended up with Decca. He devoted his first date there, in December 1945, to one of his most famous creations, Manhattan Tower. Jenkins enjoyed great success with Decca, remaining there until 1955, when he joined "X" Records.

This post compiles 17 of the 22 Capitol records that Jenkins made in 1942. The five remaining titles can be found in my 2019 Johnnie Johnston compilation.

I am again indebted to collector extraordinaire and frequent collaborator Bryan Cooper for his help in assembling this program.

Time to Dance with Gordon Jenkins

Eight of Jenkins' 1942 sides can be found on the Capitol LP Time to Dance with Gordon Jenkins, which I posted back in 2009. I've now remastered this early 10-inch LP, which provides the first eight songs in this post.

Connie Haines

Although the album identifies all eight songs as Jenkins recordings, some were issued on 78 with him as assisting artist to a vocalist, with the rest under his name as bandleader.

For example, Don Raye and Gene de Paul's "I'll Remember April" was originally issued as a Martha Tilton record, with Jenkins and his orchestra as backing artists. Similarly, "At Last" and "Be Careful, It's My Heart" came out with Connie Haines as the main attraction. Johnnie Johnston was the primary credit on the 78 issue of "That Old Black Magic." 

All three of those songs derived from current films. Amazingly, the superb "I'll Remember April" is from Ride 'Em Cowboy with Abbott and Costello (eek!). Harry Warren's "At Last" comes from Glenn Miller's Sun Valley Serenade. Haines is good on "At Last," but you must hear the fabulous original soundtrack version sung by Pat Friday. Finally, Bing Crosby introduced "Be Careful, It's My Heart" in Holiday Inn.

As I mentioned above, Jenkins backed Johnnie Johnston on five other Capitol recordings - "Dearly Beloved," "Easy to Love," "Light a Candle in the Chapel," "Singing Sands of Alamosa" and "Can't You Hear Me Calling Caroline" - which can be found in my Johnston compilation.

Bob Carroll

The rest of the songs on the Capitol LP featured Jenkins in the leading role. Three are instrumentals: "Always," "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," and "Paradise," the latter of which does not seem to have been issued at all before appearing on the LP.

"Chasing Rainbows" has an uncharacteristic arrangement, starting off with a brass fanfare and quickly subsiding into a quasi-baroque chart with Jenkins (presumably) on the harpsichord. This must be one of the earliest appearances of the harpsichord on a popular record. I'm not sure if the arrangement is supposed to represent Chopin, who wrote the melody, but if so, Jenkins undershot the mark stylistically.

"There Will Never Be Another You" is another Harry Warren-Mack Gordon song, this one from Sonia Henie's skating spectacular Iceland. The recording has a vocal by the excellent Bob Carroll, a Charlie Barnet alumnus. (Some of Carroll's later records are collected here.)

The 1942 78s

With the help of Internet Archive and Bryan Cooper, I've assembled what we think are the balance of Jenkins' issued recordings from Capitol that date from 1942.

In tandem with "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," "He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings" made up Jenkins' first record as a leader and one of the first Capitol issues. Connie Haines was the sensitive vocalist on the latter song.

Next we have Ferde Grofé's "Daybreak" with a vocal by Bob Carroll, which was the flip side of "There Will Never Be Another You." Carroll returned for Holiday Inn's "White Christmas" and for "Heaven for Two," a fine Don Raye-Gene de Paul song written, improbably, for Hellzapoppin'.

Six Hits and a Miss

Jenkins also helmed four songs for the vocal group Six Hits and a Miss. "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," one of Cole Porter's better songs, was introduced in Something to Sing About by Don Ameche, who did sing, sort of. The septet also appeared on the wartime novelty "Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee," "Bye Bye Blackbird" and another Raye-de Paul song, "Two on a Bike."

None of the Six Hits and a Miss songs are characteristic of Jenkins' later work or even the charts elsewhere in this set. "You'd Be So Nice" starts off with a semi-Dixieland chorus, sliding into the smooth vocal. "Would You Rather Be a Private with an Eagle on Your Shoulder or a Chicken with a Banjo on Your Knee," sounds more like the fare that John Scott Trotter was producing for Crosby than the approach Jenkins adopted for his other Capitol arrangements. "Bye Bye Blackbird" also is atypical, although here the group name checks Jenkins and he responds with a typically spare piano solo. "Two on a Bike" even has a Tex Beneke-style whistling chorus.

Six Hits and a Miss were originally Three Hits and a Miss before inflation set in. The group was formed in 1937 with Martha Tilton as lead voice, but the talented Pauline Byrns took over the following year and was still in that slot when these records came out. The group was ubiquitous on the radio during the war years.

Martha Tilton

Along with Jenkins, Tilton was one of the first Capitol artists. Jenkins' final 1942 recording for Capitol was their collaboration on "Comin' Through the Rye," where Martha somehow makes Robert Burns sexy.

Most of the other arrangements are a cross between the dance-band charts Jenkins would have produced for Isham Jones or Shep Fields and the more lush string sound he would use for Sinatra and others in the 1950s and later.

As was the general practice back then, when the singer was primary on the label, he or she took the first chorus. When Jenkins was billed as the main artist, a band chorus came first. The vocalist would sing a chorus, dance-band style. Jenkins' single-finger piano solos can be heard on both the vocalist-led and bandleader sides.

The sound on most of these records is very good. The download includes brief Billboard reviews for most of these songs.

One final note: Jenkins apparently was not an exclusive Capitol artist - he also led the band for a June 1942 Dinah Shore session for Victor. I am preparing a post of the six resulting songs for my other blog. These include "He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings" and "Be Careful, It's My Heart," both of which he also recorded for Capitol at about the same time, but with much different arrangements.

Despite what the Billboard ad above implies, Jenkins
apparently did not back Tilton on Moondreams

William Warfield Sings Schumann and Brahms

The American bass-baritone William Warfield was a great singer who did not achieve the fame his gifts warranted, possibly because he made very few solo recordings. We have been slowly working through them on this blog.

Warfield's initial session for Columbia, in 1951, was devoted to lieder by Carl Loewe and a selection of "Ancient Music of the Church." That recording will appear here in the future.

William Warfield

Later in 1951, Warfield premiered Copland's Old American Songs, which Columbia coupled with Celius Dougherty settings of sea chanteys. This record, which appeared here many years ago, is now available in a newly remastered edition.

In 1952, Warfield's third Columbia session produced more quasi-popular material, this time settings of folk or folk-influenced songs, with backings led by (and possibly authored by) Lehman Engel. This also has appeared here, and now has been remastered.

Today we have a fine collection of Schumann and Brahms lieder dating from 1953. Following this session, Warfield was to make no other solo recordings, save for a reprise of Copland's Old American Songs, this time in the orchestrated version. He was, however, often heard in ensemble works such as The Messiah, and of course in Porgy and Bess.

Warfield in the recording studio

This Brahms-Schumann recital elicited strong reviews; I've included examples from The New Records, The New York Times and Billboard. The LP cover quotes approving European reviews of Warfield's appearances, such as this from Vienna's Weltpresse: "This glorious voice is a baritone which reached from dark bass-register to bright tenor notes, and is of a singular technical perfection and smoothness of voice control. Joy and pain, hope and sorrow and great inner strength are in the voice..."

The LP program shows these qualities very well. It includes Schumann's Liederkreis, 1840 settings of poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, and Brahms' Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), the composer's 1896 settings of Biblical texts. (The download includes texts and translations for both works.) It's a shame Warfield was not asked to record more of this repertoire.

Otto Herz

The fluid accompanist on the LP was Otto Herz, who at the time was much in demand by young performers making their debuts  at New York's Town Hall, as did Warfield in 1950. The download includes an obituary for this sensitive pianist.

Also included is an interview with Warfield by the Chicago Tribune's John von Rhein dating from 2000, when the vocalist was 80 and still teaching at Northwestern. He died two years later.

Gordon Jenkins' Almanac

Composer-arranger Gordon Jenkins made just this one LP for RCA Victor's short-lived subsidiary, "X" Records, but it's a good one.

His not-terribly-original concept was to write a new song for each month in the year, and call it Gordon Jenkins' Almanac. None of the songs became hits, but even so, the record is pure delight.

The album dates to 1955. It and about six single sides were Jenkins' sole contributions to the "X" Records catalog before RCA disbanded that mark in 1956. Jenkins then moved on to Capitol.

Gordon Jenkins

"X" was actually Jenkins' third record label. The first records under his own name came out on Capitol in 1942. One of the label's earliest signings, he appears on about a dozen sides for the company, issued either under his own name and or as accompanist for Capitol vocalists. Early in the LP era, the label collected eight of those singles on the 10-inch LP Time to Dance with Gordon Jenkins, which I shared many years ago. I am preparing a newly remastered version of the LP, and including the additional singles as a bonus. 

Jenkins' biggest hit for Capitol came after he left the label. It was his song "San Fernando Valley," recorded by label co-founder Johnny Mercer with Paul Weston's orchestra in 1944.

Jenkins' next stop was Decca, which kept him busy with his own recordings (including the popular and trend-setting Manhattan Tower), his orchestrations for such singers as Dick Haymes, and his work with the Weavers. He brought that group to the label and had a handful of huge hits with them before they were blacklisted in 1952.

In late 1954, Jenkins moved on to RCA Victor, which engaged him to produce and record for its new subsidiary, "X" Records.

Gordon Jenkins' Almanac is a good compendium of his various styles. There are riff-based big band sounds such as "January Jumps," a march, waltzes, blues, night music, and his trademark sad song, in this case "Blue December," which portrays a lonely man reflecting on the upcoming holidays.

Bonus Single

I mentioned that Jenkins recorded several singles for "X" Records. One is included as a bonus with the LP. Although neither number is a Jenkins composition, both are of interest.

The single's "plug" side was "Goodnight, Sweet Dreams." Supposedly a "Lindeman-Stutz-Barefoot" composition, it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Weavers/Jenkins' greatest hit, "Goodnight, Irene." The uncredited soloist sounds very much like Lee Hays of the Weavers. Whether this was the still-blacklisted Hays incognito or merely a sound-alike, it makes for an enjoyable tune. The Weavers themselves would soon re-emerge to record a live album on Christmas Eve 1955 that was released by Vanguard in 1957 to much acclaim.

Stuart Foster

The "X" single's flip side, mentioned in tiny type in the ad above, is "Young Ideas," taken from the score for the TV musical The King and Mrs. Candle and written by Moose Charlap and Chuck Sweeney. It's a good song, treated to a superior vocal by Stuart Foster, a talented singer who never hit it big but whose skill and versatility made him popular with bands and in the studio. He will be the subject of an upcoming post.

The LP comes from my collection. Its sound was surprisingly opaque, so I brightened it up a touch. The single, conversely, was strident, so I have tamed it a bit. I found that 78 on Internet Archive.