The Obsolete Collection (Retail Division)

The recent post of "The Obsolete Collection" on my singles blog met with favor, so I decided to do a sequel. I've moved this new post over to the main site in the hopes that more people will see it, and perhaps investigate its predecessor.

The first "Obsolete Collection" covered songs having to do with lamplighters, kerosene lamps, steam locomotives, trolleys, rumble seats, telegrams, telephone party lines, cuckoo clocks, milkmen and typewriters.

This time we explore the retail trade, broadly considered, looking for records that have to do with formats that have had their time in the sun and are now looking a bit withered. Let's start off with that mainstay of my youth, the big city department store.

The Department Store

Macy's Herald Square, New York, back when there were horses and streetcars on the street, and the 6th Avenue El up above

Department stores have been around for more than a century, but seem to be experiencing a agonizingly slow death. Instead of the giant Macy's you see above, for example, the chain is now opening small format stores that would have fit in a old Macy's rest room. And that chain is one of the few survivors.

We can go back even to the 19th century and find records about the department store. The vaudeville comedian Cal Stewart made a living off his rural character Uncle Josh encountering city institutions, including the big store. Stewart first starting recording his "Uncle Josh in a Department Store" routine back in 1898, for the Berliner company. He took the same act over the Victor folks in 1901, then to Columbia and Zonophone before finishing up shortly before his death in 1919.

Our "Uncle Josh" version comes from a 1902 Victor session. Tastes were different then, and his yuck-yuck-yuck routine soon becomes annoying. 

I don't think the "country bumpkin" character was novel even back then, but it influenced comics up through Cliff Arquette and his "Charley Weaver" in the late 20th century.

As a bonus, I've included some "Radio Hucksters Store Spots," with a vocal group and combo limning the praises of notions, linens and so on. Each spot starts with a vocal, followed by a instrumental interlude designed so that local stores could add their specific plugs ("Yes, head on down to Blatnik's Boston Store, and find bargain after bargain ..." etc.), with a brief vocal outro.

The Five-and-Dime

This circa 1940 Phoenix postcard focuses on Woolworth's, but also helpfully points out its five-and-dime competitors Newberry's and Kress

The department store's less flossy cousin was the five-and-dime - Woolworth, Kresge, W.T. Grant and so on. These vendors tried to keep the prices low, but still had a wide variety of goods. The one near me when I was young had everything from birds to records. Some sold china and peanuts, and that's where our featured record comes in. It's one of the best known tunes in the set - "I Found a Million-Dollar Baby (in a Five-and-Ten Cent Store)." I've selected the 1931 hit version by Waring's Pennsylvanians, with a sincere vocal by Clare Hanlon and a trio. It also includes the seldom-heard verse, which was new to me.

Billy Rose found two million-dollar babies

But wait - there are two such "million-dollar baby" songs. An earlier one, with the same theme and title but different music and lyrics, had come out in 1926. Both seem to be the handiwork of lyricist-promoter Billy Rose, working with Fred Fisher on the earlier song, and with Harry Warren and Mort Dixon on the latter.

The 1926 song is represented by a snoozy Victor recording by tenor Henry Burr, apparently a John McCormack fancier. The peppier approach taken by Waring's band works much better.

The Pool Hall

Ya got trouble ... watch out for the guy with the meat hooks

Do pool halls exist nowadays? I haven't seen one lately. But they were an urban favorite way back when. The picture above (it's a pool room in Washington Court House, Ohio) is roughly contemporary with the time period of Meredith Willson's The Music Man, which set in 1912 in "River City," Iowa (a stand in for Willson's home town, Mason City). The 1957 musical includes the magnificent spiel "Ya Got Trouble," where con man "Professor" Harold Hill proselytizes the townfolk about the depths of de-gra-day [tion] involved with the forthcoming transformation of the genteel billiard parlor into a wicked pool hall.

The song was introduced on Broadway by the magnetic Robert Preston, but I thought you might like to hear Willson's own version, which comes from one of those "And Then I Wrote" LPs. He's almost as good as Preston. FYI - the LP was in awful early stereo with Willson's voice seeming to come from the far right of the sound stage. He needs to be front and center, so I've moved him there.

The Nickelodeon

A circa 1910 nickelodeon

A "nickelodeon" was a cheap place to watch the early silent films. Entrepreneurs would take over a storefront, add some chairs, a screen and a projector, and voila, the Comique in Toronto (above), which was one of the fancier operations, by the looks of it. 

The word "nickelodeon" is a portmanteau of "nickel" (the price of admission) and odeon (from the Greek word for a covered theater). But somehow, the term "nickelodeon" transmigrated to also describe a coin operated player piano, and to some degree, what we would call a jukebox (which we'll get to next).

How do you improve a player piano? Add a drum, a cymbal and an accordion!

I haven't discovered any songs celebrating the original meaning of the word, but there is a well-known number that deals with the coin-op piano - "Music, Music, Music," aka "Put Another Nickel In" and "The Nickelodeon." Quite an elaborate set of titles to describe a simple melody with a bridge swiped from Franz Liszt.

The big hit of this song was by Teresa Brewer, a record I have detested since I was a small child. So I've included the original version, by one Etienne Paree with Eddie "Piano" Miller, whose playing is so metronomic it sounds appropriately mechanical. Actually this version is as bad as Brewer's, and Etienne is a little creepy.

The nickelodeon as theater was supplanted by movie palaces as the audience for films grew. I've recognized the days of silent films by including a snatch of stereotypical "chase music" ("The Chase") as played on a theater organ such as you might heave heard in one of the more elaborate showplaces..

As for coin-operated player pianos, you may be able to find one in your local museum.

The Juke Box

Wurlitzer would have had you believe that even a rural hideaway could afford its fancy model 1015

When we think about "putting another nickel in," those of us of a certain age think of the jukebox, that coin-operated marvel where you could watch the machine grab the record, put it on a turntable and bring the tonearm down so the music would flow.

Jukeboxes are not extinct, but there was a time when they were ubiquitous. So to celebrate them, let's begin with perhaps the most famous such record - the Glenn Miller version of "Jukebox Saturday Night," from 1942. The vocalists are Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke and the Modernaires. The original includes an impression of Harry James' "Ciribiribin" and Ralph Brewster's droll send-up of the Ink Spots' "If I Didn't Care."

Two of the Modernaires' three recordings of "Juke Box Saturday Night"

The Mods knew they were onto a good thing, so they made a Soundie version in 1944, remade the single record for Columbia in 1946 and put together a "New Jukebox Saturday Night" for Coral in 1953. I've included the latter in the package - it features their takes on Don Cornell, Les Paul and Mary Ford, the Four Aces and Johnnie Ray.

Juke boxes were still the thing later in the 1950s, when Perry Como treated us to Joe and Noel Sherman's "Juke Box Baby." Mr. C continued the Modernaires' habit of name checking other songs, including any number of current hits in passing.

This ditty, which shows off Perry's keen sense of rhythm, was on the flip side of another famous Como epic, "Hot Diggity." You will realize this is an old record when Perry complains to Juke Box Baby, "You don't dig Latin like ya dig that crazy sound." Latin? Talk about obsolete! Mine was probably the last generation that had to relieve Caesar's Gallic Wars.

The Road House

A "swanky" road house

Now, where did one find these juke boxes? Well, they were common, but certainly one place would be at the old road houses, a bar or club out on a country road. These sometimes were venues where you could find gambling and other once or still-illegal pastimes. 

Road houses have inspired several excellent songs. We'll start off with the wonderful "Road House Boogie," a 1949 R&B opus by Big Jay McNeely, with an uncredited vocal by (I believe) Ted Shirley. (Big Jay is the honkin' tenor sax player.) As always with these adventures, the singer ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. ("Saturday Night Fish Fry" is perhaps the most famous example.)

The next year brought another classic, this one from the honky-tonk giant Lefty Frizzell - "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time," his first record. Louche Lefty picks up a lady with some money, and tells her they'll drive out to all the hot spots and "dance, drink beer and wine." (He insists, "Bring along your Cadillac, leave my old wreck behind.") But, the denouement comes - "If you've got no more money, honey, I've got no more time."

The title is an example of country artists turning an off-color catchphrase into a song. Another was Hank Penny's "Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am!"

Finally, the more innocent "Down the Road Apiece," which Don Raye wrote in 1940 for him and Ray McKinley to sing with the Will Bradley Trio. Just a short while ago, we heard McKinley's remake with his big band, but today let's jump ahead a few decades to the insanely rocking version from the young Rolling Stones. In this reading, Mick Jagger rewrites the lyrics so that instead of calling on "Eight-Beat Mack" (i.e., McKinley), he calls out "Charlie McCoy, you all remember that rubber legged boy." Not sure how he came up with McCoy (or rubber-legged), but he's surely referring to the Stones' own drummer, Charlie Watts.

The Drive-In

Orange you glad you went to the Orange Drive-in?

If you were going to drive out to the sticks, you might want to take in a movie in the questionable comfort of your car. Drive-ins are still around, but they are not as popular as they once were. Back in 1964, they were still the place for a couple to canoodle in the dark. The Beach Boys immortalized the drive-in experience on their "Drive-In," which was a cut on their All Summer Long LP.

The term "drive-in" also encompassed the type of restaurant where you ordered from your car and the uniformed attendant brought you your food. These spots are still around, but again, not nearly as plentiful as they once were. Where I lived many years ago, there was a drive-in restaurant right down the street from a drive-in theater, so that was convenient on a Saturday night.

Joe - er, Dolores' - Drive-In 

In 1947, veteran singer-songwriter Seger Ellis praised "Joe's Drive-In" as the place to head after seeing a show, "so I can feed this face of mine." A fun record from the author of "Little Jack Frost, Get Lost" (written with Al Stillman) and "You're All I Want for Christmas" (with Glenn Moore).

The estimable Nelson Riddle also put out a record called "Drive In." I don't know whether the title refers to the film or food variety (presumably not drive-in banks or churches), so I've parked it in between the Beach Boys and Seger Ellis.

The Gas Station

Service with a smile, but try not to drip from your nozzle

Now, if you were going on a road trip, presumably you would have needed gasoline, so let's memorialize these palaces of petroleum before they are replaced by charging stations.

Gas stations are still common on the roadways, but they are much different enterprises from when I would gas 'em up, change the oil, sell you tires, replace your muffler, do a tune up or brake job, etc. That was nearly 60 years ago when gas stations were self-styled "service stations." Today they are a combination of convenience store, fast food vendor, THC emporium and car wash. And no one but you pumps the gas (in most places).

To recognize the old days, we have a lively piece called "Gas Station Mambo" by the fabulous Pérez Prado and his band, from 1953. In this station, the proprietor greets you by shouting "uh!" and "dilo!" The band sings about something or other, but I don't habla español. (I studied Latin, remember.)

And to get you in the mood to hang around the old grease rack, as I once did, we have a "Filling Station Effects" transcription featuring a very loud grease gun followed by the racket of an old-school gas pump, complete with periodic dings. The gas pump sounds like it could have used some lubrication itself. I would not recommend that you have this one on repeat play.

The Motel

Circa 1940s postcard 

We finish our survey with the motel, also still around, but much different from what it once was. A case in point is the Lazy Acres Motel above, once a modest motel, today primarily an RV park. And it's a survivor. Most of these rural retreats are long gone.

Lazy Acres did some radio advertising back circa 1950 on the Los Angeles radio program of Western Swing's Spade Cooley. We have a promotional record appropriately titled "Lazy Acres Motel." The song is performed by the Prairie Schooner Boys, who suggest you "take Route 99 and look for the sign - Lazy Acres Motel." Note that author of the song is one "Stan Feberg," probably the future musical satirist Stan Freberg.

I've heard worse promos - the department stores spots above, for example.

Bonus Track - "The Lamplighter's Serenade"

Dave Federman asked me if I would try to resuscitate a song that I could have included in the original "Obsolete Collection" - "The Lamplighter's Serenade." 

In my collection, I had chosen the slightly later "Old Lamplighter," but the Serenade is a fine record, too, written by Hoagy Carmichael and Paul Francis Webster.

I was familiar with the Miller and Sinatra versions, but Dave has uncovered a first-rate example by Woody Herman in an uncharacteristically mellow mood.

I found two copies of the 1942 78 on Internet Archive, but neither was in particularly good shape, offering an explosion of noise punctuated by peak distortion. I've taken the best parts of each disc, moderated the noise and mostly ameliorated the distortion so that the record now sounds acceptable.

The selections in this post came from IA and my collection. The sound is generally very good, even for Uncle Josh and his 1902 visit to the big city.

LINK to The Obsolete Collection (Retail Division)

Ray McKinley and Eddie Sauter - the Majestic Recordings

Eddie Sauter and Ray McKinley

The great arranger Eddie Sauter made his name with Benny Goodman, but the many songs he arranged for Ray McKinley's excellent postwar band deserve to be remembered as well.

Previously I've posted McKinley's complete RCA Victor recordings, including a number of Sauter compositions. I've now remastered that set in ambient stereo.

Today we'll explore: 

• The sides that McKinley made for the small Majestic label just before joining Victor, specifically the 19 songs that Sauter arranged for the band, including many of his own works

• As a bonus, excerpts from a radio appearance from the same time period, with two additional Sauter arrangements

The Ray McKinley Band, 1946

I want to acknowledge my friend and frequent collaborator, the indefatigable Dave Federman, who first covered these recordings in his new Substack site, Dave's Desk, which I heartily recommend. Before Dave hipped me (as they said in the 40s) to these recordings, I had not heard them. What a revelation!

Let me quote here from Dave's essay on Sauter and McKinley: "His [McKinley's] recordings for the Majestic label in 1946-7 are, for me, pinnacles of progressive jazz - mainly because they feature Eddie Sauter arrangements. These are so surrealistic and free-form that they represent a parallel to the abstract expressionist art then being developed by the likes of Arshile Gorky and Hans Hoffman. The arrangements often seem goofy and Keatonesque, and are mindful of the playfulness of abstract art before it left the realms of form and representation entirely."

The Majestic Recordings

Here, we'll examine the McKinley-Sauter Majestics in chronological order, as is our usual practice. The set includes all the Sauter arrangements that I know about; there may be more.

Eddie arranged more than his own compositions for the band, and we start off with something far afield from Sauter's own works, Ivor Novello's end-of-war ballad, "We'll Gather Lilacs," in a strikingly good arrangement with a vocal by Ann Hathaway. (She is probably the same vocalist who later issued a well received LP on Motif.)

[Note (November 2024): I discovered that this is not true. There were two singing "Ann Hathaways" in the late 1940s. One was Ann Baker, who appears on this record, a former Louis Armstrong and Billy Eckstine vocalist who also recorded a single for Keynote. She is the artist on "We'll Gather Lilacs." The other "Ann Hathaway" was Betty Ann Solloway, who recorded a single for Avalon and an LP for Motif in the 1950s. I plan to feature both of them later on.]

"Ann Hathaway" (Ann Baker)

Next is one of the many novelties that featured McKinley's genial singing: "In the Land of the Buffalo Nickel," lyricist Bob Hilliard's wacky visit to the old West. This was at about the time that Hilliard was tasting success with "The Coffee Song."

Drummer Paul Kashishian, trumpeters Nick Travis, Chuck Genduso, Joe Ferrante and Curly Broyles

Our first Sauter composition is "Sand Storm," which begins in a bop vein, then settles into an eventful band instrumental with breaks for (possibly) trumpeter Chuck Genduso and clarinetist Peanuts Hucko.

Next, another McKinley specialty - his remake of Gene Raye's "Down the Road Apiece," which had been a hit for Ray, Gene and the Will Bradley Trio in 1940. When Ray sings, "The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack," he of course is referring to himself. It's worth hearing, but in truth, Sauter's arrangement could have had more of a boogie-woogie feel.

Teddy Norman

Another ballad was Burke and Van Heusen's "That Little Dream Got Nowhere" from the comedy film Cross My Heart, where it was sung by Betty Hutton. Here it gets a smooth rendition by the talented Teddy Norman.

Next we have three consecutive Sauter compositions, starting with "Tumblebug," a somewhat surreal exercise that starts off in a bop vein, but has guitarist Mundell Lowe throwing in interjections throughout. This is the "abstract expressionism" that Dave mentioned above.

"Hangover Square" was the title of a creepy 1945 film, but Sauter's namesake composition is rather a band tour de force, with the title possibly referring to the musicians' drinking habits.

Trombonists Vern Friley, Irv Dinkin and Jim Harwood

Trombonist Vern Friley was credited on the label for his solo work on "Borderline," another Sauter composition.

Sauter produced a fairly standard but still accomplished big band arrangement for McKinley's "Jiminy Crickets." I'm not sure about the trumpeter, but the alto saxophonist is probably Ray Beller,

In case there is any doubt who leads the band ...

We're back in McKinley specialty territory with his "Howdy Friends (E.T.O. Curtain Call)." (I have no idea what "E.T.O" stands for.) The label credits Ray four times - as the singer, composer, bandleader and via a second subtitle to the title - "Ray McKinley's Theme Song." It's a good piece that allows Ray to credit some of his notable band members. In this version he mentions Ray Beller, Mundell Lowe, Vern Friley, Peanuts Hucko and pianist Lou Stein. The lineup in the live version discussed below is different. 

Next, and moving into 1947 recordings, we have the Harold Arlen-Ted Koehler standard "I Got a Right to Sing the Blues," first recorded by the young Ethel Merman in 1932. Sauter provides space for some appropriate hot obbligatos and McKinley permits himself a few brief scat passages a la Louis Armstrong. The few instrumental choruses are much the most interesting part of this piece. Parenthetically, I'm an admirer of the composers, but this is not one of my favorite songs.

"Red Silk Stockings and Green Perfume" is another off-center adventure from lyricist Bob Hilliard, perfectly suited to the talents of McKinley and Sauter.

Guitarist Mundell Lowe, Ray McKinley, baritone sax Deane Kincaide, vocalist Teddy Norman

"Comin' Out" is a rocking instrumental from the band, featuring McKinley on drums. This, "Red Silk Stockings" and the next number, "The Chief," were apparently unissued on Majestic, but later came out on Savoy and Allegro Elite. The transfer of "Red Silk Stockings" is from a Hit pressing, the others from an Allegro 10-inch LP in my collection.

The following two numbers amount to Bob Hilliard's ventures into ethnic stereotypes - then taken as comic, today as questionable to say the least - "Pancho Maximilian Hernandez (The Best President We Ever Had)" and "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)." The latter song was a big hit. The McKinley version did well, but not as well as the Andrews Sisters/Danny Kaye disc.

The bandleader's contract with Majestic was running down but there was time for two more numbers before he and the band were off to Victor. First we have Sauter's "Mint Julep" (not the same song as the Clovers' "One Mint Julep" of several years later).

Finally, a pensive Lynn Warren sings "Over the Rainbow," dragging the beat out so much that the band seems to be getting impatient.

A Band Remote from 1946

Finally, we have several items from a June 25, 1946 radio remote from Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook, a well known club in New Jersey. This comes from a long-ago bootleg with fairly good sound.

Ray predictably starts out with "Howdy Friends," this time with a shout-out to Sauter. He then segues into a really fine performance of Sauter's "Hangover Square," a bit looser than the Majestic recording above.

Sauter then contributes a dynamic arrangement of "The Carioca," an impressive workout for the band. The set ends with another Sauter arrangement, this one of "Tuesday at 10."

These materials were remastered from items on Internet Archive and from my collection. Majestic's sound was not as polished as Victor's, but is still reasonably good.

Sauter of course went on to form the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra with Bill Finegan. The band's output has been covered on this blog fairly extensively. The most recent post is here; it will lead you to all the previous articles on the band that I've published.

LINK to Ray McKinley and Eddie Sauter - the Majestic Recordings

The Music of Daniel-Lesur

Continuing a series of recordings of French music by the radio orchestras of that country, today we have three works by Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002), one of the members of the La jeune France group.

Sources differ about his full name - was it Jean-Yves Daniel Lesur or Daniel Jean-Yves Lesur? - but he went by the name "Daniel-Lesur" throughout his career.

La jeune France: Olivier Messiaen, Yves Baudrier, André Jolivet and Daniel-Lesur

The composers Olivier Messiaen, André Jolivet, Yves Baudrier and Daniel-Lesur founded La jeune France in 1936, to promote less abstract forms of music than were then the fashion. The group has been called neo-impressionistic, but their styles differ from one another. For example, Messiaen, Daniel-Lesur's lifelong friend and the best-known member of the group, was a mystic and developed his own idiosyncratic methods that are much different from his friend's approach.

In his book French Music Today, the musicologist Claude Rostand described Daniel-Lesur as "a sincere musician, fond of clarity, hostile to facile exterior effects, to the excesses of the advance guard as well as to stilted formulae."

Writing in 1973, soon after this LP was released, the critic Royal S. Brown noted, "Daniel-Lesur. although less ambitious than Jolivet and Messiaen, found a highly personal idiom marked by strong, insistent rhythms (frequently derived from dance patterns) and an almost English pastoral quality lacking in the style of the other Jeune France composers."

These characteristics were indeed what you will hear on this record, which encompasses Daniel-Lesur's Symphonie de Danses, Sérénade pour orchestre à cordes and Pastorale.

Edouard Lindenberg

The performers are the Orchestre de Chambre de l'ORTF as led by Edouard Lindenberg (1908-73), a Romanian conductor resident in Paris after 1950. Lindenberg, little known in this country (the US), made quite a few recordings for European labels. He died not long after this LP was issued.

This recording has not be re-released in any form, to my knowledge, although the music has been recorded by other artists. The composer remains relatively neglected - there seems to be only one CD of his music currently available.

Daniel-Lesur

Daniel-Lesur also had a distinguished career as an organist (at Ste. Clotilde and the Benedictine Abbey of Paris), teacher, and arts administrator (head of the Schola Cantorum and the Opéra National de Paris).

This transfer was requested by a reader. My pressing was relatively clean except for one unfixable fault. To cover that, I edited in a short section of a live performance led by Louis de Froment, suitably matched to the Lindenberg recording. The overall sound is very good.

The download includes Royal Brown's lengthy survey of 20th century French music - dated, certainly, but still useful.

LINK

'Inside Sauter-Finegan' (and S-F Reups)

The Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, circa 1954. Eddie Sauter is at the microphone.
The singers may be Anita Darian and Andy Roberts.

Fourteen years ago I posted four Sauter-Finegan Orchestra LPs and stopped there, although I have several others. Today we have a much delayed restart of the series - along with newly remastered versions of the S-F albums that have appeared here before.

Way back when, I offered the first and second S-F albums, recorded in 1952-53; the fourth LP, from 1953-54; and the Rolf Liebermann Concerto for Jazz Band and Orchestra, from late 1954. More about them below, along with a link to a collection of non-LP recordings.

But first, the new item.

Inside Sauter-Finegan

Today's post centers on the third S-F LP, Inside Sauter-Finegan, recorded in 1954. We might as well start the discussion with the first thing you see - the spectacular Jim Flora cover above, with caricatures of Bill Finegan and Eddie Sauter, who appear to have ingested a few musical instruments for lunch.

The arrangers were actually sober looking fellows such as you might have encountered at a local church service. They just happened to be two of the finest musicians of the day, whose music indeed sounded more like the Flora cover than the Metronome cover below.

Eddie Sauter and Bill Finegan

Sauter and Finegan themselves provided extensive liner notes printed on three sides of the gatefold sleeve. For some reason known only to the producer, the notes on the pieces do not follow the order they appear on the LP. (Also, the type layout on the first page is all fouled up.) Enough griping; there is much good information here.

The title Inside Sauter-Finegan is designed to denote that the LP displays the individual talents of the musicians. Let me spotlight the soloists first; then I'll run down the rest of the numbers.

Nick Travis

The excellent trumpet player Nick Travis is featured on the Ralph Freed-Burton Lane perennial "How About You?", of Garland-Rooney fame, here called "How About Choo" for some reason. Travis is accompanied by a small ensemble selected from the band.

Bobby Nichols

Another trumpeter, Bobby Nichols, is heard in Bill Finegan's nocturne, "New York ... 4 A.M." The bandleaders commented, "Bobby has bushy red hair and looks like what most people think a trumpeter should look like." I dunno, he doesn't look a thing like Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie. Maybe Red Rodney.

Sonny Russo

Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke didn't write "Pennies from Heaven" for Sonny Russo (it was for Bing in the film of the same name), but the trombonist does his best to make it his own on this recording, particularly in the spectacular cadenza.

Joe Venuto

Joe Venuto was the xylophone (I believe) soloist in "When Two Trees Fall in Love," which Sauter wrote for him. The bandleaders tagged Joe as a young man with "unlimited potential." He became a long-time studio percussionist. (There's a nice tribute to him here.)

Andy Roberts

Andy Roberts is the vocalist in Willard Robison's second-greatest hit, "Old Folks," written with Dedette Lee Hill. Roberts had excellent diction and a lovely voice, but may have been a touch too urbane for Robison's small-town ethos.

Also on this excellent LP are:

• Sousa's "The Thunderer," called "The 'Thundisbreak'" here, which adapted surprisingly well to the Sauter-Finegan manner.

• Bill Finegan called his "Finegan's Wake" a "mock wake." He writes, "This piece frowns - but if you look (or listen) closely you will see the twinkling eye beneath the frown." His words rearrange the features of the face, but you get the idea.

• "Four Horsemen" is a feature for Bobby Nichols, Nick Travis and lead trumpet Al Maiorca, along with Harvey Estrin on clarinet.

• The other vocalist on the record is Sally Sweetland, whom we recently featured here. Included in that post was "Autumn Leaves" from this LP, but I somehow missed her skillful vocalese contribution to "10,000 B.C.," which as Sauter himself notes, is at base stereotypical "Chinese" music.

• Finally, "September's Sorrow" is Sauter's attempt to "capture the forlorn quality of pleasure irretrievably lost."

LINK to Inside Sauter-Finegan

Reup - New Directions in Music

My original post combined the 10-inch version of the album with the four songs that were later added to make a 12-inch version.

The article includes a brief early history of the band. I wrote, "Although the popularity of the band didn't last, it did start off life with a promising record called 'Doodletown Fifers,' an arrangement of a Civil War tune that became the band's theme. This LP contains that song along with other pieces that are among Sauter-Finegan's best-remembered numbers - 'Moonlight on the Ganges,' 'April in Paris,' a fine arrangement of 'Azure-Te,' and their version of the Troika from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite, called 'Midnight Sleighride' here."

A newly remastered version of the LP in ambient stereo can be found via the original post here.

Reup - The Sound of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra

The band's second album was apparently slated to be another 10-incher, but was expanded to the 12-inch format late in the process by adding the bandleaders' "Extended Play Suite," which had appeared on an EP. To complete my post, old friend Ernie contributed the "Extended Play Suite, Vol. II," which did not appear on the album. 

From the original 2010 post: "The Sound of S-F, intended to appeal to the nascent hi-fi cult, was not designed to be a cohesive record. It offers up a potpourri of vocals, attempts to recreate the 'Doodletown Fifers' success, and even a rhythm and blues cover."

Notable are the three vocals by the great Joe Mooney, including the semi-hit "Nina Never Knew."

This LP also is newly redone in ambient stereo. The original post (and link) are here.

Reup - Concert Jazz

The Concert Jazz LP contains features for Joe Venuto, Nick Travis, Sally Sweetland and Andy Roberts (an elaborate take on "John Henry" that displays his acting ability). Also, Finegan riffs on Gershwin's Concerto in F. Vocalist Anita Darian is featured in the lengthy "Pictures from Sauter-Finegan Land," which has a narration by Roberts. It's a period piece that starts off "Busy, busy, busy highways," goes into generic bustling-city music, and proceeds from there to Vermont and other places.

You'll note that there is another Jim Flora cover on this album.

For some reason I wrote very little about Concert Jazz when I first offered it, so there's no sense sending you back to the original 2015 post. You can find the newly remastered version of the LP via the link below.

LINK to Concert Jazz

Reup - Liebermann - Concerto for Jazz Band and Orchestra

In late 1954, Sauter-Finegan got together with the formidable Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony for a recording of Rolf Liebermann's Concerto for Jazz Band and Orchestra. I posted the results as long ago as 2010, but have now reworked the sound in ambient stereo. 

Actually both the concerto and its disk mate, Richard Strauss' Don Juan, were recorded in stereo but not released as such until later. Back in 2010, a reader provided a link to the stereo tape version of the Liebermann (which still works), and I've now re-recorded the Don Juan from its first stereo release on LP, dating from 1968.

More information and the link can be found via the original post here.

Sauter-Finegan Obscurities

Earlier this year I collected nine non-LP selections from the Sauter-Finegan band for my other blog under the name "Sauter-Finegan Obscurities."

The selections are "Pale Moon" (with vocalese by Florence Fogelson), "Coco Bongo," "'O' (Oh!)," "Of Thee I Sing," "Joey's Theme," "Science Fiction," "Honey Babe," "Don't Be Angry" and "I Am a Camera."

Details on these pieces and the link can be found in the original post.

The LPs are all from my collection; the singles were cleaned up from Internet Archive.

Ahronovich Conducts Tchaikovsky's Manfred

The Russian-Israeli conductor Yuri Ahronovitch (1932-2002) has appeared here several times and has achieved a certain level of popularity among listeners. I had a request for more from him, so here is his 1977 recording of Tchaikovsky's Manfred. 

Yuri Ahronovitch

This is the first time we have had a chance to hear the conductor at his most subjective. His Nielsen Third Symphony was powerful but not eccentric; the same could be said of Taneyev's Fourth Symphony. And in the Taneyev Concert Suite he was the well-mannered accompanist to a tidy and not in the least temperamental soloist.

Manfred is extravagantly Romantic music; Ahronovitch was an extravagant conductor, so it's a combination that should have worked out. Whether it did or not was a matter of some debate.

Lord Byron

Tchaikovsky called Manfred a "Symphony in Four Scenes," but it could also be considered four interlinked symphonic poems. The composer, at the behest of Balakirev, patterned it after Berlioz's Harold in Italy. Both were inspired by works of Lord Byron. The French composer explained Harold's solo part as follows: "I wanted to make the viola a kind of melancholy dreamer in the manner of Byron's Childe-Harold." Manfred has no soloist, but nonetheless concerns the troubles of another melancholy Byronic hero.

In both works, Lord Byron's heroes mirrored his own travails. The noble poet had evacuated from England to the Alps after scandals that involved a supposed affair with his half-sister. His hero Manfred, similarly, has an unspecified but forbidden relationship with with his late love, Astarte. He is tortured by this, resorts to the supernatural to help him forget, but remains bereft.

Eventually he chooses death, famously telling an Abbot, "Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die."

Pyotr Tchaikovsky

In conducting Manfred, Ahronovitch's tempos struck some reviewers as excessively slow. Edward Greenfield in The Gramophone: "Not since the days of Mengelberg at his most wilful can I remember a Tchaikovsky performance which indulged so freely in rhythmic caprice ... I could hardly believe my ears at Ahronovitch’s treatment of the lovely Andante theme for muted strings at bar 171 in the first movement representing Astarte. I thought that the first phrase of five quavers and a dotted minim would never end, and after that the following pause was equally exaggerated. No doubt that extreme ritenuto style can on occasion in a live performance give a sense of spontaneous expressiveness, but here it sounds mannered to a degree, with Tchaikovsky’s free-sung phrases getting glued up."

But others were convinced by the performance. Here's Ivan March two months later, reviewing the tape edition in the same magazine: "EG [Edward Greenfield] and I are generally at one on Tchaikovsky interpretations but I enjoyed Ahronovitch’s account of Manfred more than he. It is very much a personal reading, certainly, but in this Byronic work one can accept a little licence; for instance I found Ahronovitch’s treatment of the tender second subject of the first movement (on muted strings) rather moving and his extreme ritenuto style effective in its way. Certainly this performance has transferred well to tape with good detail and an impressive weight and richness in the bass."

Whatever the merits of the performance, there are many memorable moments in Tchaikovsky's score. For me, Ahronovitch is at his best in the dramatic fourth movement. 

The record was transferred from a mint copy in my collection with dramatic if none-too-subtle late-analogue sound. This is a notably well-filled LP; the second side is 36 minutes long!

The link below is for the 16-bit, 44.1 kHz version. A 24-bit, 96 kHz transfer is available on request.

LINK

The Complete Lee Wiley on Columbia, Plus Bonuses

Following her series of songbooks for small labels in the 1940s, Lee Wiley moved on to a major company, Columbia, for which she recorded three LPs in 1950 and 1951.

Today's post brings together all those albums, and adds a few bonus items as well.

Specifically, we have:

• Night in Manhattan - Wiley's first Columbia LP, from 1950
• Lee Wiley Sings Irving Berlin - A return to the songbook format, from 1951
• Lee Wiley Sings Vincent Youmans - Recorded at about the same time as the Berlin album
• Treasury Department Guest Star - The songs from a program promoting savings bonds, circa 1951
• Maggy Fisher's Piano Playhouse - A 1950 LP by Wiley's piano accompanists for these LPs - Cy Walter, Stan Freeman and Joe Bushkin

All the Wiley recordings are from my collection. The piano disc was remastered from Internet Archive. There are separate links at the end of each section below.

Previously, Lee has been featured here in the music of Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart.

Night in Manhattan

For Wiley's first Columbia LP, she was co-starred with trumpeter Bobby Hackett, with pianist Joe Bushkin (and "His Swinging Strings") in smaller type. Both had often appeared with Lee, so this was a promising line-up.

The addition of strings was becoming a popular way to add some "class" to the proceedings. It became fashionable in jazz following Charlie Parker's 1950 LP. Previously, Sinatra often had used strings in his recordings, as had many other singers and big band leaders.

Perhaps it is the surroundings, but both Bushkin and Hackett sound more inhibited than they had in earlier recordings with Wiley, and the song treatments lack variety without the additional soloists that could be heard in the previous songbooks.

Bobby Hackett

That aside, the album is a complete success vocally. Lee, who is in great form, chose four songs by her mentor, bandleader Victor Young - "Any Time, Any Day, Anywhere" (which Wiley co-wrote), the fabulous "Street of Dreams," "A Ghost of a Chance" and the lesser-known "A Woman's Intuition," with an awkward lyric by the usually reliable Ned Washington.

Joe Bushkin

Also on the program was Bushkin's "Oh! Look at Me Now," with a special set of lyrics by Johnny DeVries. As vocal expert Will Friedwald noted, "the original hero sings of his desire to fall in love, the new heroine sings of her avaricious desire for checks and jewelry."

The other songs are two Wiley often recorded - "Sugar" and "Manhattan" - and the Gershwins' "I've Got a Crush on You," which she had revived for her 1939 songbook. Friedwald thinks the new version was influenced by Frank Sinatra's 1947 recording, which also features Hackett and perhaps not coincidentally Mitch Miller (on oboe). Mitch produced Lee's Columbia records.

Alternative 10-inch cover; 12-inch cover 

Night in Manhattan was originally a 10-inch LP. Columbia later issued it in 12-inch format, adding two songs each from Lee's Berlin and Youmans collections, which are discussed below.

LINK to Night in Manhattan

Lee Wiley Sings Irving Berlin

For her 1951 LPs, Columbia (probably in the form of Mitch Miller) teamed Wiley with the regular two-piano team of Cy Walter and Stan Freeman, who had appeared on radio as a duo, made a 1950 LP for M-G-M (see below) and would record separately and together for Columbia. 

Both were interesting characters. Walter was a fixture on the New York club scene, while Freeman is best known for playing the harpsichord on two hits - Rosemary Clooney's "Come On-a My House" and Percy Faith's "Delicado." (Stan also was a comedian.)

Cy Walter and Stan Freeman looking glum in the radio studio

Friedwald speculates that this teaming was an attempt to appeal to cabaret habitues, as was Wiley's sophisticated appearance on the LP cover.

Whether the accompaniment works or not is a matter of some dispute. There's no question that Lee sings beautifully. Walter and Freeman mesh quite well. But they also can sound as if they are in a different world from the vocalist, like they are in a separate acoustic. And there is a lack of variety in the sound, even more so than on Night in Manhattan.

Wiley complained to her friend Gus Kuhlman that she was not too happy with the records, and others agree. I'm not among them. Taken by themselves, they are a joy to hear, not least because they include some seldom-heard songs.

The Berlin LP starts off with one of the composer's greatest songs, "How Deep Is the Ocean?" from 1932. (I am reminded here of Sinatra's 1960 recording with a famous bass trombone solo - probably by George Roberts.)

The unfamiliar "Some Sunny Day" comes from 1922, and is one of the many, many Mammy-Alabamy numbers of the time. This one does have the distinction of including a talking hen, which you won't find in many songs. While the lyrics aren't great, the tune itself is catchy.

Irving Berlin

"I Got Lost in His Arms" is from Berlin's 1946 hit Annie Get Your Gun. Introducing the song was Ethel Merman, a much different artist than Wiley, to be sure. But Wiley is at her best here, and the pianists appropriately scale back their sound.

The performance of "Heat Wave" is fascinating because it features Berlin's opening verse and an interlude that few other artists have included, making a seemingly simple number far more complex. The song comes from 1933's As Thousand Cheer, where it was performed by Ethel Waters, one of Wiley's influences. Waters' 1933 recording also reflects the complete as-written composition.

J. Harold Murray and Katherine Carrington introduced "Soft Lights and Sweet Music" in 1932's Face the Music. A popular success, it was recorded by many artists at the time, then revived by Dick Haymes in 1948.

Lee Wiley in performance, circa 1950

"Fools Fall in Love" is a superior song, although little known. Will Friedwald remarks that the few other singers who performed it included Teddi King (who learned it from Wiley) and Marlene VerPlanck (who learned it from King). Several artists did record the song upon its being published in 1940, but it was little heard thereafter until Lee's performance.

Back in 1926, "How Many Times" was popular with recording artists, but today it isn't one of Berlin's most recognizable compositions. Wiley handles this up-tempo number with great authority. It is one of the best items on this LP.

Finally, another Ethel Waters song from As Thousands Cheer - the wrenching "Supper Time," where the singer's husband isn't coming home any more. He has been lynched. The song and performance are brilliant.

LINK to Lee Wiley Sings Irving Berlin

Lee Wiley Sings Vincent Youmans

Vincent Youmans is perhaps the only composer with a Wiley songbook who isn't a household name today. He was popular in his prime, but he wrote almost nothing after contracting tuberculosis in 1934, while still in his 30s. His neglect is a shame - there is much to admire here.

Youmans was famous for building melodies from short phrases. Lee starts off her LP with perhaps the best known example, "Tea for Two." It came from the composer's huge hit of 1924-25, No, No Nanette (which endured a campy revival in 1971). 

Vincent Youmans

Wiley's second song, "Sometimes I'm Happy," is even earlier and was first published with different lyrics before being cut from one show, used in a flop and eventually finding a home in the 1927 success Hit the Deck. It, too, is repetitive, but the initial melodic figure complements the lyrics and the song also has a soaring section to provide contrast. Both songs have Irving Caesar lyrics.

Lee herself had recorded the next selection, "Time on My Hands," soon after its introduction by Marilyn Miller in 1930's Smiles. The song is deservedly famous, and Wiley's knowing reading of Harold Adamson's languid lyrics is perfect.

In performance, about 1950

So, too, is the much different song "Rise 'n' Shine," a cheerful Depression-era ditty introduced by Ethel Merman in 1932's Take a Chance. I believe the song had fallen into obscurity until Lee revived it. Buddy DeSylva was the lyricist.

"More Than You Know" is one of Youmans' most famous compositions, and for good reason. This torch song has been featured by artists from Ruth Etting to Barbra Streisand. Here it is in an affecting version by Wiley. The song, which comes from the 1929 musical Great Day, has words by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu.

Like "Rise 'n' Shine, "Should I Be Sweet?" is from Take a Chance, and is just as unknown today. June Knight performed it in the original production. Victor Young recorded it in 1934, which may be where Wiley learned it. Buddy DeSylva wrote the words.

Cy Walter and Lee Wiley

The yearning "Keeping Myself for You" is beautifully suited to Wiley's sympathetic approach. The pianists are at one with her on this number. Youmans and Sidney Clare wrote the song for the 1929 film version of Hit the Deck. Jack Oakie (of all people) and Polly Walker sang it in the film, which is now lost. It is another song that fell into an undeserved oblivion before Lee revived it.

The LP concludes with "Why, Oh Why," another little-known song, although I suspect some of you may have heard it before. It comes from the stage production of Hit the Deck. The lyrics are by Clifford Grey and Leo Robin. It's an excellent song in a terrific performance.

In summary, this record is a gem, and should be better known.

LINK to Lee Wiley Sings Vincent Youmans

Treasury Department "Guest Star"

Wiley appeared on a US Treasury Department "Guest Star" transcription that radio stations broadcast in early 1952. I've included her two songs, along with an introduction by announcer John Conte and a plug for US Savings Bonds by Lee and Conte.

The label says that the program is with "Harry Sosnik and the Defense Bonds Orchestra," but the Lee Wiley Bio-Discography speculates that her songs are actually airchecks from a late 1951 radio program with trumpeter Billy Butterfield and Joe Bushkin's combo.

From the early 1950s

The arrangements are similar to the ones used on the Night in Manhattan album, and her two songs are selected from that record's repertoire - "Manhattan" and "A Ghost of a Chance," both of which she does well.

This transfer is from the original 16-inch transcription disc.

LINK to Treasury Department Guest Star

Cy Walter and Stan Freeman - Maggy Fisher's Piano Playhouse

Cy Walter and Stan Freeman performed together for a few years on a curiously name radio program, Maggy Fisher's Piano Playhouse. Among their guests on the program was Joe Bushkin, and the LP the three made for M-G-M in 1950 is a fitting way to close this post.

The seven selections include only one song on the Wiley LPs above - Irving Berlin's "Soft Lights and Sweet Music." That's one of the two numbers that includes Bushkin; the other is a double-length version of "Indiana."

Richard Rodgers in the radio studio with Cy Walter and Stan Freeman

Otherwise, Walter and Freeman present "Falling in Love with Love," "Orchids in the Moonlight," "Oh! Lady Be Good," "Younger Than Springtime" and "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

Note: In the first version of this transfer there was a truncated opening to Indiana due to an editing error. Corrected versions of both the song and the complete LP are below.

LINK to Maggy Fisher's Piano Playhouse (corrected)

LINK only to corrected Indiana (Parts 1 and 2)

I expect to devote a similar post to Wiley's RCA Victor recordings soon.