Fulton Sheen

Bishop Fulton Sheen was quite a presence in American Catholic life for many years, and particularly in the early 1950s, when the record above was made. A mesmerizing speaker with a penetrating gaze, he actually had a prime time television program opposite Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra at that time. A cover story from Time magazine gives a good sense of his influence. There are quite a few examples of his television show on YouTube. This clip condemning Communism shows the power of his delivery.

The record above is actually a 10-inch 78 made for children, with two prayers and two religious poems. Bishop Sheen's intensity in the poems is a little frightening. I remember him well from my own childhood - and indeed I instantly remembered this record from many years ago when I acquired it recently. Like many young people of that era, I had a record player of my own and my own little record collection. This has led to a lifelong hobby and now this blog, but that's another story - and quite a dull one, too.

I've added a bonus item of sorts to the record above, and it really is esoteric. It is an excerpt from a sermon that then-Msgr. Sheen delivered to a gathering of 110,000 faithful in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1940. The sermon was issued by the Catholic Digest via a three-record set of 12-inch 78s pressed on unusual dark-blue shellac. I only have one of the records - the excerpt is from the second side. In this item, Msgr. Sheen gets transcendental and likens all of California to an altar, with Mexico the sacristy. I think that's what he is saying - the sound's a little dim.

LINK

Danny Kaye Returns

Our first Danny Kaye item was surprisingly popular, so here goes with another one.

Two of the numbers on this record were from Kaye's films - Lobby Number, an amusing six-minute ramble through movie cliches, was from Up in Arms, and the Little Fiddle, a send-up of introductory classical pieces for kiddies, was from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

If you are familiar with the performance of Triplets by Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan, and Fred Astaire in The Bandwagon, you may find this version interestingly different. Kaye also does some straight singing on this record, and very well.

This was Kaye's first album. It's a good one. My copy must have been owned by a real fan of Dan - it is a bit worn, I'm afraid.

Woody Guthrie

It's been some time since we visited the folk/blues/early jazz category, and what better way to add to that collection than with a Woody Guthrie album.

This is a Folkways LP that came out in 1950, but it collects some of the first commercial recordings that Guthrie made - for RCA Victor in 1940. On the A side you will find four classic dust bowl ballads; on the flip side, songs about the migrants who were chased from the southwest by the storms of the 1930s. These include a piece that Guthrie based on John Steinbeck's Tom Joad character.

It's interesting that Guthrie, thought of as a true folk artist, was influenced by Steinbeck's novel and (according to the notes to this album) even the film of the Grapes of Wrath. His work in turn became part of the collective consciousness, in a sense - I remember singing So Long and This Land Is Your Land in elementary school in the 1950s, well before I ever heard of Woody himself.

Guthrie's RCA session was tremendously successful artistically - this record doesn't include Do Re Mi, Vigilante Man, and Pretty Boy Floyd, all of which he recorded at the same session.

The cover of this album, by an artist named Carlis, is perfect for its contents. A great record and great package.

Mewton-Wood, Part 2

Continuing our series of the recordings that Noel Mewton-Wood did for the Musical Masterpiece Society circa 1950, we have a wonderful performance of this supreme work by Beethoven.

Mewton-Wood was one of those artists whose work always seems perfectly natural; whether elegant or impassioned, it just seems right. To achieve such results in rushed sessions for a budget label continues to be a source of wonder.

In this concerto, he partners with the Utrecht Symphony, which was a "real" orchestra (unlike the Netherlands Philharmonic heard earlier in this series). Once again, the conductor is the talented Walter Goehr.

I do hope you will listen - and forgive the noise at the beginning of the transfer. It soon fades, but the impression left by Mewton-Wood's artistry does not.

(Note: this noise has now been all but eradicated in the latest version.)

LINK

Georgia Gibbs

A high percentage of early LPs featured pop singers. We've neglected them here, so let's start to make amends with this album from a fine vocalist, Georgia Gibbs.

I wish there were a way to make amends to Her Nibs (as she was called) for this cover. Yes, her skin is really the color of a rotting lime on the original artwork. Yes, there are cobwebs attached to her head. And yes, there are rolls of flab on her neck. All of which signifies that the cover was designed by my very own "discovery," Fred Steffen!

We first encountered Fred in the early days of this blog. He did the outrageous art for a Steve Gibson LP featured way down below. I said then that I didn't know anything about the artist. Since then I've found references to him as being a Chicago resident (Mercury was headquartered there) who designed book illustrations and a couple of pieces of art for Rogue, a men's magazine. I surely hope the latter were more alluring than his work for Georgia Gibbs.

Gibbs deserved better. A talented singer with a gutsy approach, her biggest hits were R&B covers like Dance with Me Henry. This is a enjoyable record in good sound with nice backing by an anonymous group.

LINK

Humoresque

Here's one of those movies from the 40s that used classical music (or classical music by-products, anyway) in the service of melodrama.

Like our last venture into Golden Age Hollywood, this was a Joan Crawford vehicle. Fresh from her Mildred Pierce triumph, she was paired this time with smoldering prole John Garfield. I like the IMDB summary: "A classical musician from the slums is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite."

Well, you can probably imagine what happens with that plot (as IMDB says, "Tragedy ensues"). But you may find it hard to imagine what happens in the score when Franz Waxman decides that Wagner's Tristan and Isolde really needs the assistance of Isaac Stern and Oscar Levant in solo roles. What ensues is not exactly tragic, but it's not exactly Wagner either. Waxman, Stern, and Levant were all wonderful musicians, but this was not a good idea.

Stern has better luck with Waxman's arrangements of Dvorak's Humoresque and Rimsky-Korsakov's Flight of the Bumble-Bee. Waxman also does an arrangement of Sarasate's arrangement of themes from Bizet's Carmen (if that makes sense). For some reason, he left Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen alone.

This record must have been aimed at the market for fiddlers (Stern was then an up-and-comer) because it has a nice drawing of the violinist rather than a photo of Garfield or Crawford on the cover. Thank goodness the result looks nothing like the gaudy movie poster.

Barbirolli Conducts Rubbra

Born in 1901, Edmund Rubbra was a contemporary and friend of such English composers as Gerald Finzi and William Alwyn. Like them, he wrote music that was conservative for its time.

His fifth symphony comes from 1947. This is its first recording, and the only recording of any of his symphonies for many years. (All 11 have now been recorded at least once.)

Barbirolli was a champion of this work, and the attractive record sleeve gives him the play over Rubbra - it's actually hard to read the title of the piece because the script font is reversed out of light blue.

It's an elegant package, and if the music inside is more earnest that elegant, it is well worth getting to know.