Pavane for Two Dead Airlines

I enjoy at least some promotional LPs, and here are two good ones, both honoring now-defunct airlines.

Above we have "The Name of the Game Is Go," issued to celebrate a new advertising campaign, circa 1970, for Pan Am, at the time the largest international airline serving the U.S. The audience was likely travel agents, among others.

Below is a 1965 LP, "Images in Flight," which took the unusual step of having three conservative American composers gussy up the Eastern Airlines theme music into an aural travelogue depicting some of the destinations Eastern served. The cover notes imply that the record was a giveaway for Eastern employees, but I have seen the LP many times over the years, so I suspect its circulation was wider.

Both albums come from a time when air travel was rather more glamorous than it is nowadays. My own flying experience spans the period from when these records were issued until today, and I can tell you the only things I don't miss from those earlier days are cigarette smoke in the cabin and the less sophisticated weather forecasts of the time, which often led to bumpy if not dangerous flights.

But rather than going off into a reverie about the old days, let's look at each of the albums in turn.

Pan Am

The Pan Am record is listed online as coming from 1969, but since it references the Boeing 747, which Pan Am did not fly until 1970, I believe it is from a little later. The first side is devoted to several iterations of "Name of the Game is Go" advertising spots, which feature the catchy theme developed for the campaign and various versions of the clever lyrics. Each spot ends with a segue into the older "Pan Am Makes the Going Great" tagline music.

As usual with advertising jingles, the composer and copywriter for the "Name of the Game" spots are anonymous. However, "Goin's Great" music is also present in two recordings made of the music as adapted into song form, as performed by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Steve Allen circa 1969. The credits ascribe the music to Stanley Applebaum and lyrics to Sammy Cahn. Allen helpfully quotes "Shortnin' Bread" in his piano solo, suggesting where Applebaum may have found inspiration.

Gatefold - click to enlarge

The album's covers and gatefold display the ad campaign's print element. The artwork is by Henry "Hank" Syverson, a cartoonist with a very distinct style who worked for magazines and advertisements.

The music, arrangements, lyrics and artwork are all redolent of the time, and were largely aimed at the tired businessman looking to get away from it all. As was the custom then, women were mainly stereotyped as housewives.

Note (October 2024): this LP has now been remastered.

LINK to The Name of the Game Is Go

Eastern Airlines

The Eastern LP is the result of a collaboration between the airline and Andre Kostelanetz, a high-toned mood music maestro and the conductor of the New York Philharmonic's pops concerts. Kostelanetz then commissioned three reputable composers - Alan Hovhaness, Paul Creston and Henry Cowell - to produce a suite, "Images in Flight," making use of the airline's theme music. As with the Pan Am music, the composer of the Eastern theme is anonymous.

The result, as recorded by the New Yorkers in 1965, is surprisingly palatable in its easy-going way. The album is filled out by an instrumental version of the Eastern theme music, called "Bermuda Concerto" for some reason, as arranged by Clay Wernick (I believe) and performed by studio pianist Dick Hyman and the Kostelanetz ensemble. The balance of the LP consists of reissued Kostelanetz sides mainly on the travel theme.

The sound on these records is generally above average for promotional items, which often have dim sonics. The "Images in Flight" suite sounds quite good.

Note (October 2024): this LP has now been remastered.

LINK to Images in Flight

Film Music from Louis Lane and the Clevelanders

Here is the second in a series of recordings that the late conductor Louis Lane made with the Cleveland Orchestra's summer assembly, then called the Cleveland Pops Orchestra.

Lane in his summer Pops garb

This program of film music is varied, with contributions from composers who concentrated in musicals (Frederick Loewe, Richard Rodgers, Harold Rome), classical composers (William Walton, Virgil Thomson) and a film score specialist (Ernest Gold).

As you might expect, Lane and his group do particularly well with Walton's beautiful string pieces from Henry V and Thomson's characteristic Acadian Dances from Louisiana Story. When they get into fare that requires ardor, such as the theme from Gigi, they seem detached in a way that (for example) the Boston Pops did not in its recording of the same music.

The analytical recording from Severance Hall (then a rather dry acoustic) adds to this impression - so different from the billowing reverberation that RCA Victor derived from Boston's Symphony Hall. But the clarity in the Cleveland sound has its benefits, allowing you to fully enjoy the superb playing throughout the program.

Epic's sessions for the Thomson and Walton were in July 1961, per Michael Gray's discography. It's likely that the other works were set down at about the same time. Lane was then the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra.

E. Power Biggs with Familiar Bach

I've had an occasional series of recordings by organist Virgil Fox going on for some time. Today we have a contrasting approach to the instrument from Fox's great mid-century rival, E. Power Biggs.

Fox was known for flamboyance; Biggs for a more measured, even chaste approach. That is not to say his work is dull - far from it, and this mellifluous program of familiar J. S. Bach items is evidence.

Biggs is accompanied by the Columbia Chamber Orchestra conducted by Richard Burgin, in a set taped May 24, 1951 in Boston's Symphony Hall. Given that Burgin was assistant conductor and concertmaster of the Boston Symphony at the time, and that all but one of the named soloists were members of the ensemble, it seems likely that the "Columbia Chamber Orchestra" was at least in part made up of BSO members.

Harrison and Biggs meet with Albert Schweitzer during the build of the Aeolian-Skinner destined for Symphony Hall

Biggs performs on the G. Donald Harrison-designed Aeolian-Skinner organ, which had been installed in Symphony Hall a few years previously. Columbia began recording him on that organ almost as soon as it was available.

The soloists on the LP are as follows:

• Roger Voisin, Marcel LaFosse - trumpets
• Phillip Kaplan, Lois Schaefer - flutes (Schaefer was not then a BSO member, although she joined much later on)
• Alfred Krips - violin

First cover

The transfer, the result of a request on another site, is from a nice pressing dating from later in the 1950s, with the modernized cover shown above. (The first cover is at left.) The download includes scans of the covers, as always, and discographical information from Michael Gray's site.

Malcolm Arnold's Trapeze Score, Plus Reups

It was just about, oh, five years ago that I posted the soundtrack to The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, and promised to follow up with more works from the talented English composer Malcolm Arnold.

Here to make belated good on that promise is Arnold's 1956 score to the Burt Lancaster - Gina Lollobrigida - Tony Curtis circus epic Trapeze.

Malcolm Arnold

Well, half a score anyway. A good part of the listening experience is occupied by "The Entry of the Gladiators," two Sousa marches, and the Blue Danube waltz. This would be well and good except conductor Muir Mathieson apparently wanted his orchestra to sound like a circus band, with raucous results.

To me, bad music is only one of the many reasons not to go to the circus - or to watch circus movies. So I have not seen Trapeze, but I can tell you that it revolves around a love triangle (if such a thing is geometrically possible). As you might guess from the wonderfully vivid cover, the participants are Lancaster, Lollobrigida and Curtis. At least I assume that is Curtis on the endless rope ladder - he looks as much like William Shatner there.

Poor Tony has to watch as Burt and Gina do their mid-air smooching routine. Meanwhile a circus tableau seemingly as imagined by Hieronymous Bosch unfolds far below, with what looks like a Parisian gang fight in the corner.

They don't make record covers like this anymore, nor scores, for that matter, although honestly, this is not one of Arnold's best efforts. His cues are effective enough, but there aren't many of them, and the effect is not as impressive as some of Arnold's other works.

Columbia did not give its best efforts to the sound, either, although I have done my darndest to give the thin sonics some life and heft.

Now on to the reups, leading off with Arnold's Inn of the Sixth Happiness score.

Malcolm Arnold - Inn of the Sixth Happiness. A wonderful early stereo score with Arnold at the height of his powers. Remastered.

Jean Francaix - Concertino, Serenade. The composer is soloist in his delightful Concertino, and Eugen Jochum leads the ensemble in the equally delightful Serenade, in these Telefunken recordings from the 1930s. Remastered.

Eartha Kitt - RCA Victor Presents. The first LP by the vocalist-tigress, with many of her most famous numbers, including "C'est Si Bon." Also the Stan Freberg send up of the latter tune. Remastered.

George Byron - Sings Jerome Kern. Byron was a cabaret singer who happened to be married to Kern's widow. His performances are scrupulous and convincing.

Joe Venuti and Bobby Maxwell. Jazz violin and jazz harp, separately and together in this compilation from mid-century. Remastered.

As usual, the links above go to the original posts, New download links are in the comments, both there and here.

Louis Lane Conducts American Composers, Plus a Bonus

To mark the death of conductor Louis Lane, I recently shared on another site my transfer of Lane's 1961 Epic LP, "Music for Young America," made with the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, at that time the summer incarnation of the Cleveland Orchestra. Lane was the longtime assistant, associate and resident conductor of the Cleveland ensemble, during the Szell years.

I thought I might also make it available here, together with a substantial bonus of more music by Cleveland-related composers (see below).

Louis Lane

The performances in Lane's program of music by conservative American composers are finely judged and clean cut, a fitting tribute to an excellent musician and the superb Cleveland ensemble.

It may be a little ironic that the chosen “Music for Young America” was composed by five older composers, two of whom had already passed away at the time of the recording. But that doesn’t take away from the quality of the works themselves. The most familiar is Aaron Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture,” followed by the suite from Gian Carlo Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors." Wallingford Riegger’s “Dance Rhythms,” unlike many of his other works, is tonal.

The second side is devoted to two Cleveland composers. Herbert Elwell, longtime critic of The Plain Dealer, is represented by his most frequently performed work, the ballet suite from "The Happy Hypocrite." Finally, there is “The Old Chisholm Trail” from Arthur Shepherd’s suite “Horizons” (I believe Shepherd designated it as his Symphony No. 1), a relatively early example of Americana, dating from 1926.

To make the Cleveland connection complete, the informative liner notes are by Klaus Roy, longtime program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra and himself a notable composer.

LINK to Music for Young America (April 2025 remastering)

Music by Herbert Elwell and Ernest Bloch

Now to the bonus disc - a private recording of Elwell's "Blue Symphony," a setting of John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" from the 1940s, together with Ernest Bloch's Piano Quintet, written in 1923, when the composer was head of the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Herbert Elwell

The worthy performances are by the Feldman String Quartet, with soprano Elizabeth V. Forman and pianist Gloria Whitehurst Phillips. The recording was made for the Roanoke Fine Arts Center in 1962.

LINK to music by Elwell and Bloch (April 2025 remastering)

Ives and Sessions with Patricia Travers

When Patricia Travers died several years ago, her obituary in the New York Times melodramatically termed her the "violinist who vanished."

But Travers herself did not disappear, rather she abandoned a career that had recently transitioned from child prodigy to an uncertain future as an adult soloist.

As the Times relates, "In her early 20s, for the Columbia label, she made the first complete recording of Charles Ives’s Sonata No.2 for Violin and Piano, a modern American work requiring a mature musical intelligence. Not long afterward, she disappeared."

Patricia Travers

This is the recording that the newspaper mentions. It and the Sessions Duo for Violin and Piano were taped in April 1950, but she was in fact active for at least a few years thereafter. In June 1952 Columbia had her record another modern American work, Norman Dello Joio's Variations and Capriccio, with the composer at the piano.

On the evidence of this LP, Travers was certainly up to the task of rendering the first recorded performance of Ives's characteristic sonata and Sessions's knotty Duo. Composer Arthur Berger wrote in the Saturday Review that she gives the music "the kind of treatment the big names reserve for the 

standard classics. The Sessions work, which I had always regarded as an over-restless, tense piece, is invested with just the right amount of repose - revealing intrinsic beauties I had only vaguely suspected it of having. The Ives, by contrast, which has been played in a rambling fashion, ruminating over the hymn-tune and the country-dance, takes on remarkable shape in her reading."

These works were perhaps a relief after the showpieces that typically are allotted to the child virtuoso. Perhaps remarkably, perhaps not considering what shows up on YouTube, you can see the 20-year-old Travers perform a bit of the Carmen Fantasy in a 1948 German newsreel.

Travers never did explain her "disappearance." It is left for us to speculate, and I will only note my own opinion that no one should be induced to give up their childhood and adolescence to public performance and scrutiny, which can deplete the resources of even the most well-adjusted adult.

Her cohort on this 10-inch LP is the well-known accompanist Otto Herz. The sound is excellent. This is Travers's only recording, save for the Dello Joio.

Note (November 2024): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo. The download includes complete scans and contemporary reviews.

LINK to Ives and Sessions

Ruth Olay with Jerry Fielding

Last summer I posted an Jerry Fielding LP from 1953, with a bonus single featuring the young vocalist Ruth Olay. At that time I had a request for more Olay, so here she is, appropriately accompanied by Fielding in this 1958 date for Mercury.

By that time, Olay had become more established in the West Coast clubs, and had even become a familiar face on television. The cover above pitches her as the "singing discovery of the Jack Paar Show" - Paar at that time was the host of the late night Tonight Show on U.S. television, with Olay as a frequent guest.

Ruth Olay

The term "discovery" may suggest that the singer was a newcomer to the studio, which was not the case. I believe this was her fourth LP recording, with previous entries for the Zenith label, Mercury and Mercury's EmArcy mark (although the latter may have been released later than Easy Living).

Her singing on the Trend single was assured, if seemingly under the spell of Mildred Bailey. On this session she retains her characteristic rapid vibrato, but has adopted a more individual manner, with overtones of Lena Horne and Kay Starr. In a revealing interview with Bill Reed, Olay herself insists her greatest influences were blues singers. In any case, she was a highly accomplished artist whose current neglect is curious - especially considering she is still with us.

Easy Living embodies the peculiarities of early stereo, made during the period when engineers were still experimenting with the new format. On most tracks, Ruth comes at us from the left speaker, with the Mercury folks occasionally moving her to the right channel mid-song, seemingly just for the heck of it. On "Undecided" (of course), she keeps switching back and forth. These artificial shenanigans were common when stereo was young, the better for buyers to show off their new two-channel set-ups. (I distinctly remember the first time I heard a stereo record. It was at the house of friends of my parents, and seemed like quite a big deal to nine-year-old Buster.)

As a bonus, I have added a non-LP single that Olay made with Fielding early in 1958. Apparently the only title issued from that January date, it is a lively version of the Mercer-Donaldson song "On Behalf of the Visiting Firemen." (The other side of the single was "I Wanna Be a Friend of Yours" from the Easy Living album.)

By the way, the mention of Jack Paar on the LP cover inspired me to dig out one of the comic's few singles - a surprisingly good one (no thanks to Paar). The curious can find it on my singles blog.