Damone Special - April in Paris Plus Bonuses and Remasters

Vic Damone has become something of a sub-specialty of this blog, most recently with a collection of his Silvertone Record Club recordings.

At that time I speculated that the Silvertone sides were produced by Mercury, the singer's main label, and in fact almost all of the many Damone tunes on this blog originated with that Chicago diskery.

Today I add to the pile of Mercury LPs with a transfer of a 10-inch album from circa 1953, April in Paris. Six of the eight songs therein derive from 1951 sessions with blog favorite arranger George Siravo. A seventh comes from a 1951 date with George Bassman, and the remaining item is with Glenn Osser and comes from 1947.

As a bonus, I've included an EP with three songs that didn't appear on LP and a 78 with two additional non-LP tracks.

The EP is This Is the Night, with three 1947 songs with Glenn Osser arrangements, along with "My Heart Is Breaking" from 1952, with Joe Lipman backing. The latter also appears on the LP Amor, which I have transferred previously and which is being reuploaded today (see below).

The bonus 78 comprises "Good Morning, Morning Glory" and "Goodbye for Awhile," which come from one of the 1951 Siravo sessions.

To summarize, here are the tracks, arrangers and dates:

01 You Belong to Me (George Siravo) 1951

02 Funny (George Siravo) 1951

03 My Funny Valentine (George Siravo) 1951

04 Easy to Love (George Siravo) 1951

05 April in Paris (George Siravo) 1951

06 Far Away Places (Glenn Osser) 1947

07 Operetta (George Siravo) 1951

08 Jump Through the Ring (George Bassman) 1951

09 Everyone But Me (Glenn Osser) 1949

10 Let's Fall in Love (Glenn Osser) 1949

11 This Is the Night (Glenn Osser) 1949

12 My Heart Is Breaking (Joe Lipman) 1952

13 Good Morning, Morning Glory (George Siravo) 1951

14 Goodbye for Awhile (George Siravo) 1951

Damone sounds great throughout this collection, and is at his most Sinatra-like in the 1951 Siravo dates. "Good Morning, Morning Glory" even apes the approach Frank was taking with novelty material at the time under the heavy hand of Mitch Miller. The sound is good for the most part, with the exception of some peak shatter in "Easy to Love" and a bit of 78 surface gravel on "Goodbye for Awhile."

Mercury's cover, as often is the case with the label, is adorably dorky, with Damone's disembodied head poking out from under a "boulangerie" sign. (They had the good sense to not have it say "charcuterie.")

Reups/remasters

I've remastered and reuploaded the four Damone 10-inch solo LPs that have appeared previously on this blog. The sound is generally much improved over the original incarnations. The links below lead to the original post. Download links can be found in the comments there and in the comments to this post as well.

Amor

Ebb Tide

Vic Damone (MG25028)

Vic Damone (MG25029)

Khachaturian: Kaufman vs. Kogan

When I recently posted a transfer of Oscar Levant's Gershwin recordings, reader Brent asked if I had the pianist's rendition of the Khachaturian concerto. I did not, but my good friend Bryan does, and he proceeded to post his fine transfer over at his blog The Shellackophile.

This transaction got me thinking about the composer, and records of his music in my collection. And in truth, my favorite Khachaturian concerto is not his rumbustious effort for the piano, but his gorgeous, atmospheric violin concerto.

My first choice for soloist was blog favorite Louis Kaufman. So I dutifully transferred his version, coming to the reluctant conclusion that this isn't his best recording. He sounds over-stretched, and the sound, too, is wuzzy (a word I just invented that combines fuzzy and woozy). The good news is that the accompaniment from the Santa Monica Symphony and Jacques Rachmilovich is sturdy, what you can hear of it.

Cover of the Kogan version

At that point I decided to bring out one of my favorite artists, the Soviet violinist Leonid Kogan, for a contrasting view of the work, and presumably a definitive one, being backed by the composer himself in a 1951 rendition with the USSR State Radio Orchestra.

A later Kogan recording had been my introduction to this work many years ago, in his early stereo version with the Boston Symphony and Pierre Monteux. I still find that reading entirely magical, but this earlier effort is not far behind and has reasonably good sound to boot.

I believe the Kogan-Khachaturian is either the third or fourth commercial recording of the work. My pressing is on the "International Recorded Music Society" label, which appears to be a Concert Hall Society spin-off dating from the late 1950s.

Kaufman's effort is purportedly from 1945, which would likely make it the concerto's second recording. I am a little dubious of the date because it would come before the founding of the record company itself (i.e., Concert Hall Society), but I suppose it is possible.

The initial recording of the concerto was by dedicatee David Oistrakh with Alexander Gauk, made the year after the work's 1940 premiere.

Please enjoy these contrasting views of this delightful composition and feel free to provide your reactions in the comments.

ADDENDUM - Reader Hiram from Venezuela recommended a version of the concerto with the short-lived Julian Sitkovetsky and the USSR State Radio Symphony under the composer's direction. This comes from 1956, the same year the 30-year-old violinist was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died in 1958. I found a low bit-rate version on YouTube, listened, and was very impressed. I highly recommend it to all. I have remastered the sound and provided a link in the comments to this post.

Khachaturian and Kogan with Soviet notables circa 1960. From left in the front row are the composer, Tikhon Khrennikov, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Kogan is third from the left behind this group, with Mstislav Rostropovich over his left shoulder.

Hovhaness Conducts Hovhaness

Longtime friend of the blog David Federman recently sent a plea for more transfers from the M-G-M Records classical catalog. That label was active in the classical realm for several years in the 1950s, and issued many interesting items during its short life.

I do have a number of M-G-M titles, and this one is of perhaps special interest. It presents the idiosyncratic American composer Alan Hovhaness leading three of his own works in what must be considered authoritative readings, in vivid if at times unsubtle sound. (Turn down the tymps, please!)

The first side consists of his incidental music for The Flowering Peach, a Clifford Odets play about Noah and the Ark that was on Broadway for four months in late 1954 and early 1955. (It later became the basis of the Richard Rodgers-Martin Charnin musical Two By Two, a vehicle for Danny Kaye, who infuriated Rodgers with his improvisations.)

Alan Hovhaness, demonstrating his prolificacy

Side 2 is mainly devoted to a suite from the ballet Is There Survival?, which Hovhaness alternatively titled King Vahaken. It dates from 1950, with a revision in 1955. Filling out the side is the composer's Orbit No. 1 from 1952, so titled because it is patterned after astronomical movements.

Hovhaness was famously prolific and reputedly did not try to create a masterpiece with every opus. But with his influences from Armenian and other world musics, he may seem more up-to-date to today's listeners than many of his contemporaries.

In the recording, Hovhaness leads chamber ensembles that I believe were drawn from the New York pool of musicians, who as you might expect are proficient, although they sound a little under-rehearsed. I don't have recording dates for all of the pieces on this LP, but two of them were taped in 1955.

If you enjoy Hovhaness's music, you may also want to go to my post of his St. Vartan Symphony, which I recently remastered and reuploaded at David's request.

Note (October 2024): both Hovhaness discs have now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK to The Flowering Peach, etc.

Vic Damone for the Silvertone Record Club

Young Vic Damone

Vic Damone recorded for a number of companies during his long career, but his early efforts were mainly but not exclusively for Chicago-based Mercury records. He joined that label in 1947, just a few years after it began, and quickly became one of its most important artists.

But perhaps even before the silky-voiced young baritone was recording for Mercury, he was a featured artist for another Chicago institution - Sears, Roebuck and Co. Damone was one of the main attractions of the "Silvertone Record Club," a high-toned pop and light classical label that Sears operated from 1946-49.

I believe that Sears contracted with Mercury for its Damone output - and possibly other selections. He is backed by such arrangers as Glenn Osser and Tutti Camarata, who also helmed his Mercury output during the same period. Many of the songs first issued on Silvertone show up in his Mercury discography as well. It seems likely that the masters reverted to Mercury after the Sears imprint went under.

This post brings together the majority of Damone's Silvertone recordings. The first eight are from an LP issued on the Hollywood budget label in the 1950s (cover below). The sound on these sides is relatively good, with my usual reissue complaint that reverb has been added to "modernize" the sonics. Not much I can do about that, but I could and did fix the pitch, which was distinctly sharp.

The balance are from two Silvertone 78s in my collection. These 78 transfers are not as bright sounding than most of my efforts, to minimize some audible needle damage that is endemic to these early vinyl pressings. Vinyl 78s sounded great when new, but did not stand up well to the two-ton tonearms that were normal on contemporary record players.

So why transfer these if some can be found on Mercury issues? First, because the majority come from 12-inch masters, and I believe that Mercury shortened them for subsequent release. Second, not all of them were re-released. And most importantly, they are fine examples of Damone's balladry, and thus enjoyable in and of themselves.

Let me mention that the last song in the collection is a Ted Dale instrumental with no vocal. I included it only for the sake of completeness - it is the flip side to Damone's vocal on "I've Got You Under My Skin."

LINK

Note (January 2024): these recordings have now been remastered in ambient stereo for better sound. Also, I've now completed the Silvertone set with three additional sides that can be found on my singles blog.

Chausson from Francescatti, Casadesus, Guilet Quartet

The Chausson Concert for Piano, Violin and String Quartet is one of the great masterpieces of French Romanticism. Today we have a sterling rendition from some of the finest French instrumentalists of a later generation.

In this latest addition to my series of recordings by Zino Francescatti, the violinist is joined by pianist Robert Casadesus and the Guilet Quartet (at the time, Daniel Guilet and Bernard Robbins, violins, Emanuel Vardi, viola, Benar Heifetz, cello).

Francescatti and Casadesus

The cover announces that the record was released to mark the 100th anniversary of Chausson's 1855 birth. The sessions actually occurred in December 1954 in Columbia's 30th Street Studio, New York.

Francescatti and Casadesus often performed together and are at one in this well-recorded performance.

Gershwin from Kostelanetz, Plus More from Weston

My last post presented two of the recordings that Columbia made to mark the release of the 1945 George Gershwin biopic, Rhapsody in Blue - the Rhapsody with Levant and Ormandy, and An American in Paris with the New York Philharmonic and Rodziński.

Cover of 78 set

The label's third contribution to the Gershwin fest was an album of song arrangements led by its pops maestro, Andre Kostelanetz. Like the concert pieces, Kosty's efforts enjoyed a long life in the catalogue - first the 78 set (left), then a 10-inch LP (cover above), and finally a 12-inch LP (cover at bottom of post). The first part of today's post consists of a transfer of the 10-inch LP, with the addition of the extra items from the 12-inch album.

Now why (you might ask) didn't I just record the 12-inch LP? Well, the name of this blog was a consideration, but the main reason was simply that the older LP had better sound. By the time the 12-incher came out in 1955, it was a ironclad item of faith among transfer engineers that everything sounded better with reverb. The mid-50s version of "More cowbell!!" was "More echo!!" So my download presents the unclouded sound of the 10-inch LP, then adds "I Got Rhythm," "Mine," "Bess, Oh Where's My Bess," and "Strike Up the Band," all taken from the 12-inch disc.

As always with Kostelanetz, the arrangements are busy but full of interest, if lacking in the emotional depth that is an integral element of many of Gershwin's songs.

I decided to add a bonus to the Kostelanetz post in the form of a 1953 10-inch LP from fellow mood music maven Paul Weston. As in my previous Kosty/Weston dual post, the records have one song in common (Gershwin's "Soon"), so you can compare and contrast the differing approaches of these fine arrangers.

Weston's LP is titled Whispers in the Dark after the 1937 Leo Robin-Frederick Hollander song from the film Artists and Models. It's one of the many wonderful songs from that era that are almost unknown today. As with the previous Weston album, the program is enjoyable and satisfying, and the sound is excellent - as it is on the Kostelanetz program.

Cover of 1955 LP

Gershwin from Levant, Kostelanetz and Rodziński

Times Square, 1945

By the time the Warner Bros. had released their romantic biopic of George Gershwin in 1945, the late composer had ascended to a crescendo of fame that endures to this day. His most notorious musical advocate, Oscar Levant, wasn't far behind.

Initially, Levant's popular renown came not from musical performance but from radio appearances. As Life magazine put it in a 1940 profile, "Until about a year and a half ago, Oscar Levant enjoyed a limited fame as a composer of one smash-hit tune, Lady Play Your Mandolin, and as an interpreter of George Gershwin's serious piano music." That was before his triumphant tenure as enfant terrible on radio's Information Please, and the publishing of his amusing first memoir, A Smattering of Ignorance.

So when it came time for Warners to cast their Gershwin movie, Levant was a natural choice not only to play himself, but to dub Robert Alda's Gershwin character at the piano.

1943 ad

Columbia Records had begun pairing Levant with Gershwin's music as early as 1941 with the Three Piano Preludes, and then in 1942 with the Concerto in F, backed by Andre Kostelanetz and the New York Philharmonic. The production of the film Rhapsody in Blue was the impetus for Levant to take on the composition of the same name, with backing by the Philadelphians and Ormandy in June 1945 sessions.

Earlier LP cover

Levant's efforts were only part of Columbia's tie-ins to the film, however, They engaged the New Yorkers and music director Artur Rodziński for An American in Paris, and brought in Kostelanetz for an album of Gershwin show tunes. These were released at the same time as the movie.

All are superb recordings that are more than worthy of their long life in the catalogue. I recently transferred them for my own amusement, and thought some of you might like to hear them as well. Today we have an excellent 1957 LP version of the concerto, Rhapsody and An American in Paris. Later on I'll present the Kostelanetz collection.

FYI - in 1949 Columbia had Levant in the studio to set down the Second Rhapsody and the Variations on "I Got Rhythm" with Morton Gould and a New York orchestra, issuing them on a 10-inch LP with Levant's classic set of the Preludes. I recently reuploaded my transfer of this superb album.

1957 cover