Reups: Morton Gould, Simply Heavenly, Sousa

A quick post to let you know about some recent reuploads on the blog, per requests by readers. The links below take you to the original posts. Download links are in the comments sections both there and here.

Morton Gould - Manhattan Moods
From the early days of the blog but refurbished and sounding excellent is this 10-inch LP from blog-favorite Morton Gould. Manhattan Moods is a terrific exercise in the sub-Gershwin genre; the best known example on the record is Alfred Newman's "Street Scene," from 1931. Lou Alter, Matty Malneck and Gould himself also contribute pieces. Excellent sound from 1951.

Simply Heavenly (Original Off-Broadway Cast)
This enjoyable record preserves the original cast performance of Langston Hughes's Simply Heavenly, which appeared off Broadway in 1957. The fine cast is led by Claudia McNeil and Melvin Stewart. Hughes provided his own lyrics; the music is by David Martin. The author adapted the story from his own novels about his character Jesse Semple ("Simple").

Stars and Stripes Forever (Original Soundtrack), Plus Sousa Recordings
The soundtrack of a film biography of march king John Philip Sousa, as produced by 20th Century-Fox in 1952. Fox improbably cast Clifton Webb as the military bandleader, and even more improbably gave the soundtrack to M-G-M records to release. Between the two studios, they managed to capture Alfred Newman's massed brass in subfusc sound. The soundtrack LP does not sound as crisp as the vintage 1920s Sousa recordings I've appended as a bonus.

A Musical Salute to Kitchen Appliances

The big news on Broadway in 1957 may have been West Side Story and The Music Man, but in Columbus, Ohio they were singing about kitchen appliances rather than Jets, Sharks or 76 trombones.

The occasion was the annual meeting of the Westinghouse dealers, and the centerpiece of their August gathering was a musical tribute to the new line of fridges, stoves and mixers, as documented in today's post, The Shape of Tomorrow: A Musical Introduction to 1958 Westinghouse Appliances, a souvenir LP from the meeting.

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The Shape of Tomorrow is one of the prime artifacts from the heyday of the industrial musical, designed to amuse attendees at boring meetings while creating enthusiasm for the sponsoring company and its product assortment. I've already posted a notable example - Once in a Lifetime: the Complete Musical Score from the Edsel Dealer Announcement Show, which dates from the same month as the Westinghouse production.

Green in G&S costume

If anything, the Westinghouse show was more elaborate than the Edsel spectacular. The large cast was led by Martyn Green, perhaps the most famous Gilbert & Sullivan specialist of the 20th century, who had moved to the U.S. after leaving D'Oyly Carte in 1951. The other performers are less noted, but their work is uniformly good.

The show has a fine score by John Wyman, of whom I can find no information, with lyrics by Herb Kanzell, an actor and writer who went on to do many such shows for clients including International Harvester, Dulux, British Rail, Oxo and British Airways. The BBC interviewed him as recently as 2012, but that clip is unfortunately not online.

Wyman and Kanzell concocted a variety of tunes, including a patter song for Green, "Nightmare," patterned after a G&S specialty, where his character has horrible dreams about unwashed dishes and similar domestic catastrophes that would ensue without Westinghouse appliances. My favorite is the calypso, "He Got No Westinghouse Franchise," where Green sings about war heroes such as Pershing, Eisenhower and Wellington, lamenting that "Him won the war but he got no store, and that's why the tears they dim his eyes. He got no Westinghouse franchise!"

Green is cast as J.W. Butterfield, Westinghouse dealer extraordinaire, who has a customer base so exclusive that "We only condescend to sell to upper-crusted clientele - and never the lowly bourgeoisie!" A man to emulate for the dealers in the audience, no doubt.

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The staging of the show was by Buff Shurr, who was in a few Broadway musicals and was to be assistant choreographer on The Roar of the Greasepaint. He eventually directed more than 150 industrial shows, for companies including RCA, GM, Ford, PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper and Frito Lay. As recently as last year he was associated with Garland Summer Musicals in Texas.

Besides Green, the best-known member of the troupe was orchestrator and conductor Ted Royal, one of the finest Broadway arrangers, whose credits include Brigadoon, Where's Charley?, House of Flowers, Flahooley and Mr. Wonderful.

Peter Muller-Monk

Why would Westinghouse spend so freely for this product introduction? It may have been because the new models represented a major change for their appliances. Styles had been modulating throughout the 1950s from the rounded moderne forms of the 1930s and 40s into the straight, clean modernist lines that had already influenced architecture, furniture and automobiles. Westinghouse's 1957 products had been stuck in the old style, so it was time to get in tune with the times.

The company hired Peter Muller-Monk, a Pittsburgh-based industrial designer, to remake the look of its products. Together they came up with The Shape of Tomorrow, a motto and symbol reminiscent of The Forward Look, which Chrysler and Virgil Exner had introduced a few years before. Muller-Monk was a talented designer; his work was an artistic success that wears its 60 years well. I've included an article on him in the download.

Unlike many promotional LPs, the sound from this example is very good.

Larry Elgart and Charles Albertine

Bandleader Larry Elgart died last week, so I thought I might post one of his most unusual records, this 1954 LP of Music for Barefoot Ballerinas and Others. It's not in the big-band realm occupied by so many of the records issued by Elgart, either under his own name or in conjunction with older brother Les, himself a prolific recording artist. Instead it is putative ballet music featuring Larry's alto saxophone as a solo voice.

Although Elgart is listed as directing the record, the music was composed and arranged by Charles Albertine. Little known today, Albertine worked extensively with the Elgarts and later with the Three Suns and Sammy Kaye. (More info here.)

Larry Elgart

The "Barefoot Ballerinas" music is most enjoyable, with Albertine drawing on French and Russian composers for inspiration, and Elgart's alto adopting a purer sound than is usually found in pop or jazz alto solos. (I find it hard to listen to many jazz altos.) You may find this album described on the web as avant-garde or akin to Bob Graettinger's City of Glass. Neither claim is true; it is entirely euphonious.

Albertine had begun working with the Elgarts in 1952 or 1953, and had already arranged one LP for Larry, 1953's Impressions of Outer Space, a record I wish I owned for its fantastic cover alone. Albertine composed five of the eight tunes on that record; one other was by Kermit Levinsky (Leslie), who recently made an appearance on this blog.

Much of Albertine's work for the Elgarts was far more conventional than "Barefoot Ballerinas." Earlier in 1954, Les had taped Albertine's "Bandstand Boogie." It's quite a good big-band riff tune in a Jerry Gray vein, one that will be familiar to most Americans of my generation as the theme music for Dick Clark's television show American Bandstand.

Larry continued recording into the 1980s, scoring a hit with his album Hooked on Swing, which was not as disreputable as its counterpart Hooked on Classics. Both were mainstays of an 80s record library.

Decca's cover for "Barefoot Ballerinas" is much different from its usual blatant approach to art. It does not even display the Decca logo, which makes an appearance on the back (see below). I will admit, though, that the drawing looks like it might have been scribbled by a lovesick high school student. The sound is fine.

Note (May 2025): this has now been remastered in ambient stereo.

LINK

Constant Lambert and Brian Easdale

I'm planning to present a series of posts devoted to the 20th century English composer-conductor Constant Lambert, starting with this 10-inch LP that couples scenes from his Horoscope ballet with music from The Red Shoes composed by Brian Easdale.

Lambert was a talented man, skilled at both writing and performing music. He wrote the music for Horoscope in 1937 for a production at the Vic-Wells Ballet choreographed by Frederick Ashton. It is thought that the scenario in some ways paralleled his relationship with dancer Margot Fonteyn, who assumed one of the leading roles.

Michael Somes and Margot
Fonteyn in Horoscope

Lambert was then only 32, but he had already written most of the music he would finish in his brief life, which ended in 1951, two years after these recording sessions.

This LP contains just two of the nine surviving sections of the ballet music: the gorgeous, Ravelian "Saraband for the Followers of Virgo" and a Bacchanale slightly reminiscent of another astrological work, Holst's The Planets.

Lambert actually recorded five of the ballet's scenes - three with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1945 and these two with the Philharmonia in 1949. The Liverpool sessions are not represented on this LP, but I have included them in the download as a bonus. (Not my transfer, although I did clean up the sound.)

Constant Lambert

Lambert was also a witty critic, notably in his 1934 book Music, Ho!, which contains the oft-cited assessment, "The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder." I've included the book in the download, courtesy of Project Gutenberg Canada.

Brian Easdale

I don't mean to slight the other work on this record, which combines Brian Easdale's prelude and ballet music from the remarkable 1948 Powell-Pressburger film, The Red Shoes. This is far and away the composer's best known work, although it does not match the quality of Lambert's score. Easdale had a long and fruitful working arrangement with Powell and Pressburger, scoring seven of their films. He won an Academy Award for this music.

This record is not the original soundtrack, which was conducted by Easdale and, in the ballet, Sir Thomas Beecham. It is a version done in 1949 by film music specialist Muir Mathieson and the Philharmonia.

Both recording sessions were held in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, and both resulted in superb sound. The English Columbia ad below suggests that the company thought that both the Lambert and Easdale 78 sets would make dandy Christmas presents in 1949, and I might have liked to receive them myself, had I not been nine months old and more inclined to the likes of "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo."

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Over the Rainbow with Les Brown

I haven't been able to accomplish much recently due to a faltering computer (not to mention its faltering operator), but I did get this enjoyable set by Les Brown in the can.

It's organized around colors, a common motif for record sets then and now. The most common theme over the years has probably been travel, followed by colors and women's names, I would guess.

So no prize for originality, nor are the song choices anything special, although "Red Wing" and "Azure" aren't all that well known.

But, as I said, the program is a good one, played by Brown's superb band, which was a working unit at the time, I believe. Among the soloists are pianist Jeff Clarkson and guitarist Tony Rizzi; the featured tenor sax is probably Dave Pell, and the trombonist is likely Dick Noel.

Frank Comstock

The smooth arrangements are by Frank Comstock, who had been on Brown's staff for a few years and then continued to write for him for many years thereafter. Comstock later made some LPs under his own name, backed the Hi-Los and other singers on their records, and wrote and arranged for films and television (I fondly remember his Rocky and Bullwinkle themes.)

This set dates from 1951 and is Brown's first LP (a 10-incher) on Coral, which he had joined from Columbia. I transferred two of his Columbia LPs previously, which can be found here and here. The sound on the Coral disc is vivid.

LINK to remastered version in ambient stereo (June 2025)

Barbara Cook and Glen Campbell

Two brilliant but very different singers died earlier this week - Barbara Cook and Glen Campbell.

I have nothing new for you to commemorate their passing, but I did want to point you to a few items that may be of interest.

There have been three posts here of Barbara Cook material, all relatively obscure, which you can find via this link. They include:

Songs of Perfect Propriety, a 1958 LP that married texts by Dorothy Parker to music by Seymour Barab. It was Cook's first solo album, and not entirely successful, but worth hearing.

Hansel and Gretel, a 1958 TV musical with songs by Alec Wilder and William Engvick, featuring Cook, Red Buttons, Stubby Kaye and Paula Lawrence.

Yeomen of the Guard, a promotional EP for a 1957 televised version of the Gilbert & Sullivan opus, starring Cook, Alfred Drake, Bill Hayes and Celeste Holm.

In contrast, Glen Campbell has never been mentioned on this blog, although I greatly admire his artistry. Let me simply direct you to this YouTube video of his extraordinary singing on the Brian Wilson song "Guess I'm Dumb," written for him.

Paul Bowles and Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Here is a second entry in a series devoted to M-G-M's classical recordings of the 1950s. This LP presents two works by composer-author Paul Bowles, and one by composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, setting words by Bowles. The two were close friends.

Bowles's "The Wind Remains" is a 1943 setting of an excerpt from Federico García Lorca's 1931 play Así que pasen cinco años. The work was introduced in 1943; this recorded version is an adaptation that Glanville-Hicks commissioned for a 1957 concert series at the Metropolitan Museum. It was prepared with her assistance and that of conductor Carlos Surinach, per Edward Cole's detailed notes. The recording was made shortly after the concert.

Paul Bowles

The M-G-M record does not include the text nor a translation, but the synopsis provided in the notes may be helpful. (Here is a link to the text of Lorca's play.)

Also by Bowles is "Music for a Farce," composed in 1938, performed here by an ensemble led by Arthur Winograd, who was just beginning a career as conductor after leaving the Juilliard Quartet, where he was the founding cellist.

Arthur Winograd

The contribution by Glanville-Hicks is "Letters from Morocco," her 1953 setting of excerpts from correspondence to her from Bowles. He had left the U.S. in 1947 to take up residence in Tangier, intending to write the novel that became The Sheltering Sky, a major literary success in 1949. Bowles had always been both a composer and writer, but the balance shifted to literary endeavors after the novel was published. Bowles said he was tired of writing things "for other people" - principally incidental music for plays. (An example of that output can be found on this blog - music for Jose Ferrer's 1946 production of Cyrano de Bergerac.)

Peggy Glanville-Hicks

Glanville-Hicks, born in Australia, was a music critic for the New York Herald-Tribune when these recordings were made. She in fact succeeded Bowles in the post. Both were appointed by Virgil Thomson. A few years ago I transferred a promotional recording of her brief "Prelude and Presto for Ancient American Instruments," which can be found on my other blog.

Loren Driscoll

Tenor Loren Driscoll is featured in "The Wind Remains" and "Letter from Morocco." A specialist in contemporary music, he sang the lead role in the 1958 production of Glanville-Hicks's opera The Transposed Heads. Soprano Dorothy Renzi, heard in "The Wind Remains," also was noted for performances of new music. She sang on the M-G-M recording of works by Marga Richter.

The performances here are sturdy (although I do not care for Driscoll's voice), and the sound is good. [Note (July 2023): I've now remastered the recording in ambient stereo.]

Quick note: this transfer is from a 1960s reissue series. To save money, M-G-M reprinted some of its classical titles in simpler packaging. The color covers were jettisoned, and the original back covers became the front. The cover you see above was sourced from the web. There are high-res scans of the front and back in the download.