If you asked me to choose my favorite Lee Wiley records, her various circa 1940 songbooks would be the winners. But these 1956-57 discs would not be far behind.
Today's post includes all the 26 songs she recorded for RCA Victor during those years. The singer was for the most part in prime form; it is regrettable that she made no more records for 15 years thereafter - and those were disappointments.
The Victors include two complete albums and part of another:
- West of the Moon with Ralph Burns, from 1956
- A Touch of the Blues with Billy Butterfield, from 1957
- Two songs from a 1956 jazz miscellany issued under the name of TV host Dave Garroway. (The LP is included in full. It also has contributions from Barbara Carroll, Deane Kincaide, Helen Ward, Tito Puente and Peanuts Hucko.)
I've added a bonus EP, issued to promote a 1963 fictionalized television drama based on incidents in Wiley's life.
All items are from my collection. We'll start with the complete LPs, then circle back to the Garroway collection and the EP.
West of the Moon
Wiley is in mostly commanding form throughout
West of the Moon. She is surprisingly compatible with modernist arranger-conductor Ralph Burns, whose charts support her well - although I can't help but note that she seemed more attuned to the collective improvisations of the groups that backed her on the songbooks.
And in fact, she starts off with a song beloved of those throwback groups - "You're a Sweetheart," which I was intrigued to learn she had not recorded before. To me, Burns' repetitive arrangement is a disappointment, but the vocal is excellent.
Lee moves on unexpectedly to Kurt Weill's "This Is New," where she sounds uncomfortable with the melody line; a shame, it's a magnificent song from the score by Weill and Ira Gershwin for Lady in the Dark.
She's in more compatible territory with the bouncy "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," a movie song from 1938 by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. There are good solos by Billy Butterfield and Peanuts Hucko.
Lee does the highly sophisticated "Who Can I Turn To?" soulfully, an apt tribute to a 1941 piece by Alec Wilder and William Engvick. It is the first song they wrote together.
Burns wrote a lovely chart for Richard Whiting's "My Ideal," and Wiley graces it by including the wonderfully contrasting verse. This would be near perfection except that Lee was not in prime voice.
She is great, however, in
"Can't Get Out of This Mood," which Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh wrote for Ginny Simms and the 1942 film
Seven Days' Leave. But be sure to hear
Sarah Vaughan's 1950 Columbia recording.
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| Ralph Burns and Lee Wiley |
"East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)" was the biggest hit for short-lived songwriter Brooks Bowman, who composed it for a Princeton show. Burns' gentle arrangement is just right for this song, which is usually done as a rhythm number.
Lee reached back to the 1920s for the Sammy Fain-Irving Kahal "I Left My Sugar Standing in the Rain," almost never heard these days. She includes the verse, which I'm not sure I've heard otherwise. The song has contrived lyrics, but a memorable melody. The singer is near ideal, and the backing is sympathetic. There's a notable solo by Lou McGarity on trombone.
"Moonstruck" is a high quality song written for Bing to warble in 1933's College Humor, but forgotten these days. It is characteristic Crosby material from the time - but Lee is persuasive as well. The arrangement for the Arthur Johnston-Sam Coslow song is subtly done.
Like "This Is New," "Limehouse Blues" was introduced by Gertrude Lawrence. She performed it with Jack Buchanan in the 1921 West End revue A to Z. It's a fascinating song, although wildly dated, and Burns can't resist including the usual chinoiserie. The song is set up beautifully by the seldom-performed verse.
Wiley and Burns also use the verse to good effect in "As Time Goes By" - again, it leads into the the famous chorus very well.
The LP is rounded off by a return to a Dixieland-type arrangement on Fats Waller-Andy Razaf's perennial "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now," an upbeat end to the proceedings.
The recording captures Wiley's voice truthfully, but the engineers did swaddle the band in too much reverb.
A Touch of the Blues
I will admit to preferring the second album, A Touch of the Blues, on all counts - the arrangements by Al Cohn and Bill Finegan, Wiley's singing, the material and the quality of the sound.
Most of the songs are not standards, but are all the more welcome because of it. The first three selections date from as long ago as 1909.
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| Al Cohn |
"The Memphis Blues" is a W.C. Handy song with lyrics by George Norton that is seldom if ever heard these days. Lee and the swinging Al Cohn chart make an strong argument for it.
"From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water" is another case. One of Charles Wakefield Cadman's Indianist works, it's a period piece that should have been left in the period. Wiley was of Native American descent, but the material is not suited to her.
When I first saw the title
"The Ace in the Hole," I thought of the Cole Porter song that Mary Jane Walsh introduced in
Let's Face It. But this is an earlier piece, and an interesting one at that. James Dempsey and George Mitchell were the authors.
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| Bill Finegan |
Louis Armstrong was the fellow behind "Someday You'll Be Sorry," a good tune not often heard. Bill Finegan's arrangement is entirely supportive. Most enjoyable, with Lee at ease.
"My Melancholy Baby" is certainly well known. Dating back to 1912, it was written by Ernie Burnett and George A. Norton (although Ben Light claimed he was the composer). By the time Wiley recorded it, the piece had become something of a punch line because of its use in the 1954 version of
A Star Is Born, where a drunken heckler yells for Judy Garland to "sing
Melancholy Baby." (Ex-vaudeville trouper William Frawley - Fred Mertz on
I Love Lucy - claimed to have introduced the number. For the curious, his recording has appeared
here.) As often on these records, Wiley graces the song by including the verse.
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| Billy Butterfield |
She does not do so, however, for "A Hundred Years from Today," although the composition does have a beautiful introduction by trumpeter Billy Butterfield, who leads the band on the LP. This fine song is the handiwork of Victor Young (Lee's early mentor), Ned Washington and Joe Young.
I really enjoy Benny Carter's "Blues in My Heart," which suits Wiley perfectly. Finegan's sparse arrangement is tailored to the subject matter. Butterfield has a striking obbligato.
"Maybe You'll Be There" is one of Rube Bloom's best songs, with a sensitive lyric by Sammy Gallop. Cohn provides a simple arrangement. The present recording is good, but it will not make you forget Sinatra's recording of the same year, made with Gordon Jenkins.
"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," a celebrated number by Arlen and Koehler, is nicely done. This cut is marred by the strangely pinched sound of the muted trumpets.
Frank Loesser and Jule Styne were eminent musicians, but "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" was most effective in its period as a war song. Wiley doesn't seem all that involved.
"Make Believe" is one of the last songs I would have identified with Lee; it's a soaring, quasi-operetta piece that is one of Kern's greatest creations. She does pull it off, but she, Cohn and Butterfield never seem completely happy with the material.
The title song is another matter altogether. "A Touch of the Blues" is a lost gem from Eddie Wilcox, the pianist of the Jimmy Lunceford band, with words by Don George. A good Cohn arrangement, too.
The sound is generally very good, widely spaced early stereo.
LINK to A Touch of the Blues
Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz
The name of this 1956 various artists LP, Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz, was suggested by Garroway being the host of a television show called Wide, Wide World. And the songs do all relate to world locales.
The title is misleading, though, in that it presents a narrow view of jazz, with the exception of Tito Puente's presence. The other artists were from the vocal, Dixieland, swing and piano trio subgenres, and the same musicians play on most of the selections.
Lee Wiley was allotted two of the numbers, both accompanied by Deane Kincaide's Dixieland Band, which also performed two other songs sans vocal.
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| Deane Kincaide |
"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?", a late example of the longing-for-the-South genre that was so common in the first half of the 20th century, is an excellent song, here in a knowing performance by Wiley and Kincaide's forces. The piece comes from 1946, Louis Alter and Eddie DeLange.
We're back in the South for "Stars Fell on Alabama," a 1934 composition by Mitchell Parish and Frank Perkins. Lee is mostly relaxed and effective, although she strains to hit the highest notes. I do enjoy the arrangement, presumably by Kincaide. The vocalist is at her best in these surroundings, I think.
A few words about the other performers and songs:
Deane Kincaide's Dixieland Band - Kincaide's band has lively outings with Jelly Roll Morton's "Chicago Breakdown" and "Kansas City Stomp." Note that the "Dixieland Band" includes Billy Butterfield, Cutty Cutshall, Peanuts Hucko and Lou Stein, who also are in Hucko's Swing Band, discussed next.
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| Peanuts Hucko |
Peanuts Hucko's Swing Band - I don't mean to imply that Hucko's band is bad - far from it. They have spirited outings with the Gus Kahn-Isham Jones "Spain" and Frank Loesser's "Wonderful Copenhagen" (written for the Danny Kaye film of Hans Christian Anderson). I enjoy this band, and may work up a post devoted to the LP that it recorded with Helen Ward.
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| Helen Ward |
Helen Ward - Hucko's band backs ex-Goodman, James and Hal McIntyre singer Ward on two numbers: Louis Alter's "Manhattan Serenade" and the Gershwins' "A Foggy Day." Ward was a characterful singer whom I enjoy, although her intonation and control here were not impeccable.
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| Tito Puente |
Tito Puente - It's good that Victor included Tito Puente under the jazz rubric, because he did profess to produce "jazz with a Latin touch," had just produced an LP called Puente Goes Jazz, and employed many jazz musicians, including Bernie Glow and Dave Schildkraut on this date. The songs are "Flying Down to Rio" by Youmans and Kahn and arranger Chico O'Farrill's "Havana After Dark."
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| Barbara Carroll |
Barbara Carroll - The fluent pianist and her trio do well with "California, Here I Come" and Carroll's own "Paris Without You." She made several LPs for Victor in this period.
Most of these songs were otherwise unreleased, to my knowledge. "Flying Down to Rio" does appear on Puente's 1957 Night Beat LP, and "A Foggy Day" can also be found on Peanuts Hucko's With a Little Bit of Swing, released in 1958.
The sound is excellent on this LP.
LINK to Dave Garroway Presents the Wide, Wide World of Jazz
Something About Lee Wiley
Events in Wiley's life were the subject of the 1963 television drama Something About Lee Wiley, an episode in the NBC anthology series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre.
Piper Laurie played Wiley, with Joy Bryan dubbing her singing voice. I haven't seen the show, but it apparently deals with the time Lee fell from a horse and was temporarily blinded, and with her acrimonious marriage to pianist Jess Stacy.
Chrysler put out a promotional EP for the program. Rather than including songs from the episode, it contains two numbers from the West of the Moon LP - "East of the Sun" and "Can't Get Out of This Mood" - contrasted with two of Lee's earliest sides, both made as a band singer with Leo Reisman - "(Got the) South in My Soul" from 1931 and "Time on My Hands" from 1932.
LINK to Something About Lee Wiley
The Christmas Seals people had an active promotional program for many years that included special programs that they would send to radio stations, hoping for airtime. Today we'll hear two of the 1954 programs, which starred two of the hottest performers of the day - Eddie Fisher and Tennessee Ernie (later Tennessee Ernie Ford).
