1953-56 Margaret Whiting Singles

Here are 12 more relatively rare Margaret Whiting singles from the 1950s, following up my earlier post of un-rereleased sides from this fine singer.

We start with a 1953 release of Take Care, My Love, a nice ballad that originated with Pee Wee King. The flip is a kind of a clog dance called Singing Bells. Lou Busch (aka Joe "Fingers" Carr, who made a ton of records I have been ignoring all my life) accompanies. He and Whiting were married at the time.

Whether the marriage broke up or she just got tired of the bowler hat and arm bands, by 1954 Maggie had moved on to Nelson Riddle, who arranged the excellent Waltz to the Blues and the execrable C.O.D. Better she should have done the Merle Travis classic, Divorce Me C.O.D.

Billboard ad

Also in 1954, Whiting appeared in the film Fresh from Paris, singing the nice ballad Can This Be Love, here in another Riddle arrangement. The flip side is another awful novelty, All There Is and Then Some, which Ross Bagdasarian produced between 1951's Come on-a My House and his later transmogrification into David Seville, a witch doctor and several singing chipmunks. Of course, All There Is and Then Some was the plug side. It also must mark the only time that Riddle used a steel guitar in an arrangement, almost certainly played by Capitol's Speedy West.

This pattern repeated in 1955, with a pleasant if formulaic ballad by Jerry Livingston and Carolyn Leigh, Stowaway, backed by a dreadful novelty, Allah Be Prais'd, which manages to relocate Baghdad into Persia. Riddle supervises here, as well.

The two final singles are from 1956, by which time frequent collaborator Frank DeVol was back at the musical helm. On the first single, Maggie is a young lover who is nonetheless Old Enough (for love, of course) on the one side, and an older lover who falls the Second Time in Love on the reverse. The latter song was from Harry Warren's last score, a musical version of Lost Horizon called Shangri-La, which quickly closed on Broadway.

The last single is Haunting Love, an OK rhythm ballad which DeVol graces with a mighty Wurlitzer backing, and a good cover of True Love, backed by Buddy Bregman.

All except the last record are from unplayed store stock, and the sound is exceptionally good. The Capitol News cover above is courtesy of my friend Alan Matheson.

I have located my stash of Whiting 78s, so there is much more to come.

Vaughan Williams and Robert Palmer from Cornell

This Concert Hall Society release from 1954 demonstrates the high quality of music making in upstate New York at the time. It presents one of Vaughan Williams' most unusual works and compositions from Cornell University composer Robert Palmer.

The English composer is from an earlier generation than the American Palmer, but in fact Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on the Old 104th Psalm Tune was written at the same time as Palmer's Chamber Concerto, and both were nearly new when this record was made.

John Hunt

The fantasia oddly combines a barnstorming piano part (played here by John Hunt) with a choral hymn tune, somewhat in the manner of Beethoven's Choral Fantasia. This was almost certainly its first recording, and I don't believe there was another until an Adrian Boult-led performance in 1970. Also on the record are three of Vaughan Williams' most attractive folk song settings for choir.

Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer comes from the great American lineage of Roy Harris, Howard Hanson and others of the preceding generation, although he was as much influenced by Bela Bartok. "Robert Palmer exerted an influence on the development of American music far greater than his current obscurity would suggest," writes composer Steven Stucky in an insightful remembrance of his teacher available here. "Fashions come and fashions go, but Palmer's music is ripe for rediscovery by a wider public."

Robert Hull

The performances, all very good, are from the Cornell A Capella Choir and the Rochester Chamber Orchestra, led by Robert Hull, then a professor of music at Cornell. He left to become dean of fine arts at Texas Christian University in 1956.

In the Palmer concerto, violinist Millard Taylor was the concertmaster and Robert Sprenkle the principal oboe of the Rochester Philharmonic. Both were longtime faculty members at the Eastman School.