William Wordsworth - String Quartets and Songs

I transferred this LP in response to a request on another site, but I might as well post it here too, even though it is newer than what I usually offer.

The composer is William Wordsworth, who had a famous name to be sure, and in fact he was a descendant of the poet's brother Christopher. Wordsworth the latter lived from 1908-88.

This CRD album, from 1981, was one of the few recordings of Wordsworth's music during his lifetime. The performers (the Alberni String Quartet and tenor Ian Partridge) are most sympathetic and the sound is excellent.

To my ear, the best music on the disc is the composer's setting of three of his namesake's poems, which help give his music some shape and color (although the music for "On Calais Beach" is strangely glum). The string quartets are closely argued, as the liner notes outline, but they also have a dogged quality that I don't care for.

Lyrita's recent CD of Wordsworth's Symphonies No. 1 and 5 have brought his name to the attention of more people. I have an earlier Lyrita issue of the second and third symphonies, which is worth investigating. If you want to learn more about the composer, a good remembrance can be found on MusicWeb. Wordsworth is seen with the recording artists below.

Southern Gospel with the Rangers, Blue Ridge Quartet, Foggy River Boys

Southern gospel music is a periodic enthusiasm of mine, one that has not been in evidence here for a number of years. Today we have a Vocalion reissue of some American Decca sides that capture three popular, although less celebrated gospel groups of the mid-century period – the Rangers and Blue Ridge Quartets and the Foggy River Boys.

Rangers Quartet

The Rangers - Denver Crumpler (top), Vernon
Hyles, Arnold Hyles, Walter Leverette

The Rangers are the earliest, with three New York City recordings dating from September 1939, its sole Decca date, which yielded 12 masters. Originally from Texas and named the Texas Rangers, the quartet was at the time of the session based at either WHAS radio in Louisville, Kentucky or WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Members at the time were tenor Denver Crumpler, baritone and guitarist Vernon Hyles, baritone Walter Leverett and bass Arnold Hyles, all of whom were in the group for well over a decade. All became well known, especially Crumpler, who moved to the famous Statesmen Quartet in 1953, and Arnold Hyles, whose powerful bass voice is perhaps the most notable feature of these records.

Blue Ridge Quartet

Ed Sprouse, Kenny Gates, Elmo Fagg
of the Blue Ridge Quartet

The Blue Ridge Quartet was originally the Stamps Blue Ridge Quartet from Raleigh, North Carolina, moving in the late 40s to Burlington and then Spartanburg, North Carolina, where they were heard on WSPA. Decca invited the group to New York to record four songs in March 1950, three of which are heard here.

At the time, the quartet comprised either tenor Clarence Turbyfill or Ed Sprouse, lead Elmo Fagg, baritone Everett Payne, bass Burl Strevel and pianist Kenny Gates.

Foggy River Boys

The Foggy River Boys - Back: Warren Holmes,
Charlie Hutton, Bill Matthews.
Front: Bill Hedrick, Monty Matthews

The final group is the Foggy River Boys, who are related to the Jordanaires, one of the best known gospel groups because of its extensive work with Elvis Presley. According to the indispensable (although not infallible) Southern Gospel History website, around 1950 the Jordanaires began using the Foggy River Boys name when making secular recordings. By 1953, they had resumed using the Jordanaires name, and at that time brothers Bill and Monty Matthews, two founding members of the Jordanaires, assumed the Foggy River identity.

The Matthews version of the Foggy River Boys was associated with Red Foley, appearing on both the radio and television versions of his Ozark Jubilee program in 1955 and thereafter. The group had three Decca sessions, the earliest likely in 1954, and then April and December 1955 dates, each of which yielded one single. This LP contains four of the six sides made for that label. Group members at about that time were likely tenor Bill Matthews, tenor Rosie Rozell (later of the Statesmen), lead Charlie Hutton, baritone Monty Matthews, bass Warren Holmes and pianist Bill Hedrick.

As you listen to the three groups, you probably will notice a stylistic transformation from the relatively straightforward Rangers to the extroverted Foggy River Boys, who were strongly influenced both by the showmanship of the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen, and particularly by the innovations of black gospel groups, producing a style sometimes called “gospel boogie.” The font of this style is the famous song of that name as recorded in 1947 by the Homeland Harmony Quartet, available via my singles blog.

The sound is good, if you make allowances for the reverb that the transfer engineer has applied enthusiastically throughout the program.

I should mention that all of these groups recorded for other labels as well as Decca – some of them prolifically.

An Ania Dorfmann Recital

Previously in my Ania Dorfmann series, we have had her Grieg and Mendelssohn concerto pairing, Chopin waltzes, and Beethoven's first concerto with Toscanini.

Ania Dorfmann

Today we present a varied recital, which actually may have been similar to programs she may offered at the time. We can assume that the Liszt, Mendelssohn and Chopin at least were in her standard repertoire, because she had recorded them for 78 issues at various times dating back to 1932. Only the Menotti is at all unusual - a Ricercare and Toccata on a theme from the composer's first opera, The Old Maid and the Thief. The piano work was new when Dorfmann recorded it; although the cover notes claim that Menotti composed it in 1940, the published edition cites research that dates it as being from 1951, the year before the pianist took it up.

This set derives from three January 1952 dates in Town Hall (not to imply that they were recorded at public recitals - there is no audience present). Dorfmann is in typical sparkling form, and RCA Victor does well with the sound.

John Powell and Daniel Gregory Mason, Plus Reups

Composer John Powell is one of the most interesting and at the same time notorious figures in American music. This early American Recording Society LP presents his most famous composition, the Rhapsodie Nègre, which anticipated the so-called “concert jazz” movement by several years.

John Powell in 1916

A few words of background from Powell scholar Stephanie Doktor: “In 1918, Virginia-born composer and concert pianist John Powell premiered his Rhapsodie Nègre - a symphonic composition designed to blend both the ‘primitive’ and ‘childlike’ qualities of the Negro. The rhapsody was but one of the many compositions Powell rooted in the melodic and harmonic structures of black American music.”

Doktor goes on to say that “Powell was on the cusp of America’s burgeoning modernist concert tradition, just before he developed a distinctly anti-modernist stance. More broadly, I argue that the concert jazz vogue, which Powell presciently advanced six years before George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, reflects musical modernism’s indebtedness to conceptions of black sound.”

Nevertheless, Powell was a virulent racist. “Four years later [i.e., after the premiere of Rhapsodie Nègre], Powell launched a white supremacist campaign to preserve the Anglo-Saxon race in law and in music. Powell and his political allies helped pass the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited miscegenation [in Virginia].”

Daniel Gregory Mason

By that time, Powell had come to believe that his music should be inspired by Anglo-Saxon folk music, a view he shared with his friend and associate, the New Englander Daniel Gregory Mason, who composed the other work on this 10-inch LP, the Chanticleer overture.

An article by David Z. Kushner, which also provides much more background on Powell, notes, “By 1920, Mason, too, was pontificating about the need to recognize the Anglo-Saxon virtues that he juxtaposes to the ‘Jewish infection in our music.’” Regardless of this rhetoric, none of this is apparent in Chanticleer, an attractive piece inspired by Thoreau’s Walden.

Dean Dixon leads the accomplished performances, with the Vienna Symphony (here in the guise of the ARS Orchestra) perhaps happier with the Powell than the Mason, in which the ensemble sounds thin (as it often did in these ARS sessions). Oddly, the soloist in the Powell work is uncredited. I don’t believe it was Dixon, who as far as I know was not a pianist.

The Mason recording is from March 1951 – at least the indispensable discographer Michael Gray lists a Mason session for that time with Dixon, although he says the work is Chronochromie rather than Chanticleer, evidentally confusing Mason for Messiaen (which probably would not have pleased the former). The Powell session is likely from about the same time. The download includes the Doktor and Kushner articles referenced above.

Reups

I had a request to reupload another ARS disc, the first recording of Ives’s Three Places in New England, coupled with Robert McBride’s amusing Violin Concerto, with the excellent soloist Maurice Wilk. Walter Hendl conducts. This has been remastered, and now has much better sound.

Another new remastered reupload is the result of a request on another site – Artur Rodzinski’s fine recording of Prokofiev’s Symphony No.5, with the superb Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York.

Links to all items are in the comments.

Athena

This post of the soundtrack to Athena was inspired by nothing more profound than me watching the film the other day, and deciding to transfer the record for my own amusement. (I believe I have an expanded soundtrack CD around here someplace, but who knows where that is.)

Athena was a most peculiar movie, with Louis Calhern as the patriarch of a physical culture sect that included his daughters Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds as well as (among others) future sword-and-sandal stalwart Steve Reeves. This was certainly the only musical from Hollywood's heyday that featured a body-building contest as part of the plot.

The film provides love interests for Reynolds and Powell in the persons of crooner Vic Damone (who really does wear that set of carmine-colored tails in the movie) and the dour Edmund Purdom, who dumps Linda Christian for a somewhat-addled Powell during the proceedings. Purdom had much better chemistry with Christian, to the point of later marrying her in real life.

Powell and Reynolds were among Hollywood's most charming commodities and the film is fun to watch - and listen to, with its fine score from the distinguished Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. The studio may not have thought much of the tunes, however, for they brought back the team's "The Boy [here, Girl] Next Door" from Meet Me in St. Louis for an encore. I find it most enjoyable, with wonderfully relaxed and effective performances of the gorgeous "Love Can Change the Stars" and "Venezia" from Damone, and the terrific "Imagine" from Damone and Reynolds. On the other hand, Powell's waltz feature "Vocalize" was surely inspired by her breakthrough performance of "It's a Most Unusual Day" in A Date with Judy. And Reynolds's hectic "I Never Felt Better" is reminiscent of "I Cain't Say No" from Oklahoma!

For some reason, M-G-M ceded rights to the soundtrack to Mercury, which provided its usual gravelly pressings for this 1954 10-inch LP. The sound is perfectly fine, nonetheless.