Paul Whiteman's 1946 and 1954 Gershwin Recordings

This post brings you yet another Paul Whiteman version of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," adding the Cuban Overture and "'I Got Rhythm' Variations" for good measure.

It's a "Rhapsody in Blue" with a difference, though - Whiteman added a cooing vocal ensemble at several places in the piece. The voices add nothing to the piece,to my ears, but Whiteman told pianist Earl Wild that he had run the idea past Gershwin before the composer's death and received his blessing. The arranger was Glenn Osser, per the pianist.

Earl Wild and Paul Whiteman

Wild himself made something of a specialty of the piece. The young pianist was a staff artist with NBC at the time of the recording, and had broadcast the Rhapsody with Arturo Toscanini in 1942, to much acclaim. He would go on to tape it with the Boston Pops and Arthur Fiedler for a 1960 RCA release.

Wild and Whiteman recorded the piece in December 1946 for the small Signature label, which had high hopes for the venture. It issued the 78s in an attractive album as number 1 in its "Great Performances" series. The set sold well enough to appear as number three in Billboard's classical chart for 1947. (Number two was another "Rhapsody in Blue" - from Levant and Ormandy. Number one was the Rubinstein-Golschmann Rachmaninoff Second Concerto.)

10-inch LP cover

But apparently the records did not sell well enough for Signature to continue the Great Performances series or offer more recording dates to Pops Whiteman. When the label foundered a few years later, Decca bought its masters. It gave the Wild-Whiteman Rhapsody new life by issuing it on a Coral 10-inch LP in 1952.

Buddy Weed

Decca-Coral invited Whiteman back to the studio in October 1954 to record the additional Gershwin works on offer today - the "Cuban Overture" and "'I Got Rhythm' Variations." The soloist in the latter piece was Buddy Weed, a studio pianist who appeared on dozens of records during the period, and who had been associated with Whiteman since the beginning of his career. This is the only Whiteman recording of the Variations, according to his biographer, Don Rayno. The Overture is presented in a much different arrangement than the 1938 version that featured pianist Rose Linda. I haven't been able to determine who arranged the 1954 recordings.

In 1956, Coral issued the three pieces in a 12-inch LP it dubbed "Great Gershwin" (cover below). This is the source of my transfer. I've moderated Coral's glaringly bright sound. The performances throughout are fluent and enjoyable. The download includes covers for the Signature set, the 10-inch and 12-inch Coral LPs, and a Coral 45, which used the familiar Whiteman caricature.

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Dinah Sings for Green Stamps

I don't mean the headline to suggest that Dinah was paid in S&H Green Stamps. Rather, this was a promotional record for a 1962 television show sponsored by Green Stamps.

Before I go farther, I should explain that Green Stamps were a pioneering US customer loyalty program most popular from the 1930s through the 1960s. Merchants would give the sticky little items out with your purchase, you would paste them into books, and then you could redeem the books for merchandise.

Dinah Shore was the face of the company in the early 60s, just as she had been for Ford and then Chevrolet earlier. She appeared in ads, other promotional materials, and in television specials sponsored by the company.

This present record is the soundtrack of her October 14, 1962 hour-long program, minus the ads, and was issued in advance to promote both Green Stamps and her slate of NBC specials during the 1962-63 season. I am not sure about the audience for the record. I haven't found any advertising material that mentions it as a premium for consumers, so it may have been intended for S&H employees and business associates, for NBC affiliates, or both.

It's quite a good record. Shore does the show without guests, solely with the help of the Even Half-Dozen vocal group and Frank De Vol's orchestra. The lively program includes several imaginative medleys concocted by her long-time accompanist, Ticker Freeman, which possibly were drawn from her night club repertoire, Dinah's singing is excellent, but at times she seems uncharacteristically ill at ease during the spoken repartee.

The sound can best be described as adequate. The show would very likely have been videotaped on Ampex's relatively new Quad format, then the sound laid off onto audio tape. The resulting sonics are good on Shore's voice, but otherwise can be distant. Announcer Harry Von Zell sounds like he is at the other end of a tunnel.

As a bonus, I've added an S&H radio ad featuring Dinah telling listeners that it's time to get ready for Christmas, while plugging her TV specials. The download includes several other print ads from the period.

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The Two 'Down in the Valley' Recordings

One of the first posts on this site was the Decca recording of one of Kurt Weill's last compositions, the 1948 folk opera Down in the Valley. But that was only one of two recordings of the work made in 1950. RCA Victor came out with a competing version that year.

Today's post includes the music from both 10-inch LPs: the Decca in a remastered version taken from the original album, and the RCA in a new transfer from a 1964 reissue. The latter combined Down in the Valley with another Weill work, the musical Lady in the Dark, which I featured several weeks ago.

The genesis of Down in the Valley 

Down in the Valley is a brief (45-minute) work built on several folk songs and designed for college and community forces. Weill and librettist Arnold Sundgaard had developed it in 1945 as a radio opera, but that production was shelved. In 1948, Hans Busch of the the Indiana University music school asked Weill if he could supply a work for his opera workshop. Weill was happy to comply - Busch was the son of his old friend and colleague, the conductor Fritz Busch - so he and Sundgaard reworked and expanded Down in the Valley for Indiana's use.

The opera was an immediate success with the public. The July 1948 production on the Bloomington, Indiana campus led to another a few weeks later in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. The latter was broadcast, leading to dozens of college and amateur productions in the next few years.

The producers of television's nascent NBC Opera Theatre took notice. The NBC troupe had begun its 15-year history in 1949 with a staging of Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief, commissioned by NBC radio in 1939. The Weill work became the TV Opera Theatre's second production, and was telecast on January 14, 1950. As far as I can tell, a kinescope does not survive.

Kurt Weill and Marion Bell in Bloomington

Conducting the televised opera was Peter Herman Adler, who was artistic director of the NBC Opera Theatre throughout its existence. The leading role of Jennie was taken by Marion Bell, who had been in the Bloomington production and previously was one of the leads in the original cast of Brigadoon. The male leads were William McGraw as Brack and Ray Jacquemot as the villain Bouché. Neither performer had illustrious careers, but both are excellent in the recording.

The competing LPs

Jane Wilson in 1946

RCA Victor was quick to capitalize on the interest Down in the Valley had excited, taking the television cast into the recording studio 11 days after the broadcast

Meanwhile, Decca took notice of the opera's popularity, and thought it might be a match for its newly acquired vocal star, Alfred Drake, who had appeared on Broadway several years before in the folk-based revue, Swing Out, Sweet Land. Decca had him record the work in April 1950. Taking the role of Jennie was Jane Wilson, who had risen to prominence on the radio with Fred Waring's troupe. The conductor was Maurice Levine, whom Weill had engaged to conduct Lost in the Stars on Broadway the year before.

Curiously, Weill stamped his imprimatur on the studio version rather than RCA's recording of the television production. He had supervised the Decca production until his death just three weeks before the recording session.

The two 1950 recordings of Down in the Valley were issued simultaneously, with both reviewed in the July 22 issue of Billboard. The critic there preferred the Decca version, but I vote for the RCA, which seems more settled, probably because it was based on an actual production. The sound on both is just fine.

The opera

As a work of theatre, Down in the Valley was more popular with audiences than certain critics, who disliked both the book and the music. They complained that Weill stitched the folk songs together with music better suited to Puccini than small-town Americans, and they felt that Sundgaard's story was pat and unrealistic. But neither Sundgaard nor Weill were aiming for verisimilitude.

Arnold Sundgaard

The story is a simple good guy vs. bad guy one, with a girl as the object of their dispute. Sundgaard, a veteran of the Federal Theatre Project, put an anti-capitalist spin on the plot by having the villain Bouché hold a lien on the family home. So the girl's father is eager to match her with him rather than her preferred suitor, Brack, even though the plot makes it clear that Bouché is no good. Poor Brack kills Bouché in self-defense, is sentenced to death, then escapes and spends his final moments of freedom with the girl, Jennie.

If that seems like a stock story line, it was meant to be. Sundgaard wrote, "Its unfolding as a tragic romance was intended to follow in extended form the shape and progression of a traditional ballad." A talented librettist and lyricist, Sundgaard worked with Douglas Moore, Alec Wilder and John Latouche in addition to Weill.

Score with Grandma Moses cover

The composer was proud of the opera, and just as proud of its success. He wrote his parents, "The critic from the [New York] Times is comparing my opera with the original Beggar's Opera, which was the source of English opera, and says that Down in the Valley will go down in history as the 'fountain head' of American opera."

Weill died thinking that he had reached a new peak in his career. Today we remember him much more for his German works and his American musicals than for Down in the Valley, which is considered a period piece - Weill's contribution to the then-popular strain of Americana.

I imagine the work is still performed today occasionally, but its popularity certainly has dimmed since these recordings were made. After the two competing LPs, to my knowledge only one recording has followed - a 1991 version from the German label Capriccio, which has issued all Weill's operas.

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Carl Fischer's 'Reflections of an Indian Boy'

Carl Fischer had a dream of finishing a suite of music reflecting his Native American heritage. He never was to fulfill that dream during his brief lifetime, but after his death, his powerful friends in the music business - Frankie Laine, Victor Young and Paul Weston - brought his ideas to life in the beautiful composition, Reflections of an Indian Boy, released by Columbia on LP in 1956.

Fischer (1912–1954) - who, despite his German name, was three-fourths Cherokee - was best known as Laine's pianist. He also was a talented composer, writing the songs "We'll Be Together Again," "Who Wouldn't Love You," "It Started All Over Again" and "You've Changed," all of which became popular. But his ambition was to compose a more elaborate work, and he had been working toward that end at the time of his death. The suite, however, had never been written down - it existed only in a piano recording made for composer Victor Young. After Fischer's death, Marvin Wright transcribed the tape, Young orchestrated it, and Laine set about arranging a performance. Only a few months later, he succeeded - a premiere with the Cleveland Orchestra during its summer season, Victor Young conducting.

Carl Fischer, Frankie Laine and a gold record -
I believe for their "We'll Be Together Again"

Reflections of an Indian Boy is a lovely piece of music, handled beautifully in this performance conducted by Paul Weston. The cover calls it a "tone poem," but it actually is a series of tone poems illustrating the young man's life, presumably "reflecting" the composer's own experiences. It does not use Native American musical themes, and there is little here that would be identified as stereotypically "Indian." It is most similar to the compositions of Ferde Grofé and reminiscent of film music, surely because of Young's orchestrations.

Columbia put its promotional might behind the LP, and it sold well. That said, far more people have heard it through its second life as the soundtrack to a popular outdoor drama, Tecumseh!, which has been performed for the past 45 years at the Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheatre in south central Ohio. The producer of Tecumseh! was familiar with Weston's record, and decided to use it as a backdrop to the outdoor drama he was planning on the life of the Shawnee leader. For this purpose, he enlisted Erich Kunzel, the longtime conductor of the Cincinnati Pops, to make a new recording with the London Symphony, which is available today via Amazon and presumably other sources.

This post is the result of a suggestion (really more of a plea) from David Federman, and is a collaboration between me and my friend Ernie, who often contributes materials to the blog. The flawless transfer is Ernie's work; the scans are my doing. Columbia's sound is excellent.

Fischer and Laine at a recording session

Morton Gould - Music of Lecuona / String Time

We return to old friend Morton Gould this week with a 1951 LP that repackages two of his 78 sets from the 1940s, with a few other items tossed in, all in a handsome Alex Steinweiss cover.

Music of Lecuona

The first side is mainly devoted to the music of Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963), whose songs became popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Gould chose four of Lecuona's best known pieces, arranging them for orchestra, in this case the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia. This is the Philadelphia Orchestra, appearing under the name it assumed for its summer concerts at Robin Hood Dell.

Ernesto Lecuona

The Lecuona works are "Andalucía" (which became a hit as "The Breeze and I"), "Malagueña" (still widely heard), "La Comparsa" and "Jungle Drums." All these melodies may be familiar even if you don't know their names.

Morton Gould

Gould was apparently fond of this music, re-recording it for RCA Victor in 1956 for the LP Jungle Drums. The title tune was at the time widely popular with the bandleaders who specialized in what has become known as "exotica," a name derived from a Martin Denny LP. Denny himself recorded all four of these songs, including "Jungle Drums" on his 1959 Afro-Desia LP.

These particular Gould renditions date from August 1947, although they were not released until 1949. Columbia filled out the first side of the LP with Gould's arrangements of Jessel's "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers" and Polla's "Dancing Tambourine." These were from the same August 1947 recording session, but were issued separately as a single. The former piece will certainly be familiar. The latter dates from 1927, when it was recorded by any number of bands.

As a bonus, I've added Gould's V-Disc recording of "Jungle Drums," which predates the commercial recording. This version apparently is an aircheck from a 1945 radio program, "Shower of Stars," where Gould was a regular participant. The performance is slightly quicker and less refined, as you might expect.

I'm very interested in the music of Lecuona and its popularity in the US during the 30s and 40s. One of my next posts will bring together a few dozens versions of his compositions -  the four on this Gould album, "Siboney," "Say 'Si, Si,'" the songs from the 1947 film Carnival in Costa Rica, and other items.

String Time

Gould's 78 album String Time came out in 1947, although judging by the matrix numbers it was probably recorded the year before. (Update: discographer Nigel Burlinson writes to say the sessions were probably in July 1946.) It contains his arrangements of eight standards for strings, with the performers are identified as "Morton Gould and His Orchestra."

Cover of 78 album

The cover notes to the 78 release claim, "It is questionable if anyone today can do a consistently better job of spinning the fine cocoon of symphonic ornamentation around a popular melody and then conducting the new arrangement to the best possible advantage." That may have been correct, but I suspect that Andre Kostelanetz of the same Columbia record company would have disagreed.

The sound for the String Time numbers, probably a product of Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York, is very good. (Update: Nigel Burlinson writes that the recording was likely in Liederkranz Hall rather than 30th Street, which did not open until 1949.) In Philadelphia, the engineers were not so lucky, but I've done my best to clarify the opaque sound. I think you will find it pleasing.

Boult's Scottish Elgar Second, Plus Reups

The young Adrian Boult was one of the first proponents of Sir Edward Elgar's Second Symphony. After Boult conducted a 1920 performance, Elgar wrote to him, "I feel that my reputation in the future is safe in your hands."

Boult was the first to record the symphony, save for Elgar himself, and went on to set down his interpretation another four times - three more than any other conductor.

Elgar and Boult at a 1932 recording session

Today we have the least known of Sir Adrian's five recordings, but not perhaps the least. It was made for the small and short-lived Scottish company Waverley in 1963, and tends to get lost among Boult's earlier and later EMI recordings, and even his 1957 effort for Pye.

The Waverley, set down in September 1963 in Glasgow Concert Hall, is a worthy contender, well played and truthfully recorded. I agree with Gramophone reviewer Trevor Harvey, who wrote that it main flaw is the underpowered strings. That's not an unusual fault with provincial ensembles - Harvey noted that the playing of the Hallé for Barbirolli in his Pye recording was no better, and even the London Philharmonic in Boult's 1957 recording was none too glamorous sounding. The Gramphone review is included in the download.

But I don't mean to make too much of this; it's a fine performance of a grand symphony. I transferred this symphony many years ago, but it has never appeared here. I've revisited the files and improved the sound for this post.

Reuploads

Let's stay with the music of English composers for today's two reuploads, which comprise Vaughan Williams' Mass, and the Mass and Symphony No. 5 of Edmund Rubbra. As usual, the links below take you to the original posts.

Vaughan Williams and Rubbra - Masses. The Vaughan Williams Mass is relatively familiar, not so the Mass setting of Edmund Rubbra (1901-86), whose music is too little known. Here we have 1953 recordings by the Fleet Street Choir under T.E. Lawrence, who premiered a number of important works.

Rubbra - Symphony No. 5. The composer wrote 11 symphonies in all; this was the first to be recorded. It is a typically passionate performance led by Sir John Barbirolli with the Hallé Orchestra. The recording sessions were in December 1950.

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Where There's Life, There's Beer - and Music

These days, the big beer brands sell mainly via ads that punctuate the televised exploits of professional athletes. But sixty years ago, easy listening music was part of the marketing mix, as this 1960 LP demonstrates.

It represents a promotional tie-in between Anheuser-Busch, brewers of Budweiser beer, and RCA Victor, purveyors of vinyl records. The LP is titled Where There's Life..., which happened to be the first part of Budweiser's tag line, "Where There's Life, There's Bud." And the awkwardly posed model seems to be eagerly anticipating the frothy Budweiser being offered. Either that or the off-camera male has no pants on. It's hard to tell, no pun intended.

Magazine ad

Other than the label on the bottle, there is no other mention of Budweiser or Anheuser-Busch on the album. Even so, the brewery went all out in support of the LP. Billboard reported that it pushed out 40,000 display cards, 12,000 streamers and 4,000 coasters, plus it sprung for a big ad buy in the major magazines of the time, with all items featuring the album art. There even was a promotional single.

But what of the music, you may ask, this being a music blog and all. There is a melodic tie-in as well - the first song is "Where There's Life," which turns out to be (no surprise here) a glamorized version of the then-current Bud jingle. All the other tunes have "life" in the title as well.

The proceedings were under the direction of Russ David, who it turns out, wrote the Bud jingle back in 1956 with arranger-conductor George Cates, Lawrence Welk's music director and a mainstay of the Coral catalog. Cates recorded "Where There's Life" first, on a 1957 Coral single that went nowhere, probably because it didn't benefit from 40,000 display cards, etc. George is nowhere in evidence on the LP, and his name is spelled "Catz" on the songwriter credits. I've included Cates' single in the download.

Russ David as radio personality

David did not have a national presence - this is his only LP, as far as I can tell - but he was well known in St. Louis, the home of Anheuser-Busch, where he had radio and television shows and where he led a band. I get the sense that he also did other work for A-B through the years.

The record is a credible affair, with David doing a Gordon Jenkins-style single-note solo over the opening of "Where There's Life," accompanied by accordion, followed by clarinet, tenor sax and trombone. It's all very pleasant, even if several years out of style in 1960.

On other songs, David brings in a vocal group and a terrific female soloist, who remains unnamed. I wish I knew who it is - I first thought it might be Jamie Silvia of the J's with Jamie, but comparisons suggest that it is not her. The vocalist is particularly good in her "Give Me the Simple Life" solo spot, but then I am partial to that Rube Bloom-Harry Ruby composition. Less effective is the male vocal chorus on "There's a Lull in My Life," which has a peculiar robotic quality.

Cover of 1957 promo

As I mentioned, the Budweiser jingle dated back to 1956. I've included a Bud promotional record from 1957, with seven ads in different musical styles. The first one, to my ears, features the same female vocalist as on the Russ David record. Also included are a waltz, a Dixieland arrangement, a Glenn Miller-style rendition, and a lounge version a la Jackie Gleason's records with Bobby Hackett on solo trumpet. (The latter arrangement is  reminiscent of Gordon Jenkins' style. David was apparently a fan - I am assuming David did these charts.) No rock 'n' roll on the LP or the promo record, though. Bud was not aiming to be up-to-date or hip at the time.

The LP is my transfer; the other items are courtesy of the web although remastered by me. RCA's sound is very good, although lushly reverberant in the style of the times.

This post is a result of a discussion that I had with my pal Ernie not long ago, where we differed on which RCA record had a beer on the cover. I opted for this one, although I said it was by Larry David, while acknowledging that couldn't be right. Ernie claimed it was a Boston Pops record. It turns out we were both right - there is a two-LP Pops set, "Everything But the Beer," that has two Anheuser-Busch beer steins on the cover. I have that album as well.

To go back to the Where There's Life cover, it is an example of the "Droste effect," that is, a picture within a picture of itself. It's not perfectly executed, though.

If you want more beer music - and who doesn't - a decade ago I uploaded a Schlitz promotional record with Nelson Riddle at the helm and featuring Jamie Silvia on vocals. Riddle turned the Schlitz jingle "The Real Joy of Good Living" into "The Joy of Living," the title tune of a 1959 LP. So the Milwaukee brewer or its ad agency had the idea first. The Riddle record is still available if you haven't had enough brew for the evening.

Rignold Conducts Prokofiev's Cinderella

About a month ago, I featured excerpts from Prokofiev's score for the ballet Cinderella, from the Royal Opera House Orchestra under Warwick Braithwaite. Now here, on request, are two of the three suites that the composer authorized from the score - also from the ROH Orchestra, this time under Hugo Rignold.

The Braithwaite recording was made in conjunction with the ballet first Western performance, which was by the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1948. Frederick Ashton's staging became a mainstay of the company, and in 1957 was the basis of an American television program, which was likely the impetus behind this second recording.

Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes

The televised production was in the prestigious NBC series Producers' Showcase, broadcast live and in color from 1954-57. It marked the second time that the ballet company had appeared in the series. First was Sleeping Beauty in late 1955, followed by the May 1957 Cinderella staging. Both featured Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes in the leading roles. A DVD of the televised Cinderella is available; you can see an excerpt on YouTube.

Hugo Rignold

Although the NBC telecast was on April 29 and the recording session for this LP was the following week, they employed two different conductors. Robert Irving led the orchestra for the TV show, as he had for the most recent performances at Covent Garden. But Hugo Rignold, then new to the company, was in charge for the recording session at Kingsway Hall. What is more peculiar, later in May Irving took the Royal Philharmonic into the studio to make a competing recording for EMI. While this was presumably done for contractual reasons, the Royal Ballet's administration could not have been happy to see its longtime (1949-58) music director become a competitor.

The online biographies of Irving and Rignold both state that they were music directors of the Royal Ballet in 1957 and 1958, so it is unclear who was in charge when this record was made. In any event, Irving was off to the US in the latter year to take up residence with the New York City Ballet.

Rignold stayed with the ballet until 1960, when he moved to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Previously he had been with the Liverpool Philharmonic. Rignold had a background in popular music, so he was not (and is not) taken very seriously as a classical conductor. Nonetheless, this present effort is well done, and moreover is nicely recorded. This was during a period when RCA Victor's sessions were handled by English Decca's production staffs.

First Red Seal cover

The record first came out in mono in 1957. I believe the initial stereo issue was this 1965 pressing in RCA's budget Victrola series. I own a mono Red Seal pressing (cover above), but have never seen an early stereo Red Seal and Philip Stuart does not list such an issue in his UK Decca discography. All stereo Red Seals that I have seen date from the 1990s or later (and use the mono back cover). The Irving recording for EMI also was first issued in mono, which is the format of my copy on American Angel.

The download includes several photos from the television production, a few brief reviews of the Rignold LP, and front and back scans of both the Red Seal and Victrola covers.

The Complete 'WIld One,' Plus Reups

From top: the EP,
10-inch LP, 12-inch LP covers

Almost 10 years ago, I featured the 10-inch LP of Leith Stevens' score for The Wild One - you know, the flick where Marlon Brando and his motorcycle gang take over a small town. The movie was iconic in a number of ways - Brando as anti-hero, his leather-jacket-and-engineer-boot look, the entire biker-film genre, and - most pertinent to this discussion - Stevens' use of jazz on the soundtrack.

Jazz had appeared in films many times before, of course. At one time in the early 40s, even third-rate big bands were snaring gigs in B-movies. Stevens' sound seemed different, though - more modern. It was in fact the approach of the more hard-driving wing of the West Coast jazz scene, as embodied in trumpeter Shorty Rogers and his cohorts, who recorded the backgrounds to Brando's brooding.

That's not to say that all the music was groundbreaking. "Blues for Brando" could well have come from any dance band's catalog. "Lonely Way" is lounge music. But the title theme was influential - its aggressive motto theme paved the way for such scores as Kenyon Hopkins' The Strange One (notice the title's similarity as well).

Today's post gathers all The Wild One recordings in one place - not just the 10-inch LP, but the additional numbers recorded later for a 12-inch album, and the EP of music from the film that Rogers recorded under his own name. Doing such a compilation isn't a new idea, but since I own all three records, I thought it might be fun to put them together in one post. I've added below some remastered versions of Leith Stevens scores.

Let me start with a brief discussion of each Wild One record in order of recording date. The first was actually Rogers' four-song EP, set down in July 1953. For the date, the trumpeter led a 19-piece band featuring Bill Perkins on tenor sax. Rogers and Perkins were veterans of the Woody Herman and Stan Kenton bands, as was true of many participants on all three recording sessions.

First EP cover

Initially, RCA Victor issued the EP under the title Hot Blood, the working title of the film, which came out the following February as The Wild One. When the film was renamed, so was the EP and the movie's title tune, as well.

Rogers and eight other musicians - most of whom were on the previous date - returned to the studio in October 1953 to record a 10-inch LP for Decca. For this date, they were dubbed "Leith Stevens' All Stars." On the LP cover credits, Shorty Rogers was listed as "Roger Short" and drummer Shelley Manne became "Manny Shell" for contractual reasons. This time around, the tenor sax soloist was Bob Cooper.

By 1956, the 10-inch LP had given way to the 12-inch variety, so Decca called Rogers back to record four more numbers to fill out a Wild One reissue in the larger format. Some of the same musicians returned for this April 1956 session, including Bob Cooper on tenor.

Brando as the badly misunderstood Johnny Strabler

To summarize, my package includes: a new transfer of the EP; a remastered transfer of the 10-inch LP; a new dub of the four songs added to the 12-inch LP; and front and back scans of all three covers.

It is sometimes said (even in the comments on this blog) that Rogers, not Stevens, wrote the music for The Wild One. I haven't seen evidence for that assertion; Stevens was an accomplished musician who had a long career in Hollywood. Still, there is no question that Rogers and his hand-picked musicians had a great deal to offer when the score was recorded. IMDb lists Rogers as arranger on the soundtrack, and he surely had much to do with the sound of the score.

Leith Stevens Reups

To complement The Wild One, I've remastered two Leith Stevens soundtracks from the early days of this blog. The links below take you to the original posts.

Destination Moon. From 1950, another influential score. A decade ago, my take was that "it does have overtones of Holst and Ming the Merciless, and I know he [Stevens] cribbed one of the main motifs from somewhere I can't recall, but it is very enjoyable nonetheless." Still true!

The James Dean Story. Following Dean's 1955 death, the American exploitation machine went into overdrive. This post captures Stevens' very good score for a 1956 documentary, with a title tune by the prolific duo of Livingston and Evans. I've tossed in a Mantovani single version of the title song for good measure. Included are excellent graphics both for the LP and the Mantovani picture sleeve.