Songs from (or Cut from) 'Out of This World'

Previously in this series about the musical stage, we've tried to reconstruct original cast recordings where there were none. For this post, we'll look at a show where a cast LP exists, by exploring some of the commercial recordings by the popular artists of the day.

The subject is Cole Porter's score for Out of This World, a 1950 opening that lasted for about five months on Broadway. Not one of the composer's greatest hits, and a show whose best-known number was cut before the opening.

Still and all, it offered an entertaining collection of songs that were eagerly adopted by the record companies, providing plenty of grist for this musical mill. The inspiration for my post - if "inspiration" is the right word - was the following trade ad that ran in Billboard in early 1951.

Click to enlarge

As you can see (if you enlarge the ad, that is), nine songs from the score were recorded, eight of which are in this group. ("Hark to the Song" only appeared on a transcription that I haven't found.) The ad also touts the original cast LP, which has been reissued a number of times. Ironically, it lists the cast album right below the song "From This Moment On," which does not appear on said cast LP because director George Abbott cut it in tryouts. It is surely the best known (and best) piece that Porter wrote for the score. Fortunately it came to glorious life in the 1953 movie adaptation of his Kiss Me Kate. We'll eventually get to it in this collection, along with another song that was cut. And we'll add the song "Out of This World," which came from a 1945 film and wasn't by Porter.

Cole Porter and Charlotte Greenwood

Before I get to the music, let me pay homage to the show's star, Charlotte Greenwood, a wonderful comic actor who brightened vaudeville, Broadway and the films for several decades. Out of This World, based on Plautus' Amphitryon, had Greenwood playing Juno and George Gaynes Jupiter. While she does not appear in this collection, she can be heard on the cast album.

The songs below appear in show order - until we get to the cut items, that is.

Songs from the Show

"Use Your Imagination" was popular with the record companies, if not the record buyers, attracting many of the most popular artists of the day. That said, it's a lumbering creature that didn't bring out the best from the best. My favorite is the fresh-voiced Vic Damone with a band led by Harry Geller. Vic does sound fine, but even so, more animation might not have been amiss.

Jo Stafford and Paul Weston pose in the studio

"Where, Oh Where" is given a lush arrangement by Paul Weston that sets off Jo Stafford's lovely voice very well. It was her first Columbia single (and was backed by her own version of "Use Your Imagination," not included here).

Vic and Jo are well remembered, but our next artist is less so. She was a fine singer, though, and here takes up the most popular item from the score as it appeared on Broadway - "I Am Loved" - and does it wonderfully even when compared to such competitors as Frank Sinatra. She was Evelyn Knight, who recorded a great number of songs for Decca from 1944-52 and was often heard on radio. She retired from the business in the 1950s.

One oddity is that the Discography of American Historical Recordings lists Knight as being backed by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians. However, no label credit is given to the band, and the aural evidence does not point to the Lombardo clan, for sure.

Peggy Lee

With "Climb Up the Mountain," Porter decided to dabble again in the folk-spiritual realm, which he had mined in "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," for 1934's Anything Goes. This new song is similar, and it generated only one commercial recording, that of Peggy Lee. I am an admirer of the singer, but this is an execrable record, starting with the braying band vocal and carrying on through Lee's shrill, overemphatic singing. I'd say it is unlistenable, but then I am asking you to listen to it, and for all I know you might like it!

Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra

Next, Porter tried to replicate the success of "You're the Top" with another simile song, "Cherry Pies Ought to Be You," which Columbia assigned to Frank Sinatra and the up and coming Rosemary Clooney. It's a tad abstruse, what with Porter comparing the loved one to "asphodels" and "Ambrose Light," a light tower in the waters off New York. (At the latter mention, Frank interjects, "Hey, that's a good one!", but then he was from around those parts.) Porter exercises his penchant for mildly risqué lyrics at several points, causing Frank to caution, "Hey, watch it!" when Rosie makes vague reference to Errol Flynn's sexuality. A fun record, even though the singers go out of tune at the end. (The 78 was also mastered considerably flat, which I fixed.)

Dinah Shore - nobody was chasing her

Another song from the show that was heard occasionally was "Nobody's Chasing Me," which was Juno's closing lament in the show but here improbably assigned to RCA Victor's Dinah Shore. It's another example of Porter revisiting an earlier song idea - instead of an entreaty for love, as in "Let's Do It," it's a lament for its absence: "The bull is chasing the heifer, but nobody's chasing me." Henri René accompanies Dinah with slide whistles and accordions.

Songs Cut from the Show

Now on to the songs cut from the show. First is "You Don't Remind Me," dropped during the tryouts but even so recorded by several notables, including Frank Sinatra. It's another list song, but this time a ballad, and Frank makes the most of it. Let me put in a word for arranger Axel Stordahl. This is more for his body of work, because here he and Sinatra seem of two minds about the tempo. It's a beautiful song, nonetheless.

As noted above the best known tune written for the show was "From This Moment On," recorded by several artists in 1950-1, but not achieving great popularity until it was used in the 1953 film version of Kiss Me Kate. It happens to be one of my favorites, so I've included three varied recordings from the later time period.

Dick Noel

First is a disc by the strong voiced Dick Noel, who never achieved great popularity as a record artist, but was hugely successful in the jingle field. It's a pleasure to hear his forthright singing, well suited to the material and ably backed by Decca mainstay Jack Pleis.

One oddity is that Noel has the same name as a well-known studio musician, trombonist Dick Noel, who appears on the next version of "From This Moment On," that by Les Brown's powerhouse band, with a superb chart by Skip Martin. This is exciting, but not more so than the version from the film itself.

There's also a link between Les Brown's record and the film version, because Skip Martin was one of the credited orchestrators on the film, along with Conrad Salinger, with uncredited contributions by Robert Franklyn and Wally Heglin. Any or all of them could have handled "From This Moment On." It is a wonderful chart, performed by the M-G-M Orchestra conducted by André Previn.

'From This Moment On'

On screen, the music's impact is heightened by the colorful set design and dancing. The film's choreographer was Hermes Pan, but at least some of this dance has more than a whiff of Bob Fosse about it, particularly his section with Carol Haney. Vocally, he is credited on the record label along with Tommy Rall, Ann Miller and Bobby Van. The strongest singing voice you hear is Rall's.

The download includes the audio version from the M-G-M commercial issue, along with the longer version directly from the film soundtrack. I prefer the edit because it seems better integrated and doesn't reflect the dancer's footfalls. The soundtrack is in stereo, though. (You can watch the dance on YouTube, of course.)

The Song "Out of This World"

Finally, let's discuss the song "Out of This World," which is unrelated to Porter's musical and predates it. It comes from a 1945 Eddie Bracken film of the same name, with a wonderful title song by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. Bracken plays a Bing-style crooner; his singing voice is, appropriately enough, dubbed by the man himself.

Sheet music from the film, George Paxton ad and vocalist Alan Dale

Crosby's Decca disc is desultory, so I turned instead to a relatively obscure recording, that of George Paxton, who had a strong band in the brassy mid-40s manner also adopted by Stan Kenton and Boyd Raeburn. Singing is the young Alan Dale, a very good romantic baritone. The Paxton-Dale record represents the Arlen-Mercer song very well.

These records are remastered primarily from Internet Archive needle drops. The sound is generally excellent ambient stereo.

More Aafje Heynis and "Haunted Heart"

Let me clarify the header - Dutch contralto Aafje Heynis does not attempt the Dietz-Schwartz semi-standard "Haunted Heart." She leaves that fine number to several great pop singers. Instead, she favors us with an Elgar song cycle.

To clarify further, this post is a follow-up to my two most recent items - the contemporary recordings of the 1948 Dietz-Schwartz revue Inside U.S.A., and a 1962 Brahms collection featuring Heynis, the Vienna Symphony and its chief conductor, Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Ilene Woods

First, Inside U.S.A. and its ballad "Haunted Heart." In the comments of my post, I decided to include a link to my remastering of a Frank Sinatra aircheck from Your Hit Parade. (Sinatra never did a commercial recording of the song, to my knowledge.) Old friend David Federman one-upped me (actually five-upped me) by posting contemporary versions from Bing Crosby, Don Rodney with Guy Lombardo, Jo Stafford, Margaret Whiting and the very young Ilene Woods (soon to be the voice of Cinderella). The latter is particularly interesting because it includes a vocal bridge that I have not heard in any other recording. I've now added Frank to the Federman collection, and included a fresh link in the comments to this post.

Aafje Heynis

Meanwhile, reader Andrew alerted me to the existence of an 1962 aircheck of Heynis as the soloist in Elgar's cycle, "Sea Pictures," Op. 37. I quickly hunted it down, remastered what I found and am pleased to offer it to all of you who were enchanted by Heynis' singing in the "Alto Rhapsody." She is accompanied by the Netherlands Radio Orchestra under its chief conductor, Henk Spruit. The sound is good quality mono. Here, too - as always - the link is in the comments.

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More Perfectly Frank

Several months back, I presented a selection of songs that Frank Sinatra recorded for his 1953-55 radio program, To Be Perfectly Frank. These were sourced from two awful-sounding bootlegs from many years back. I got rid of most of the noise, rebalanced the scrawny sounding transfers, and fixed the speed where it was awry. The results, while not in any sense high fidelity, were acceptable to these jaded ears - and certainly good enough for you to appreciate some Sinatra from a prime period and in a small group setting.

Here, as promised, are the rest of the recordings from those sources - and if anything, these sound even better.

I spent a fair amount of time searching through my Sinatra materials to find some ad or other artifact of the radio program, without luck. So I've chosen one of my favorite Frank photos - looking casual outside what I would guess is the office of a Tijuana divorce lawyer.

As before, I am presenting these recordings are in memory of my late mom, who started me on record collecting and got me my first Frankie LP (Ring-a-Ding-Ding).

NEW LINK

In Memory

My dear mom, who started me on the lifelong hobby of record collecting, passed away last week. I can think of no better tribute than to present several rare items involving her favorite singer, Frank Sinatra.

Frank, unsurprisingly, is also my favorite singer by far, and it's amazing to me that I have managed to operate this blog for nearly a year without presenting anything by him. I suppose the reason is that virtually everything Sinatra ever recorded is in print and easily available, and this blog is mainly devoted to more elusive materials. So forgive me if what I present here is a bit esoteric.

First up is a 78 that was issued in this form only in the UK. It is Frank's 1950 recording of two lovely songs by English composers - Ivor Novello's If Only She'd Look My Way and Carroll Coates' London By Night - in beautiful Axel Stordahl arrangements. The rarity here is the spoken introduction by the Duke of Edinburgh thanking the purchaser for supporting the National Playing Fields Association (see label above). To be clear, only the intro is unusual. The songs themselves are otherwise available.

The second rarity isn't even a Sinatra record - it is a rare Sinatra 78 picture sleeve (below) showing the cast of From Here to Eternity, his comeback film. Ray Bloch's orchestra presents the title song with accordion solo by Mat Mathews (recently featured here). On Re-enlistment Blues, Bloch accompanies an excellent anonymous vocal reminiscent of Sy Oliver.

The main part of this post really is important Sinatra, and if not impossible-to-find is still unusual. It consists of 17 songs from his 1953-55 radio program, To Be Perfectly Frank, in which Sinatra presented standards with backing by a small combo. These songs are sourced from two old and rough-sounding bootlegs. I have expended a fair amount of effort to remove clicks and noise, re-equalize each item, and fix speed problems (which is of course involves some guesswork). I am happy with the results and you may be, too, if you don't expect sonic miracles. The singing is miraculous enough.

Another 17 songs from this set will appear as soon as I finish work on them.

Thanks, Mom, for the gift of life and of music. I miss you very much.

78S | PERFECTLY FRANK