Damone Special - April in Paris Plus Bonuses and Remasters

Vic Damone has become something of a sub-specialty of this blog, most recently with a collection of his Silvertone Record Club recordings.

At that time I speculated that the Silvertone sides were produced by Mercury, the singer's main label, and in fact almost all of the many Damone tunes on this blog originated with that Chicago diskery.

Today I add to the pile of Mercury LPs with a transfer of a 10-inch album from circa 1953, April in Paris. Six of the eight songs therein derive from 1951 sessions with blog favorite arranger George Siravo. A seventh comes from a 1951 date with George Bassman, and the remaining item is with Glenn Osser and comes from 1947.

As a bonus, I've included an EP with three songs that didn't appear on LP and a 78 with two additional non-LP tracks.

The EP is This Is the Night, with three 1947 songs with Glenn Osser arrangements, along with "My Heart Is Breaking" from 1952, with Joe Lipman backing. The latter also appears on the LP Amor, which I have transferred previously and which is being reuploaded today (see below).

The bonus 78 comprises "Good Morning, Morning Glory" and "Goodbye for Awhile," which come from one of the 1951 Siravo sessions.

To summarize, here are the tracks, arrangers and dates:

01 You Belong to Me (George Siravo) 1951

02 Funny (George Siravo) 1951

03 My Funny Valentine (George Siravo) 1951

04 Easy to Love (George Siravo) 1951

05 April in Paris (George Siravo) 1951

06 Far Away Places (Glenn Osser) 1947

07 Operetta (George Siravo) 1951

08 Jump Through the Ring (George Bassman) 1951

09 Everyone But Me (Glenn Osser) 1949

10 Let's Fall in Love (Glenn Osser) 1949

11 This Is the Night (Glenn Osser) 1949

12 My Heart Is Breaking (Joe Lipman) 1952

13 Good Morning, Morning Glory (George Siravo) 1951

14 Goodbye for Awhile (George Siravo) 1951

Damone sounds great throughout this collection, and is at his most Sinatra-like in the 1951 Siravo dates. "Good Morning, Morning Glory" even apes the approach Frank was taking with novelty material at the time under the heavy hand of Mitch Miller. The sound is good for the most part, with the exception of some peak shatter in "Easy to Love" and a bit of 78 surface gravel on "Goodbye for Awhile."

Mercury's cover, as often is the case with the label, is adorably dorky, with Damone's disembodied head poking out from under a "boulangerie" sign. (They had the good sense to not have it say "charcuterie.")

Reups/remasters

I've remastered and reuploaded the four Damone 10-inch solo LPs that have appeared previously on this blog. The sound is generally much improved over the original incarnations. The links below lead to the original post. Download links can be found in the comments there and in the comments to this post as well.

Amor

Ebb Tide

Vic Damone (MG25028)

Vic Damone (MG25029)

Siravo Swings in Hi-Fi and Stereo

When I recently reupped three early LPs by arranger-conductor George Siravo, my friend Scoredaddy sent in a polite plea for more.

SD is one of the blog's earliest and most loyal supporters, so I made it a priority to unearth more Siravos from the cartons in my cavern of a basement. Here is the result of my search.

George Siravo

This one is an unusual post because I am offering both the mono and the stereo versions of the record, while stating my strong preference for the single-channel version.

The cover you see above is from the LP's original incarnation on RCA Victor's subsidiary Vik label. Recorded in July 1957, it probably came out later that year under the title "Swing Hi Swing Fi." A good example of hi-fi it was, too, with a wide range and good instrumental balance. My only niggle would be that because it is a multi-miked but single-channel recording, the musicians sometimes sound like they are standing on top of one another.

Stereo was supposed to address this phenomenon, and when it came along in a big way in 1958, people were astounded by what they heard. The tendency back then was for engineers to park some of the instrumentalists over on one side and some over on the other, with nothing in the middle, so as to emphasize that you were hearing two-channel sound, let there be no doubt about it.

So when RCA decided to put out a stereo version of the Siravo LP in 1959, that's exactly what it did - hole-in-the-middle stereo. Too bad the ham-handed engineer in charge used a 14th generation tape for a master and then added clumsy reverb to the whole thing, resulting in a sonic horror that does not do justice to the performances.

Since "hi-fi" was dated as a marketing gimmick and "stereo" in vogue, RCA renamed the mess "Siravo Swing Session" and issued it on its budget line, Camden, in the cover below. (You may think that's the same photo as on the mono release, but look closely and you will see it's from a different negative. I just wonder how the drummer managed to play his kit with the the pieces scattered all over the place.)

On to a few words about the music. Siravo reached way back for his repertoire choices, with all tunes composed in the first three decades of the century. I imagine some of this was impelled by royalty considerations, but the arranger did have a taste for the real oldies. His previous LP for Vik was music by Stephen Foster and his 19th century contemporaries.

Siravo of course updated the material, turning the "Twelfth Street Rag" into a rhumba, and using an R&B motif to intro "Margie." (I might note that he then turns that figure into a riff that is suspiciously similar to Kenyon Hopkins's famous theme from the film The Strange One, which came out a few months before "Swing Hi" was taped.) Otherwise, you will hear many echoes of Siravo's big-band background, including one arrangement that sounds a lot like a Benny Goodman recording with Charlie Christian that I can't place.

As usual I've included a run-down of personnel where known. Soloists are not noted, but my guess is you are hearing (among others) Buck Clayton on trumpet, Boomie Richman on tenor, Toots Mondello on alto, and Buddy Weed on piano. Terry Snyder is on vibes, and is probably also the xylophone player on "Twelfth Street Rag."

One final note: the title "Siravo Swing Session" predates "Sinatra's Swingin' Session!!!" by a few years. Somewhat ironic, since half of the Sinatra LP (arranged by the irreproachable Nelson Riddle) was a remake of the "Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra" album that Siravo arranged for Columbia. That was probably not lost on Siravo, who by that time was on the outs with the Voice. (See this good article on the arranger.)

Portraits by George Siravo

Here by request is George Siravo's circa 1956 LP, Portraits in Hi-Fi. Siravo's records have shown themselves to be quite popular hereabouts, much to my surprise.

This album comprises Siravo compositions, and for some reason he ventures into what I would have to assume is deliberately trite material on several cuts. Not sure what the point of that is.

Nor can I tell you what is supposed to be happening on the cover. The unspoken assumption seems to be that all women are housewives, and they are getting dressed up for a portrait. But what of the man? If he is a painter, is he supposed to be Siravo himself? And if so, why is his coat four sizes too large and his hair and beard so odd?

Enough of this pointless musing (I hear you saying) - on to the sounds. I have to tell you, then as now, when you speak the words "hi-fi" to an engineer, he eagerly plugs in the reverb unit. So here, Siravo's music is bathed in an echo that only Mantovani could love.

However, I will say the LP was in excellent shape. and admit that I enjoyed the music a great deal - there is much here to like. I just wish someone had hidden the reverb machine. (Also the xylophone.)

Polite Jazz with Siravo

A short while ago I put up a George Siravo LP in my series about postwar bands. A lot of you were enthusiastic about Siravo's arranging prowess and a few were especially interested in this particular LP.

It says it is polite and in fact, that's just what it is. Not exactly cool, not exactly sweet, and certainly not hot. As the cover advertises, it is smooth and swinging. I was particularly taken by Boomie Richmond's Prez-toned tenor sax among the soloists. There isn't too much room to roam, however, in the arrangements.

Speaking of the cover, I hope you like the results - this one had quite a bit of water damage, so I had to do some reconstruction. Looks pretty good, I think.

We also had a request for Portraits in Hi-Fi, which is all Siravo compositions, so I'll prepare that one for our next installment.

Dancing with George Siravo

Returning to our series of postwar dance bands, here is another "dance date" as presented by Columbia in 1950. This one features George Siravo, who didn't have a road band but who was making a name for himself as an arranger for the finest singers, including Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Buddy Clark and later Tony Bennett.

Siravo has achieved some latter-day acclaim for his instrumental LPs as well, although this one (his first) is relatively unknown, but very worthwhile. As this album's excellent anonymous notes point out, his "firm, catchy beat" is in evidence throughout the set.

Siravo was doing quite a bit of work for Sinatra around this time, and his tune Barbecue Riffs on this LP later turned up on a Sinatra session as Farewell, Farewell to Love. Siravo didn't, however, do the arrangement for Frank; Ray Conniff did.

As with the Hal McIntyre record below, Columbia touted this album as presenting continuous music (in the process creating its own variant spelling for "medleys"). On the McIntyre set, the songs were linked by brief celeste interludes. Here Columbia just clomps them together.