Mary Kaye's Lone (and Excellent) Solo LP

This fine LP was requested by gimpiero, a motion seconded by woolfnotes. I've had it in the queue for transfer since my previous upload of the Mary Kaye Trio nine years ago. (I work slow.)

Gimpiero and woolfnotes have good taste - to me, this is a superior product but is fairly unknown. It is the only solo album by Mary Kaye, the singer-guitarist and namesake of the trio that was a fixture in the Las Vegas lounges of the time. All her other LPs were made with the trio and include as much ensemble as solo singing.

Mary Kaye

The trio was an excellent act, but that may have masked the real skills of Kaye, who was at once an assured and technically skilled singer with a great deal of emotional depth.

As bandleader/producer Sonny Burke writes in his liner notes, "Her timing, invention, phrasing and delivery are beyond reproach... [She] sings the words with exactly the feeling that the lyricist had in mind when he added his thoughts to the music." 

In the first song, "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," you may note the influence of Sarah Vaughan in her phrasing at the beginning of the number. But reflecting Kaye's Las Vegas background, she then seamlessly changes tempos so that the torch song turns into a swinger. 

Even so, Mary Kaye's approach can be more inward than Vaughan - striking in someone who made a living in Las Vegas lounges. Sarah herself made notable early recordings of two of the songs herein - "You Taught Me to Love Again" and "You're Mine, You."

The first side of the LP is composed of standards, with more adventure on side 2, which starts off with the terrific and not-often-heard "Real Love" by the team of Matt Dennis and Don Raye. The singer continues her salute to her peers with Mel Tormé's second biggest hit, "A Stranger in Town," which benefits from a particularly fine interpretation.

"Old Maid in April Weather" is a bit of a peculiar song by Mary's brother Norman, and the singer herself adds "I Must Have You," written with John Kruglick. "When I Go, I Go All the Way" is another unusual item, penned by arranger Russ Garcia and Bob Russell.

The LP benefits from charts by Jerry Fielding, which are worth hearing on their own. Decca's sound is very pleasing on this 1958 release.

Jerry Fielding

Bonus Items

I've added two items as bonuses - an RCA Victor single from 1954 along with one of Mary Kaye's earliest recordings, which gives a clue to her background.

The RCA single couples the dramatic "Almost," with music by Fred Spielman and lyrics by the father-daughter team of Ogden and Isabel Nash, with "Don't Laugh at Me," the theme song of English comedian Norman Wisdom. Not sure how they came up with this coupling, but these offbeat items are done very well. Hugo Winterhalter conducts.

The earlier recording is a selection from a 1947 Apollo album, when Mary Kaye's act was known as the Mary Ka'aihue Trio. She and her brother had been in show business from an early age, performing in her father's act, Johnny Ka'aihue’s Royal Hawaiians. The trio's first records were of Hawaiian music, including "Hooheno No Beauty" (The Beauty Hula) and "Makalapua" (Your Eyes Are Like Flowers), which were coupled on one of the three records in the Apollo set. Mary and Norman soon changed their last name to Kaye so that people would not assume they only performed the music of Hawaii. 

Both the RCA and Apollo records were cleaned up from Internet Archive needle drops. The Victor sound is good; the Apollo is a bit noisy.

There is more about Mary Kaye and her act in this 2013 post. Also you can hear her (and, separately, Julie London) sing the title song from Boy on a Dolphin.

Ruth Olay with Jerry Fielding

Last summer I posted an Jerry Fielding LP from 1953, with a bonus single featuring the young vocalist Ruth Olay. At that time I had a request for more Olay, so here she is, appropriately accompanied by Fielding in this 1958 date for Mercury.

By that time, Olay had become more established in the West Coast clubs, and had even become a familiar face on television. The cover above pitches her as the "singing discovery of the Jack Paar Show" - Paar at that time was the host of the late night Tonight Show on U.S. television, with Olay as a frequent guest.

Ruth Olay

The term "discovery" may suggest that the singer was a newcomer to the studio, which was not the case. I believe this was her fourth LP recording, with previous entries for the Zenith label, Mercury and Mercury's EmArcy mark (although the latter may have been released later than Easy Living).

Her singing on the Trend single was assured, if seemingly under the spell of Mildred Bailey. On this session she retains her characteristic rapid vibrato, but has adopted a more individual manner, with overtones of Lena Horne and Kay Starr. In a revealing interview with Bill Reed, Olay herself insists her greatest influences were blues singers. In any case, she was a highly accomplished artist whose current neglect is curious - especially considering she is still with us.

Easy Living embodies the peculiarities of early stereo, made during the period when engineers were still experimenting with the new format. On most tracks, Ruth comes at us from the left speaker, with the Mercury folks occasionally moving her to the right channel mid-song, seemingly just for the heck of it. On "Undecided" (of course), she keeps switching back and forth. These artificial shenanigans were common when stereo was young, the better for buyers to show off their new two-channel set-ups. (I distinctly remember the first time I heard a stereo record. It was at the house of friends of my parents, and seemed like quite a big deal to nine-year-old Buster.)

As a bonus, I have added a non-LP single that Olay made with Fielding early in 1958. Apparently the only title issued from that January date, it is a lively version of the Mercer-Donaldson song "On Behalf of the Visiting Firemen." (The other side of the single was "I Wanna Be a Friend of Yours" from the Easy Living album.)

By the way, the mention of Jack Paar on the LP cover inspired me to dig out one of the comic's few singles - a surprisingly good one (no thanks to Paar). The curious can find it on my singles blog.

Jerry Fielding's 1953 Band

Jerry Fielding is remembered today as a film and television composer, but before that experience, he was an arranger, radio conductor and bandleader. It’s in the latter guise that we hear him today, in this 1953 10-inch LP for the short-lived Trend label.

A friend of mine posted this record on his blog, and observed that Fielding seems so young on the cover that he does not look like he’s begun to shave. Perhaps so, but by this time he had been a professional for nearly a decade, writing big-band arrangements and conducting the orchestras for a number of radio shows.

Fielding was born Joshua Feldman, and the claim is made that in 1947 the producer of Jack Paar’s radio show made him change his name as a condition of getting a job on that program. However, by that time the young bandleader had already made records under the Fielding name.

By whatever name, he was a notable success, and this record is testimony. It documents a working band that Fielding had assembled, with three or four trumpets, two trombones, four or five saxes, and rhythm. The soloists include Maurie Harris (trumpet), Hymie Gunkler (alto), Buddy Collette and Sam Donahue (tenors) and Gerald Wiggins (piano). The leader’s arrangements are varied and imaginative, making for a fine album. (Perhaps not as good as the review below, which touts this disc as “the best band album ever recorded,” to the surprise, no doubt, of Ellington, Basie and many others.)

Billboard ad - click to enlarge

The LP has 11 cuts, five of which are devoted to Fielding’s theme song, “Carefree,” which is heard in snatches at the start and end of each side of the record, and complete on the first side. It’s an attractive piece, but maybe not deserving of all that exposure.

As a bonus to the LP, I’ve added Fielding’s first single for the Trend label. It includes a band treatment of “Here in My Arms” backed by a vocal on “A Blues Serenade” by the young Ruth Olay, who was under the influence of Mildred Bailey at the time. Olay went on to record a number of albums, and was backed by Fielding on one of her records for Mercury.

The Trend label was started by Albert Marx, who had owned the Musicraft label and was at the helm of Discovery for many years. Trend also recorded blog favorites Matt Dennis and Claude Thornhill, among others. These masters later were reissued on Kapp.

After Trend’s demise, Fielding moved on to Decca. I’ll post one of the records from that association if there is interest.