Rafael Kubelik's First Recordings

Rafael Kubelik in 1937

The eminent conductor Rafael Kubelik (1914-96) was closely associated with Czech music, particularly that of the national composer Bedřich Smetana (1824-84). Fittingly, Kubelik made his recording debut at age 23 with two of the symphonic poems from Smetana's Má vlast (My Fatherland) -  Vltava (usually called The Moldau in English) and Z českých luhů a hájů (From Bohemia's Woods and Fields).

Those 1937 recordings were made in London for HMV, although with the Czech Philharmonic, which Kubelik had first conducted when he was 19. At least for recording purposes, the conductor's repertoire was entirely Czech composers until 1948, when HMV had him conduct the Philharmonia for Ida Haendel's recording of the Bruch Concerto No. 1 (which you can find here).

The 1948 session was several months after Kubelik had defected to England. He decided he was no longer willing to remain in Czechoslovakia after the Communist takeover, having just endured a different authoritarian regime led by the Nazis. He did not return to his native land until the fall of the Communist government in 1990.

Kubelik was to revisit the Má vlast cycle four more times during his recording career, but there is nothing immature about these 1937 readings. Vltava is far and away the most familiar of the five symphonic poems, and it receives a sensitive performance here. It may be a little ironic that this most Czech of compositions makes use of a ancient Italian melody called "La mantovana," which has also been adapted for such purposes as the Israeli national anthem, the 1960s instrumental hit "A Walk in the Black Forest," and Stan Getz's jazz composition "Dear Old Stockholm." Italian, Israeli, German, Swedish - yet here it could not be more Czech.

Z českých luhů a hájů also is a good composition, although more patchy than Vltava, accentuated here by the less than smoothly executed side breaks inherent in the 78 medium. But the playing is good, and I probably don't need to mention that the performance is heartfelt.

These recordings were remastered from needle-drops on Internet Archive. The sound in ambient stereo is pleasing.

LINK

Bedřich Smetana

Columbia Promotes 'The Louis Armstrong Story'

After Columbia Records launched the LP format in 1948, it took just a few years to start mining its back catalogue for reissue candidates. One obvious artist emerged - Louis Armstrong, the trumpeter-vocalist who was the most important figure in early jazz. The right producer was already on staff, young George Avakian, who had been compiling Columbia's "Hot Jazz" albums on 78 for some time - including some of Armstrong's legendary recordings.

Promo label; George Avakian and Louis Armstrong; LP cover

The resulting Louis Armstrong Story was a four-record set (the LPs were issued separately) that came out in 1951. To promote the albums, the label had Avakian record introductions for some of the selections. Columbia then sent the intros with the appropriate cuts to disk jockeys, hoping they would air the package as a half-hour program.

There actually were two such promotional sets; today's post presents the second of them. I've gathered and remastered the seven Armstrong recordings and accompanying Avakian intros from needle drops on Internet Archive. The sound has a great deal of impact, as you will discover on the first Armstrong cut, "West End Blues" from 1928, which is one of the most famous jazz records of all time.

"West End Blues" begins with a spectacular Armstrong solo, astonishingly virtuosic for the time, which contrasts starkly with the stodgy playing of trombonist Fred Robinson and clarinetist Jimmy Strong, but not the fluid pianism of Earl Hines, like Armstrong resident in Chicago and advanced in his musical thinking. "West End Blues" also contains an early example of Armstrong's wordless vocalizing - I would call it "inimitable" if it hadn't inspired an army of imitators.

Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong

"West End Blues" was credited to "Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five," but by the time the next cut in this program was recorded late in 1928, the credit was simply "Louis Armstrong," here again in the company of Earl Hines and again producing a jazz classic, "Weather Bird."

For the next selection, Avakian returned to the June session that produced "West End Blues," choosing "Don't Jive Me." He notes in his introduction that Armstrong popularized many familiar jazz terms - including "jive." Here, Armstrong's solo is again riveting, but more space is allotted to Jimmy Strong, for whatever reason. In his solo, Hines demonstrates one of his stylistic hallmarks, playing out of time. Surprisingly, this record was unissued until Avakian included it in one of his "Hot Jazz" 78 compilations, in 1941.

Reissue label

Avakian introduces "Knockin' a Jug" as being the product of a jam session in the studio. For the first time, Armstrong is heard with one of his longtime associates, trombonist Jack Teagarden (whose solo for once is not all that good), and with the short-lived guitarist Eddie Lang. Louis has the last word, and thankfully the over-miked drummer Kaiser Marshall lays out for the climax.

Internet Archive's copy of "Knockin' a Jug" comes from an early reissue, dating from 1938 and sponsored by an enthusiast group called the United Hot Clubs of America. The 78 was issued by the Commodore Music Shop of New York, best known for its own label. These UHCA releases appeared even before Columbia started reissuing Armstrong's records.

Avakian says that Armstrong's managers wanted him to start recording more pop material, so in 1931 he took on "Star Dust" in his own way, remolding what Avakian terms Mitchell Parish's "prosaic" lyrics into something entirely new. Armstrong does sing some of Parish's words, while replacing others with vocalese, improvising just as he did on the trumpet. The band's chugga-chugga backing is highly amusing.

"I Can't Give You Anything But Love" is more of the same, only different, with Louis moaning his way through a chorus, whipping through a brief stop-time interlude, then returning to his vocal improvisations. The concluding trumpet solo is one of Louis' best.

Avakian concludes the program with "Muggles" (a slang term for marijuana). This 1928 record only takes flight when Armstrong plays his concluding solo - not unusual on these records.

Pinky Tomlin's Greatest Hits

Pinky Tomlin

The singer-songwriter Pinky Tomlin (1907-87) popped up in my most recent post, devoted to renditions of "Ragtime Cowboy Joe", so I thought I might explore three of his bigger successes. Each comes in two versions - his original recordings for Brunswick and 1940 remakes for Decca.  

Tomlin's career peaked when he was a young man - almost all of his records were made in the 1930s, and he appeared in quite a few films during that decade. He left show business altogether in the 1950s, except for a 1963 LP with Nelson Riddle that featured remakes of the three songs discussed below. (I have the album if anyone is eager to hear it.)

Pinky's first and perhaps biggest hit was "The Object of My Affection," a catchy number that became very popular in 1934-35. Wikipedia tells us, "Tomlin came to national attention in the 1930s due to a song he had written while attending the University of Oklahoma, one he composed for a student at the school, Joanne Alcorn, whom he would later marry. His original composition was subsequently adapted by Coy Poe and orchestrated and recorded in 1934 by bandleader Jimmie Grier."

Tomlin's singing is assured for someone who had little experience as a vocalist, and he already had a style of his own. His approach is notably conversational and informal. He occasionally sings out of time or alters the melodic line, seemingly deliberately. In some ways, he can be compared to the slightly older Willard Robison and Hoagy Carmichael, although he does not imitate them.

Grier's band, based in Los Angeles, is usually identified as the Coconut Grove Orchestra, although not here. His arrangement of this tune is standard for the time - staccato brass, soupy saxes, etc.

Jimmie Grier

Grier brought Pinky back in December 1934 for a session devoted to the singer's "What's the Reason (I'm Not Pleasing You)." The number was again attributed to Poe and Grier along with Tomlin. The arrangement turns the song into a duet with Betty Roth, who made at least one other recording with Grier. Her strident tones don't go all that well with Tomlin's relaxed approach.

By 1937 Tomlin was established enough that the Brunswick label promoted him to solo artist for another major hit, "The Love Bug Will Bite You (If You Don't Watch Out)." The song has a unusual structure in that it calls for the vocalist to ad lib a bit of a different song in each chorus: "The love bug will bite you if you don't watch out / He ever bites you, you'll sing and shout: [insert song of choice]." On this record, Pinky interpolates snatches of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," "Honeysuckle Rose" (a nod to Fats Waller, perhaps for recording some of Tomlin's songs), "Sweet Adeline" and "Swanee River," among others. At another place, he scat sings, showing an unexpected Louis Armstrong influence.

Texas Jim and Pinky

Tomlin moved to  Decca in 1938, recording 12 songs for the blue label between April of that year and December 1940. The first eight were in the company of Harry Sosnik's band, but for the final session, Decca matched him with Texas Jim Lewis and His Band. The band, generally billed as the "Lone Star Cowboys," was a Western swing outfit, and Tomlin's backing largely consists of accordion, fiddle and guitar.

The Cowboys were not virtuoso musicians and added little to the records, but Tomlin's singing is assured. Among the four songs they cut were remakes of the three discussed above, which I've included in the download. This time, Pinky's interpolations for "Love Bug" included "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar," a hit at the time. He also adds a coda not on the 1937 version.

Lewis went on to appear in dozens of Western films during a period when seemingly anyone with a ten-gallon hat and a guitar was cast as a singing cowboy. In the 1950s, he surfaced as the host of a kiddie show in Seattle, where he was very popular.

These songs were remastered from Internet Archive needle drops. The sound is very good for the time.

That Hifalutin, Rootin'-Tootin', Son-of-a-Gun from Arizona

Vaudeville singer and recording artist Bob Roberts did well in front of the microphones in the early years of the last century, even rivalling such stars as Billy Murray for popularity with such fare as "The Woodchuck Song." But his fortunes were ebbing in 1912 when he managed to enjoy one last hit, a record that would become one of the most popular of that year - "Ragtime Cowboy Joe." 

It's a song that was still well known when I was a pup 40 years later, and was one of my firm favorites. In today's post we'll look back at its recordings over the period from Bob Roberts' Camden session until the Jo Stafford disc of 1949 - one that I would have heard as a young Bronco Buster.

"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" was the handiwork of three successful young songwriters. The clever words are by Grant Clarke, who also wrote the words to "Am I Blue?", "Second Hand Rose" and "He'll Have to Get Under (Get Out and Get Under)." Maurice Abrahams wrote the music for the latter song. Lewis Muir's biggest hit was "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee." 

The story is told that Abrahams was inspired to write "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" by the cowboy outfit sported by his young nephew, Joe. That sounds like a publicist's concoction, though.

The Bob Roberts record is a fun listen, with the singer coming through with great presence, although he is mainly notable for being able to enunciate at a rapid clip while singing loudly into the recording horn. As per usual in 1912, the orchestra makes wheezing sounds in the background.

The Girls of the Golden West

"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" had a recording revival in 1938, for reasons that aren't clear to me. Our next disc comes from that year and is by a radio act called the Girls of the Golden West. Said girls were two sisters (Dorothy and Millie Good) who named their act after a Puccini opera. Dorothy accompanied the sisterly vocals on guitar in this recording. They seem under-rehearsed, which is surprising because they surely had the song in their repertoire.

Ella Logan

The unlikeliest 1938 disc may have been a Brunswick release by Ella Logan, a Glasgow-born band singer who would not have her greatest success for nearly another decade - in Finian's Rainbow. Her backing on the record is by a Perry Botkin group.

Singer-songwriter Pinky Tomlin did well with his 1939 recording, where he was backed by the Foursome and Harry Sosnik's band. Grant Clarke's lyrics had called Ragtime Cowboy Joe a "son-of-a-gun from Arizona" but Tomlin relocated him to Oklahoma, his home state. Pinky's greatest hits were "The Object of My Affection" and "The Love Bug Will Bite You If You Don't Watch Out."

Louise Massey and the Westerners

The Good sisters weren't the only country act to feature "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" - Louise Massey and the Westerners recorded it in 1939 for Conqueror. They were very much a Western swing outfit at the time, with a prominent trumpet similar to Bob Wills' band. Louise isn't featured on this record; I believe the lead vocal is by her brother Curt, who could have used another take. Curt, who is in the center of the photo above, later had a successful solo career.

Finally, Jo Stafford's 1949 recording. This is certainly the best sung rendition but it has a few mildly mysterious elements. First the label claims the song is from Hello, Frisco, Hello. True, but that Alice Faye film had come out six years earlier, and the song had also been used in a more recent movie, 1945's Incendiary Blonde with Betty Hutton. The label also claims the piano solo is by Pat Gillham, which may be the case, but if so, he has no other recording credits I can find. The Jo Stafford discography and Wikipedia both claim the pianist is actually Joe "Fingers" Carr. But that name is a pseudonym for Lou Busch, who hadn't started recording as "Fingers" just yet. Was "Pat Gillham" another nom du disque that Busch used before the Carr identity?

The Stafford record was not the end of Ragtime Cowboy Joe's recording history. I have spared you and the song the indignity of including the most recent hit version - a 1959 single by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Today, an adaptation of the tune is in use as a fight song by at least one US university - that of Wyoming.

These recordings were redone from Internet Archive needle drops.

Paul Kletzki's 1948 'Siegfried Idyll'

When we last heard from the urbane gentleman at the right, he was conducting a Wagner program that included a stereo version of the Bayreuth master's most pacific score, the Siegfried Idyll. 

It was not the first time that he (Paul Kletzki) had recorded the Idyll. The maestro had started recording for EMI in late 1946, and by the time he got around to the Idyll in May 1948, he had already set down the Lohengrin preludes and the Flying Dutchman overture from Wagner's oeuvre.

But his way with the Siegfried Idyll was special, although certainly much different from what Cosima Wagner would have heard from her window on Christmas morning 1870, when Hans Richter and a small ensemble serenaded her to mark the birth of the Wagners' son Siegfried.

The 1870 ensemble included a relative handful of instruments. Today and in Kletzki's day the work is usually performed with a bigger ensemble - even bigger than the expanded chamber orchestration that Wagner published.

Still and all, it remains a unique work in Wagner's catalogue, here in a graceful, yet carefully controlled performance from the vintage Philharmonia Orchestra, in a beautiful recording from the long-lost Kingsway Hall.

Paul Kletzki can also be heard on my other blog in music of Brahms and Mendelssohn.

The Foursome - 1926-37 Singles

Back in April I posted some Gershwin songs as performed in 1939 by the Foursome vocal group, both on their own and accompanying Shirley Ross. That delightful act mated clever vocal arrangements to harmonizing on the ocarina, the sweet-potato shaped wind instrument with a distinctive sound. They helped popularize the instrument in the 1930s.

Today, a return to the Foursome via eight additional songs, ranging from their first record, from 1926, through to the bulk of their solo discs, made for Decca in 1937, and including the first recording of their most famous number, the Gershwins' "Bidin' My Time."

I am indebted to Jordan Young's biography of the group on Allmusic for much of the following information. The original group included Marshall Smith, Dwight Snyder, Harry Isaacs and Kearney Walton, all from the Pacific Northwest. By 1926, they had recorded a single with bandleader Paul Ash, "There Ain't No Maybe in My Baby's Eyes," a big hit song that year. Ash's version is bouncy in the style of the time, and the Foursome acquit themselves well, although their style was not yet distinctive.

By 1930, the group had appeared in a few films then on Broadway in Ripples, an Oscar Levant-Irving Caesar musical that went nowhere. By this time, the group consisted of Marshall Smith, Dwight Snyder, Del Porter and Raymond Johnson, the members for most of the ensemble's history.

Not sure, but this may include at least three of the Foursome - still from Girl Crazy

Ripples may have flopped, but the quartet had much better luck with their next opportunity - Girl Crazy from the mighty Gershwins. Introducing "Bidin' My Time" helped make their career. This set includes their first recording, made for Brunswick in 1930, which presumably is close to what was heard at the Alvin Theater as the opening number in the show. (Confidentially, their 1939 remake is better.)

By 1937, the group had secured a Decca recording contract, and devoted its solo first session to a dynamic specialty by Del Porter and Ray Johnson, "Sweet Potato Swing," which was backed by the 1923 chestnut "Nobody's Sweetheart," which is handled much better than the song deserved. By this time, the group had mastered playing their ocarinas. Jordan Young quotes Ray Johnson: "We worked like hell to get them in tune. You'll never hear that sound again - nobody would be fool enough to do it."

The Foursome

The final four songs in this set come from a November 1937 recording date, where the Foursome was joined by a Perry Botkin ensemble, with Botkin the stylish guitarist and Spike Jones as the drummer. 

Again the group reached back to the rhythm numbers of the 1920s for "My Honey's Lovin' Arms" and "Sweet Georgia Brown," both well suited to their style, and both most impressive. They added "Chinatown, My Chinatown," a 1906 number which is badly dated today but was a jazz favorite for many years, and "Blue (and Broken-Hearted)," which was popular in 1922 and for some time thereafter. The Foursome do both beautifully.

Perry Botkin

The groups' final records under their own name were included in the previous post. They also kept busy accompanying some of Decca's biggest artists, including Bing Crosby and Dick Powell. As I mentioned in the earlier article, later on, Del Porter started a band called the Feather Merchants, which eventually turned into Spike Jones and the City Slickers. The Allmusic article adds that Porter, Johnson and Snyder also were in a group called the Sweet Potato Tooters, and that the first two appeared on Capitol as members of the Starlighters. (The version of that group that I am familiar with had different personnel, however.)

Most of these recordings come from Internet Archive needle drops, which I've cleaned up in ambient stereo, but which still have some residual noise at times. Great performances, though!

Constant Lambert Conducts 'The Skaters Waltz'

In 1937, Composer-conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51) devised a ballet score for the Vic-Wells Ballet called Les Patineurs, utilizing music from two operas by Giocomo Meyerbeer. Selections from that score have appeared on disc several times, including a set by Lambert in 1939. My other blog has the 1950 Sadler's Wells recording led by John Hollingsworth, one of Lambert's successors with the company.

Émile Waldteufel

By the time of the Hollingsworth recording, Lambert was a sick man who would survive only until August of the following year. Fortunately the UK Columbia company had him in the recording studio several times in 1950, with his final session in late September. Among those last dates were a few devoted to the works of Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915), the Alsatian composer whose best-known work was another (and better known) Les Patineurs - in the Anglophone world usually called The Skaters Waltz.

Lambert also recorded more works by Waldteufel at the same time - Estudiantina, Pomone and Sur la plage. I don't - or to be more accurate, Internet Archive does not - have those discs. A shame because Lambert and the Philharmonia Orchestra do Les Patineurs beautifully, and the Kingsway Hall sound as remastered in ambient stereo is excellent.

I admire Lambert's conducting, and generally like his championing of lighter works such as this. In his last year of recording, he had a final go at Walton's Façade (which can be found on my other blog), plus Suppé's Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna (also available there). His last recorded performance was his own arrangement for orchestra of Chabrier's piano piece Ballabile (which I don't have).