Buddy Clark: 1936-41 Transcriptions

Continuing an exploration of vocalist Buddy Clark's early recordings, in this set we turn to transcriptions dating from about 1936-1941. These come from two sources: transcriptions from the radio program Your Hit Parade, which sponsor Lucky Strike pressed for promotional purposes of some type, and a set of Associated Transcriptions made for radio station use. The sound is good, as are the performances. There are 19 selections in all.

Lucky Strike Transcriptions

Your Hit Parade began its long tenure on radio and television in 1935, with Lucky Strike cigarettes as sponsor. Clark was one of the first vocalists to be featured, appearing from 1936-38. The sponsor pressed some of the recordings, and it is a selection of those that appear here. Mark Warnow is the conductor, except as noted.

Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote "September in the Rain" for James Melton to sing in the 1937 film Melody for Two. 

Mark Warnow

"Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" has a curious history. Lyricist Jacob Jacobs and composer Sholom Secunda wrote it as "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" ("To Me You're Beautiful") by  for a 1932 Yiddish language musical, I Would If I Could. There are a variety of stories about how lyricists Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin came upon the song, but their version of it became a giant hit for the Andrews Sisters in 1937. Richard Himber conducts Buddy's performance.

Richard Himber

Allie Wrubel and Herb Magidson wrote "Goodnight Angel," a very pleasing but now forgotten song. Hal Kemp recorded it with Bob Allen on vocals.

Al Goodman

As was noted here recently, the Gershwin brothers wrote "Love Walked In" for Kenny Baker to sing in the film Goldwyn Follies. Al Goodman conducts Clark's performance.

Associated Transcriptions

Associated was a major supplier of transcriptions to radio stations, but the first two songs actually come from a disc the company produced for Muzak. This was in the early years of the service, when it was employing recognizable artists for its product.

The two Muzak songs are likely from 1936. Both were written by Mach Gordon and Harry Revel. "A Star Fell out of Heaven" was recorded by any number of bands that year. "When I'm with You" comes from the Shirley Temple epic Poor Little Rich Girl, where Shirley, Tony Martin and Alice Faye all had a crack at it. Mark Warnow conducts for Buddy.

In about 1938, Associated produced a recording of the famous tango "Caminito" with Clark singing in English and a singer only identified as Chico in Spanish. Lon Gladstone is listed as the conductor, but that was a baton name for Lud Gluskin.

Lud Gluskin

"Will Love Find a Way" is from the 1934 Stags at Bay show at Princeton University. The author was the short-lived Brooks Bowman, who also wrote the far better known "East of the Sun" for that production. Gladstone/Gluskin again is the bandleader. Buddy is uncredited on the label.

Shortly after the Hammond company introduced the first commercial synthesizer, the Novachord, Associated employed it for some of its transcriptions. It may have been a technical marvel, but it still sounds to me like an anemic organ.

Buddy's first encounter with this scourge was "Let There Be Love" with music by Lionel Rand and lyrics by Ian Grant, published in 1940, a tune still beloved of cabaret artists. (Bobby Short's version can be heard here.)

"From Another World" is from Rodgers and Hart's 1940 show Higher and Higher. Shirley Ross was among the vocalists who introduced the song - her big solo number was the far better-known "It Never Entered My Mind." Shirley's commercial recordings of songs from the show can be found here.

For the next several songs, Clark gets what Associated called a "Novelty Orchestral Accompaniment," but they can't fool me. It's the Novachord again, at times with an organ and a clarinet.

"Trade Winds" was a product of Charles Tobias and Cliff Friend. Crosby and Sinatra both had a go at it in 1940.

For "There's a Great Day Coming Mañana" Buddy unexpectedly breaks into an Al Jolson imitation halfway through the number. He had a reason - Burton Lane and Yip Harburg wrote the piece for Jolie to sing in the musical Hold Onto Your Hats, which ran on Broadway for five months in 1940-41.

I think "When the Lilacs Bloom Again" is a version of "Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht," written by Fritz Rotter and Franz Doelle in the 1920s.

Next we have two famed songs from Rodgers and Hart's musical Pal Joey of 1940 - "Bewitched" and "I Could Write a Book."

"Because of You" was written by Arthur Hammerstein and Dudley Wilkinson in 1940. It did well for Tommy Tucker and Larry Clinton at the time, but the big hit wasn't to come until Tony Bennett revived it in 1951.

Jack Tenney and Helen Stone wrote "Mexicali Rose" in 1923, but it wasn't on the charts until Bing Crosby recorded it in 1938.

Nat Brandwynne

Buddy wasn't liberated from the "Novelty Orchestra Accompaniment" until the final two songs in this set, which have a backing by Nat Brandwynne, who had accompanied the singer from quite a few Brunswick recordings a few years earlier. Nat was favoring a soupy Guy Lombardo sound at the time.

Buddy and Nat combined for two songs from Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's musical Lady in the Dark - "My Ship" and "This Is New." Buddy doesn't suggest the neuroses of Liza Elliott, but this is worth hearing if you don't mind the ultra-30s backing.

LINK

The Young Buddy Clark, Plus a Glenn Miller Bonanza

Today we take a deep dive into the early recordings of Buddy Clark, a favored singer around these parts, and an even deeper dive into the Glenn Miller catalogue, the latter courtesy of our friend David Federman. 

For Clark, we have his complete 1934-36 output with the Lud Gluskin orchestra - 25 songs in all. The Miller trove includes both volumes of the his "Limited Editions" - 1950s sets of commercial recordings and airchecks that haven't been reissued in that form.

Buddy Clark with Lud Gluskin (1934-36)

Buddy Clark

Buddy Clark was just 23 when he first entered the recording studio in 1934. Although his mature manner was not fully in evidence at that point, it was only a matter of months before he was sounding very much like the Buddy of his 1940s hits.

Clark was a singer for hire in those days, and appeared with several bandleaders on their records during this early period - Freddy Martin, Eddy Duchin, Xavier Cugat, Joe Moss, Ruby Newman, Nat Brandwynne and Archie Bleyer. He even made a few records under his own name for Melotone. But most of his sessions were with Lud (Ludwig) Gluskin, one-time partner with Jimmy Durante, and then a Paul Whiteman drummer who decided to remain behind in Paris following a European tour. Gluskin became a popular and much recorded bandleader there, until returning to the states circa 1934.

Gluskin called the American ensemble his "Continental Orchestra," presumably a nod to his European popularity. I haven't been able to discover who was in the band - or even if it had a existence outside the studio, but I will say that the musicians are experts and the arrangements are pleasingly elaborate in the mid-30s style - bouncy two-beat, chalumeau-register clarinet, fruity saxes, rat-a-tat or tightly-muted trumpets, strings, harp and ringing piano figures. Also as was the practice back then, the singer is limited to a chorus or two in the middle of the arrangement.

Blue shellac, blue label

At first, Gluskin and Clark recorded for Columbia, back in its blue shellac and blue label days. Their initial date was in October 1934, when they took up two songs from a Broadway revue called Continental Varieties. On the stage, Lucienne Boyer sang both "Speak to Me with Your Eyes" and the very popular "Hands Across the Table" in French. As he often did throughout his career, Mitchell Parish was on hand to provide English lyrics, in this case for the Jean Delettre music. Those are the versions that Clark sang.

At this early stage, Buddy had adopted some of the more dramatic mannerisms of his contemporary Bing Crosby. He soon was to moderate them (as did Crosby), but there is no doubt who was his inspiration.

Lud Gluskin

Buddy's next assignment, in November, was the title song of the film Sweet Music, where it was introduced by Rudy Vallée. Harry Warren and Al Dubin were the authors.

Calling All Stars, from whence came an ode to Gigolo Joe ("Just Mention Joe") was a short-lived Broadway revue produced by Lew Brown, with a cast that included Gertrude Niesen, who I believe introduced this song. As they often were, Gluskin and Clark were surprisingly persuasive in this Latin number. Indeed on that same November date, they recorded an early Raymond Scott number called "Tia Juana." The backing of that song was another Jean Delettre-Mitchell Parish outing, "Dancing with My Darling."

By January 1935, Clark was fully recognizable as the singer who was to become popular in the 1940s. The first recording on the January date was one of Oscar Levant's tunes, "Pardon My Love," with words by Milton Drake. But the prize of the session - and one of my favorites from this collection - was "It's You I Adore," by William Livingston and J. Russell Robinson, who also wrote "Margie," "Singing the Blues" and "A Portrait of Jennie."

Clark and Gluskin moved right back into the Latin repertoire with "The Rhythm of the Rumba," bringing along Joe Host as a faux-Cuban for the occasion. "Host" was actually Joe Hostetter, ex-Glen Gray trumpeter. "Rhythm of the Rumba" and its disc mate, "The Magic of You," were written by Ralph Rainger for the film Rumba, starring George Raft. I suspect you can see Raft, who was a dancer, do the r[h]umba in that film.

That January session closed out Gluskin's contract with Columbia. He and Clark were on to Brunswick for new recordings starting in September 1935.

The first song they set down was "Rhythm and Romance" by George Whiting, "Nat Schwartz" (Nat Burton) and J. C. Johnson, which also was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald. Its backing was the far more famous "Red Sails in the Sunset," with music by "Hugh Williams" (Wilhelm Grosz) and lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy, which emanated from Broadway's Provincetown Follies. Bing had the bigger hit version, but Buddy's was a good one.

The next coupling came from the 1935 musical, Here's to Romance, which starred operatic tenor Nino Martini, for a short time also a crossover star in films. First was the title song, backed with "Midnight in Paris."

Better remembered than either of those tunes was "Moon Over Miami" by Joe Burke and Edgar Leslie. These days it is mostly known for being used in the 1941 film of the same name, but it was written in 1935, and recorded by Gluskin in December. Buddy's reading is very fine. The flip side did not have a Clark vocal, unusually.

On the same date, Clark and Gluskin set down two songs from the film King of Burlesque, introduced by two very different singers - "I've Got My Fingers Crossed" by Fats Waller and the wonderful "I'm Shooting High" by the equally wonderful Alice Faye. These Ted Koehler-Jimmy McHugh songs are well suited to Clark's optimistic style.

We move on to an April 1936 session that included four songs, three of them English. "She Shall Have Music" and "My First Thrill" came from the Jack Hylton film She Shall Have Music. The writers were Maurice Sigler, Al Goodhart and Al Hoffman.

Another bandleader who became famous in England (although he was actually American) was Carroll Gibbons. His contribution to this set is "On the Air," written with James Campbell and Reginald Connelly. The lyrics are best suited to broadcast use, but the song is pleasantly melodious and perhaps appropriate for the performers - Clark was often on radio and Gluskin would soon became CBS music director. The B-side is "Sunshine at Midnight" by the eminent lyricist Edward Heyman and the talented bandleader Matty Malneck.

Clark's final session with Gluskin was in November 1936. "Rainbow on the River" comes from the film of the same name, with songs by Paul Francis Webster and Louis Alter, whose work has appeared here before. The song was written for the 10-year-old Bobby Breen, who had a brief vogue. It was backed by "You're Too Good to Be True" by Bud Green and Jesse Grier.

For their final recording, Clark and Gluskin again turned to the English film industry, plucking two songs from Head Over Heels, both introduced by Jessie Matthews - "Head Over Heels in Love" and "May I Have the Next Romance with You?" The songwriters were Americans Mack Gordon and Harry Revel (the latter was born in England).

The sound from these 78s is generally exceptionally vivid, showing both Clark and Gluskin's band to good effect. The source materials are from Internet Archive, cleaned up (at times laboriously) by me.

Special thanks to friend of the blog and discographer Nigel Burlinson, whose Buddy Clark discography was invaluable in researching and dating these recordings. The discography is enclosed in the download; the Gluskin recordings are in red.

Glenn Miller - The Limited Editions

Our great friend David Federman has finished a very worthy project - reassembling the two Glenn Miller "Limited Editions" that came out in 1953 and 1954, which have never been reissued in their original form.

The Limited Editions were both five-LP sets covering 1939-42: the first included commercial recordings and broadcasts; the second was entirely airchecks. They show the Miller band at its commercial zenith, before World War II intervened, and eventually ended Miller's life in 1944. All your favorite performers are on hand: Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, the Modernaires and Tex Beneke. 

David justifiably calls it "a Glenn Miller treasure trove." He writes, "Miller was the first hero of my musical life after I saw the 1954 biopic of his life. I was 12 and Miller was like a Damascus Road." Strangely, I had the same reaction to the bandleader at about the same age, but the occasion was the release of his two movie soundtracks.

One note - for Vol. 1, if the performance date is preceded by a "B", it is taken from a broadcast; if "R," it is a studio recording. 

"This offering is both a labor and a gift of love," David tells us. His work is much appreciated. Links are in the comments.