From the Back Room: More Buddy Clark in the 30s

I've been working my way through all of Buddy Clark's commercial recordings in the 1930s, finishing up with this selection of 21 songs for my "From the Back Room" series.

This set includes five songs with Xavier Cugat, four with Eddy Duchin, four more with a Johnny Hodges group chosen from the Ellington band, and eight with Buddy as the featured attraction on the label. The recordings date from 1934-38.

Solo Recordings I

We begin with a group of solo recordings by Clark. The first items go back to 1934, at the beginning of his recording career. (There are a few earlier recordings from Gus Arnheim with a vocal by "Buddy Clark" but the aural evidence is that this is not the same singer.)

Clark was a skillful and pleasing singer right from the start, although he took a little time to find his own style.

The first song is the Leo Robin-Ralph Rainger standard "June in January," written for Crosby to intone in Here is My Heart. Buddy is suitably Bing-like in his singing, probably an advantage in this release on the budget Banner label.

"June in January" was backed by another standard from the same film and authors, "With Every Breath I Take." On all these solo numbers, the accompaniment is unidentified.

We jump ahead to 1936 for the next release on Banner. One side has "The Touch of Your Lips" from the great songwriter-bandleader Ray Noble, who recorded it with his American band and the superb vocalist Al Bowlly. (Their version can be heard here.) 

The flip side is another fine piece called "Lost," by Macy O. Teetor, Johnny Mercer and Phil Ohman. It was a popular item with the bands back then. On these, Clark is very much his own singer.

With Xavier Cugat

It would hardly be accurate to label Clark a specialist in Latin music, but he does fit in nicely with Xavier Cugat's Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra in some unusual repertoire. These Victor sessions were in 1937.

Xavier Cugat before he had hair

"A Love Song of Long Ago" is the first selection. The label tells us that Sigmund Romberg wrote it for the film They Gave Him a Gun, a crime saga that seems pretty far afield from such Romberg fare as The Student Prince. But it's a waltz and the sort of thing that Cugie and Clark generally did well, although the tempo here is more lugubrious than might be ideal. Gus Kahn wrote the words.

"I Hum a Waltz" also came from a crime film - This Is My Affair. This number too is less lively than it might have been. Hollywood vets Mack Gordon and Harry Revel were the songwriters.

The bandleader kept the waltzes a-comin' with Agnes Sarli's "Hold Me Tight." Buddy does a professional job, but doesn't seem convinced of the material's merit.

Possibly at the same session, Buddy cut two other songs with Cugat. These were released on the NBC Thesaurus label, a transcription series for radio use. Victor produced the masters for the series.

I don't know a thing about the first song - "Where Did the Night Go?" Buddy didn't seem to know much about it, either - he sounds like he is sight-reading.

The other song is better, and better-known. "You Showed Me the Way" was composed by Ella Fitzgerald, Bubby Green, Teddy McRae and Chick Webb, and recorded by Ella with Chick's band. Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson also had a go at it.

With Eddy Duchin

Eddy Duchin

Buddy proved that he was not partisan by recording with one of Cugat's rivals among the swank New York bandleaders - Eddy Duchin - and during the same year as well. Eddy was at the Persian Room of the Plaza Hotel at the time. Both baton-wielders recorded for Victor.

Eddy gets us started with a fox trot - "Ten O'Clock Town," from a musical with the unpromising name Sea Legs. It's a good song, and Buddy seemed to like it a great deal. Too bad the show closed after 11 performances. The song was by Michael Cleary and Arthur Swanstrom.

The B-side of that song was "A Star Is Born," from the film of the same name - the original version with Janet Gaynor and Fredric Marsh. The music is by the famed Max Steiner, with lyrics by Dorothy Dick. Clark is earnest but he realizes that this isn't the best song he's ever tootled. Eddy is clangorous, as he tended to be.

I enjoy Edgar Leslie and Joe Burke's "The Camera Doesn't Lie (Neither Do I)," and Clark and Duchin seemed to have fun as well. Billy Rose had this one written for the Aquacade show he mounted at the 1937 Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland.

"Heaven Help This Heart of Mine" is another nice piece of songwriting. It's by Hugh Williams and Jimmy Kennedy. The original recording was by the American-born British bandleader Roy Fox. Here we have a very skillful vocal from Clark.

With Johnny Hodges

Johnny Hodges

Clark was in decidedly more relaxed company when he met up with a Johnny Hodges group for another 1937 date. Hodges was of course the longtime Duke Ellington alto saxophonist, who occasionally had his own date, usually in company with some of his Ellington bandmates. Here, everyone on the date was in Duke's ensemble except for the vocalist. There are three songs, with an alternate take added for one number.

You will hear Cootie Williams on trumpet, Barney Bigard on clarinet and Harry Carney on baritone sax. The playing is masterful, and Clark's singing is at the same high level.

The songs are all excellent. "Foolin' Myself" is by Jack Lawrence and Peter Tinturin. Al Bryan and Joe Santly wrote "You'll Never Go to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)."

There are two takes of "A Sailboat in the Moonlight," by Carmen Lombardo and John Jacob Loeb. (The alternate is from a bootleg.) Make sure you have heard the brilliant version of "Sailboat" from Billie Holiday, Lester Young et al.

Solo Recordings II

Buddy recorded two songs from Rodgers and Hart's 1938 show I Married an Angel - the title song and the instant standard "Spring Is Here." I featured Clark's renditions a while ago, in a post devoted to the contemporary recordings from the show, but have included them here as well.

The final recordings, also for Vocalion, are more esoteric. "Let Me Whisper" started life as "Murmullo" by Dick Gasparre and Manuel Del Rio (the original label credits Electo Rosell), as recorded by the Trio Garcia of Mexico. Buddy makes it into a nice tango ballad, with English words from Edward Heyman.

"Beside a Moonlit Stream" came from Booloo, a jungle adventure film. The songwriters were Sam Coslow and a Hollander who may be the German composer Frederick Hollander. IMDb doesn't tell us if the number was actually used in the movie. Regardless, it doesn't really come off in this recording.

More Clark in the 1930s

There have been four previous posts devoted to Buddy's commercial recordings of the 1930s:

• A set with Lud Gluskin's orchestra

• With the bands of Dick McDonough and Nat Brandwynne

• With ensembles led by Freddy Martin, Archie Bleyer, Ruby Newman and Wayne King (plus duets with Hildegarde)

• More with with Archie Bleyer and Ruby Newman, along with the bands of Benny Goodman, Joe Moss, Bob Causer and Joe Reichman

Once again, thanks to discographer Nigel Burlinson, whose work was invaluable in assembling these posts.

Let me mention that I am also planning to feature transcriptions from the same period, as mentioned in the initial post about this series.

LINK

The Popular Lecuona

My recent post of a few Morton Gould recordings of the music of Ernesto Lecuona (1895-1963) led me to seek out recordings that would demonstrate how the Cuban composer’s music became popular in America during the 1930s into the 50s.

This post is the result. It compiles 24 versions of Lecuona’s most popular compositions, drawn from 78s and soundtrack recordings. These include different interpretations of the songs that Gould orchestrated: "Andalucía" ("The Breeze and I"), "Malagueña," "La Comparsa" and "Jungle Drums."

Alfredo Brito

Perhaps the first Lecuona melody to become popular in the U.S. was his 1929 composition "Siboney.” (Siboney is a town in Cuba, and by extension can be understood to refer to Cuba itself.) The song gained notice in 1931 via a record by Alfredo Brito and His Siboney Orchestra, the first item in our collection.

Many artists have since recorded “Siboney,” often with the English lyrics written by Dolly Morse that have nothing to do with Lecuona’s original words. Bing Crosby recorded the English version in 1945 with Xavier Cugat and his Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra. Cugat was prominent in America at the time and recorded many Latin songs, but nonetheless his was not considered an “authentic” Cuban band, even though he spent much of his youth in that country.

The young Cugat. He later grew hair.

Cugat in fact popularized the second Lecuona composition in the set, "Para Vigo Me Voy” (“I’m Going to Vigo,” a town in Spain), which became known as "Say Si, Si" after acquiring Al Stillman’s English lyrics. Cugat recorded it in 1935, the year of its composition. The English version became a hit in 1940, with the Andrews Sisters having the best-selling disc. The download includes both the Cugat and Andrews records.

The next song, “Jungle Drums,” was called “Canto Karabali” by Lecuona when he published it in 1933. I believe “Karabali” refers to African slaves brought to Cuba from a particular region of Africa. Both versions in the playlist come from 1939, the first by Artie Shaw and his band, the second from Cugie again, with an unlikely vocal by Dinah Shore, making one of her first appearances on record. Dinah presents the English lyrics written by Carmen Lombardo, of all people. “Jungle Drums” went on to become one of the theme songs of the exotica movement of the 50s.

“The Breeze and I” is one of Lecuona’s most recognizable and enduring melodies, originally published as “Andalucía” in 1928. With Al Stillman’s new English lyrics, the song became an American hit in 1940 through the single version by Jimmy Dorsey’s band, with a vocal by Bob Eberly. This is another Lecuona song that is still heard today.

Jimmy Dorsey and Bob Eberly

After “The Breeze and I” and “Say Si, Si” became hits, Lecuona wrote the title song for the 1942 film Always in My Heart, which starred Kay Francis and Walter Huston. The song was nominated for an Academy Award, losing to "White Christmas." Dorsey and Eberly, recognizing a good thing, recorded a version with Kim Gannon’s English lyrics, and it became a hit as well.

One of Lecuona’s most popular melodies, "Malagueña" (that is, a type of dance from Málaga, Spain), comes from his 1933 Suite Andalucía, to which he added lyrics in Spanish. Our first interpretation comes from Del Campo and His Orchestra, with a piano solo by arranger Jose Esteves. Luis Del Campo was a former Cugat singer who formed his own band in the 1940s, continuing until his death in 1950. This record, from about 1947, appeared on the short-lived Coda label.

Dorsey and Eberly struck again in 1942 with a vocal version of "Malagueña" called “At the Cross-Roads,” with English lyrics by Bob Russell.

It’s been said that Lecuona lifted the melody of "Malagueña" from a section of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s 1851 composition Souvenirs d'Andalousie. I think it’s more likely that both Lecuona and Gottschalk were drawing upon the same indigenous melody.

Next we have a record by the Lecuona Cuban Boys, confusingly named because the group did not include Lecuona himself. He did, however, start the group in the early 1930s after seeing the success that Alfredo Brito was having with his music. The song “Panama” comes from a 1937 Columbia album by the group.

The Cuban Boys also contribute a rendition of one of Lecuona’s best-known melodies, “La Comparsa,” taken from their early Victor album Melodias Cubanas, with a piano solo by Armando Oréfiche, the group’s leader. I've also included a 1946 recording of "La Comparsa" from Camilo Lentini and His Latin-American Orchestra on the Pan-American label. Lentini was active in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s.

Hollywood called on Lecuona once more for a title song for the 1946 film One More Tomorrow, an Ann Sheridan-Dennis Morgan-Alexis Smith love triangle in which Morgan has to choose between his principles and his rich friends. (In other words, it has a plot you have seen a hundred times.) The version of the song in the playlist comes from Tex Beneke’s revived Glenn Miller Orchestra, with a sensitive vocal by Artie Malvin, who later became the king of the budget-label cover records.

Also in 1946, Lecuona provided the music for Carnival in Costa Rica, a musical starring Dick Haymes and Vera-Ellen. I am particularly fond of the music from this film, so I have included the main songs directly from the soundtrack and from Haymes’ Decca recordings.

Vera-Ellen’s singing voice was dubbed by Pat Friday, a superb vocalist who appeared on several radio shows, did some film dubbing and made a very few records, including a version of Carnival in Costa Rica's “Mi Vida." My other blog will soon have a post of the few 78s she made in 1946 for the small Enterprise label.

Dick Haymes and Vera-Ellen in Carnival in Costa Rica

In this collection, we have soundtrack versions of “I’ll Know It’s Love” (Friday solo and Haymes/Friday reprise), “Mi Vida” (Haymes/Friday duet) and “Another Night Like This” (Haymes solo). Also included are Haymes’ Decca 78s of “Another Night Like This” and “Mi Vida,” which have backing by Gordon Jenkins.

The Lecuona Cuban Boys return with a 1946 single on the Majestic label – “Rumba-Bomba,” with a Manyo Lopez vocal, and “Maracas,” vocal by Ernesto Ojea.

Lecuona’s music continued to be popular into the 1950s. The playlist concludes with two versions of “The Breeze and I” from that decade. The first is a Vic Damone vocal recording, which became a hit in 1952. Finally, there is a George Shearing instrumental from 1951 that demonstrates the influence of Shearing’s sound on the exotica bands that were soon to emerge.

The sound on these records ranges from good to excellent. Most were sourced from lossless needle-drops on Internet Archive.

Buddy Clark on OKeh, Columbia and Varsity

Buddy Clark

My friend Morris asked me to transfer a batch of Buddy Clark records - ones that are not often encountered. Not that you find too much of the singer's output around these days, save for his late 40s Columbia hits such as "Linda" and "I'll Dance at Your Wedding." Too bad - I consider Clark one of the finest pop vocalists of the last century.

Clark's career began in the 30s as a band and radio vocalist. He made some recordings early on for Vocalion and other companies.

Today's selections begin with two songs Clark did for the Varsity label in 1939. "In an Old Dutch Garden" is a Mack Gordon/Will Grosz song from Earl Carroll's Vanities. "Leanin' on the Old Top Rail" is a Nick and Charles Kenny song recorded by both country and pop artists in 1939 and later years.

"In an Old Dutch Garden" was also included in a batch of Varsity singles I uploaded several years ago. That bundle also includes a bonus of a 1936 Melotone single of "Lost" and "The Touch of Your Lips."

Clark moved on to the OKeh label in 1941 with a revival of "Lamplight," an attractive song that its composer, James Shelton, introduced in the 1934 revue New Faces. The flip side, "G'bye Now" comes from the long-running Olsen-Johnson revue Hellzapoppin'. The writers were Sammy Fain and Charles Tobias.

Also on OKeh were the great Martin-Blane song "Ev'ry Time" from Best Foot Forward. It was backed by "It Happened in Hawaii," which had the remarkable bad luck to come out in early December 1941, just before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

After war service, Clark joined the main Columbia label. I believe that all the songs on that label in this group were recorded in 1947. The first effort is "I'm Waiting for Ships that Never Come In," a nice tune by Abe Olman and Jack Yellen that was seemingly inspired by "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" from 1917 - which was definitely "inspired" by Chopin.

On the other side, Buddy covers Bing's version of "The Emperor Waltz" from the film of the same name. And yes, it is a vocal version of the waltz by Johann Strauss II, and no, the new lyrics aren't very good, e.g., "Deep in your heart, joy seems to dwell / Like poets say, it's perfectly swell."

For these and the other Columbia singles below, Mitchell Ayres leads the orchestra, unless otherwise noted.

Recording with Mitchell Ayres

Showing his versatility, Clark then turns to the catchy Latin tune "It's Easy When You Know How," where he is paired with Xavier Cugat. He even brings the bandleader in for a brief vocal interlude, but Cugie should have stuck to waving a baton and holding a Chihuahua.

"I'm a Slave to You" is a good if formulaic torch song that Mitchell Ayres had a hand in. The other side of the single is the soupy "Where the Apple Blossoms Fall," backed by organ.

Billboard ad from December 1948

I posted the final coupling on my singles blog several years ago, but here in a new transfer are "Gloria" and "The Money Song." Leon René's "Gloria" became a doo-wop favorite in the 1950s, but in 1948, it was a pop song recorded by a number of crooners. "The Money Song" came from the Harold Rome revue That's the Ticket, which closed in Philadelphia before making it to Broadway. You may have heard the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis version of the song. If so, don't be put off by that monstrosity. Clark does much better by this mock calypso. On both songs, he is backed by the Modernaires and the Skylarks.

These discs are from my collection, and all are in vivid sound. See my other blog for a new post of the four Clark songs on V-Disc that aren't just dubs of his commercial recordings. These include two airchecks, one alternate take from a Columbia session, and a "Fluffs at a Record Session" recording where Clark makes up his own lyrics then launches into a Jolson imitation.

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