The Hits from Cole Porter's 'Can-Can'

In the mid 20th century, whenever a famous songwriter prepared a new musical, the record companies would quickly enlist their top acts to record the numbers likeliest to be the most popular.

Cole Porter's Can-Can of 1953 was set in the boîtes of 1890's Montmartre, a perfect setting for a lively score. And Porter did produce several songs that enjoyed some popularity in the day, and a few that are still heard today. The show was quite a hit, remaining on Broadway for more than two years. It was the career breakout for Gwen Verdon.

Capitol records had several of its top acts swing into action with recordings from the score. Four of these are collected on today's EP, with one more added as a bonus.

Les Baxter

The record begins with a choral version of "I Love Paris" from a Les Baxter ensemble. The single did well on the charts (which may be why it leads off the record). Baxter effectively handles the transition from the dirge-like opening to the sunny proclamation "I love Paris every moment!" His instrumental chart is in the exotica style that was then becoming popular.

Gordon MacRae, Kay Starr

Gordon MacRae must have thought that "C'est Magnifique" required a bravura approach - he came out with an operetta-style performance that is effective of its type. Axel Stordahl is the conductor.

Kay Starr's intense singing is well suited to "Allez-vous-en (Go Away)," a good song that is less often heard that the two already mentioned. Providing the backing is Harold Mooney.

Nat King Cole

One of the label's biggest stars, Nat King Cole, was matched with one of the  weaker songs from the score - "I Am in Love." He handles it in his usual sincere manner, but it doesn't take flight, despite a chart by Nelson Riddle.

Bob Manning

Capitol entrusted the most famous song from the score - "It's All Right with Me" - to its new romantic balladeer, Bob Manning, in one of his first recordings for the label. Bob's smooth version did not make it onto the EP, possibly because the other artists were more established, but I've added it to the download file. Sid Feller was the conductor on Bob's single.

Manning's collected Capitol singles can be found here.

Such EPs with songs from the musicals of the day were common back then. At times they came from varied artists, such as this one, but just as often they featured one of the label's stars in all four songs. For example, just for Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1951 hit The King and I, RCA Victor issued an EP with Dinah Shore, and M-G-M did the same with Jane Powell. For the listener, it was an inexpensive way to get to know the new songs in versions by their favorite artists.

LINK

Gordon MacRae's Strangest Hits

In preparing the recent post with two Gordon MacRae operettas, I noted that Capitol was keeping him busy at the time (1950), recording such deathless fare as "Hongi Tongi Hoki Poki" and "You Dyed Your Hair Chartreuse." It struck me that those songs and a few more of their ilk might make a fun post for this blog. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to use a goofy photo of MacRae with chartreuse hair.

All these five tunes were in the mold of novelty songs, which the recording industry was turning to in search of the elusive hit. These particular items range in style from Dixieland jazz to polka to R&B, but they all aim to get your attention with silly, even nonsense titles.

"You Dyed Your Hair Chartreuse" would not be an unusual observation these days, but was decidedly less common in 1950. In this R&B effort, complete with wailing sax, MacRae exerts a valiant effort to sell the song, even engaging in call and response with the Ewing Sisters. "What makes your big head so green!" he exclaims at one point, in homage to Caldonia. Hey, this is fun!

"Oh! Oh! Oh! Ophelia" is the Dixieland number, backed by Paul Weston's Dixie Eight. I know nothing of the provenance of the song, but it surely is designed to be reminiscent of the 1920s, although MacRae sounds little like any singer you might have heard back then.

"Hongi Tongi Hoki Poki" is a vaguely racist tale of a sailor boy who visits the Tongi Islands. I'm not sure whether "Tongi" is supposed to be "Tonga," but anyway MacRae marries the king's daughter but the inhabitants get sore and threaten to off him, so he sails from Botany Bay, which is in Australia, so I'm confused. It's a hornpipe and MacRae has a good time with it, abetted by a tuba player and the Les Baxter Singers.

"The Pigskin Polka" is mostly a chance to name check half the colleges in the US, paying homage to football teams from Rice to NYU. (I wondered if NYU ever did have such a team, and the answer is yes, it was one of the first in the US to field an eleven. But by the time of this recording - 1950 - the program was winding down and disbanded in 1953. Now you know.) The song is, as promised, a polka, but MacRae, the Ewing Sisters, Two Sharps and a Natural, and Frank DeVol's orchestra take it at such a clip that you might sprain an ankle if you tried to dance to it.

"Tik-a-Tee, Tik-a-Tay" is a lively quasi-Italian song, one that Dean Martin must have rejected. As with all these numbers, it's amusing and well done without ever exhibiting any quality that might have made it a hit. This one comes from 1955, unlike the others, which date from several years earlier.

So we have five songs in five different styles, all of them handled convincingly by a singer we just heard in operetta. You may not want to listen to any of them more than once - but honestly most are better than their titles portend!

Thanks to Internet Archive for the source materials, and to you for your patience.

Gordon MacRae on Apollo

Most recently we have heard from vocalist (and future film star) Gordon MacRae in his early Musicraft recordings, dating from 1945. Today we examine two 78s he made for the Apollo label in 1947, just before he joined Capitol, where he did his best-known discs.

Apollo was only a few years old at the time, and was known primarily for gospel and R&B releases, although it also had a pop line. The catalogue featured a few releases by the young Dean Martin, made at about the same time as MacRae's efforts for the label. All this was shortly before Apollo was to sign its biggest star, Mahalia Jackson. 

MacRae's selections for the label were all songs that had achieved some popularity at the time, three on the charts and one on Broadway.

Gordon MacRae

His first coupling was "Heartaches" b/w "If I Had My Life to Live Over." The former, written by Al Hoffman and John Klenner, dated from 1931 but had been revived in 1947 as an instrumental by bandleader Ted Weems.

"If I Had My Life to Live Over" is another oldie, written by Moe Jaffe, Larry Vincent and Henry Tobias in 1939. Larry Vincent and the Feilden Foursome revived it in 1947 with some success. Vincent was the owner of the Pearl label, which primarily issued party records.

MacRae includes the verse on both the above songs.

"I Want To Be Loved (But Only By You)" was a new song that Savannah Churchill wrote and recorded for Apollo. It was to hit number one on the R&B charts. MacRae's effort was presumably a cover for the pop market. (This is not the same song as "I Wanna Be Loved," a 1933 effort by Johnny Green and Eddie Heyman that may be more familiar.)

The backing for Savannah Churchill's composition was "Old Devil Moon," a great song by Burton Lane and Yip Harburg from the current Broadway hit Finian's Rainbow.

MacRae is in good voice and generally does well, although he seems uncomfortable with "I Want to Be Loved." The singer displays more of a Bing influence here than on the Musicraft sides, where he sounded more like Dick Haymes.

Leading the band on both records was tenor saxophonist Jerry Jerome, who had played with Glenn Miller, Red Norvo, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. The backings on the first two songs were lush in the manner of the time, including strings. The arrangements on the second coupling were less elaborate, with the chart for "I Want To Be Loved (But Only By You)" an odd amalgam of R&B and Dixieland. Jerome was presumably the tenor soloist on that number.

Jerry Jerome had an usual physique

Completing Gordon MacRae's Musicraft Sides

Vocalist Gordon MacRae made 16 recordings for the small Musicraft label early in his career, before joining Capitol. I posted 12 of the 16 sides years ago on my other blog, where they are still available. Today's post completes the set.

Unlike the first post, this group comes from the original 78s, as found on Internet Archive and remastered by me. There are some excellent songs to be found here, led by Irving Berlin's superb "Everybody Knew But Me." Published in 1945, the song attracted the attention of such vocal luminaries as Dinah Shore, but MacRae's version is not inferior.

The second selection is "I Have But One Heart," also known as "O Marinariello," which was written in 1893 but revived in 1945, eventually becoming popular in the Frank Sinatra and Vic Damone versions.

"(It's Gonna Depend on) The Way That the Wind Blows" is a pretty good number by Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer. MacRae's picture appeared on the sheet music for this tune.

Another interesting item is "Slowly," written by David Raksin and lyricist Kermit Goell for the 1945 film Fallen Angel, where the song is heard on a jukebox as sung by Dick Haymes. MacRae was very much under Haymes' spell at the time, so this was a good choice for him.

Composer Raksin went on to write two of the enduring melodies from American films - "Laura" and the "Theme from The Bad and the Beautiful," amid much other movie music.

As on all his other Musicraft sides, MacRae is accompanied by a band led by Walter Gross, best known as the composer of "Tenderly."

A Special Gordon MacRae 78 Promoting Community Chest

Here's a circa 1950 charitable contribution in song from Gordon MacRae and his radio sponsor, the Association of American Railroads. It promotes giving to Community Chest, the forerunner of today's United Way in the US.

The disc dates from 1948-50, which is when MacRae's show, The Railroad Hour, was on the air.

You'll notice that the label says that the record was produced for the "United Red Feather Campaigns of America." The red feather was the symbol of the campaign; when you gave, you would get a red feather lapel pin in recognition. Even as a child, I received such pins for my small contributions.

The Community Chest campaigns began in Cleveland in 1913, then spread rapidly throughout the nation. Even today, the biggest contributors to the local United Way receive a "Red Feather" designation.

MacRae's song was called "Give Your Best to Community Chest," a march with music by Gus Haenschen, long-time radio and music industry figure who made many records under the name Carl Fenton. The lyricist was Bea Adams. I suspect she was the person of that name who was the creative director of the Gardner Advertising Agency of St. Louis.

The flip side of this record is the "United Red Feather March," by the Earl Paul Brass Band and Chorus. I can't tell you anything about the artist, or the Phil Davis who wrote the music.

This record is a companion to a post on my main blog focusing on the records of MacRae and Jo Stafford from the same period.

My Buick, My Love and I

My pal Ernie and I share a love for old promo records, so I was intrigued when he sent me a link to this specimen - "My Buick, My Love and I" by the illustrious team of Gisele MacKenzie and Gordon MacRae, dating from 1951.

It turns out that this song has a bit of a back history - and some more recent history as well.

I  also discovered in the course of doing this post that I actually had uploaded this song several years ago as a bonus to a MacKenzie album. But this post is far more complete and the transfer is much better.

Olds, Buick and Pontiac in Song

Songs promoting specific automobiles go back almost as far as the contraptions themselves. And they were contraptions in 1905 when Gus Edwards and Vincent P. Bryan came out with "In My Merry Oldsmobile." The song became popular and was used by the Olds people for many years as a theme song.

The 1905 Oldsmobile

Other songwriters recognized a good thing, so in 1909 Victor Smalley and Bernie Sidler decided to extol the virtues of the 10-year-old Buick marque with their song "I Love My Horse and Wagon, but Oh! You Buick Car." Then in 1922, there was a more romantic item called "Take Me on a Buick Honeymoon" by Art Hickman and Ben Black.

Neither of these Buick songs had the enduring appeal of "In My Merry Oldsmobile." It probably was the most famous automotive promotional song until Ronny and the Daytonas came out with "GTO" (usually called "Little GTO") in 1964. It was written in honor of the then new Pontiac GTO, the first of the so-called "muscle cars" of the 60s. Accounts differ about whether the song was the idea of the Pontiac promotional people or the musicians, but there is no doubt that Pontiac used it to hype the new GTO into a bit of a craze.

I am sure there have been many more auto-related songs - not to mention jingles - but let's turn to "My Buick, My Love and I."

'My Buick, My Love and I'

It's not clear where the idea of "My Buick, My Love and I" originated, although I suspect it was commissioned by Buick in 1951 from movie composer Frank Skinner and lyricist Jack Brooks. It first came out on both sides of an SRS-Capitol promotional release with one side by MacRae and MacKenzie, and the other by the Mellomen, a well-known studio quartet that featured Thurl Ravenscroft and Bill Lee. I haven't been able to discover what Buick did to promote the song at the time, save for a fellow recollecting that his college marching band had to play it at all their games because they had received a donation from Buick. That in itself does not seem like much of a marketing plan, so there must have been more to it.

Regardless, Skinner was fond of the piece and wanted to get it more exposure. He paid to have the promo record sent out to deejays, scaring up enough interest that Capitol decided to issue a commercial version of the MacRae-MacKenzie rendition, backing it with their duet on "A Lover's Waltz.

That's the story as related in a late 1951 Billboard article. And while it may be true, it is almost exactly the same tale that Capitol had put out a year earlier with regard to "Hoppy, Topper and Me," a Margaret Whiting record about cowboy star Hopalong Cassidy. It too was first issued as a promo and then a commercial disc. (The Hoppy song also has appeared on this blog.) In both cases, I suspect Capitol was just trying to attract some attention and press coverage.

What they were promoting - the toothy 1952 Buick

"Hoppy, Topper and My Buick" - err, "My Buick, My Love and I" was not a commercial success, as far as I can discern, and the critic at Billboard sneeringly advised deejays that "spins should be paid for at the regular commercial rate." But the song did later find some use as the theme of Milton Berle's Buick-Berle Show that appeared on American TV from 1953-56.

It's not a bad tune in the old-timey style popular in the early 50s, although it was clearly inspired by "In My Merry Oldsmobile." In recent years the song has had a surprising revival. I was amazed to find that it has been recorded by comic-turned-crooner Seth MacFarland and Nashville legend Reba McIntyre. I do not know what sparked their interest.

The download includes the versions by the MacKenzie-MacRae duo and the Mellomen, along with the Macs' recording of "A Lover's Waltz," which Capitol had previously issued backed by the unpromisingly titled "On Rosary Hill" (not included). As far as I can tell, these are the only records Mac and Mac made together.

By the way, if you want to check some automotive promo items on my other site, there is a post devoted to a 1970 album by The Going Thing, a Ford-sponsored group, and one to the dealer introduction show for the ill-fated Edsel, not one of Ford's better ideas.