We Missed National Banjo Week . . .

. . . By about 68 years - it was March 30-April 6, 1954. But to make amends, today we have a commemorative single put out by RCA Victor in a burst of plectrum pride and also with the hope of selling a few records.

The 78 went out to radio stations along with details of a contest that RCA was sponsoring for the disk jockeys who could do the most to promote the Victor records being plugged - the Ames Brothers' new single of "The Man with the Banjo," along with a few others.

RCA had a lot riding on the outcome - the Ames frères were the label's big new acquisition, leaving Decca-Coral after five successful years. So RCA promised a new color television to the DJ doing the best job of promotion.

The Ames Brothers

The ethics of this aside, it was a quite a prize. Network color was a rarity then; it had begun at the beginning of the year, and there were almost no receivers. RCA introduced its color set only in April, concurrent with the promotion. The sets cost $1,000, the equivalent of $11,000 today.

But back to the music - the Ames' record did well, although not as well as their "The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane" later that year. The team only had one other big success in the years ahead - "Melodie d'Amour" in 1957.

"The Man with the Banjo" is a pleasant piece, well sung by a talented outfit with a banjo plunking along. The plectrist on the record is not identified; presumably it was not one of the Ames crew or bandleader Hugo Winterhalter.

Vess Ossman Sr. and Jr. with their Big Six-Foot Banjo

The flip side of the promo record is interesting, too. It was touted on the label as the first record Victor ever released - Vess L. Ossman's 1901 recording of "Tell Me, Pretty Maiden." Ossman's banjo was just the type of instrument that the rudimentary recording equipment could capture well - loud and uncomplicated.

The 10-inch version of Ossman's record

The record must have done well for Victor and Ossman - the company had him record both 7-inch and 10-inch versions of the tune on that January day, then had him back in the studio in 1902 and 1909 for remakes, presumably because the masters were worn out.

Even so, Victor did not have an exclusive on Ossman's interpretation, if you can call it that. He also recorded it for Columbia, Zonophone and Leeds & Catlin at more or less the same time. Ossman was a popular fellow, recording more than 500 items for various companies.

RCA Victor used the Ossman record in a commemorative capacity several times. This particular pressing comes from a 1946 matrix that Victor had issued to mark producing one billion records. Later it used that same recording to mark pressing a billion records at its Indianapolis plant.

The 1946 commemorative

What is odd is that "Tell Me, Pretty Maiden" was not the first record ever made by Victor or even by Ossman for Victor. He had recorded "Hands Across the Sea" for that company in November 1900, and the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) shows many other Victor recordings from that year by other artists.

I've also seen it written that "Tell Me" was the first Victor recording to be issued a matrix number, but DAHR shows it as being "pre-matrix."  I'm no expert on early phonography, so the whole tale seems mysterious, although RCA certainly thought the record was important.

On its commercial release, the flip side of "The Man with the Banjo" was "Man, Man Is for the Woman Made," a title that sounds like it was run through Google Translate. Victor should have made it a two-sided record, "The Man with the Banjo Is for the Woman Made."

"Man, Man Is for the Woman Made" turns out to be a relatively early example of a calypso number done for the US market. The trend started with "Rum and Coca-Cola" in 1945 and crested with the "Banana Boat Song" in 1956. The Ames Brothers were game interpreters, but calypso was not their métier, and Winterhalter's arrangement is unidiomatic, as you might expect.

Vaughn Monroe Names His Favorite Songs

Leather-lunged vocalist and bandleader Vaughn Monroe was popular in the 1940s and into the 50s, starting with "Racing with the Moon" on through "Riders in the Sky."

In early 1950, RCA Victor was looking to plug his latest opus, an atmospheric early exotica number, "Bamboo." So it had him record a four-minute promo record called "My Seven Favorite Songs." The seventh turned out to be "Bamboo," unsurprisingly. For the other six, Monroe chose the following:

• "Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train" - Louis Armstrong
• "Marie" - Tommy Dorsey, Jack Leonard, vocal
• "Don't Be That Way" - Benny Goodman
• "Moonlight Serenade" - Glenn Miller
• "Bouquet of Roses" - Eddy Arnold
• "Prisoner of Love" - Perry Como

Cash Box plugs "Bamboo"

Not coincidentally, all the selections were issued by RCA or a predecessor. Vaughn's presentation is smoothly professional, like his singing.

I've included the B-side of the record, "A Little Golden Cross," a period sentimental ballad. It's well performed; better than "Bamboo," which has a lumpy arrangement.

Also in 1950, Republic Pictures, apparently having run out of singing cowboys, cast Monroe as the lead in Singing Guns. The big tune in this production was "Mule Train," which actually had been released by Vaughn and others the year before. Monroe's release went clippity-clopping along, but Frankie Laine had the biggest hit on the song, his cries of "Hee-yah!" being more convincing. I've included the Monroe version in the download.

Even though "Mule Train" had been written and first recorded as far back as 1947, it was nominated for the 1950 Academy Award for Best Original Song. "Mona Lisa" won.

The RCA promo record comes to us via Internet Archive.

More Bobby Troup Obscurities

Blog follower lafong has come through with three more Bobby Troup rarities to add to the five I posted a few days ago.

These include two more songs on the Bullet label, from circa 1948, that composed the first Troup 78 to be released. Bobby couples the standard "Bye Bye Blackbird" with a love song to his dog "Heidi." Both are smoothly performed by the "Bob Troup Trio," with an unidentified guitarist and bassist.

An excellent article on the Jazz Research site speculates that the two accompanying musicians were Al Viola and Lloyd Pratt. They were working at the time with Page Cavanaugh, who shared management with Troup. Viola and Pratt joined Troup's backing combo a few years later.

The third song is a 1949 Count Basie release on the RCA Victor label called "Bran' New Dolly," another Troup composition. The very basic arrangement of this diverting song was by Don Redman.

The three items do come from relatively low bit-rate sources. This shouldn't affect enjoyment too much, although for the Bullet sides you may notice some background artifacts on headphones.

Thanks to lafong for this contribution!

 

Bobby Troup Obscurities

Here are five early singles from singer-pianist-songwriter Bobby Troup, including his first record - well, one side of it, anyway.

That first record came out on the small Bullet label in 1948, coupling the oldie "I Found a Million Dollar Baby" with Troup's own "Baby, Baby All the Time." I pulled the former song from Internet Archive, but the latter was nowhere to be found. Too bad - "Million Dollar Baby" is a fine performance.

Troup was 30 in 1948, but had achieved success as a songwriter even before he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania back in 1941. His tune "Daddy" (still one of his best known numbers) was made into a hit by Sammy Kaye. The following year, Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra did well with his "Snootie Little Cutie," but by that time Troup had enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Bobby Troup

Postwar, Nat Cole had a hit with perhaps Troup's best known song, "Route 66." Cole continued to record his work, including "Baby, Baby All the Time."

But Troup was a performer as well as a writer, so he made the occasional record with the bands of the time - Freddie Slack, Jerry Gray and Vic Schoen.

In 1949, Slack had him duet with Phil Gordon on Carl Sigman's "What Ever Happened to Ol' Jack" in a cringe-inducing jive manner similar to Johnny Mercer.

Jerry Gray had him in for two 1950 sessions that produced good performances of "The Lonesomest Whistle" and Summer Stock's "Dig-Dig-Dig Dig for Your Dinner," with smooth support from the Crew Chiefs. That group had been associated with Glenn Miller's AAF Band, and in fact many of the musicians who played on these Gray sessions were Miller vets. Decca had brought in Gray as its entry in the Miller-soundalike band sweepstakes, but Gray's resulting sides were generally not as Milleresque as the Ralph Flanagan's band of the same period.

Vic Schoen was best known as the bandleader for the Andrews Sisters. He had Troup take part in a late 1950 session to sing "Walking with the Weary Blues," a standard lament undermined by a stiff arrangement.

Throughout these five sides, Troup is in better voice that he was several years later, when he developed a tendency to croak, whether as a hip affectation or as a vocal necessity.

Still, I think he was one of the most interesting singers (and writers) of the postwar period. Years ago, I posted a few of his LPs on my other blog. I've now refurbished and augmented those transfers and have included them in a new post. 

Two Musical Odes to the Brooklyn Dodgers

Brooklyn now has a professional basketball team, and even had a hockey team for a short while, but way back when, its sports identity was focused on a baseball team - the legendary Dodgers.

Oh, the Dodgers still exist - on a distant promontory called Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, as far away from Brooklyn as it is possible to be in the continental United States. That's the way it has been since 1957.

Even though I was a passionate Cleveland Indians fan, the eight-year-old me hated to see the Dodgers leave Ebbets Field, and hated just as much the thought of the New York Giants vacating the peculiar environs of the Polo Grounds for a new home on San Francisco Bay.

Brooklyn has always been a favorite subject for musicians. In years past, there were many recorded odes to the beloved borough. A quick scan turns up a "Brooklyn Boogie," "Brooklyn Polka," "Brooklyn Stomp," "Brooklyn Bounce," "Brooklyn Cake-Walk," "Brooklyn Bridge," "Cowboy from Brooklyn," "Born and Bred in Brooklyn," "Give Me the Moon Over Brooklyn," and "I'm Gonna Hang My Hat on a Tree in Brooklyn," plus the baseball odes that are the subjects of today's post - Robert Merrill in the "Brooklyn Baseball Cantata," and three 1948 Dodgers players doing "The Brooklyn Dodgers Jump."

The Brooklyn Baseball Cantata

"The Brooklyn Baseball Cantata" is a highly amusing piece that is brilliantly done here by baritone Robert Merrill (1917-2004), a native of the borough, along with Russ Case's orchestra and singers.

The music is by George Kleinsinger, best known for his 1946 hit, "Tubby the Tuba." He (Kleinsinger, not Tubby) worked with writer Michael Stratton on this 1937 piece that once was part of a failed Broadway review, then was revived in 1948 for the talents of Merrill, who was equally at home in pop music and at the Metropolitan Opera.

Merrill has been heard around these parts in the 1952 soundtrack to Aaron Slick from Punkin Creek, an undignified endeavor that caused Met supremo Rudolf Bing to ban him from the premises for a time.

Russ Case and Robert Merrill

Bing was not around for the "Brooklyn Baseball Cantata," so it did not get Merrill in trouble. There's no reason why it should have - it's a lively work of only 12 minutes duration that ends happily (unlike "Casey at the Bat"), with the Dodgers besting their hated rivals the New York Yankees. (This was a fantasy; when the record came out in 1948, the Dodgers had most recently lost to the Yankees in the 1947 World Series.)

Ironically, Merrill later would become closely associated with the despised Bronx Bombers. For many years they had him sing the National Anthem on Opening Day and other occasions. His recorded rendition can still be heard at Yankee Stadium from time to time.

Robert Merrill in the land of the free and the home of the Yankees

The Brooklyn Dodgers Jump

It's unknown - at least to me - which baseball player was the first to enter the recording studio and demonstrate his lack of vocal prowess. I suspect that it's been going on so long that Thomas Edison may have been at the controls.

In general, major leaguers are team-oriented and tend to make such vocal endeavors group efforts; the thinking perhaps may be that several tone-deaf singers can somehow equal one who can sing.

"The Brooklyn Dodgers Jump" is a good example of the genre. It dates from 1947 and features rightfielder Carl Furillo and pitchers Ralph Branca and Erv Palica, who display more enthusiasm than skill on this unfamiliar playing field.

By genre, the "Brooklyn Dodgers Jump" is a jump blues, although it unexpectedly utilizes an accordion rather than saxophone as lead instrument. The whole thing goes on and on, across two sides of the 78, rambling through Dodgers history, the current team, the owners, and anything else the authors could think of.

Honestly, I've heard a lot worse. Heck, I've posted worse (and better). If you check this post, you can hear Dizzy Dean sing "Wabash Cannonball" after a southern fashion and Don Drysdale croon a Sinatra tune, quite well actually. Also there's a promo record for Carling's Black Label Beer backed with "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

Then there is this item, in which trumpeter Henry "Hot Lips" Levine plays his composition "Indian Uprising." He dedicated this number to the old Cleveland Indians, who this year have been renamed the Guardians. (They are apparently guarding the Indians' legacy of not having won a World Series since 1948.) Oh well, at least the team is still around, under one name or another!

Please enjoy these artifacts that I disinterred from the Internet Archive and refurbished for my amusement and perhaps yours.

Bei Mir Bist du Pork and Beans

Something (probably money) motivated the Campbell Soup Co. to put out a promotional record called the "Pork and Beans Review" in 1950, and star the Andrews Sisters in the production.

It's not clear how the three-minute spot was used, but the tie-in was certainly the long-running radio show "Double or Nothing," which was sponsored at the time by Campbell's Pork and Beans.

Appropriately, Campbell's offered double your money back to anyone who didn't think that its pork and beans was "the best you EVER tasted," in the emphatic words of Lou Crosby, the radio show's producer.

The Andrews Sisters

The Andrews Sisters were brought in for entertainment purposes and both spoke and sang in unison for this spot. In the process we get to hear them yodel this take-off on their best-known hit: "Bei mir bist du pork / Bei mir bist du beans / Bei mir bist du Campbell's Pork and Beans." This would translate as follows: "To me you are pork / To me you are beans / To me you are Campbell's Pork and Beans." Hardly terms of endearment.

But then, the sisters were talented and could make anything sound good, even working in parodies of "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" and "The Fountain in the Park" into the spot. It's a lively and well produced little promo.

Also taking part in the proceedings (and singing along) was the radio program's long-time host, Walter O'Keefe.

I found this gem on the Internet Archive, the source of many such promo items hereabouts.

The "Double or Nothing" set, 1950, with Walter O'Keefe gesticulating at the microphone