Piero Coppola Conducts Debussy

Piero Coppola

As a companion to a new post of Claude Debussy's music conducted by Marius Constant on my main blog, here are historic recordings of some of the same works led by a conductor who was responsible for the first recordings of several Debussy compositions.

The conductor is the Italian-born Piero Coppola (1888-1971), who was the recording director for French HMV (La Voix de Son Maître) from 1923-34. Coppola never held any major positions other than for HMV, but his work is nevertheless highly esteemed among aficionados of old records.

Both recordings date from 1931. Coppola leads the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in two of the four symphonic fragments from Debussy's incidental music for Gabriele D'Annunzio's Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien - No. 3 (La Passion) and No. 4 (Le Bon Pasteur). I believe both selections are somewhat abridged. The sound is very good for the time.

Gaston Hamelin examines the latest clarinet models at the Selmer showroom

Also in the program is the Première rhapsodie, pour clarinette et orchestre, with Gaston Hamelin as soloist. This one comes from a noisy pressing, I'm afraid. Both are from Internet Archive's transfers.

There is more about both works in the post on my other blog. If you are interested in the complete set of Coppola's Le Martyre de Saint-Sébastien recordings, you can find them on the site of my friend Rolf (Satyr), on Internet Archive. Rolf also has posted Coppola's version of the other work on Marius Constant's LP - the Rhapsodie pour saxophone, with soloist Jules Viard.

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Claude Debussy

'Me and Juliet' - the Contemporary Recordings

Me and Juliet is considered one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's flops, even though it ran on Broadway for a year in 1953-54. Such was the team's record of success that anything but a legendary musical was considered a failure.

As with the duo's other lesser-known shows - Allegro and Pipe Dream - there is much to admire about the Me and Juliet score, even though it produced but one hit, "No Other Love" - which had a recycled melody and has not survived as a standard. In this post we'll re-examine the some of the songs of Me and Juliet through the non-cast recordings made when the show was new.

RCA Victor underwrote the Broadway production, so several of the discs below along with the original cast album were issued on that label.

Me and Juliet is a backstage musical with a show within the show, titled, confusingly enough, "Me and Juliet." The principal characters of the meta-Me and Juliet were ancillary to the production of the play-within-a-play. Jeanie (Isabel Bigley in the original cast) is a singer in the chorus; her competing suitors are Larry (Bill Hayes), an assistant stage manager, and Bob (Mark Dawson), an electrician. Bob is the heavy.

The show starts with Jeanie singing the wistful "A Very Special Day." It's a simple song, befitting Jeanie's personality, but lovely and affecting. For our collection, it is very well done by Sue Bennett, one-time Kay Kyser vocalist who had recently finished a stint on Your Hit Parade. 

Sue Bennett

Bennett is backed by the orchestra and piano of Ted Straeter, the long-time bandleader at the Plaza Hotel in New York. The number is one of four on a "songs from" EP that M-G-M records put out at the time of the Broadway production. Three songs from the EP appear in this compilation.

Ted Straeter

The next number is "Marriage Type Love," which is performed by Charlie and Lily, the two principals in the play-within-a-play. The song is both a precursor to Jeanie and Larry's eventual marriage and a contrast to the difficulties in their relationship. The lyrics are deliberately moony: "We made a date, couldn't wait for my day off. / Now it's a thing, with a ring for the pay-off."

In our set, the song is performed very well by Bennett and Straeter. Ted was one of those singers-without-a-voice who proliferated in nightclubs and cabarets. He was wonderfully effective within his limits - he had clear diction and a great feel for lyrics - and his ringing piano playing is a pleasure to hear.

"Marriage Type Love" is one of the several songs in the score that have a Latin beat. Rodgers was picking up on the then-current fashion for the the mambo in particular. The next song in the set, "Keep It Gay," is another example. We hear it first from Straeter, then in an actual Latin arrangement from the Venezuelan bandleader Aldemaro Romero, who was then working for RCA and probably recorded the number in New York with a studio band. Romero's arrangement shows the influence of the fashionable sound of the George Shearing Quartet. Shearing would soon release Latin albums of his own.

Aldemaro Romero

In the show, "Keep It Gay" is designed to show off the insincerity of Larry's competitor Bob.

The best known song from Me and Juliet - and its only hit - is "No Other Love." Richard Rodgers wrote it as a instrumental tango called "Beneath the Southern Cross" for the 1952 television documentary Victory at Sea. (You can find the excellent original soundtrack LP via this earlier post.) In the musical, the song is a duet for Larry and Jeanie.

"No Other Love" was a big success for Perry Como in an overblown arrangement by Henri René that has the Moaner belting at the end (which he does quite well). The flip side of the record is Perry's version of "Keep It Gay," which has an even worse arrangement, so I've not included it in this compilation.

Noro Morales

I've added a version of "No Other Love" by the well-known Puerto Rican bandleader Noro Morales, who turns the tango into a mambo with the feel of a cha-cha-cha, which dance was just beginning its period of popularity. I believe Morales made this record in New York. 

Jo Stafford

The final song from the score to merit a commercial recording was "I'm Your Girl," a hymn from Jeanie to Larry. Religious and quasi-religious songs were popular back then - "I Believe" had been a hit for Jane Froman in early 1953 - and of course Rodgers and Hammerstein had a huge success with "You'll Never Walk Alone" in Carousel.

"I'm Your Girl" is an affecting piece, particularly in the rapt rendition by Jo Stafford that concludes this compilation. Although her singing always is warm, she has seldom sounded so involved with the words. The only clinker is Hammerstein's final line, "I'm the girl you own," which sounds wrong to modern sensibilities.

There were several other notable songs in Me and Juliet that did not achieve recordings outside the original cast album, including "That's the Way It Happens," "The Big Black Giant" and "It's Me." 

Me and Juliet didn't enter the R&H pantheon for many reasons. Its songs, particularly the lyrics, were not as strong as other shows. Its story was both too complex (the show within a show) and too simple (a good guy and a bad guy compete for a girl). But the critical issue was the public's expectations - that R&H should present "must-see" spectacles, which more modest shows like Me and Juliet, Allegro and Pipe Dream could not provide.

The recordings come from my collection and Internet Archive. The sound is generally excellent.

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Rodgers and Hammerstein in the run-up to the show opening, 1953

Pierné Conducts Chabrier and Franck

Gabriel Pierné

Gabriel Pierné (1863-1937), whose compositions are being celebrated on my other blog, also was a distinguished conductor and organist. This post looks at a few of the records he made leading the Orchestre Colonne, which he conducted from 1910-32.

The recordings, dating from December 1929, pay homage to two French composers of an older generation - Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94) and César Franck (1822-90).

For Chabrier, Pierné chose the work that is still the composer's most popular - the orchestral rhapsody España. The lively and memorable piece set off a fashion for Spanish-themed works among French composers, including Debussy (Ibéria) and Ravel (Rapsodie espagnole). (It also "inspired" Perry Como's 1956 hit, "Hot Diggity.")

Franck is represented by a contrasting work, his solemn Prelude, choral et fugue, a brief piano work here in an orchestral transcription by the conductor. Pierné was one of Franck's organ students, and later succeeded him as organist at the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris.

César Franck and Emmanuel Chabrier

The recordings, remastered from transfers on Internet Archive, were originally issued on Odéon. The transfers come from somewhat later US Decca pressings. The sound is vivid despite a relatively constricted frequency response, which tails off below 200Hz and above 4.5kHz. It does provide a good representation of the sound of the Orchestre Colonne under its distinguished conductor.

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For more on Pierné as conductor, please see this post on Internet Archive by my friend Satyr. It includes Berlioz's Carnaval Romain Overture, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite no. 1 and the Berceuse from Stravinsky's L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird). Pierné led the 1910 premiere of the work for the Ballets Russes.

We Bring You Eight Lulus

The toothy personality at the right is Lulu, who, according to songwriters Billy Rose, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, you were not supposed to bring to the party, lest she break up the place. 

Lulu was the off-stage protagonist of their lively 1925 composition. It was popular at the time and still retains some interest today because it is both catchy and witty.

"Don't Bring Lulu" is one of my favorite compositions of the 1920s, so I thought I might construct one of those posts where I present both period and more modern performances in varied styles. Today we have eight interpretations in all - vocals, a jazz band, R&B, even a theater organ.

The song's first releases were in early 1925, and must have been among the last batches of acoustic recordings that were made before the far-superior electrical recording process came into use.

Among the Lulu's first exponents was the popular singer Billy Murray, whose penetrating voice, perfect diction and not-unsubtle delivery were well-suited to the acoustic method. His Victor record has a strong period flavor, even including "doo-wacka-doo" figures in the noisy accompaniment. Murray handles the pay-off line of the chorus - "I'll bring her myself" - perfectly, by underplaying it.

"Don't Bring Lulu" also was a favorite of the instrumental jazz bands of the time. Our second selection is by the California Ramblers, identified as the "Varsity Eight" on the Cameo label below. The names of the musicians at the April 1925 recording recording session are somewhat speculative, but may have included Red Nichols and Tommy Dorsey. The band definitely features bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini, who provides a typical solo near the end of the performance.

Adrian Rollini, a gigantic sax and even bigger label

For our next selection, we jump ahead to about 1950. The disc features an obscure R&B group called, wonderfully enough, Fats Fuller and the Dunce Caps. Their "Lulu" was issued on a Philadelphia imprint called Palda, best known for Ferko String Band releases, but which also boasted early records by Al Martino, the Four Aces and Bill Haley on its subsidiary labels. I can't find anything about Fats and his associates, but I can tell you that the Dunce Caps have a King Cole Trio flavor, and Fats himself resembles his namesake Fats Waller in the piano department (assuming he's the pianist) but not vocally.

Tiny Hill

The ever-popular "Lulu" was taken up by another rotund singer, Tiny Hill, for a 1953 outing on Mercury. Hill led a big band that had novelty and country leanings. His easy-going rendition features the sandpaper-block shuffle rhythm that was his trademark.

Nostalgia for the 1920s came into vogue as the 1950s drew to a close. "Don't Bring Lulu" was just the thing for the young musical archeologist Bobby Short, who selected the song for his 1959 Atlantic LP The Mad Twenties.

Bobby Short and Dorothy Provine

The period mood also inspired such television shows as Margie (its theme song was the 1920s hit of that name) and The Roaring 20s. The star of the latter was Dorothy Provine, who played the leader of the band Pinky and Her Playboys. She even put out a popular 1960 LP on Warner Bros. (which produced the show), including her "period" performance of "Don't Bring Lulu."

Mitch and the Gang, sans accordions

Mitch Miller followed the trend in 1962 with a four-square (and just plain square) reading of "Lulu" with his Sing-Along Gang. Mitch must have worn out Columbia's reverb units making his expanded barber-shop recordings, with a jolly men's chorale and echoing accordions accompanying them.

Finally, a selection from an enormous set of theater organ recordings. "Lulu" adapted nicely to the sound of the behemoth instrument once housed in the Regal Theatre, Marble Arch, London - at least in the hands and arrangement of the experienced organist George Blackmore. This record probably dates from the early 1960s.

By the way, the Colgate toothpaste folks solved the mystery of Lulu's unpopularity in the 1940s. See the comic strip ad below for the unsurprising key.

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