Mood Music In The Latin Manner - Various

 

Mood Music In The Latin Manner

Mood Music...

In The Latin Manner 

Selected by The Editors of Reader's Digest Music Guide

RCA Victor Club Record CSP-103

1962

Cielito Lindo - Chucho Ferrer and His Orchestra

Cachita - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Jurame - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Ay, Ay, Ay - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Ansiedad - Chucho Ferrer and His Orchestra

Lamento Borincano - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Adios Pampa Mia - Chucho Ferrer and His Orchestra

Maria La O - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Mis Flores Negras - Mario Ruiz Armengol and His Orchestra

Alma Llanera - Chucho Ferrer and His Orchestra

Lisbon At Twilight - George Melachrino

 

Una Casa Portuguesa

Lisbon At Twilight

George Melachrino

The Melachrino Orchestra Conducted by George Melachrino

Cover Photo: Ewing Krainin

RCA Victor LSP-1762

1958

From the back cover: It makes no difference whether or not you've been to Portugal, you'll never understand Lisbon nightlife of the Portuguese people until you've heard the fado – nostalgic little ballads telling of death, disappointment, drownings, stabbings and general heartbreak. If you like soap operas, you'll love fado.

Best place to hear fado is in the murky little cafes in the old quarter of Lisbon. Some of them used to be wine cellars; many are still lined with the great casks.

The conventions that govern fado singing are as rigid as diplomatic protocol. Two guitarists sit at a table  – one plays the Spanish guitar, and the other plays the Portuguese type with six double strings and a special screw-type tuning. The singer, swathed in a somber black shawl, leans against the stone wall.

You can rate fado spots as one-shawl, two-shawl or three-shawl establishments, depending on whether the singers bring their own or pass the house shawls from shoulder to shoulder as they give out with the blues.

Amateurs can participate, too, and that's  one of the highlights of the evening. After the audience gets warmed up with a few chronicle of blighted romance or foreclosed mortgages under the shawl, the real fun begins. Gentlemen with a grievance stand up and tell you their troubles – in a minor key. Other guests add extemporaneous stanzas or butt in to relate – still in song – how much worse their troubles are than anyone else's. No one in the audience makes a sound or twitches a muscle during the song. Even if your Portuguese is nonexistent, you can enjoy the spirit – because when it comes to the fado the Portuguese people have a wonderful time feeling terrible.

This album of Portuguese music will run you approximately $450 less than the round-trip economy-class air fare between New York and Lisbon, and next to being there it's the best way to catch the beat. George Melachrino set out to record authentic songs of Portugal in an instrumental setting after a visit last year. The Portuguese guitarist Raul Nery flew over to London to sit in on the recording sessions. He's one of the world's greatest virtuosos on this unusual instrument, and his ability to play from memory almost one thousand tunes has won him the title of "The Musical Memory Man." And Great Britain contributed her favorite guitarist, the popular Ivor Mairants.

The most famous of all fados starts off Side 2. As April In Portugal it became a world favorite, but under its original title of Coimbra it had been a popular fado for years. Barco Negro, originally called Black Mother, comes from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese possession in the Atlantic off the coast of  West Africa – therefore its strongly African beat. It was first popularized by the famed Amalia, perhaps the greatest fado singer of them all. Song Of The Sea, at the end of Side 1, is a beautiful number that was featured in the film "April In Portugal." Una Casa Portuguesa is a very gay pop tune often sung at fado places. As contrast, I guess. – Richard Joseph, Travel Editor of Esquire

Lisbon At Twilight

Barco Negro

The Lonely Beach

Rapsodia Portuguesa

A Small Cafe

Song Of The Sea

April In Portugal 

Fado Obrigado

Villa Villa

Variacoes em re Menor

Ladies Of Lisbon

Una Casa Portuguesa

Getting Sentimental Over Tommy Dorsey - Jo Stafford

 

Oh! Look At Me Now!

Getting Sentimental Over Tommy Dorsey

Jo Stafford

Arrangements by Benny Carter, Billy May & Nelson Riddle

Vocal Arrangements by Vince Deegen

Reprise R-6090

1963

From the back cover: Anybody who feels like getting sentimental over the music Tommy Dorsey and his great band were playing during the early forties has a perfect right to. After all, that was a pretty emotional kind of band. It could swing high, and thanks to Tommy and his set of sentimental singers, it also created many mellow musical moods.

Jo Stafford was one of those sentimental singers. She joined the band as the only girl member of the Pied Pipers, an octet that soon became a quartet, just about the time the year 1939 was joining 1940. A few weeks later a young singer named Sinatra left the Harry James band and moved into the Dorsey troupe too. 

For the next two and a half years, almost everyone who listened to or who worked in the Dorsey band had a ball. For this was one of the most colorful and completely satisfying musical groups ever assembled. Under the dynamic leadership of Dorsey, who was not only sentimental but also very demanding (say Jo, "He always expected the best from you and was surprised when he didn't get it"), the band worked hard as it played – and its succession of hit engagements and recordings proved it.

But the band had fun too. Actually, any band Dorsey ever led was bound to have its share of good times. He may have been a disciplinarian, but there were times when he would play it strictly for laughs. And he was very generous toward his sidemen (and women), often spotlighting them far more than he would himself. This was especially true during those times when he was blessed with outstanding performers.

Certainly the band in which Jo sang was one of his best – if not THE best. It had a host of stellar musicians, like Bunny Berigan, Joe Bushkin, Ziggy Elman, Sy Oliver and Buddy Rich. It produced a whole raft of hit sides, a dozen of which are revived herewith in new musical settings arranged by Benny Carter, Billy May and Nelson Riddle, the last a Dorsey alumnus who joined the band after Jo had left to begin her successful career as a single performer. Jo's vocal arrangements here are by Vince Deegen.

On all of the tunes heard on these records Jo was a featured vocalist. She was the soloist on three of them – The Night We Called It A Day, Who Can I Turn To, and Yes, Indeed – and she sang lead for the Pipers on the remaining eight.

Times have changed since then, and so have the arrangements. There's even a lyric change in Let's Get Away From It All that recognizes the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the United States; and there's a singer, unknown to most people in the early forties who now takes over the role in Yes, Indeed, originally filled by the tune's composer, Sy Oliver. The new singer: Sammy Davis, Jr. And thought Tommy's voice may not be here on I'll Take Tallulah, one of the few vocals TD ever took, Billy May pays his respects by having the entire sax section play the trombone solo Dorsey originally blew on the record.

But there is one important way in which these records parallel the originals; they're all extremely musical. And so, of course, is Jo's singing. Did Tommy make a deep impression on her? "Of course he did," she admits. "With Tommy, perfection was always the norm, and anyone who worked with him had great training that way." And how about Dorsey's long, melodic way of phrasing? "I think it affected most of his singers. With me it may have come a little easier, because I had had five years of classical training and so I could sing those long phrases without too much trouble. But the influence wasn't a complete conscious one. It was never actually a case of seeing if I could sing as long as he could play, but we all followed his lead I guess." 

Through the years, Jo has remained a great admirer of Dorsey – and of Sinatra, too. "He's the same now as he was then. He was always wonderfully kind and encouraging. I remember, I used to have about as much ambition as an old bunch of keys, but he always told me to keep on singing."

Another man within the Dorsey family whom Jo admired greatly was arranger Paul Weston. The admiration was mutual. So was the love. That's why today Jo is Mrs. Paul Weston and they have their own happy family.

Yes, a lot of good things have happened to Jo Stafford, ever since she and the other Pipers joined TD more than a generation ago – a lot of good things for which the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing was directly responsible. So you can't blame her one bit, can you, for getting sentimental over Tommy Dorsey! – George T. Simon

The One I Love (Belongs To Somebody Else)

I'll Never Smile Again

Oh! Look At Me Now!

Who Can I Turn To?

There Are Such Things

I'll Take Tallulah

Let's Get Away From It All

It Started All Over Again

Whatcha Know Joe

The Night We Called It A Day

Yes, Indeed