Larry Clinton In Hi-Fi

Larry Clinton In Hi-Fi
Larry Clinton With Helen Ward
RCA Victor LPM 1342
1957

Available from online vendors so I will not be posting a sample. Presented here to share the cover and jacket notes.

From the back cover: Clinton was responsible for some of the most enduring hits in the dance band repertoire, as a glance down the list of selections in this set will show. There are numbers written or arranged by Clinton and originally featured by his band. For these high fidelity re-creations he has held to the general outlines of the original arrangements, although sometimes they many not come out exactly as veterans of the dancing Thirties remember them. This is not because they have been extensively revamped, but simply because there is no definitive, finished version of any Clinton arrangement. They keep changing in numerous subtle ways as they are played over and over again, and new ideas or variants crop up. The arrangements that the Clinton band was using in 1938 and 1939 (which encompasses most of these numbers) had already started to change by 1940 and 1941, and they continued to go through slight mutations until Larry broke up his band in 1949.

Helping Larry to harken back to the golden age of dance bands is Helen Ward, who was swinging out ballads vocally for Benny Goodman a couple of years before the Clinton band established these numbers in the public fancy. Helen left Goodman to marry and retire from music when she was twenty. Since then she has been one of the most decorative matrons in Rye, New York, making a few rare forays into recording studios to reveal, as she does here, a voice with the same lilting appeal that used to arouse the gallants who flocked around the Goodman bandstand.

From Billboard - March 9, 1957: To one class of album buyers – those who were dancing and romancing in the late 1930s – this could strike a responsive chord. Program includes such well-known Clinton vehicles as "Dipsy Doodle," "My Reverie," "Study In Brown," etc. Oddly, Helen Ward, the one-time Goodman thrush handles the vocals instead of Clinton's Bea Wain, but few would quarrel with that change. Today's kinds may not know about Clinton, but once exposed, they'll find these numbers extremely danceable. We've heard higher fi elsewhere, incidentally.
Dipsy Doodle
My Reverie
In A Persian Market
Deep Purple
Our Love
Johnson Rag
Study In Brown
Heart And Soul
Satan Takes A Holiday
Martha
Bolero In Blue
Study In Surrealism