Moonglow - Benny Carter

Laura

Moonglow

Love Songs by Benny Carter and His Orchestra

Cover Photo by Phil March

Verve Records MG V-2025

1957

From the back cover: The fact that Benny Carter has been so closely associated with motion pictures for the last decade or more doesn't make him any more qualified to interpret love songs than he always has been. Still, it's interesting to observe that the movies are a good spawning ground for love songs. In this album two of the songs – significantly the ones bearing girl's names – also served well as the titles for above-average movies. There's "Laura," which hit the screen in 1945 and concerned a phantom type of Everyman's dream girl, and there's "Ruby," a 1952 vintage film with the girl in question more on the difficult side but nonetheless desirable. And both, "Laura" and "Ruby", are love songs to beat all love songs, both moody, intensely romantic and–to nearly everyone who has ever had a brush with romance on enduring terms – immensely evocative. "Laura," especially, is the hand-holding song, the one that stirs the couples on the dance floor to the dreamy, cheek-to-cheek routine. (As important as the lyrics may be to "Laura," the lyricist himself, Johnny Mercer, once threw all the credit to Dave Raksin, the composer, with this self-effacing statement: "Laura' would have made it, musically, if its title had been 'Sam.'")

In any event, these are a few songs as they were meant to be played – with tenderness and affections for the lyric content of the song as well as the music. To discuss some of the other songs individually, "Moonglow," the title tune, was the combined effort of Will Hudson, Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills in 1934 and although it was never utilized for a movie or a Broadway show it has grown with the years into one of our more valued standards. (If there are words in our language that lend themselves to mental pictures "Moonglow" must be one of the pleasantest of the lot). The Gershwin's, George and Ira, wrote "Love Is Here To Stay" for the motion picture, "Ziegfeld Follies." Walter Gross composed "Tenderly" in 1945 and since then few songs have been played quite so often.

Benny Carter, who is a native New Yorker, has earned an enviable reputation not only as a leader and arranger but as a versatile instrumentalist. He is heard here on alto saxophone, his major instrument, although on occasion he also plays the tenor, clarinet and trumpet.

The artists: Benny Carter, alto saxophone; Don Abney, piano; Louis Bellson, drums and George Duvivier, bass, are heard on all the tunes with the exception of "Laura" on which are heard Bill Harris, trombone, Oscar Peterson, piano, Herb Ellis, guitar; Ray Brown, bass and Buddy Rich, drums.

Moonglow

My One And Only Love

Love Is Here To Stay

Tenderly

Unforgettable

Laura

Ruby

Moon Song