36 Dance Favorites In Hi-Fi - Geraldo

 

Side 2 Band 3

Dance Dance Dance!

36 Dance Favorites In Hi-Fi

Geraldo and His Orchestra

RCA Camden CAS-442

1958

From the back cover: The widely herald and frequently demonstrated theory that one society

band sounds like every other society band gets a severe jolt in the work of Geraldo and his Orchestra. For here is a society band that is different.

For on thing, Geraldo's milieu is not Partk Avenue but London's West End. He is an English bandleader who has been around for a long time covering a wide ranger of territory. Back in the Thirties, when dance bands had the "name" quality that is now usually reserved for popular singers, Geraldo led one of England's great name dance bands – a band which rated with such internationally famous English bands as those led by Ray Noble, Jack Halton and Bert Ambrose, and with the equally worthy but more locally renowned bands of Carroll Gibbons and Roy Fox.

At the same time, Geraldo's was one of London society's favorite bands. When the present Duke of Windsor was still the playboy Prince of Wales, Geraldo was, more often that not, themas who provided the musical background for his merriment. Geraldo established himself as a society laborite while he was still a popular favorite, so that when the popular demand for name dance bands wanted he was in a position to move firmly and securely along the society trail that he had already charted.  The extent and solidity of his reign as England's great society bandleader is emphasized by the fact that his band played for King George V in 1933 and it also played for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in 1955.

Because his background has been broad and has not been limited to the routine demands put on the usual society bands, Geraldo's approach is one that is personal and different from that of the society bands we are accustomed to hearing in this country. He bows to an occasional hallmark of the society band – the more-or-less continuous music through ling medleys and, in moderation, that brisk tempo which is sometimes referred to as "boom-chick."

But it is right here that we begin to discern a difference in Geraldo's work. WWHere the routine soicety band forces everything into a Procrustean "boom-chick" gallop, Geraldo varies his tempos to bring out the full musical values of the tunes he is playing and to provide a welcome balance and pace to his programming.

The typically brisk society band tempo serves as a sprightly introduction and finale, so Geraldo appropriately uses it in both his first and last medley here. But even then there is no mechanical backing out of the tunes, but a carefully arranged kaleidoscopically shifting pattern of solo instruments and ensembles which provides the variety that escapes many society bands. If you have ever wondered what became of the old swing bands, you will find some evidence of a swing band in disguise in the way Geraldo's band plays the arrangements that he and his staff arranger, Pete Moore, have written. The interweaving of soloists, thrice and swinging reed ensembles and the smoothly persuasive beat are all vestigial descendants of the style that made the swing bands popular.

But there is more to Geraldo's unique position in the society band field that this. Notice the unusually slow (for a society band) tempo that Geraldo uses on Medley three, and the effective manner in which he does the practical unheard-of thing (for a society band) of turning the tunes in the medley over to single soloists – and note particularly the lovely results he gets from this use of the alto saxophone in Jerome Kern's Dearly beloved. And notice the consistently imaginative writing that has gone into al the medleys, and especially the ingenious way in which Geraldo and Pete Moore have pitted the combination of flute and bass clarinet angst deep, gruff-voiced trombones on Cole Porter's It's Delivery, which opens the first medley on the second side. And notice also that when Geraldo takes up the expected waltz medley, this variety-minded leader manages to give ua a capsule demonstration of three different and valid ways to play a waltz – the polished stateliness he give to Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow Waltz. the simple but haunting solo trumpet interpretation of Richard Rodger's Falling In Love With Love, and the lilting, harp-induced sparkle that is so appropriate to The Blue Danube Waltz.

The tunes, of course are – as they should be – from that seemingly bottomless bag of musical show melody in which the names of Kern, Rodgers, Porter and Gershwin appear almost automatically. Geraldo also has near for the bright, happy-go-lucky tunes that Buddy De Sylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson were contributing to Broadway revues in the late Twenties, and he has, happily, included three of them – Button Up You Overcoat, The Best Things In Life Are Free and You're The Cream In My Coffee. And he has not forgotten two of England's most brilliant contributors to this special bag of melody – Noel Coward Dance Little Lady) and Ivor Novello (We'll Gather Lilacs).

Geraldo dresses up these tunes in the suave, sensitively swinging style that has been inspiring dancers in love, lovers of the dance, royal bloods and young blood for more than a water of a century.

Dance Little Lady; All The Things You Are; Button Up Your Overcoat; The Way You Look Tonight: The Lady Is A Tramp

The Merry Widow Waltz; Falling In Love With Love; The Blue Danube Waltz; Long Ago (And Far Away); Dearly Beloved; You Were Never Lovelier: Love Walked In

Nice Work If You Can Get It; The Best Things In Life Are Free; Shall We Dance; A Fine Romance; You're The Cream In My Coffee

It's Delivery; Easy To Love; I Won't Dance; I Love Paris; In The Still Of The Night

Lovely To Look At; We'll Gather Lilacs; Can I Forget You; There's A Small Hotel

Carioca; Cherry Pink Mambo, April In Portugal; Mu Cha Cha; My Heart Belongs To Daddy

The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise; Why Do I Love You; I'm Old Fashioned; On Your Toes; You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To