The Legendary Libby Holman

 

The Legendary Libby Holman

Evergreen Presents

The Legendary Libby Holman

The Ballads & Blues / The Torch Songs

In Collaboration with Gerald Cook

Produced by Bill Borden & Steve Marvin

Special Brochure Enclosed with Program 

Monmouth Records, Inc. MR 6501

1966

From the producers: When Libby Holman heard our Through The Years With Vincent Youmans album her reaction was so enthusiastic we made bold to ask her if she would make a record with us of songs from her wide repertoire which she has made uniquely her own. She consented and the present LP i the exciting result. To have captured forever her vocal artistry at its zenith has been most rewarding. – Bill Borden, Steve Marvin

From the brochure: Libby Holman became a singer almost by accident. Born in Cincinnati, she originally seemed heading for a career in law. There was, however, one hitch. Having graduated from the University of Cincinnati at the age of eighteen, she was not permitted to enter law school until she was twenty-one. Since she also had theatrical ambitions, her father, a lawyer, agreed to let her have three years in which to try her luck on the stage. If, during that period, she couldn't make it, she would be happy to enter law school.

Libby's first stage part was in final road company of the interminably touring play, The Fool, by Channing Pollock. Her first Broadway part was that of a maid in a short-lived mystery, The Sapphire Ring. About that time – early 1925 – she became friendly with a group of young actors who were attending classes conducted by the Theatre Guild. They were planning to put on a revue, and they suggested that she try out for a part. "That was The Garrick Gaietiesm," Miss Holman recently recalled. "I went to see a young man named Dick Rodgers, who had written the music for the show. 'What key do you sing in?,' he asked. I didn't know what key I sang in. I told him, "Just play low... no, lower... lower.' He wasn't too excited about my voice, but they hired me because they said I had good legs. I was in a trio with two other girls and I also had as old, 'Black And White,' which was about miscegenation. Pretty daring in those days, but I loved doing it. My idol was always Ethel Waters. I didn't try to copy her, but I always hoed to have something of her quality. Soon after the opening, they dropped the number from the show, and I went back to the chorus. I said, 'Nuts to this, I'm going home.' But I did need the $35 a week, so I stuck it out."

During the run of The Garrick Gaieties, Libby attended classes at Columbia's School of Journalism. It was then that she met a young man, Britten Harden, who had recently started a magazine called Time with another man named Henry Luce. Because of the high production costs in New York, the partners were planning to move their offices to Cleveland early the following year. Libby so impressed Hayden that he offered her a job as a researcher. This seemed ideal, particularly since she was returning home to Cincinnati for Christmas. What could be better than going on from there to Cleveland, and a job in an exciting new venture?

Chance and coincidence ended the not-quite-budding career in journalism. "While I was in Cincinnati," Libby related, "a friend asked me to go backstage with her at one of the local theatres where a touring company of The Greenwich Village Follies was playing. She had written a song, and thought that I could be of help. We met the stage manager, Stanley Rayburn, after the show, and, surprisingly enough, he listened to the song. Then he turned to me, and asked 'Weren't you in The Garrick Gaieties?" When I admitted that I was, he said, 'I remember you in that trio number. You were the most professional one in it. We need a replacement in this show and I'd like to have you join it.' Without too much thought, I said yes. Not only did I go right back into the theatre, but bought the Gaieties song, I also had my 'Black and White' number again. I packed my bags that night, and I was off again. I wonder whatever happened to Time magazine."

At that point in her career, Libby was using the name, Elspeth Holman, which she fancied had the proper theatrical quality. Rayburn didn't like it and suggested "Betty Holman." "If I'm going to change my name at all," she told him, "I'm going to change it to Libby. That's what everybody has called me since elementary school." Rayburn approved, and from then on she was known professionally as Libby Holman.

From the touring Greenwich Village Follies, Libby went into New York production, then playing its final months on Broadway. She also toured in it on the road.

It was during the tour that she met a young singer named Leonard Tillman; even then, he was a discoverer of talented new faces. Sillman brought her to the attention of producer Richard Herndon, who cast her in a revue called Merry-Go-Round. Libby's most important song in it was "Hogan's Alley" by Howard Dietz and Jay Gorney, and for the first time she was noticed by the critics. Across the street from her theatre was another musical, Rang-Tang, which had an all-Negro cast. When the leading lady became ill, the producer asked Herndon to release Libby so that she might take over the part in his show. "I would have jumped at the chance," Libby recalls, "but my producer didn't tell me about it until after our show closed."

Libby Holman was beginning to attract attention. Florenz Ziegfeld went to see her during an engagement at the Roxy Theatre, and signed her to a contract to appear in a projected second New York company of Show Boat, which was to play concurrently with the original company. This would have been the first time such a scheme was ever tired, but Ziegfeld eventually abandoned the idea. Libby, of course, was set for the part of the mulatto, Julie LaVere, the role created by Helen Morgan.

When that fell through, Libby auditioned for a role in Rainbow, an ambitious new musical by Vincent Yuma's, Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, and Laurence Stallings. After being turned down because her voice was too low, she went on the road again in a one-hour tab show playing movie theatres. It was called Texas Guinan's Padlocks, and Libby played Texas. She hated it. During the tour, she found out that the part she had auditioned for in Rainbow was still open. This time she was accepted, and she joined the company just before its Baltimore tryout. Despite a fine score and a ruggedly honest book, the play did not catch on and lasted only one month on Broadway.

Another discouraging experience as Ned Weyburn's Gambols, a more deserving disaster. Then – within three months – Libby's luck changed completely. Howard Dietz, remembering her from Merry-Go-Round, helped her win the female lead in a bright, original revue called The Little Show, in which Clifton Webb and Fred Allen were also featured. Libby's big hits, "Moanin' Low" by Dietz and Ralph Rainger and "Can't We Be Friends?" by Kay Swift and her husband, Paul James (a pseudonym for banker James Warburg), established her reputation as Broadway's most celebrated musical torch bearer. This eminence was reinforced two seasons later when she was reunited with Messer's. Webb and Allen in an equally successful venture, Three's A Crowd. This produced two more memorable songs – "Body And Soul" by Johnny Green, Edward Heyman and Robert Sour, and "Something To Remember You By" by Dietz and Arthur Schwartz.

But Libby Holman was still not satisfied. The only acting she had been able to do on Broadway had been in a few revue sketches. She began to study acting seriously, and even spent a season at Jasper Deeter's Hedgerow Theatre in Pennsylvania. Broadway still beckoned. Vinton Freedley wanted her to come back in a new musical called Anything Goes, but she didn't think the part was suitable. It later went to Ethel Merman.

Libby did accept another offer. This was from Dietz and Schwartz to appear in their first book musical, Revenge With Music, an adaptation of the Spanish classic, El Sombrero de Tres Picos. The score was lovely, Libby received personal acclaim, but the musical was only moderately successful.

Apart from her program, Blues, Ballads and Sin Songs, which she offered in 1954, Libby Holman's last Broadway appearance was in the short-lived Cole Porter musical, You Never Know, in which she was again teamed with Clifton Webb. She did, however, appear in an experimental off-Broadway production, Mexican Mural, in 1941, and has acted in many plays in summer theatres. In 1958 Libby gave a highly-acclaimed performance in Paul Bowles' musical resetting of Garcia-Lorac's Yerma, at both the University of Denver and Ithaca College.

Libby Holman's dedication to more earthy song material began in the early Forites. "I just became sick and tired of Tin Pan Alley," she recently said. "I wanted to spread out – to sing folk material from all over the world. Then I realized I didn't know enough languages, and I decided to stick to American songs. I met Leadbelly and Josh White. A whole new world opened up. You can go just so far being a torch singer. I studied and studied and worked and worked. I don't like to call these songs 'folk songs.' That term always seemed to precious. As far as I'm concerned, they are the real thing, the real America.

Libby Holman and Josh White began their joint recital tour in Boston in 1941. After playing a week, they opened at La Vie Parisienne in New York. Although singed for two weeks, they remained for eight months. Since 1947, Libby has been working with Gerald Cook. "Gerald is more than an accompanist," she states emphatically, "He writes musical settings, a sort of dialogue between piano and voice. He pulls me out and almost lets me go, then he pulls me back in again. there are elements of tension in what we do, and there are many example in which we work in partnership. We're always changing. We try to make everything contemporaneous. I do all the songs as of now. I never copy the way the they were done before – not even by myself. What I'm singing is always a very present thing. It's here, it's' now, it's' what's happening at this moment. That's what makes the songs so vital. When I sing, I never spare my vocal cords. My singing is like Flamenco. Sometimes it's purposely hideous. I try to convey anguish, anger, tragedy, passion. When you're expressing emotions like these, you cannot have a pure tone. I still love the old songs – the Broadway songs. But I do them differently now. I can't go back. I never want to be put in a pigeon-hole marked 'torch singer.'".

Gerald Cook - Composer-pianist Gerald Cook was born in Chicago. As a child he was awarded first prize in a National Guild of Piano Teacher's competition and, while at the University of Illinois, won a scholarship to the Long School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger.

Mr. Cook pursued his musical education at Columbia University, the Manhattan School of Music and Hunter College – supporting himself as a concert accompanist and night club pianist, and emerged with a B.A. andM.A. degree in music. Recently, he studied Theory and Composition with Rudolph Schramm and Ludilla Uhlela of New York.

As a composer his output include a "Cycle of Spirituals" for voice and piano, a String Quartet and a Solo Cantata for Mezzo-Soprano and Chamber Orchestra. His scenario music for theatre includes a score for Horton Foote's "Goodbye To Richmond." Timothy Kelly's off-Broadway production of "The Darker Flower," and two ballets choreographed by Ray Harrison; "Kicks" and "Espail" – the latter being produced by the Juilliard Dance Ensemble, March 1964, as well as incidental theatre music and many night club, television and recording arrangements.

His credits as arranger and musical director include many television assignments – for Stan Kenton, Patti Page, the Hallmark-NBC production of "The Green Pastures" among then, and recordings for Columbia, Capitol, and Decca Records. He created the orchestrations for Paul Bowles' score for Garcia Lorca's play "Yerma." His musical arrangements and accompaniment for Libby Holman' programs of songs over the past decade have gained him the acclaim of critics throughout England, France Italy, Switzerland and in the United States.

Body And Soul (from Three's A Crowd)

Love For Sale (from The New Yorkers)

I Want A Man (from Rainbow)

Can't We Be Friends? (from The Little Show)

A Ship Without A Sail (from Heads Up!)

Moanin' Low (from The Little Show)

Something To Remember You By (from Three's A Crowd)

Good Morning, Blues

In The Evenin'

Red River

Fare Thee Well

Evil Hearted Me

Easy Rider

House Of The Rising Sun

Swing Softly - Jorgen Ingmann

 

Frenesi

Swing Softly

Jorgen Ingmann and His Guitar

Mercury Records MG 20292

1958

From the back cover: Out of one magical, lightly amplified guitar, Jorgen Ingmann brings forth a whole orchestra of tone colors and a whole spectrum of moods ranging from deep introspection to carefree abandon.

Ingmann is a young Danish artist who has introduced a new delicacy to the art of multiple recording of guitars. This is the technique, first made famous by Les Paul, of superimposing one guitar performance upon another on the same recording tape, as many as ten times, to build a one-man orchestration.

Ingmann's style is particularly noteworthy for the soft richness of his tone. He applies that richness here to a set of favorite standards numbers, sprinkled with a few tunes new to American ears. Each is a luxurious gem to accompany the intimate gathering of people of good taste.

From Billboard - November 17, 1958: Several oldies like "Jeepers Creepers" and "Stardust," together with a sprinkling of exotic imports, are given the Les Paul treatment of superimposed tapes for a smooth and highly amiable cocktail effect. The soft sound and well-paced arrangements by the young Danish artist make for interesting listening and dancing.

Margie

I May Be Wrong

Frenesie

I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me

Qui Zas

Rockin' Chair

Jeepers Creepers

Stardust

Camondongo

Little Old Lady

Two Sleepy People

Yourtel Gingando

Steel Guitar Jazz - Buddie Emmons

 

Witchcraft

Steel Guitar Jazz

Buddie Emmons

Recorded at Capitol Studios, New York City on July 22, 1963

Mercury Records SR 60843

1963

Buddie Emmons - Guitar

Bobby Scott - Piano

Charlie Persip - Drums

Jerome Richardson - Tenor & Soprano Sax

Art Davis - Bass

From the back cover: Traditionally associated with Hawaiian and hillbilly bands, it is quite understandable that a steel guitar jazz album may seem a bit incongruous to the hip aficionado. But steel Guitar Jazz should convince the most demanding purist that in the right hands, the steel guitar is a formidable jazz instrument. The right hands in this case belong to Buddie Emmons, whose remarkable dexterity and unique connection show him to be a guitarist and jazzman of considerable talent.

Until this recording, the steel guitar's contact with jazz has been at best, peripheral. It was occasionally used as a novelty by the big bands of the Swing Era. In 1939, Andy Kirk had a minor hit, Floyd's Guitar Blues, using Floyd smith on an electric steel guitar; a few years later, Alvino Rey became the rage with his "singing guitars." More recently, the sometime jazzman, Lew Paul has used the instrument in a series of best selling gimmick pop recordings.

But this Buddie Emmons albums is no gimmick. Working with our uncompromising jazzmen – the fantastically talented Bobby Scott, the versatile Jerome Richardson, the smoothly swinging Charlie Persip and the propulsive Art Davis – Emmons has successfully and compellingly integrated the steel guitar's broad tonal timbres into a modern jazz setting.

Unless you dig Hawaiian or Country and Western Music, you many have never seen a steel guitar; it is an oddly shaped instrument, practically all bar and neck. All modern steel guitars are amplified. the most popular types having a long string board supported by telescoping legs. When the whole contraption is open and in operation it looks like a steel stringed ironing board. Some of the very elaborate models are rigged up with batteries of pedals which produce various tone qualities, organ tones and sharp, penetrating sounds that imitate various reed instruments.

Listening to Buddie Emmons, I think you'll agree that he makes tasteful and judicious use of the steel guitar's peculiar slides, glissandi and slurred effects, never letting them get out of hand but rather using them to add just the right harmonic seasoning. For example, on There Will Never Be Another You, Emmons shades and sustains Jerome Richardson' pretty soprano statements using deep, organ-like chords. Again on Where Or When, the guitarist adds a piquant touch, punctuating another lovely Richardson soprano chorus with incisive oboe-like effects.

Richardson charges styles and saxophones with ease, assurance and authority through the album. From an essentially lyric approach on soprano, he moves to a hard Coltrane-ish tenor sound on Gonna Build A Mountain and Oleo and thence to a relaxed, velvety, bluesy conception on I Can't Stop Loving You.

Note the rapport between Ennons and Richardson on the Sonny Rollins piece, Oleo. In the opening and closing ensemble statements, the saxophone and guitar seem to fuse, sounding almost like a two man reed section. The solos here are particularly outstanding. Emmons' solo lines are long, lean and flowing, full of eight and sixtieth note clusters in the best Charlie Christian tradition. Scott follows with a short, ebullient interlude, picking up the guitarist's ideas, succinctly commenting on them and tossing them back at Emma's for further exploration. Emmons and Richardson also work nicely together on Horace Sliver's The Preacher. Here the two spar delightfully, "trading fours" before closing with the unison saxophone-guitar voicing.

Bobby Scott's work deserves special comment. Not only are his solos superb but his accompaniment enhance the whole proceedings. On tracks like Cherokee, and Time And Bluemmons, he not only feeds Emmons chords but through fully supplements the guitarist's solos.

The group empathy throughout Steel Guitar Jazz is in the finest jazz tradition. In lieu of the every-man-for-himself approach that has characterized many modern "Blowing sessions;" each of these men constructs his choruses with an ear to what the soloist before and after him has to say. This contributes to an overall group feeling and has resulted in a recording that is related, cohesive an always swinging.

Bluemmons

Any Time

Where Or When

Indiana (Back Home Again In Indiana)

Gavy Waltz

Oleo

The Preacher

Cherokee (Indian Love Song)

Witchcraft 

Gonna Build A Mountain (from the Broadway Musical Production "Stop The World – I Want To Get Off")

There Will Never Be Another You

Music On A Silver Platter - Mary Kaye Trio

 

Love For Sale

Music On A Sliver Platter

The Mary Kaye Trio

With Orchestra Directed by Russ Garcia and Bud Conion

Cover Concept by Benne

Decca Records DL 8454

From the back cover: The Mary Kaye Trio is one of the newest and most rewarding of small groups. although its success is comparatively recent, the individual from whom it got its name has been around since babyhood. Mary Kaye was exactly three years old when she made her debut at a St. Louis Carnival. She did a precociously seductive hula dance while her brother Norman, a showman of six, played the ukulele. Their father was also in the act – trouping all over St. Louis in the evenings and keeping busy during the day in school, doing homework, and rehearsing new numbers.

Meanwhile they won almost every prize offered by amateur theatrical and radio contests in the neighborhood. Mary and Norman were a duo until they reached their early teens. Then, with their father, a former swimming champion, they became a trio. They called themselves the Royal Hawaiians, specializing in the traditional island music. Afterwards they began to introduce more and more hit songs into their act and were becoming a popular organization when, in 1943, Norman went into the Army. His place was taken by an accordionist Frankie Ross (born Biagio Ross Salvatore Bolgna); when father Kaye left the group, he was replaced by a young bass player, Julie Pursley. 

Two year later there was another switch: Norman got out of the service and Julie got into the army. Norman rejoined the group, now known as the Mary Kaye Trio, and when Julie returned to civilian life, Julie was signed on as road manager for the trio. A year later he and Mary were married; they now have one son. As might be gathered from the foregoing data, the group is a tightly knit family affair. Norman is the most versatile musician of the organization. Besides possessing a large and mellow baritone, he performs on a wide variety of instruments, including trombone, vibraharp, piano, bass, guitar, alto horn and, of course, the ukulele, which he has played ever since he was old enough to hold one. He is also the composer of about one hundred tunes. Frankie Ross not only provides the comedy for the act but is expert at the accordion. Mary is a virtuoso on the Spanish guitar and is also a singer who has developed a style distinctively her own. Together they are a trio who have become one of the country's most exciting groups –  young, versatile, and immediately likable. 

The popularity of the group has been attested by critics as well as countless audiences. The Mary Kaye Trio's previous album, "A Night In Las Vegas" (Decca DL 8238), was unreservedly acclaimed. The new recordings in this album that this interesting threesome is not only in tune with the times, but typical of the younger musicians of their generation.

All The Things You Are

Come Rain Or Come Shine

Laura

Fools Rush In

Add Another Leaf

Almost Like Being In Love

(I'm Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over

Love For Sale

Lonely Town

Save Your Sorrow

I'm In Love With A Stranger

Without A Song

Samuel Jones / Paul Cooper - Houston Symphony

 

Jones / Cooper - Houston Symphony

American Contemporary 

Houston Symphony

Jones - Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Elegy

Cooper - Symphony No. 4 (Landscape)

Produced by Carter Harman

Cover Photo by Carter Herman

Art Direction: Judith Lemer

Recored by Bill Holford - November 25, 1975

CRI 347 STEREO

1976

From the back cover: Samuel Jones (b. Inverness, Miss., 1935) is Dean of The Shepard School of Music of Rice University and, in addition to his conducting and compositional activity, is much in demand as a lecturer and writer on musical subjects. His guest conducting career includes appearances with the Detroit Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Prague Symphony, the Iceland Symphony, as well as extensive conducting duties with the Rochester Philharmonic, the Flint Symphony, and the Saginaw Symphony. He has appeared on the Naumburg Series in New York and conducts each summer at the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival at Orkney Springs, Virginia.

An honor graduate of Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, Dr. Jones received his MA and Oh. D degrees from the Eastman Schooo of Music, where as a Woodrow Wilson National Fellow he studied composition with Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers and Wayne Barlow. His numerous compositions have been widely performed and are published by Carl Fischer, Inc. He has also served as composer-in-residence at Delta College and director of instrumental music at Alma College, both in Michigan, where he founded the Festival Orchestra and the Alma Symphony. 

Dr. Jones' work as a teacher of conducting at Orkney Springs with Richard Bert (with whom he studied conducting) has been noted by the American Symphony Orchestra League. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music to write a book about Dr. Lert's teaching.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, commissioned by the Shenandoah Valley Bicentennial Committee, received its first performance in Woodstock, Virginia, on August 12, 1972m by the orchestra of the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival, the composer conducting. This work translates into symphonic arms the spirit of the passage from the Apocrypha (Ecclesiasticus 44: 1-16) which begins, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us." The verses, however, eulogize not only great heroes from the past, but also the countless numbers of this unknown persons who lives provide the continuity and inheritance of the human race. In recognition of the importance of the Shenandoah Valley during the 1800's as a center of rural church music, the composer has based this work on seven folk-hymns taken from old hymnals published in that area, in shaped-note notation. One of the tunes, Murillo's Lesson, has seven variations; the number seven is further manifested by the seven notes of the descending major scale derived from this tune which refer to the seven fabled bends of the Shenandoah River. However, the music goes beyond the confines of a single place and reflects the universal adulates of struggle, joy, and devotion that characterize of forefathers.

The work, inspired by the James Agee/Walker Evans book, is scored for full orchestra with an offstage choir of flutes. It begins with solo viola intoning the tune Davisson's Retirement. Murillo's Lesson follows, an active tune, but here treated as something of a funeral march with the above minted variations. Then, over a sustained chord from the orchestra the offstage flutes make their appearance with the tune, Montgomery. The flute choir suggest voices heard from a distance; it is also symbolic of voices returning across the years. Faster and more lively music ensues, built from the tunes Leander, Mississippi, and Pisgah, with Virginia appearing as bass underpinning about midway through. The last motion is interrupted by Davisson' Retirement, sung this time by the bassoon, then the entire string section. The final poignant lines of Murillo's Lesson bring the work to a quiet conclusion.

Elegy For String Orchestra 

Elegy, composed in a short time during he dark days that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, was first performed on December 8, 1963, but the Saginaw Symphony, the composer conducting. Written for string orchestra, the work is a brief musical statement of the feelings of grief and shock which sweet the country and, indeed, the world, after the President's death. During the years since the Kennedy tragedy connectors have turned to this work on numerous occasions both for concert performances as well as to make the pacing of tables. (It was, for example, performed in memoriam Helen Thompson by Richard Lert at Orkney Springs in 1974.) The work is simply and deeply expressive of the anguish one feels at the loss of a loved one.

Paul Cooper

Symphony No. 4 (Landscape)

Concertino Soloists: James Austin, trumpet; Wayne Crouse, viola; Byron Hester, flute

Paul Cooper (b. Victoria, Illinois, 1926) is Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music art The Shepherd school of Music of Rice University. His catalogue of works sonatinas over fifty compositions in all media except opera; his works are widely performed, both in the U.S. and abroad. He is a frequent guest composer at contemporary festival and has served as the cultural representative for the U.S. Stage Department in Yugoslavia.

Cooper was educated at the University of southern California and at the Sorbonne and Conservatory National in Paris. He was Chairman of the Theory Department of the University of Michigan School of Music until 1968, . From 1968-1974 he was Composer-in-Residence and Head of the Division of Composition, Theory, Literature, and Musicology at the College-Conservatory of Music of the University of Cincinnati. A former music critic for the Los Angeles Mirror and Ann Arbor News, Cooper has contributed to numerous journals, including the Musical Quarterly. His textbook, Perspectives in Music Theory ahas been adopted by more than 180 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada and is part of an historical-analytical series.

The composer has held both Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, and is the recipient of seven ASCAP awards as well as Rackham Research and Ford Foundation grants. In 1969 he was chosen Composer of the Year by the Music Teachers' National Association. In 1973 Cooper and five of his former students received the first National Endowment for the Arts awards for their contributions to American music.

Symphony No. 4 (Landscape) was begun in 1973 during the composer's second Guggenheim Fellowship year in London, and completed in Houston, in March, 1975. The work is dedicated to Samuel Jones, who conducted the Houston Symphony in its world premiere at the Inaugural Concert of The shepherd School of Music, September 19, 1975.

The first movement opens with massive string sonorities penetrated by a wedge-shaped melody in solo winds and brasses. A change of texture is marked by random rhythms in the strings and presages the appearance of the central generative chord-cell, basically centered on D. Amid the changing textures, contractual techniques of imitation are feared in the winds, bringing the movement to a climax of motion. Chordal sonorities reappear in a luminescent close.

Introduced with aleatoric repetitions of pre-determined pitches, the second movement is very fast and tumultuous. Dramatic defending gestures converge to clustered harmonies, a stylistic trademark of the composer. The vibraphone repeats the opening motive and a dose contra-point beginner in the strings. above it is sounded a chordal brass passage anticipatory of the third movement. The gestures of the introductory passage return, this time in reverse dynamic order, followed by a reflective coda with serves as a link to the last movement.

A plaintive motive and the sound of bells combine to form the melodic material for the third movement. Heard first in the bass clarinet, the motive appears immediately in the bells and is taken up by other instruments and subsequently becomes the basis of the dirge-like harmonic progression. The climax of the symphony is effected but the superimposition of the dirge, played by the brasses and percussion, on a circular canon in the strings and random textures in the winds. A pianissimo coda centered on B moves for its final measures to D as a culminating statement of quiet joy. The symphony takes its subtitle from a poem by C.E. Cooper. Both the poem and the symphony suggest a plurality of inner and outer conflicts, moods, and affirmations.

The Houston Symphony Orchestra

Lawrence Foster, Music Director

The Houston Symphony, founded in 1913, has established itself as one of the outstanding orchestras of the nation. It has been guided into prominence by such eminent music director as Efren Kurtz (1948-54), Sir Thomas Beecham (1954-55), :Leopold Stokowski (1955-61), Sir John Barbirolli (1961-67), and André Previn (1967 - 68). In 1972 Lawrence Foster was appointed music director, and under his tenure the Symphony has maintained and expanded its season and its reputation.

Big Hits For Swingers - Ray Ellis

 

I Feel Fine

Bit Hits For Swingers

Ray Ellis

Recording Engineer: Tom Dowd

Cover Photo: Nick Samardge

Cover Design: Haig Adishian

Supervision: Nesuhi Ertegun

ATCO Records SD 33-187

1966 Atlantic Recording Corporation

King Of The Road

Yesterday

Hand On Sloopy

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

I Feel Fine

Ferry Cross The Mersey

I'll Never Be Lonely Again

Flight To Mexico

Portrait Of Jan

1-2-3

I Got You Babe

Wait Till We're Sixty-Five

First Recordings - Leon Kirchner - Lilly / String Quartet No. 2

 

First Recordings

First Recordings

Leon Kirchner

Lily / String Quartet No. 2

Modern American Music Series 

Produced by Jay David Saks

Engineering: Edward T. Graham, Stanley Tonkel, Raymond Moore, Arthur Kendy

Cover Art and Design: Teresa Alfieri

Photography: Norman Myers from Bruce Coleman Inc.

Columbia M 32740

1974

Lilly (1973)

Conducted by the Composer

Diana Hoagland - Soprano

Columbia Chamber Soloists

Leon Kirchner - Piano

James Buswell - Violin

Nobuko Imai - Viola

Laurence Lesse - Cello

Paul Dunkel - Flute

Allan Vogel - Oboe

Richard Stalzman - Clarinet

Robert Routch - Horn

Alexander Heller - Bassoon

Lorin Hollander - Celesta

Allen Beard - Percussion

String Quartet No. 2 (1958)

Lenox String Quartet

Peter Marsh - Violin I

Delmar Petty's, Colin II

Toby Appel - Viola

Donald McCall - Cello

I–Moderato

II–Adagio

III–Allegro molto

From the back cover: The Modern American Music Series celebrates the phenomenon of contemporary music that it exists, is continuous and continuously surprising.

No oracle, happily, has ever been able to foresee what art – in the long run – will survive. On the basis of criticism at the moment of birth, most of our great music would have been quietly allowed to die. Performers and audiences have served to nurture new music past its newborn – and in some cases incubator – stages.

Today, when new music is invented more and more for a record-listening as opposed to a concert audience, it falls to the record companies to keep new works alive long enough for them to win a proper judgement. The emblem of the Modern American Music Series on this album signifies the continuing commitment to this purpose by the Masterworks Department of CBS Records. – Thomas Frost and Thomas Z. Shepard, Directors of Masterworks, CBS Records

Golden Greats - Martin Denny

 

A Taste Of Honey

Golden Greats

Martin Denny

Art Direction: Woody Woodward

Cover Photography: Ken Kim and David Gooley

Liberty Records LST-7467

1966

A Taste Of Honey

Scarlet Mist

More (Theme from "Mondo Cane")

Quiet Village

Black Orchid

Cast Your Fate To The Wind

Little Bird

The Enchanted Sea

Beyond The Reef

Ebb Tide

Hawaii Tattoo

Call Me (Produced by Joe Sarageno)

King Guitar - Al Caiola

 

Sleep Walk

King Guitar

Al Caiola

Performed by Al Caiola and Al Caiola, Jr.

Produced by Al Caiola

Mixing Engineer: Brooks Arthur

United Artists Records UAS 6586

1967

From the back cover: Pop guitarists may come and may go, but amiable Al Caiola is the reigning monarch of them all. He has been elevated to this august position by both fans and the musicians themselves, and, as a matter of fact, ever since the "guitar explosion" of several years ago, the gifted Caiola has been able to count an ever-growing number of swinging youngsters among his legion of devotees. That is why he is often called "King Guitar". That is why this album is called "King Guitar".

The Caiola artistry with a lovely ballad has never been more in evidence than here with his treatments of "A Man And A Woman", "This Is My Song" and "Lady". Then Al reverses his field and his feeling and gets with today's contemporary sounds via low-down and gutsy versions of later-day smashes like "Detroit City" and "Kansas City", plus "Somethin' Stupid", in which he plays a guitar duo with a young comer named Al Caiola Jr. If further proof of our boy's versatility is needed, it has been promptly supplied by "Front A Palacio", a tremendous hit from Spain, that has been made into a Top Ten contender by King Guitar's instrumental magic. Add "For A Few Dollars More", a movie theme done in the tradition of his memorable "The Magnificent Seven" success, "Tiny Bubbles", handled with an entirely new, and exciting conception, "Sleep Walk", a dazzling exhibition of the Caiola mastery of his instrument, and the brand-new "Stag Or Drag", an ear-arresting sound with a great dance beat, and man, you've got a guitar album with goodies for everybody. And, of course, Al doesn't do it all alone. For support, he's got many of the top hit making sidemen in the nation wailing behind him.

From Billboard - August 12, 1967: This album moves musically and should move commercially. Caiola's styling, mostly on pop hits, produces sound with such numbers as "Sleep Walk" taking on a new dimension. His is joined by his son Al Caiola, Jr., for a swingin' "Somethin' Stupid" that's tops. Other gems include "A Man And A Woman" and "Kansas City."

Detroit City - Arranged by Bert DeCoteaux

This Is My Song - Arranged by Al Caiola

Frente A Palacio - Arranged by Bert DeCoteaux

Somethin' Stupid - Arranged by Al Caiola

Kansas City - Arranged by Bert DeCoteaux

For A Few Dollars More - Arranged by Bert DeCoteaux

Tiny Bubbles - Arranged by Bert DeCoteaux

A Man And A Woman - Arranged by Al Caiola

Sleep Walk - Arranged by Al Caiola

Lady - Arranged by Al Caiola

Stag Or Drag - Arranged by Al Caiola

The All New Hawkshaw Hawkins

 

This Particular Baby

The All New Hawkshaw Hawkins

King Records 808

From the back cover: Many people in our organization, including publicity and adverting men, and even at times the artists themselves write these liners (as they are known in the trade) so that you, the public, can become more familiar with the artist that  you are listening too. However, in this case, an exception is being made. I am writing this liner myself.

Some eighteen or nineteen years ago, about six months or so after I had been in the record business, I received a paper audition record from Hawkshaw Hawkins, which at the time anyone could make by going into a booth and dropping in a quarter. It was crudely wrapped and when I opened the package, the paper record was curled to such a degree that I was tempted to throw it away, but some little voice said to me, "Listen to it," and so I did.

Upon listening to the record, I felt that the person of H. H. had a quality and a depth in his voice that was different and definitely unique. I made arrangements to record H. H. in Huntington, W. Va. Upon arriving there, I met a good looking teenager, who introduced himself to me as Hawkshaw Hawkins. I recorded my first four sides with him in Huntington. The radio station that we used was so small that I had to put the bass player in a closet and close the door, because even playing soft in this small room, which was about 7 x 8 feet, it was impossible to hear anything but the bass.

Hawkshaw Hawkins remained at King for over ten years. He then recorded for RCA Victor and for Columbia, but his first love was always King Records and we are happy and proud to have him back.

These 12 sides were recorded in a period of three days in September of 1962. Most of the Country-Western music lovers might get the impression that Hawkshaw Hawkins is an old man – but figure it out – he has not yea reached his 40th birthday. I believe when he is 60, he will have the same quality and same appeal to the young and old as he had 18 years ago.

Lonesome 7-7203

Silver Threads And Golden Needles

Caught In The Middle Of Two Hearts

I'm Beginning To Forget

Let Them Talk

This Particular Baby

Bad News Travels Fast (In Our Town)

Girl Without A Name

Teardrops On Your Letter

Everything Has Changed

Love Died Tonight

In The Shadow Again

Percussive Vaudeville - The Big Theatrical Sound

 

Sidewalks Of New York

Percussive Vaudeville

The Big Theatrical Sound

Doctored For Super-Stereo

Musical Arrangements by Harry Breuer

Production, Artist & Repertoire: Sidney Frey

Recording Engineer: Ray Hall

Re-recording Engineer: Ernest Oelrich

Editing: William Hamilton

Mastering: Clair Krepps

Cover Art: Irving Sloane

Liner Notes: Harry Breuer, Jr.

Audio Fidelity DFS 7001

1960

Percussion - Harry Breuer, Sam Herman, Arthur Marotti

Drums - Bob Rosengarden, Chauncey Morehouse

Piano - Nick Tagg

Banjo - Carmen Mastren

Bass - Frank Carroll

Tuba - Don Butterfield

Trombone - Frank Saraco

Trumpets - Manny Weinstock, Ray Crisara

Flute - Julius Baker, Al Howard

From Billboard - September 26, 1960: Here is a collection of the favorite vaudeville and minstrel tunes taken from the palmy days of that era of showbiz, but done in a polished stereo manner that would never have been heard in the tank town theater circuit. A top-notch complement, which includes men on banjo and tuba, turns out "Sidewalks Of New York," "Mr. Tambo And Mr. Bones," etc. A myriad of percussion appears to the delight of the stereo buff and it's all recorded in the highest professional manner. Package can generate excitement.

Wild Cherries

Sidewalks Of New York

Georgia Camp Meeting

Mr. Tambo & Mr. Bones

Popularity

The Smiler

Daisy Bell

Rustic Dance

Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight

Hey Rube

Lassus Trombone

The Whistler And His Dog

Ray Anthony Plays For Dancers In Love

 

You Do Something To Me

Ray Anthony Plays For Dancers In Love

Capitol Records T786

1957

Day By Day

You Do Something To Me

I Hadn't Anyone Till You

Easy To Love

Where Am I?

I've Got You Under My Skin

Through!

Falling In Love With Love

I'll Close My Eyes

Blue Champagne

Where Or When

Dancers In Love

Hawaii Connie - Connie Francis

 

Harbor Lights

Hawaii Connie

Connie Francis 

Arrangements: Al Ham, Joe Mazzu & Clem Low

Produced by Bob Morgan

Cover Photo: John Engstead

Art Direction: Acy Lehman

Recored at Commercial Sound, Honolulu / Regent Sound, New York / Columbia, New York

Engineers: Bob Lang, Bob Linton, Frank Laico

MGM Records SE-4522

1968

Singers: Mary Mayo, Toni Wine, Jerry Duane, Stephen Steck, Ronald Martin, Jack Manno, Harry du Val, Jimmy Ryan, Anne Gable, Marlene Ver Planck

Violin: Julius Held, Gene Orloff, Leo Kruczek, George Ockner, Harry Katzman, Paul Gershman, Harry Lookofsky, Raoul Poliankin, Emanuel Green, Max Pollikoff, Paut Winter, Arthur Bogin, Julius Brand, Arnold Eidus, Joseph Malignaggi

Cello: George Ricci, Lucien Schmit, Charles McCracken, Harvy Shaprio

Clavietta: Angelo Dellaira

Organ, Celeste: Morris Wechsler

Percussion: Doug Allen

Reeds: Henry Freeman, Joseph Soldo

Guitar: John Pizzarelli, Vincent Bell, Frank Cerchia

Tiny Bubbles

I'll Remember You

One Paddle, Two Paddle

Red Sails In The Sunset

Waikiki

Happy Hours

Pearly Shells (Popo O Ewa)

Lahaina Luna

Blue Hawaii

Forevermore

Harbor Light

To You Sweetheart

Stimulus Progression Number One - Muzak

 

Easy Come, Easy Go

Stimulus Progression 

Number One

Muzak SZB 497 H-1(1)80

Tonight I'll Say A Prayer

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

Easy Come, Easy Go

Everybody's Talkin'

Jean

Copy Cat

California Girl

Spinning Wheel

Children 

Jingle Jangle

Cecelia 

New Fangled Preacher Man

Porgy & Bess - Mundell Lowe

 

Porgy & Bess

Porgy & Bess

Mundell Lowe and His All Stars

Arranged by Mundell Lowe

Produced by Peter Delheim

Recorded in RCA Victor's Studios A and B, New York, July 16 and 17 and October 3, 1958

Recording Engineer: Ray Hall

RCA Camden CAL-490

1959

From the back cover: When George Gershwin turned from the sleek, sophisticated Broadway scores that had been his stock in trade during the 1920s and the early Thirties to compose "Porgy and Bess" he had to adopt an approach that was quite different from the attitude that had served him so well for such shows as "Lady Be Good," "Tip-toes," "Oh, Kay," "Funny Face" and "Girl Crazy." For these carefully calculated romps, a glib pattern had been evolved and if Gershwin managed to create more quality within the pattern than most of his contemporaries, still the pattern existed and he knew its outlines well.

But the people of Charleston's Catfish Row who had been created by DuBose Hayward in his novel, Porgy, could not be interpreted in the usual songwriting evocations of the South – the Tin Pan Alley concept of Mammy, Alabama, fields of cotton and Swanee, stereotypes to which Gershwin had already made his full contribution. This was a score that required contract with reality, so Gershwin went to Charleston to absorb the sounds and sights and smells and attitudes that would form the setting for "Porgy and Bess." He brought back some things which he transcribed literally – the flavorful street cries, for instance. But most of what he heard there served simply as the basis and guide for the composer's transudations, which retained the essential idiom of Catfish Row but expressed it in terms more suited to the high dramatic concept of "Porgy and Bess."

Something of the same process has been gone through by guitarist Mundell Lowe in adapting "Porgy and Bess" to a jazz interpretation. In writing his arrangements, he has first bone back to the basic idiom of Catfish Row, which is one of the contributory roots of jazz, and, whereas Gershwin adapted this idiom to the needs of the dramatic theater, Lowe has built on it in terms of present-day jazz.

"I wanted to get a modern jazz feeling," the guitarist has explained, "and yet maintain the flavor Gershwin had put into the score – the lonesome, empty feeling in the ballads, for instance."

He felt that this could be achieved partly through his won writing approach, partly through a choice of musicians who playing spanned jazz styles and jazz history from the raw earthiness represented by Catfish Row to is more cerebral modern equivalent. And that is why he put together the unusual group which plays all but three of these elections.

The key men are Ben Webster who, as Lowe says, "goes back to the Catfish Row days," who provided the magnificent Duke Ellington band of the early Forties with much of its rampant surge and whose playing has grown richer and more direct as the years have gone by; Tony Scott who was born, musically in the Benny Goodman era and has progressed from there; George Duvivier, a veteran of the Jimmie Lunceford band and a brilliant bassist with an unusually broad range of sympathetic interpretation; and Art Farmer, one of the new crop of jazz stars whose "lackadaisical way of phrasing," Lowe points out, provided him with just the type of modernist expression that he wanted.

And, of course, the key to this key men is Mundell Lowe himself, who plays from one of the most fabulously varied sets of jazz and folk roots that any current musician can boast of – a background that began in the jazz heartland of New Orleans and includes encounter with the Swing Era as a miner of Jan Savitt's orchestra, a pioneering modern jazz venture with Ray McKenley's brilliant but unappreciated big band of the late 1940s, emergence as a polished small-gourd performer with Red Norvo and Ellis Larkins, recognition as an unusually able all-around performer as an NBC studio musician from 1950 to 1958 and even, back in his early days, a fling with country music on "Grand Ole Opry."

For his septet, Lowe has written arrangements that have a loose swinging blues-tinged base. Summertime he viewed as the theme of the whole score. "I wanted to establish a loose feeling," he said, "so it starts very simply with the baritone (Scott) playing paraphrases of melody and gradually the whole band comes in."

Bess, You Is My Woman is taken at a tempo which, Lowe says, "most good singers use when they do this tune. We've just added a little swing and syncopation to it." Redheaded Woman, one of the less familiar tunes in the score, was chosen by Lowe because "it afforded a nice little blues for the band to play." The blues in this are recipes suggestions of a Basie interpretation. 

My Man's Gone Now is one of two pieces which Lowe felt required some basic changes for jazz treatment.

"It's such a beautifully mournful piece, "he asserts, "but it was a waltz in the original score and I felt that doing it in three-four didn't bring out the feeling I though it should have. So I rewrote it from a rhythmic point of view. And on It Takes A Long Pull To Get There, which is sung by a grouped men going out to the fishing grounds, it seemed to me that a twelve-eight rhythm portrayed this particular situation. As I've written it, it start in twelve-eight and shift to a four-four release in the middle."

The three trio selections were designed  by Lowe to achieve a change of sound and style – a shift to a light, carefree, small sound. His cohorts in the trio – Duvivier and drummer Ed Shaughnessy – are members of ta group which Lowe usually leads on weekends (pianist Bobby Pancoast is an added starter on these occasions). Shughnessy makes his first recorded appearance as a vibraphone soloist on I Love You, Porgy.

"Ed has been studying vibes for a few  years," Lowe related, "but he was very apprehensive about this little solo. You know, when you've always been a drummer it's a little hard to adjust yourself to playing a melody instrument. I think his solo is one of the tenderest things int he album."

An original Shaughnessy device – or, more accurately, an approximation of it – is heard on There's A Boat Dat's Leaving' Soon For New York. He has invented a small snare drum trimmed with little bells which he has with a foot pedal, giving off an effect something like rhythmic sleigh bells. Ed had to rush to the trio's recording session direct from a television show and he didn't have time to pick up his little bell drums. To replace it, he improvised an equivalent sound by setting a tambourine on top of a regular snare drum and hitting it with his fingers.

The flow and style in which the trio lays this number is based on Lowe's memories of working at Cafe Society with Avon Long, who played Sportin' Life and and this song in the first revival of "Pray And Bess."

"Avon did it in his night club act," Lowe recalls, "he did it very simply, dancing around and waving his cigaret. I've always felt that he was the best of all the Sportin' Lifes and I've tried to catch the wonderfully gay and seductive feeling he gave the song." – Frank Talmadge

Summertime

Bess, You Is My Woman

I Love You, Porgy

I Got Plenty Of Nuttin'

Where's My Bess

Redheaded Woman

My Man's Gone Now

It Takes A Long Pull To Get There

It Ain't Necessarily So

There's A Boat Dat's Leaving' Soon For New York