Roy Hamilton

 

Cuban Love Song

Roy Hamilton

Epic LN 3176

1956

From the back cover: Within a very few months Roy Hamilton moved from comparative obscurity into the limelight with a series of recording its on records. His uncommonly warm voice and obvious sincerity made him an instant success, and since that time he has moved constantly forward, developing his artistry and garnering louder acclaim with every appearance. That a new part was on the horizon was event from his first record, for his made his success not with a new song, but one that had been firmly popular for a decade. This was the Rodgers-Hammerstein You'll Never Walk Alone, a song of string inspirational qualities, which, ever since it was first heard in "Carousel," has been among the country's most believed numbers. But in Roy Hamilton's interpretations, it rose to sales heights it had not known before, and found in him perhaps its most impressive voice.

From that time forward, Roy Hamilton has made many successful recordings and personal appearances, and often his greatest hits have been with songs that are already established popular classics. He seems not so much to bring to these songs new stylings or highly personalized arrangements, as to be singing them for the first time, and making them sound as if the listener were hearing them for the first time. This is an extraordinary gift, and it is one he has developed to a splendid point of communication, singing his songs with such feeling and honesty that his listeners are impressed anew at every performance. In this collection, he offers a variety of old and new melodies, each one stamped with his strongly affirmative approach.

The sketches above give some idea of the manifold interest and careers of Roy Hamilton. Born in Leesburg, Virginia, in 1929, he began singing in church choirs at the age of six. When he was fourteen, his family moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, where he sang with the Central Baptist Church choir, and finished his schooling. Although other interests engaged him, it was music which took the firmest hold, and from such music he branched into operetta and light operatic music, and was hired any a small club in New Jersey to entertain. One night he was heard by a disc jockey named Bill Cook, who brought time ti the attention of Marvin Holtzman, head of popular repertoire for Epic Records, who signed him at once. And at almost the same time, Roy Hamilton became one of the first major stars of the young company.

Along the way to stardom, Roy studied commercial art, showing such aptitude that his instructors encouraged him to make excursions into more serious application of his talents, and he became a highly enthusiastic amateur painter. Some of his canvases, in fact, are to be seen in New Jersey galleries, and he still paints when other activities permit. After school days, he considered taking up boxing as a career, and in this too he was successful. During the brief time he was engaged in the sport, his amateur record listed six wins and one loss, and the latter was avenged some time later in a return match. And of course once he became a star on records, he was sought after by nightclubs for personal appearances, and took these in his stride as well. Beginning with relatively little knowledge of show business, he worked over his routines and developed his act to a thoroughly delightful presentation, learning to make contact with his audience in person as easily and completely as he had on records, Today he is a star performer, and his career is still young.

But it is a recording star that Roy Hamilton appears here, and as one of the brightest. In these dozen songs, he displayed the force and strength that first brought him nationwide acclaim, and the same deep feeling for the sense of lyrics that has made each of his records so rewarding an experience. Whether he sings old favorites, popular classic, or new songs, his versatility is such that the result is exactly right. Shading his voice, tailoring his interpretations to the songs themselves, he presents a varied and fascinating recital that will delight his countless fans, and show to newcomers whey Roy Hamilton has so swiftly become one of America's most popular singers.

From Billboard - February 18, 1956: The warm voice of Roy Hamilton, coupled with excellent instrumental backing, provides a showcase for a dozen songs – many of them great standards – as "Without A Song," "Cuban Love Song," "Trees" etc. Hamilton has had strong hit singles during the past year, and can be expected to sell well on this package.

Without A Song

Cuban Love Song

Trees

A Little Voice

Misty Valley

Take Me With You

Since I Fell For You

All This Is Mine

If You Are But A Dream

My Own Beloved

If Each One Would Teach One

Because

Music For The Big Scene - Sounds In Contrast

 

Snow Job

Music For The Big Scene

Sounds In Contrast

Shirley Bolt, Guy Durell, Jack Brokensha

Contrast Singers

Arrangements & Direction: Donn Preston

Associate Director: Merle Alvey

Produced by Edward A. Kotlar

Associated Producer: Robert B. Garbutt & F. Hal McDavid

Chief Sound Engineer: Bill Beltz

Contrast Recorings CRA 1999

1966

Elegante

It's Goodbye

Let's Take Time

Torchlight In Tahiti

Aloha, You All

Pandora's Box

Honolulu

Snow Job

Laughable 

Big Dive In Acapulco

You've got Class

Combo Techniques

Free Again! - Ann Dee

 

Free Again

Free Again!

Ann Dee

Orchestra Arranged and Conducted by Ernie Freeman

Capitol Records T2784

1967

From Billboard - November 4, 1967: This could be a stepper. Miss Dee has a rich, throaty voice, a way with a lyric and a showman's instinct. Material is all standard. With a little exposure, Miss Dee could be a durable property for Capitol – somewhat in the Marilyn Maye bag.

Stairway To Paradise

Free Again

The Look Of Love

When I Look In Your Eyes

Your Zowie Face

The Sun In My Life

Goin' Out Of My Head

What To Do?

Woman In A Man's World

Medley: Carnival / This Dream / If He Walked Into My Life

What The World Needs Now Is Love! - The Ray Charles Singers

 

Don't Cry

What The World Needs Now Is Love!

The Ray Charles Singers

Originated and Produced by Loren Becker and Robert Byrne

Art Direction: Charles E. Murphy

Recording Chief: Fred Christie

Mastering: George Piros (Stereo), John Johnson (Monaural)

Command Records STEREO RS 903 SD

1966

What The World Needs Now Is Love

Open A Window

Don't Cry

I Understand

There's No Place Like Home

I'll Walk Alone

It's Time To Sing

Promises

A Time For Love (From "An American In Paris")

Strangers In The Night

Minneapolis

I Can't Stop Loving You

Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys - Reg Owen

 

Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys

Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys

Reg Owen And His Orchestra

Photo: Stephen Fay

RCA Victor LPM-1908

1959

From Billboard - June 1, 1959: Owen Albums Pack Fine Mood Sound

RCA Victor has released five new sets by the popular British maestro, Reg Owen, three of which feature stereo counterparts. Basically, the approach is the same in each set with choirs of strings and brass weaving in and around the mostly familiar standard themes. In a set titled, "You Don't Know Paree," the framework is the same, with the added voice of a rippling solo piano on some of the tracks.

Owen recently enjoyed success in the States with a single, "Manhattan Spiritual," and this may serve to bring these Owens albums to the attention of mood-minded jocks. All will serve as splendid mood and background music. On the other hand, the sets are well-packaged, particularly the one titled "Cuddle Up A Little Closer," which shows a mother bassett hound and her brood of pups doing just that.

Recordings are all of high quality and the stereo, where it's available, is good without being exaggerated.

"I'll Sing You A Thousand Love Songs," LSP and LPM 1906; "Girls Were Made To Take Care Of Boys," LSP and LPM 1908; "Cuddle Up A Little Closer," LSP and LPM 1914; "Deep In A Dream," LPM 1907; "You Don't Know Paree," LPM 1915

September In The Rain

Girls Were Made To Take care Of Boys

Trust In Me

It Had To Be You

As Time Goes By

A Little On The Lonely Side

Somebody Loves Me

Can't We Talk It Over

I'll String Along With You

Heaven Can Wait

Can't We be Friends?

Time Waits For No One

Xavier Cugat (Hall Of Fame Series EP)

 

Xavier Cugat

Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra

Hall Of Fame Series

Columbia B-2510

1957

Come To The Mardi Gras - Vocal by Aladdin and The Boyd Triplets

Miami Beach Rhumba - Vocal by Aladdin and The Boyd Triplets

Mambo No. 5

Mambo No. 8

Teddy Buckner On The Sunset Strip

 

Down In Jungletown

The Teddy Buckner Band On The Sunset Strip

Dixie Jubilee - Crescendo Dixieland Jazz

Frank Bull and Gene Norman Presents GNP DJ510

1960

Trumpet - Teddy Buckner

Clarinet - Caughey Roberts

Trombone - Streamline Ewing

Piano - Chester Lane

Bass - Art Edwards

Drums - Jesse Sailes

From the back cover: Teddy was born in Sherman, Texas, July 16, 1909 but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles. One day when he was 8 or 9, he saw a kid band from an orphan's home parading down the street. The trumpet fascinated him and he told his mother, "That's for me."

When he had mastered the horn he played with the old John Kirby group, with Lionel Hampton and Benny Carter and made several movies with Fats Waller. There's no doubt his playing was greatly influenced by his long-time friend Louis Armstrong.

It was Armstrong who suggested that Buckner join the Kid Ory band, and that's when the Dixie music got through to hime. For four years he stood at the side of the old master of the Creole trombone, and in January, 1954 when Ory moved on to San Francisco, Teddy formed his own band. The Teddy Buckner band has been a Southern California favorite ever since.

One of the many highlights of Teddy's career was his triumphant tour of Europe in 1959, during which he appeared with Sidney Bechet at the Cannes and Knocke festivals.

From Billboard - September 19, 1960: A Dixieland styled sextet, the Teddy Buckner group also shows the influence of more recent jazz stylings, especially in instrumental solos. But it's basically the New Orleans orientation that is stressed in such items as "Dixieland One-Step," "Weary Blues," "China Boy," and an all-out attack on "Down In Jungletown." Lots of appeal in this set.

Dixieland One-Step

Mack The Knife

Weary Blues

She's A Good Good Woman

Col. Bogey March

China Boy

St. James Infirmary

I'm Crazy About Dixieland

Down In Jungletown

Ralph Burns In Percussion

 

Strike Up The Band

Where There's Burns There's Fire

Ralph Burns In Percussion

Stereo Sight And Sound

Warwick Records W 5001

1961

From Billboard - April 10, 1961: Morty Craft's Warwick Records has unveiled a new "Sight And Sound" 5000 series of audio albums with the accent on percussion. Three of the initial seven sets contain a large string complement in center stage abetted by a vast array of percussion. In another case, there is a Ralph Burns big band set, again with the spotlight on percussion.

In other sets we find "The Soul Of Percussion" and "Glenn Miller Meets The Dorsey Brothers," again in the inevitable percussion. All of these have bene obviously well-engineered and there is a great attempt to show movement of instrumentation, as though back and forth across a stage. Sound buffs will find a lot of what they like, and there is much that is danceable, including such wide-ranging items as "Concertos" by the Warwick Symphony and an all modern jazz presentation.

What strikes a reviewer here is the actual value of the use of the overworked word percussion, when in fact a bank of percussion may serve only to introduce an arrangement in the first 10 seconds or so with the scoring then proceeding along more conventional lines, This appears a tendency today in many areas and a firm might be better off taking a less obvious merchandising approach.

A Foggy Day

Moon Child

Old Devil Moon

Let's Face The Music And Dance

Portrait Of Mia

Day In Day Out

Felicidade

Blue Holiday

Bijou 

Love For Sale

All Of You

Strike Up The Band

Introducing Pete Rugolo

 

Early Stan

Introducing Pete Rugolo and His Orchestra

Columbia Records CL 635

1954

From the back cover: Early in 1954, Columbia gathered three exciting new orchestras together to bring forth the newest and most interesting ideas in present-day dance music. A genuine cross-section of today's finest was planned, and some of the first fruits of that idea are here in this collection. The orchestras were those of Pete Rugolo, Les Elgart and Dan Terry, three notable young musicians, and their dance music is as stimulating – and danceable – as anything to be heard these days.

Pete Rugolo, on whom this collection focusses, is a pioneer in progressive jazz composition and orchestration. One of the most exciting voices in modern music, he has been voted "best arranger of the year" for five successive years in both "Downbeat" and "Metronome," and won a South American poll for outstanding scoring. His unusual harmonies and conceptions have not been for orchestra alone, for he has made arrangements for many star vocalists.

Perhaps best known is his work as chief arranger for Stan Kenton's Orchestra in its most provocative days. More than fifty Rugolo works have  been recorded by the orchestra, and in this collection he pays tribute to the group in Early Stan. Pete Rugolo studied at San Francisco State College and went on to acquire a Masters degree at Mills College. During 1939 and 1940, he studied with Darius Milhaud, the famous French composer, and in 1940, his Suite For Strings won first prize in a Mills College competition. At the same time, he was playing piano with dance orchestras, playing French horn solos with the Sonoma County Symphony in California, and arranging for the Johnny Richards band.

This collection opens with Harold Arlen's That Old Black Magic, taken at a somewhat faster pace than usual, so that the convolutions of the music take on an even greater electricity; influences from the teachings of Milhaud can be found, too, in the extraordinary voicings Rugolo has written for his orchestra. Next follows Early Stan, a Rugolo original, presenting the kind of thematic development that contributed so much to the brilliance of the Kenton orchestra. Bazaar, arranged  by Rugolo from a section of Khachaturian's "Gayne" Suite, offers him an opportunity to show the expressive colorings that can be obtained from a modern dance orchestra, and in California Melodies, he again raises the tempo for growing excitement, winding up with a short waltz coda.

In You Stepped Out Of A Dream, the possibilities of a flavorsome ballad in moderate tempo are explored with a wealth of interesting sounds, while the 360 Special, another Rugolo original, generates its own special exhilaration. A light Latin beat provides the basis for his arrangement of Laura, a setting distinctly in the modern idiom that carefully preserves the feeling of the song, and the collection continues with another Rugolo composition, Come Back Little Rocket, wherein the whole pallet of the orchestra comes into play in a heady, fast-paced explosion. Throughout the collection, the inventions nd control of a master arranger is clearly evident, and the brilliant technicians who comprise the orchestra respond with performance that are a sharp and edged as the music.

The Rugolo treatment of such old standby as In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree clearly demonstrates what new voicing will do to a tune that is almost over-familiar, giving it an entirely new pulsation. Much the same thing happens in the Sidewalks Of New York Mambo, with its own special humor and the inescapable excitement of the mambo beat. Just what can be done with a basically simple theme in experimental popular music shows up brilliantly in the Theme From The Lombardo Ending, wherein a five-note phrase becomes a full-lengthy arrangement through a series of ingenious and amusing elaborations. For the finale, the Rugolo orchestra offers Mañana, a hit of a few years back, in a rousing interpretation.

That Old Black Magic

Early-Stan

Bazaar

California Melodies

You Stepped Out Of A Dream

360 Special 

Laura

Come Back Little Rocket

In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree

Sidewalks Of New York Mambo

Theme From The Lombardo Ending

Mañana 

Discotheque - Herbie Mann

 

Mediterranean

Discotheque

Herbie Mann

Produced by Herbie Mann

Arranged and Conducted by Pat Rebillot

Recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York, New York

Recording Engineer: Jimmy Douglas

Design & Art Direction: Paula Bisacca

Photography: Robert Monroe

Type Illustration: Richard Hernandez

Atlantic Recording Corporation

Atlantic SD 1670

1975

Flutes - Herbie Mann

Keyboards - Pat Rebillot

Drums - Steve Gadd

Bass - Tony Levin

Guitars - Jerry Friedman, Hugh McCracken, Bob Mann

Percussion - Ralph MacDonald, Armen Halburian, Ray Barretto (Ray Barretto appears through the courtesy of Fanta Records)

Trombones - Barry Rogers, Sam Burtis

The guitar solos on Lady Marmalade, Mediterranean and High Above The Andes are by Bob Mann

Background vocals - Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, Eunice Peterson

Hi-Jack

Pick Up The Pieces

Lady Marmalade

Mediterranean 

I Can't Turn You Loose

I Won't Last A Day Without You

High Above The Andes

Bird Of Beauty

Guava Jelly

The Greatest Garner - Erroll Garner

 

Summertime

The Greatest Garner

The Erroll Garner Trio

Cover Design: Guidi, Tri-Arts

Cover Drawing: Norman Sunshine

Atlantic Recording Corporation 

Atlantic 1227

1956

Recorded in New York with the following personnels:

On The Way You Look Tonight, Turquoise, Pavane, Impressions, Skylark, Flamingo, Reverie, Blue And Sentimental and I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Erroll Garner is accompanied by Leonard Gaskin (bass) and Charlie Smith (drums).

On Confession', I May Be Wrong and Summertime, Erroll Garner is accompanied by John Simmons (bass) and Harold Wing (drums)

From the back cover: Because of its peculiar nature, the piano, which is at once a percussive instrument, a melody instrument, an orchestral creation, and a solo vehicle, has had, like the can opener, a singularly ambidextrous career. This has been particularly true in jazz music. In fact, there is, on one hand, a history of jazz, with the piano a foundation part of it, and, again, there is a complete and almost separate parallel history of solo jazz piano, which has been practiced by ragtime pianists, boogie woogie pianists, blues pianists, stomp pianists, and, more recently, by a host of less esoteric performers who, though sometimes associated with jazz groups, have  become a kind of parade of one-man jazz bands. The greatest of these – Earl Hines, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, James P. Johnson, Mary Lou Williams, and Count Basie – have woven the piano probably the most fertile and diversified jazz instrument. In turn, jazz piano has bred the most individualistic of all jazz instrumentalists excepting obvious monuments like Armstrong, Goodman, Catlett, Parker and Hawkins – so that one can find at one end of the rainbow the sliding pastels of Billy Taylor and at the other the chunky reds and blacks of Sam Price or Joe Sullivan.

The youngest and at present most celebrated of the great solo pianists is a thirty-four-year-old heretic from Pittsburgh named Erroll Garner, who stands five foot two, is constructed lie a pugilist, has a generous, non-pugilistic parrot nose, huge hands that can, if sufficiently taffies up, span fifteen of sixteen notes, a diminutive and elf air, and an octapal way of going at his instrument that entrances both those who eat shrimps with Russian dressing and those who eat pastrami, hot, on the bun. Basically, Garner's pianistic method is an orchestral one. For, unlike the many contemporary jazz pianists who peck at their keyboards like fastidious canaries, Garner, in the tradition of his predecessors, uses all the infinite color, tone, rhythm, and dynamics inherent in his instrument. Surprisingly few jazz pianists – let alone jazz instrumentalists of whatever kind – have learned the great uses of dynamics. Garner, however, employs them ceaselessly. Within the same chorus, for example, he often devises a series of big, jagged chords, piling them thunderously atop one another until one begins to feel that he is being literally thumped on the ear. Then, suddenly, he will drop his volume in the space of a whole note to the spindliest pianissimo, and execute, perhaps, a garland or two of barely struck single notes in the right hand, with craggy, whispering chords in the left, so that, in place of tender, the bewildered listener abruptly finds himself being swathed in feathers. Linked closely with this symphonic attack, is Garner's extraordinary sense of rhythm, which permits him, variously the use masses of craggy, suspended rhythms  often in introductory phrases at the opening of a number of as a preface for an improved chorus – and, at almost all times, to jump ahead or, more often, lag far behind the beat, much as though he were a shiftless man in sloppy socks examining his stubble. Other and more minor facets of Garner's style are the frequent use of the upper registers, where he often develops – in quick, staccato strings of notes – a sense of the bubbling excitement usually associated in this area with Count Basie. Again, Garner will sometimes shift the melody work from his right hand to his left and the rhythm from his left to his right by simply transferring these duties from one hand to the other, instead of, as in the custom with more commonplace technicians, crossing his hands. (Garner can write or play tennis with either hand, and once, on a recording date he made with a broken finger, played a perfect set of chords with the back of his hand.) Great warmth and an extremely attractive sense of poignance are however the root features of Garner's appeal. There are of course, limitations to his capabilities. He does not know how to read music. (He was advised by a music teacher in Europe a few years ago that he should not, for the present, at least, take lessons for, it was felt, formal instruction would destroy what the teacher regarded as one of the greatest natural piano styles he had ever heard.) Garner is, as well, a home taught product whose technique sometimes results in slurred notes and rather odd-sounding chords. These frailties have occasionally forced him to rely overly on stylization rather than on freshness. When this happens, he becomes repetitive and throttle. But, like all primitives of great talent, Garner has an apparently bottomless love for his form. which eventually and inevitably comes spilling out again to wash away the staleness and the props.

Garner, who is a shy, sensitive, intelligent man with a ready sense of humor, was born into a musical family, and, at the age of three, was playing reasonable facsimiles of tunes he had heard pumped out on his family's player piano. When he was seven, he was a member of the Kandy Kids, a band of his peers, which broadcast weekly over KDKA in Pittsburgh. A few  years later, he was sitting in with one of Fate Marable's riverboat bands with another minor named Jimmy Blanton. He worked with local bands in his mid-teens, never finishing high school, became for a time a professional boxer (he recently disappeared from New York for a few days and was found upstate by his manager, the teeming Martha Glaser, engaged in sparring practice with a young boxer he had just "bought"), and played pit piano in theaters, one of which was located in a bucolic outpost called Glen Falls, N.Y. Buy this time, Garner's style – according to a musical who heard him at the time – was largely crystalized. (Garner does not feel that any single pianist shaped his playing, and indeed this seems true; the only influences one can isolate are what amount to a respect for certain characteristics in the work of Hines, Waller, and perhaps Tatum.) He arrived in New York in 1944 and he was twenty-three, and worked at first along Fifty-Second Street, which was undergoing its last and probably greatest days a a jazz strip. He made his first records the same year for the now-defunct Black and white label. During the next year of two, before he went out on his own as a single, Garner played and recorded with Georgie Auld and Charlie Parker. (The twelve reissues here were recorded in 1949 and 1950, and are, all in all, as fresh as anything Garner has set down.)

Garner's sheer prodigiousness has already made him the sort of figure myths are hung on. He has probably, for instance, made and sold more solo jazz piano records than any other jazz pianist. (Ralph Gleason, the West Coast whip, once estimated that Garner's LP output would require seventy-two consecutive hours of listening time.) He has recorded for an estimated total of thirty-seven different labels, most of which pirate masters back and forth like run casks, and most of which pay Garner no royalties. Garner earns at present from records, his new song publishing firm (it has set down on paper some sixty of his compositions and he has, as well, recently completed a concerto for piano and orchestra), and his public appearances, an income equivalent to that of a successful General Motors man – an astonishing condition in an art form who practitioners have been known to starve to death.

Although Garner can be placed as one of the mainstream solo jazz pianists, he is not classifiable beyond that. He has often been rather loosely associated with men like Parker and Gillespie, because of his brief earlier associations with them. Actually, though, Garner is more of rubicund, old-fashioned-type pianist – with his handfuls of keys, his blinking stride attack, and his florid right hand who has little in common with the prim young men who play the piano as if it had just two octaves. Critics have lashed into print with balloons of praise as well as with rococo statements (Harold Schonberg in the New York Times after the second Newport Jazz Festival) to the effect that Garner is not really a jazz pianist, but a kind of hyped-up cocktail musician. In the meantime, Garner continues shedding a good deal of hot and beneficent light around the modern jazz world, which has become so languid in recent years that a musical was  reported a short time again in Down Beat as saying that pretty soon jazzmen wouldn't have to play jazz; instead, they would just sit around and think it. – Whitney Balliett

The Way You Look Tonight

Turquoise 

Pavane

Impression

Confessin'

I May Be Wrong

Skylark

Summertime

Flamingo

Reverie

Blue And Sentimental

I Can't Give You Anything But Love

The Cats Meow - Jerry Murad's Harmonicats

 

Harlem Nocturne

The Cats Meow

Jerry Murad's Harmonicats

Mercury Records MG20136

1956

From the back cover: A trumpet player has a tough time in this world. He's got to blow so good just to make a dent in the great big world of music. A piano player's got it even tougher. The great big world of music is crawling with piano players. Same for guitarists, drummers, sax men, take your pick. Music is not an easy way to make a living. Just to earn moderate acceptance, you've got to be so confounded good.

Well then, consider the case of the man who would earn his living blowing the common mouth organ. Good? Why a proud, self-respecting musician wouldn't even listen to a good one. A terrific one would be lucky to win an approving smile.

So it's little wonder that you don't need the fingers of more than a single hand to count up the processional harmonicists you've ever heard. And you only need one finger to point out the most popular harmonica player there ever was – Jerry Murad, leader of the incomparable Harmonicats.

Jerry and his colleagues are not only unquestionable master of the row-of-reeds but they have elevated their chosen instrument to unquestioned acceptance as vehicles for the highest and most thrilling virtuosity.

The harmonica is probably the most American of instruments – hardly any American boy grows into a man without having learned the elements of playing it. The best instruments, though, have been made in Germany. So it's nice and incongruous that Jerry, the  instruments prophet, was born in Istanbul, Turkey. But the parents Murad came to America to rear Jerry and his harmonia in bustling Chicago. As a kid, Jerry'd have half the school gathered around him during lunch hour – even the teachers – for a concert on his pocket-sized instrument. When he graduated, he auditioned for the late Borrah Minnevitch, leader of the Harmonica Rascals, and he got the job after playing one tune. Three years later Jerry and two other Rascals, Al Fiore and Don Less, cut away to form their own group, the Harmonicats.

Not long after, a new and fresh-minded record company was forming under the agile name of Mercury. Perhaps it was beginner's luck for both the artist and the company, but the Harmonicats' Peg 'O My Heart is still – and will be for some time to come – one of the most elephantine hits in the history of music anywhere. More than three million roceds have been sold and the figures are still mounting.

In this Long Playing potpourri, Mercury happily presents on of its first and always one offs most unwaveringly popular names for record devotees. So turn out the lights and putout the milk while The 'Cats Meow in a platter of roast-changing paces and moods.

Mickey

Just One More Chance

Near You

Heartaches

The Cat Meow

Souther Cross

Harlem Nocturne

Hora Staccato

Catwalk

Peggy O'Neil

That Girl

It Was Only Make Believe

The Incomparable Hildegarde

 

Cheek To Cheek

The Incomparable Hildegarde

Hildegarde Sings

Design Records DLP 77

1958

From the back cover: Session Notes -  The unique piano effect and styling is the result of an interesting experiment in sound symmetry. The placement of twin Steinway pianos in ideal acoustical position with the balance in sound added by the center piano gives you the effect you feel of "Absolute Presence"... You are there!

The piano stylists are Cornel Tanassy and Salvatore Gioe (alternating with Joseph Berlingeri at the twin Steinways, with the feature piano played by "The Incomparable Hildegarde.") – Ralph Stein, Producer

Also from the back cover: Recordings made by the "incomparable" Hildegarde over the past two decades have all become collectors' items. This has happened because in her lifetime she has become a legend in Europe as well as the United States. During this period the lovely chanteuse, who came out of Milwaukee to astonish the world of entertainment Paris, has recorded twenty albums. These all have one thing in common, a lasting quality.

Hildegarde, herself, has the internally durable quality in her songs and the personal appearances which have taken her to all parts of the world before royalty, thousands of service men, theatre audiences, and the world of supper clubs, where she began her fabled entertainment career. Perhaps more than any other feminine star, Hildegarde has entranced audiences in nearly every entertainment media – television, radio, theatre, supper clubs, cafes, the concert world and even the symphonic stage. Her acclaim has been international.

Her return this season to the Persian Room of New York's elegant Plaza – where she starred 12 consecutive years twice a year – is typical of the everlasting enchantment of Hildegarde and her magical hold on an audience. She is dramatic, she is sentimental, she is gay. And the beauty, and romance and charm of Hildegarde is timeless.

Controversy has bubbled around Hildegarde all of her years of show business, because she makes rules of her own. She is currently preparing to star in a musical movie called "Romance Oil", to be filmed in many of the world's oil centers from Oklahoma to the Near East. In television, an hour-long show starring Hidegarde as actress, singer and hostess is being prepared and will be filmed in many of the world's romantic capitals. She is also preparing another one woman show, a 2 1/2 hour presentation with Hildegarde and a symphonic orchestra which will tour, just as she has done in recent years, through the United States and Europe. In the offing also is a Broadway musical built around her versatile personality, which won plaudits when she appeared in the leading role of "Can Can" the last few summers.

In her lifetime, no entertainer has challenged the remarkable showmanship of Hildegarde as a singer of ballads. She transports an audience to an island of romance, but her amazing showmanship was developed through all avenues of theatre. Born in a Wisconsin village, she grew up in Milwaukee with the desire to be a concert pianist. In vaudeville she learned the elements of dramatic showmanship. Fabulous Gus Edwards discovered her, urged her to use only her first name, and awarded her stardom. Her first European appearance was in London's Cafe de Paris, but it was across the chanel in Paris where Hildegarde made her mark with her first international audiences. Her appearance before the royal families of Europe are already legend. Retiring to the Untied States, she was greeted as the "incomparable" Hildegarde, became a national radio star with the Raleigh Room and was given number one billing in the nation's leading supper clubs coast to coast. She toured theaters with her own show, starred in concert performances with symphonic orchestras in the United States and many countries of Europe. Paris, where she had made her beginnings in the unknown boîtes, welcomed her with a guard of honor.

Hildegarde's fantastic career rises even higher. Millions know the Milwaukee chanteuse for her fabulous clothes – which constantly have brought her honors as one for he world's best-dressed women –, for her roses, her hankies, her long black gloves, her upswept coif, her joie de vivre, her infectious gaiety and sadness.

She is timeless – and matchless. Now, listen to her new bewitching entries in the saga of Hildegarde. – A. E.

From Billboard - October 20, 1958: An attractive cover sets off this package of sides by the chantress. Her style is still the same – ultra Continental – with songs whose lyrics lend themselves to interpretations in various languages in addition to English. "Lili Marlene," "I Love You In Any Language," "September Song" are included.

Lili Marlene 

I Love You In Any Language 

Cheek To Cheek

Mademoiselle de Paree

"Tristesse, Toujours, Tristesse"

September Song

If I Knew You Were Coming (I'd've Baked A Cake)

Ti-Pi-Tin

The Trees Of Paris

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (I Love You)

Fascinating Rhythm - Yehudi Menuhin & Stephane Grappelli

 

Summertime

Fascinating Rhythm

Music Of The Thirties, Album 2

And More Great Standards by Gershwin, Porter and Kern

Plus two Grappelli originals

Yehudi Menuhin / Stephene Grappelli

Violins with Jazz Ensemble

All selections arranged by Max Harris excepting the two Grappelli compositions

Directed by Max Harris

Recording Producer: John Mordler

Engineer: Tony Clark

Art Direction: Marvin Schwartz

Recorded May 21, 22 & 23, 1975 in EMI's Abbey Road Studio No. 1.

Photo: Reg Wilson

Angel S-37156

1975

From the back cover: One of the rare delights of the Seventies has been "Music Of The Thirties" by an incomparable duo: the mercurially brilliant classical virtuosos Yehudi Menuhin and the legendary French master of the jazz violin Stephane Grappelli. The combination of their two diverse styles creates a stunning listening experience that overflows with superb enjoyments.

There is one notable anachronism, of course, in designating the Menuhin-Grappelli performances "Music Of The Thirties." True, the tunes by Gershwin, Porter and Kern were omnipresent in that decade, But such were the era's barriers between "classical" music and jazz that a Menuhin and a Grappelli were hardly likely to meet, let alone perform together. Menuhin (b. 1917) in the Thirties was a teen-age Wunderkind rather much locked into performing the classical repertoire from Bach to Elgar. Grappelli (b. 1910), in his 20's, was attaining worldwide celebrity with guitarist Django Reinhardt in the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. 

In American, Stereo Review magazine's James Goodfriend termed the Menuhin-Grappelli performances "irresistible." He elucidated, "There is a sort of brilliant daffiness about the disc, the palm court brought up to date and raised to an infinitely higher power. The playing is full of wit and daring, the accompaniment apt, and the recording fine. I can virtually guarantee that if you hear one band, you'll buy it."

The listener will almost certainly find Album Two more delightful still. For ready reference, as he faces his speaker, he will hear Grappelli from the left, Menuhin from the right. Now old friends of two years, the violinists mesh like players who've made music together much of their lives. With them from the first album are Alan Clare on piano and  Lennie Bush on bass. Joining in for the first time are Ronnie Ferrell on drums and two fine jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs and Denny Wright, In addition, arrange Max Harris also turns up on piano.

More than ever, Album Two swings – exhilaratingly, ingeniously, captivatingly – with a bedazzlement more potent still that that which led Gramophone's Edward Greenfield to describe the first album fascination:"It is not quite like any pop, jazz or classic record you have ever heard!"

Porter: Just One Of Those Things

Gershwin: Soon

Gershwin: Summertime

Gershwin: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Grappelli: Johnny Aime

Porter: Looking At You

Gershwin: Embraceable You

Gershwin: Fascinating Rhythm

Gershwin: Liza

Kern: Why Do I Love You?

Grappelli: Menuet Pour Menuhin

Gerswhin: 'S Wonderful

Porter: I Get A Kick Out Of You

Kern: All The Things You Are

Gershwin: I Got Rhythm

Hawaiian Holiday - The Oahu Serenaders

 

Tau Here Raa (Paradise Blossoms)

Hawaiian Holiday

The Oahu Serenaders

Golden Tone 14086

Hawaiian War Chant

Lovely Hawaiian Madonna

Paul Te Mata (Girl Of The Reef)

Whispering Lullaby

Maori's Farewell

Make Aloha Nui Oe

Te Manu Oo Te Po (Moon Over The Islands)

Sleepy Sea

Tau Here Raa (Paradise Blossoms)

Aloha Oe

Flamenco - The Spain Of Manitas - Manitas de Plata

 

Andalucia: Fandangos del la Malasuerte

Andalucia: Fiesta Andaluza

Andalucia: Fandango por Soleares a Dos Guitarras

Flamenco 

The Spain Of Manitas

Manitas de Plata

Cover Design: Ron Coro

Columbia Records CS 9891

1968

From the back cover: Manitas' Spain has always been the reflection of the traditional "cante condo," those lively intimate songfests which animated the late-night Spanish get-togethers. Manitas sensed even more deeply than an Andalusian the grace of Seville, the severity of Cordoba, the purity of Granada, the charm of Jerez.

The strange irony of his intimacy with Spain lies in the fact that Ricardo Ballardo (Manitas de Plata, meaning "little hands of silver," is his professional name) was not born in Spain, but in Séte, in the south of France, and did not set foot in the land of his heritage until he was forty-seven, at which time he finally set out to trace the fountainhead of his flamenco inspiration, and to see with his own eyes the Golden Tower and the Triana quarter in Seville, the mosque in Cordoba, the Alhambra and the Sacromonte in Granada, and to witness the frenzied gait of the Jerez festival.

But his dreams were always his strongest inspiration and, for once, fact was not greater than fiction: the Andalusia of 1968 was something of a disappointment to the nomadic Manitas who, along with the byways of Provence, would listen enthralled to the sometimes animated, sometimes nostalgic tales of the mysteries of Andalusia. For Manitas was a gypsy, and essentially remains one to this day, not knowing how to read of write, having received no musical education, and yet enjoying a reputation as the greatest living exponent of flamenco music, and he is considered by some to be the greatest guitarist alive today.

And so it is that his nostalgia for those early legends of Spain, recounted by the gypsies gathered around the brightly colored caravans, comes through with greater poignancy and force, under this agile silver fingers floating over the strings of his guitar, as we listen to his improvisation whose appropriate collective title might well be "Andalusian Suite," than any later impression he many have received in the Spain of today.

In the Arabesque de I'Alhambra all the convolutions of the Moorish architecture of the palace are graphically conjured up for us under his fluid finger; wheres La Ciudad de Don Pablo recalls his second meeting with Picasso (born in Málaga, hence the title of the improvisation based on a malagueña rhythm) at which time Picasso decorated his guitar. In the third piece he calls upon his son Manero to sing the Malasuerte or lament of the gypsy, but immediately sounds of the Fiesta Andalusia, based on the thryhms of the bulerias. 

His son Manero joins him again at the end of Side I to play on his guitar (instead of singing), and together they give us their own interpretation of the classic, Fandango por Soleares.

On side II Andalusia and Aragon are set in contrast, the one through the evocation of Ronda, Seville's sister city nestled in the mountains, the cradle of the art of bullfighting, and the other Zaragoza, on the road between Barcelona and Seville, where the jota is danced.

Manero returns to sing the Seguiriya, a kind of saeta, accompanied by the guitar, which ends in a typically gypsy way with a fandango.

But Seville outshines them all, in her unforgettable grace, as Manitas makes all too clear to us, through the expressive tempos of the Sevillana.

Finally, the last improvisation Manitas offers us evokes "Cordoba, the Morrish Woman," with this Morrish dance drawn from an ancestral rhythm which his fingers enkindle like an artist's brush painting who brilliant blue of an Andalusian sky.

Granada: Arabesque de I'Alhambra

Malgaga: La Ciudad de Don Pablo

Andalucia: Fandangos del la Malasuerte

Andalucia: Fiesta Andaluza

Andalucia: Fandango por Soleares a Dos Guitarras

Ronda: Por el Camino de Ronda

Aragon: Danse Aragonaise

Andalucia: Seguiriya por Fandangos del Hijo

Cordoba: Tientos por Tres

Sinfonia - Johan Dalgas Frisch

 

Sukiyaki

Sinfonia das Aves Brasileiras

Gravada por Johan Dalgas Frisch

Arrangements by Maestro Moacyr Portes

Copacabana COE LP 40377

1966

From the back cover: Symphony Of Brazilian Birds

Following the success of his earlier discs on which bird song is mixed with human music, South America's leading recordist of bird song now embarks on a full-length LP to illustrate more fully this interesting experiment in aesthetics.

The 1965, 7-inch diameter, 33 r.p.m. records were Sinfonia dos Canários, Sinfonia do Sertão and Sinfonia do Amanhecer; and a set enterprisingly published by Varig Airlines under the series title Symphony Of Brazilian Birds with Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian and Japanese versions.

Johan Dalgas Frisch is probably the most prolific natural sound disc-maker in the world. This new 12-inch diameter LP will be his sixth in five years. The earlier five were of course all of purely natural sound, as recorded in the towns and gardens, swamps and sierras and dense mountain forests of Brazil.

The combining of bird music and man-created music is a venturesome artistic idea. It is not surprising that Johan Dalgas Frisch is the man pioneering it. His energy is intense, his enterprise boundless, and his ideas highly original. What will he do next? – Jeffery Boswall, London, Great Britain - Compiler of A World Catalogue Of Gramophone Records of Bird Voices

Kaiserwalzer (Salsa do Imperator)

Sukiyaki

Branca

Morrer... Sem Ter Amado

Santa Lucia

Trechos de Valsas Vienenses estraidos de: Danúbio Azul, Contos Dos Bosques De Viena, Ondas Do Danúbio

Tico - Tico - Tico

Ondas Do Danúbio

La Chanson Du Moulin Rouge

Luar Do Sertão

Loch Lomond

Vira Do Minho