Woodchopper's Ball! - Woody Herman

 

Who Dat Up Dere?

Woodchopper's Ball

Woody Herman and His Orchestra

Decca Records DL 8133

1955

From the back cover: The wailing, deep-down, and lonesome Blues and the high-spirited, daring and swift-driving Jazz are pure American idioms. They are immediately recognized and have been imitated all over the world. The Blues have a special significance in this connection, for they formed the basis of the Herman Herd, as the Woody Herman organization has been nicknamed. In 1937, one year after the orchestra had made its debut, Woody had a new theme song, "Blue Prelude," and sported a tag line, "The Band That Plays The Blues." After that, Woody went from one success to another – always with the Blues as his background. Woody's successes have been as commercially rewarding as they have been artistically influential. The present collection includes some of his most spectacular numbers. It is headed by the item with which Woody and his orchestra made his first big record hit for Decca – none other than "The Woodchopper's Ball." Here it is, accompanied by seven other characteristic pieces in the Herman mood and rendered in the true Herman manner.

He was born Woodrow Wilson Herman, son of a member of a vocal group known as The White City Four. Before he was nine years old, when he bought his first saxophone, Woody was earning money as a singer and dancer. He learned to play his horn in his home town, Milwaukee. At eleven, Woody picked up his first clarinet and soon was doubling. He left the stage three years later for his first job as a musician and singer with a local band led by a Myron Stewart. Soon afterwards, Herman, slightly built and pucker-lipped, joined his first travelling band, a unit led by Joe Lichter.

Woody left Lichter to return to Milwaukee to complete his high school studies and to enter Marquette University. But barely after he completed his initial semester at the university, Woody got the call from Tom Gerun, whose band was one of the big things of the late twenties and early thirties. He joined the Gerun organization and stayed with it for four years. Aside from Woody, Gerun's vocal department was rounded out by a guy named Al Norris, who doubled as a saxophone player, and a pretty brunette named Virginia Simms. Both have since graduated to pretty fair success under the respective names of Tony Martin and Ginny Simms. From Gerun's band, Herman went to work with Harry Sosnik and Gus Arnheim. Early in 1934, he joined the Isham Jones orchestra, which, when Jones retired from the band business in 1936, became the basis for the first Woody Herman orchestra.

In 1939, after a couple of years of valiant struggle and fighting a constant battle to retain its musical principles, the band played a historic engament at the Famous Door, the 52nd Street night club. Woody's band began to draw engagements and captivate 'audiences in the leading showcases of the nation: the Strand, Paramount, and Capitol theatres on Broadway, the Hotel New Yorker, and others. Woody, the musician, is a clarinetist with a tone and technique that are all his own, (He plays excellent alto saxophone as well, though he didn't feature the horn with his band until recent years.) Woody, the singer, has a flair for phrasing and sings with such feeling that he has earned widespread recognition, both among trade and general public, as a true vocalist and top stylist.

Woodchopper's Ball

The Golden Wedding

Who Dat Up Dere

Yardbird Shuffle

Down Under

Indian Boogie Woogie

Blue Flame

Four Or Five Times

Irresistible You

Chip's Boogie Woogie

Las Chiapanecas

Woodsheddin' With Woody

Frescoes - War In Heaven / The Cave Of Orcus - William Bolcom

 

Frescoes - War In Heaven / The Caves Of Orcus

William Bolcom

Frescoes

Part I: War In Heaven 

Part II: The Caves Of Orcus

Bruce Mather - Piano & Harmonium 

Pierrette LePage - Piano & Harpsichord

Engineering & Musical Supervision: Marc J. Aubort, Joanna Nickrenz (Elite Recording, Inc.)

Mastering: Robert C. Ludwig (Sterling Sound, Inc.)

Dolby-system Recording

Coordinator: Teresa Sterne

Cover Art: Griesbach/Martucci

Art Direction & Design: Paula Bisacca

Special thanks for invaluable help during the recording sessions to harmonium expert Gdalia Kowalsky, and to Baldwin Piano's Concert Technician Steve Borrell

Nonesuch Records H-71297 (Stereo)

1974

Jacket Notes: The word "fresco" refers to the technique of painting on fresh plaster. Early Italian Renaissance fresco masters are known to have worked quickly before the plaster dried; the speed of their work undoubtedly contributed to both the size of the frescoes and the sweep of their gestures in space. (A modern counterpart might be Jackson Pollock, whose "action painting" would have been far less "active" on a smaller canvas.) I am sure any painter, writer, or composer feels the need sometimes to "hew the air"; a sort of damn-the-torpedoes attitude takes over and there doesn't seem to be time to go over details-only to plunge full speed ahead. I felt the need to write Frescoes this way.

The work's most immediate source-material was an early piano duet of mine I rediscovered while visiting my old school-friend Bruce Mather in Montreal; I had written the piece as an experiment around 1960 when we were both students in Paris, and it didn't work as a piece then or now. But the germ idea - a pitting of two triads (C major and E-flat minor) against each other- seemed intriguing enough to set a new work in motion. Many composers, after years of trying to reject tonality, are now re-espousing it in one form or another, often using it in different ways from the classical masters. In Frescoes, the tonal element partakes of both traditional and non-traditional uses, ultimately reducible to the two triads just mentioned.

Jumbled half-remembrances of frescoes at the Campo Santo in Pisa (which, reportedly, also inspired Liszt's Totentanz), friezes at Pompeii, bits of Virgil and Milton, a cantata by one of the earlier Bachs, and a frightening brush with the Abyss were all geneses of the piece. The apocalyptic mode may come too easily to us today (one gets the image of artists returning again and again to the edge of doom, like tourists), and I suspect that in these times the most difficult thing to write would be something akin to Haydn's healthy joyousness. All the same, Frescoes is undeniably "apocalyptic"; I could not write it any other way. Ours is an era wherein the refrain of William Dunbar's 500-year-old macaronic poem returns to toll like a great mournful bell: Timor mortis conturbat me ("The fear of death tortures me").

In Johann Christoph Bach's cantata Es erhub sich ein Streit, depicting the war in heaven between Michael and Lucifer, two choruses hurl C-major chords at each other almost endlessly, in a bold Monteverdian stroke. Suddenly the two tremendous angels battling in midair appear in the mind's eye, motionless (to our accelerated time-sense), poised in eternal combat. This is the central image of War in Heaven; the great battle is described in the Book of Revelation and in Book VI of Paradise Lost. Milton's account is especially vivid:

...now storming fury rose,
And clamor such as heard in Heav'n till now 

Was never, Arms on Armor clashing bray'd 

Horrible discord, and the madding 

Wheels Of brazen Chariots rag'd; dire was the noise 

Of conflict; over head the dismal hiss 

Of fiery Darts in flaming volleys flew, 

And flying vaulted either Host with fire. 

          VI, 207-214.

I see armies enmeshed in enormous tugs-of-war, swords and trumpets gleaming in the blinding sunlight; precipitous darknesses; Michael rending mountains to overcome Satan's mighty engines of war; the blasted plain afterward, smoke rolling "in dusky wreaths, reluctant flames"- and finally the inevitable irony of the whole enterprise. Giants are reduced to lead soldiers by this alchemy, for the war is not won. In Revelation: "And the great dragon was cast out... into the earth." Feeding the irony are efflorescences of early-19th-century battle-pieces and gospel organ-tunes on the vast canvas. The war becomes what it is: a cosmic joke.

Orcus was the lower world in Roman mythology, best described in Virgil's sonorous periods:

Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus orci 

Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus, 

et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas, 

terribiles visu formae, Letumque, Labosque; 

tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala mentis 

Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum, 

ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens, 

vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.
          Aeneid, VI, 273-281.

Before the very entrance, in the outer jaws of Orcus

Grief and the avenging Cares have made their beds; 

there dwell the pale Diseases and dismal Old Age,
and Fear, and evil-counseling Famine, and loathsome Poverty: 

forms terrible to see; and Death and Toil,
and then Sleep, Death's kinsman, and all the Evil Joys
of the mind, and there against the threshold, death-bearing War, 

and the iron couches of the Furies, and raging Discord, 

her serpent hair entwined with bloody bands.

In The Caves of Orcus, the Stygian journey gives onto larger and larger vaults: Death's progress, as in the description in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, comes in stages. We pass by the denizens of Death in a dance that has no hope of cease, that has gone on forever; finally we arrive at the last cave, the end of everything. At the Campo Santo, Hell, in great Dantesque circles, holds at its center a huge Devil merrily devouring some unfortunate miscreant – almost a gay and noisy image. Here, however, in the "land of Shades," reign deep silence. and the eternal hopelessness one finds in the eyes of those elegantly-coiffed creatures in Roman friezes – a hopelessness that is the only hope they know. WILLIAM BOLCOM

Frescoes was written for Bruce Mather and his wife, Pierrette LePage, who gave its premiere performance in Toronto, July 21, 1971, during the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Summer Festival.

For each player, two keyboards are set at right. angles to facilitate rapid change between instruments. In this recording the first pianist also plays a two-manual Neupert harpsichord equipped with 4', 8', 16', and lute stops; the second pianist alternates with an electrified Estey parlor organ probably dating from the turn of the century. Both pianos are Baldwin SD-10s. None of the instruments is amplified.. -W. B.

Canadian composer and pianist Bruce Mather (b. 1939, Toronto) studied piano with Alberto Guerrero and Alexander Uninsky in Toronto, and with Lazare Lévy in Paris; in composition, he worked principally with Darius Milhaud in Aspen and Paris. He earned degrees in music from Stanford University and the University of Toronto. Since 1966, Mr. Mather has taught composition at McGill University, Montreal; he plays regularly for the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec concert series.

After studying with Constantin Klimoff in Quebec City and Alberto Guerrero in Toronto, Pierrette LePage (b. 1939, Montreal) continued piano studies in Paris with Lazare Lévy. Returning in 1962, she toured the Canadian universities under the auspices of the Canada Council. She taught at the University of Toronto for several years and in 1966 joined the faculty of McGill University. Miss LePage has appeared as soloist with the Toronto Symphony and performs frequently for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

As duo-pianists, Pierrette LePage and Bruce Mather have toured Canada and have performed in Europe at the French Festival International de Royan and in Brus- sels' Reconnaissance de la Musique Moderne. Mr. Mather has recorded for RCA Victor and the C.B.C. International Service; this album marks the record debut of Bruce Mather and Pierrette LePage in joint performance.

Born in Seattle in 1938, William Bolcom entered the University of Washington at age 11 as a private student in piano (with Berthe Poncy Jacobson) and composition (with John Verrall and George McKay), and earned his Bachelor's degree there. In 1958, he began study with composer Darius Milhaud in California and Paris; in 1964, he received the first Doctor of Musical Arts degree conferred by Stanford University. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Bolcom has taught music at the University of Washington and at the City University of New York (Queens and Brooklyn colleges), and has been Composer in Residence at the Yale Drama School and the NYU School of the Arts. Since Fall 1973, he has taught composition at the School of Music, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Bolcom has produced a wide variety of works for the stage and for instrumental and vocal ensemble –  among them Sessions I-IV (Session IV recorded on Philips 839.322 DSY) and Black Host for organ, percussion, and tape (performed by William Albright on Nonesuch H-71260) and a large body of piano music, including 12 Etudes (recorded by the composer on Advance FGR-14S), and numerous rags, two of which are heard in Bolcom's album Heliotrope Bouquet/Piano Rags 1900- 1970, Nonesuch H-71257, 12 others in his recording for Jazzology, JCE-72. A prolific writer on musical subjects, William Bolcom is also co-author with Robert Kimball of Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake, a book about Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle's contribution to the black musi- cal theater of the '20s (New York: Viking Press, 1973).

Grass - Ceremony I & III - Paul Chihara / Neville Marriner

Paul Chihara - Grass/ Ceremony I & II

Paul Chihara

Grass (Concerto for Double Bass & Orchestra

Buell Nedlinger, Double Bass

Ceremony I

London Symphony Orchestra

Neville Marriner, Conductor

Lead Soloists

Roger Lord - Oboe

Maurice Meulien & Douglas Powrie - Celli

Robin McGee - Double Bass

Michael Frye - Percussionist

Ceremony III

London Symphony Orchestra

Neville Marriner, Conductor

Solo Flutist: Peter Lloyd

The amplified Hichi-Riki performed by Mr. Suenobu Togi

The Hichi-Riki is a traditional Japanese double-reed instrument used in Gagaku (Court Music)

The Contemporary Composer in the USA 

Turnabout QTV-S 34572

Quadraphonic / Stereo Compatible

1974

From the back cover: Buell Neidlinger is principal bass with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and teaches at the California institute of the Arts. He has been a member of the American Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski, the Houston Symphony under Sir John Barbirolli, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf. He has also served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Center for the Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York under Lukas Foss. Mr. Neidlinger has given numerous solo recitals, notably at Carnegie Hall in New York and Jordan Hall in Boston, and has been soloist at the Ojai, Aspen, and Tanglewood Festivals. In 1968, he was a featured soloist at the Stravinsky Festival at Lincoln Center, New York. In Houston, he was director of the Contemporary Music Society. Mr. Neidlinger is perhaps best known for his performances with jazz artists Cecil Taylor and Gil Evans, and Frank Zappa. His performances on recordings of classical, rock, and jazz music are numerous. More recently, he has produced rock and roll records.

Grass was composed at the request of the noted bass virtuoso Bertram Turetzky, and first performed by him at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on April 14, 1972. Originally conceived as a concerto for bass and orchestra, it eventually evolved into a symphonic meditation on nature (and death), in which the soloist is the principal actor. Grass takes both its inspira- tion and its title from a poem "The Mower's Song" by the sixteenth century English poet Andrew Marvell:

My mind was once the true survey 

Of all these meadows fresh and gay; 

And in the greenness of the grass 

Did see his hopes as in a glass; 

When Juliana came, and she
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.

Though often sunny in its imagery, pastoral poetry is gen- erally sad and elegiac, both in tone and subject matter. So, too, I hoped my composition would suggest deeper responses than its surface sound images. The Marvell poem, recited through the five trombones, is incorporated into the generall orchestral pulse and fabric without focusing attention exclusively on its linguistic properties. Other bits and fragments of personal nostalgia, both literary and musical, find their way into the score – most notably, two sentimental old songs of mine, "Pammy's Tune" and "Whisper Julie." Grass is, I think, a very sad composition, a sort of orchestral requiem, and it dwells largely within a private world of personal associations and images. It is in five movements, played without pause.

As a concerto, it makes heavy demands on the soloist, both technically and compositionally. In the final two movements, for example, he performs against a variety of orchestral textures-some delicate and others raucous, and in a number of different musical styles, from classical to jazz to funky rock. He is asked to integrate these disparate stylistic elements. with his own musical personality, moving naturally from strictly – notated to freely– improvised passages and cadenzas. Mr. Neidlinger, who performs the solo part brilliantly in this recording and who is equipped with the most dazzling technical facility, as well as the broadest musical awareness, meets all demands with gratifying ease and sensitivity.

The Ceremony series of compositions belongs to its own sound world, quite distinct from that of Grass. The word "ceremony" implies for me a stylized ritual corresponding to some deeper, often spiritual transformation. I view these compositions as a kind of musical "rite of passage;" they deal with levels of transformation, and as such may be considered studies in continuous development or variation. They are concert meditations on simple musical objects, such as the unison, the rhythmic ostinato, the triad, etc. Textures are not so much composed as generated, the lines being "woven" by simple but incessant operations on the given materials in incantatory fashion. The principal harmonic interval is the unison (not the octave) – all other combinations being con- sidered dissonant or passing.

Ceremony I was written (and first performed) during the Marlboro Festival of 1971. Ceremony I (not represented on this recording) was composed the following year for the New York flutist Paul Dunkel and members of Speculum Musicae. Ceremony III was completed at Tanglewood in August, 1973, among the beautiful trees of the Berkshire Mountains. It was first performed in November of that year by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (who commissioned the work) under Neyille Marriner. 

Paul Chihara

Paul Chihara was born in Seattle in 1938. His principal teach- ers of composition were Robert Palmer at Cornell University, Nadia Boulanger, and Gunther Schuller. He has received numerous awards and commissions, most recently from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Fromm Foundation for the Houston Symphony, and the San Francisco Ballet. His Forest Music for Orchestra, which is the concluding work in his Tree Music series, has been performed with much success by Zubin Mehta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, in America and on their 1972 tour of Japan. It was also performed by London's New Philharmonia Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival of 1973. Mr. Chihara is a music adviser to the Monday Evening Concerts in Los Angeles, a free-lance composer, and part-time teacher at UCLA. His compositions are published by C. F. Peters.

Neville Marriner is music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as of London's Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. A former violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducting student of Pierre Monteux's, Mr. Marriner ranks among the most honored and sought after of internationally active conductors. His recordings have won him many awards, including the Netherlands' Edison Prize, Vienna's Mozart Gemeinde Prize, Paris' Grand Prix du Disque, and "recording of the year" from High Fidelity, Stereo Review, and The Gramophone. Ceremony III is dedicated to him and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

 

The Swinging 30's

 

The Swinging 30's

The Swinging 30's

Unknown Artist

Riviera (STEREO) catalog number:  R0030 (as marked on the jacket), STR030 (as marked on the disc label) and RST 0030 (as marked on the disc run-out)

1959

Paris Swing

London Swing

Hati Swing

Hong Kong Swing

Pin A Rose On Me

Goodbye Little Girl

Mr. Dooley

Bill Bailey 

Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries

I Don't Care

At The Jazz Band Ball - The Dukes Of Dixieland

 

Blue Prelude

At The Jazz Band Ball

With The Dukes Of Dixieland

Vik LX-1025

1955

From the back cover: 'Way back in 1917 our Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, closed New Orleans' famed Storyville, and jazz took the rap. Jazz flourished in Storyville as part and parcel of the entertainment. When the "Closed" signs appeared, the New Orleans jazzmen, aided in their quest for gold by Representative Andrew Volstead and his 19th Amendment, headed for Chicago, then known as a city of booze, barons and big money. For a long, long time New Orleans wasn't the same. Gradually, a jazz renaissance came about in New Orleans. There were outside influences, to be sure, like the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band in San Francisco. But mainly it was the forces from within, pushing up again against a tide that wasn't pulling too hard. Bunk Johnson had a lot, to do with the rebirth of jazz in New Orleans, and so did a group of youngsters who called themselves THE DUKES OF DIXIELAND. The Dukes got themselves organized right after the fighting stopped in World War II. They were kids, but that didn't seem to matter. Six years ago they walked into the Famous Door in New Orleans for a four-week engagement, and they stayed there for something more than five-and-one-half years. In that time the saloon was remodeled two times. The drawing power of the Dukes was such that the owner had no trouble at all digging up the necessary cash to pay for the expensive redoings. In April of '55, the Dukes were signed for an engagement at the Preview Lounge in Chicago. It was such a terrific success that they've now been signed there to a long-term contract. Because of this, the air should be purer in the old Windy City.

But we have gotten ahead of ourselves, for you should know just who the Dukes of Dixieland are. As of today, the roster reads:

Frankie Assunto - Trumpet & Trombone

Pete Fountain - Clarinet
Roger Johnston - Drums 

Artie Seelig - Piano 

Bill Potter - Bass
Betty Owens - Vocal

Frankie, now all of twenty-four years of age, was the real organizer. The Assunto boys, like each member of the Dukes, were born in New Orleans. They got their musical training from their father, who is still a mean man with the slide trombone. The front line, trumpet, trombone and clarinet, incidentally, is exactly the same today as it was at the beginning, and both Johnston and Seelig have been members almost since the start.

Betty Owens, who is the Duchess and who sings like it was all fun, is from Baton Rouge, which is in Louisiana too. For a while she sang as a child hillbilly star with Governor Jimmy Davis. She came to the Dukes in 1947, and we might guess that she'll be around for as long as they are, as she is married to Freddie Assunto.

There's a whale of a difference between the Dukes and a lot of the other jazz bands you hear nowadays. It's all to the good. Too many Dixieland bands play like it was just a dose of medicine they have to swallow each night; the Dukes don't they obviously get a tremendous wallop out of their music making, and it comes through clear and sharp on this disc. Some younger bands depend almost entirely for effect on enthusiastic effort. The Dukes combine their enthusiasm with enormous ability. They are crisp. They work together as a unit, and the solo playing is fresh and imaginative. They kick into the final ensembles like the liner United States plowing into twenty-foot waves. They are equally at home with standards and popular songs of the day, with tunes that are fast and slow. In other words, the Dukes have it in diamonds, doubled and redoubled, right down to the toes of their argyles.

As for this recording, it deals strictly with the great old Dixieland war horses, with the exception, perhaps, of Blue Prelude. This is the lovely Gordon Jenkins - Joe Bishop tune that was used as a theme for years by Woody Herman, and it's used by the Dukes as a marvelous expression for Freddie Assunto's trombone.

If one single work must be picked as the outstanding number of the album, my choice would be Tin Roof Blues, that ancient collaboration of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings which became so popular as Make Love to Me in 1954. In this one there is a crackerjack and extended solo by one Peter Dewey Fountain, Jr., who is a tremendous clarinetist! There are a couple of times when the clicking of the keys on the instrument can clearly be heard, which may be a good proving point on how well the record was recorded. And a lot of the time, behind Fountain's soulful and expressive blowing, is the undercurrent theme of Yancey's Special. The effect of this is superb.

For Tiger Rag, which should be at least accredited to Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Assunto plays some handsomely guttural trombone. The Dukes don't treat the Tiger as a race horse, but instead subject her to a steady, good gallop, which is the way it should be. Frank Assunto can be heard singing Saints, in the same kind of an "arrangement" used many years ago by Louis Armstrong. Don't miss the tromboning of Freddie on Muskrat Ramble either. Maybe he was thinking of another trombonist when he was playing this tune, another trombonist named Kid Ory who happened to write the thing. Incidentally, Muskrat Ramble didn't have a name right off the bat. It came up for recording during a session by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five. After it was all over, someone or other asked Ory for the name, and he was saved by Lil Armstrong who simply looked up and said: "Oh, that's Muskrat Ramble." Some time later Mr. Melrose of the Melrose Music Company changed the Muskrat to Muskat, because he didn't like the sound of the "rat," but it never did stick.

Panama, At the Jazz Band Ball, That's A-Plenty are wonderful expressions by the full band-solid rhythm, driving horns, magnificent clarinet and excellent solos. The album plays, to a fare-thee-well from stem to stern, and that's the way it was intended by the Dukes of Dixieland, who are, as you will so readily hear, one of the real fine jazz outfits of this or any other time. So, let the record spin. As a lady on my block is apt to say, "It couldn't possibly be more fun!" – FRED REYNOLDS

At The Jazz Band Ball

Beale Street Blues

Muskrat Ramble

Blue Prelude

That's A-Plenty

Original Dixieland One-Step

Panama

Wolverine Blues

Fidgety Feet

Tin Roof Blues 

Tiger Rag

When The Saints Come Marching In

Hit Instrumentals From Western TV Themes - Al Caiola

 

Tall Man Theme

Hit Instrumentals From Western TV Themes

Al Caiola

Guitars with Orchestra

Arranged and Conducted by Al Caiola

Produced by Don Costa

United Artists UAL 3161

1960

From the back cover: The music of the West has been traditionally designed guitar, and it was only a matter of time until Al Caiola, a master of the instrument, and the best of the themes from Western television shows were brought together. The result of this marriage is one of excitement, both for the listener and for the fans of the various video series represented.

One of the most versatile musicians recording today, Al Caiola has been a featured performer on records ranging from Jazz to Rock and Roll. Yet his major success as a star has been with music from the wide open spaces. "Magnificent Seven," a fine motion picture, gained even greater renown when Caiola recorded the title theme and saw it become a big hit. His follow-up, the theme from "Bonanza," also featured in this album, won accolades from musicians as well as millions of fans who bought the record.

The themes contained in this album will be familiar to all television viewers. But the treatment of this music, the way it has been arranged, orchestrated and performed, will add great new dimensions to each and every note you will hear. This is, indeed, a living, musical history of the great West as it has been portrayed to the entire nation through television.

Law Man

Laramie 

Theme From The Rebel

Maverick

The Ballad Of Palidin 

Tall Man Theme

Gunslinger

Wagons Ho!

The Deputy

Bonanza

Rawhide

Bat Masterson

Morgana King With A Taste Of Honey

 

Lazy Afternoon

Morgana King With A Taste Of Honey

Arranged and Conducted by Torrie Zito

Artist & Repertoire: Bud Shad

Original Recording Engineer: John Cue

Re-recording Engineer: Bob Arnold

Mastering: Hal Diepolo

Liner Notes Peter Spargo

Production Coordinator: Harry Ringler

Album Coordination: Elena Festa

Typography: The Composing Room, Inc.

Cover Art and Design: Jack Lonshein

Printing and Fabrication: Globe Albums, Inc.

Mainstream Records S/6015

1966 (or as marked on the run out: 3-30-66)

Personnel and Instrumentation

VIOLINS 

Fred Buldrini

Norman Carr 

Mac Ceppos
Peter Dimitriades 

Leo Kahn 

Leo Kruczek 

Joe Malignaggi 

Harry Melnikoff 

David Nadien 

Max Pollikoff 

Eugene Orloff 

Tosha Samaroff 

Aaron Rosand

VIOLAS
Richard Dickler 

Leon Frengut 

Emanuel Vardi

CELLI 

Peter Makas
Avron Twerdowsky

REEDS 

Julius Baker 

Leon Cohen 

Tom Newsome 

Romero Penque 

Charles Russo 

Sol Schlinger 

Bill Slapin 

Phil Woods

TROMBONE
Willie Dennis

FLUGEL HORN & TRUMPET 

Clark Terry 

Joseph Wilder

FRENCH HORN 

Richard Berg 

James Buffington 

Donald Corrado 

Tony Miranda 

Al Richman

GUITAR
Joseph Galbraith 

Mundell Lowe

PIANO
Hank Jones 

Dave McKenna

BASS
Milt Hinton

TUBA
Don Butterfield

DRUMS 

Mel Lewis

PERCUSSION 

George Devens 

Phil Kraus

HARP
Robert Maxwell 

Margaret Ross

From the back cover: One of the basic characteristics of any great artist is integrity, not only to themselves but to their many admirers who instilled with a deep sense of dedication expect consummate effort from the artist. Morgana King is a sensitive artist who employs with deep respect and reverence a style of singing that is imaginative and unique. Blessed with an acute ear and a distinct sense of rhythm, Morgana selects each tune meticulously so that it complements her free floating style.

Before one recording date was even scheduled, Morgana spent weeks and weeks going over countless numbers of compositions, seeking out the right ones for the album. After selecting the songs Morgana worked them in her act. This way she was thoroughly familiar with each tune. The one common pitfall which Morgana avoided was not allowing her interpretations to become stereotyped or sound dried up. When Morgana was convinced that her interpretation was just right, her next procedure was to sit down with the arranger and work out her ideas with him. The arranger she chose is one of the freshest, most creative writing talents to come along in quite a while. His name is Torrie Zito and the combination of Morgana King and Torrie Zito is a perfect match. It's like a Lorenz Hart lyric supported by a Richard Rodgers melody. Morgana and Torrie put their creative minds together and worked each tune out. Of course, the final orchestration was left up to Torrie. It was decided that it should be recorded in two different sessions. One for the slow expressive ballads and the other for the swinging, up-tempo sides. The composition of the large orchestra on the slow ballad sides was made up of a full complement of strings offset by a section of horns and reeds, tastefully supported by a precise rhythm section. The up-tempo session had a complement of strings, winds and horns, aided by a great brass section consisting of Clark Terry, Joe Wilder, Willie Dennis and Don Butterfield on tuba.

The original conception of "A TASTE OF HONEY" was moderately up tempo and initially performed instrumentally. Morgana's reading is so candid that it makes all the others obsolete and I'm sure that in the future there will be many artists who will try to imitate it, but the way she phrased and interpreted "A TASTE OF HONEY" will never be equalled. Torrie Zito sets the mood perfectly with a poignant introduction. Morgana sings the first verse delicately, accompanied by Barry Galbraith's smooth even guitar. Then she goes into the chorus which is sung in an up tempo. Here the steady drumwork of Mel Lewis and the tasty penetrating fills of Dave McKenna fully support Morgana. The second verse and chorus are performed in the same manner. The third verse is again sung in a slow moving style, but this time Morgana is accompanied by a magnificent counter melody in the strings that reminds you of a duet by Puccini. Supported by a punching brass, soaring strings and Phil Woods' tenor obligato, Morgana reaches to great heights as she makes the last chorus really swing. She then tapers off into a soft melancholy ending making full use of her unusual vocal style.

One of Duke Ellington's most magnificent and underplayed compositions is "PRELUDE TO A KISS" but Morgana's rendition in this album will make a lot of discerning people aware once more. This is one of those rare occasions when everything came off perfectly – the arrangement, the sound and balance of the band and Morgana's rich, haunting reading. "LAZY AFTERNOON" is one of those great, unique songs that is rarely performed simply because it is very hard to sing. You have to be an exceptional artist to do full justice to this Jerome Moross composition from "The Golden Apple." Morgana's keen ear and imaginative style allow her to give an articulate and fresh approach to this difficult song. "LADY IS A TRAMP" puts Morgana in a swinging groove as she lets loose every bit of her energy and exacting sense of rhythm. She is backed up by two hard driving solos by Willie Dennis and Clark Terry. When Morgana said she wanted to do "FASCINATING RHYTHM" it was frowned upon, but when she explained to Torrie her idea of doing it in a 34 tempo, allowing the accents to fall in different beats, Torrie visualized new ideas for an arrangement. The tune came off perfectly as Morgana and Torrie complemented each other articulately. Once again Phil Woods' hard driving solo rounds out the piece. Listen to Morgana's quality on this release – its richness and warmth seem to burst right out of the speakers.

"CORCAVADO" (Quiet Nights) can be classified alongside "TASTE OF HONEY" as a song that is going to be identified as belonging to Morgana King. This beautiful Bossa Nova tune shows off Morgana's fantastic vocal pyrotechnics. Supported by Mundell Lowe's guitar, Mel Lewis' drums and the muted, sonorous string passages written by Torrie, Morgana is in complete control as she makes "CORCAVADO" one of the highspots in the album.

"WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG" and "YOUNG AND FOOLISH" are harmoniously integrated into a warm, meaningful medley. Morgana sings the verse of "WORLD WAS YOUNG" free and easy, supported by a harp. Then she takes the chorus in tempo, melting into "YOUNG AND FOOLISH." After building up "YOUNG AND FOOLISH" to a breathtaking ending, she returns once more to the bright "WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG." Morgana rounds out the album with two Cole Porter classics "EASY TO LOVE" and "I LOVE PARIS." "EASY TO LOVE" is sung in a smooth seductive quality allowing Morgana full use of her immaculate sense of phrasing. "PARIS," on the other hand, puts Morgana back into the relaxed up-tempo groove proving once again that she is one of the most consummate artists in the entertainment field. Even the captious critic will find no room for criticism with this album.

A Taste Of Honey

Fascinating Rhythm 

Corcovado

Prelude To A Kiss

Lady Is A Tramp

Lazy Afternoon

I Love Paris

Medley: When The World Was Young, Young And Foolish

Easy To Love