A Cheerful Earful - Lew Davies

 

On The Sunny Side Of The Street

A Cheerful Earful
Lew Davies and His Orchestra
Arrangements by Lew Davies

Originated and Produced by Enoch Light
Associate Producer: Julie Klages
Art Director Charles E. Murphy
Recording Chief: Fred Christe
Mastering: George Piros (stereo)
John Johnson (monaural)
Command Records STEREO RS 861SD
Grand Awards Record Co., Inc.
1962

From the inside cover: Happiness may be a warm puppy (as Charles Shulz, the creator of "Peanuts" tells us it is).

Or it may be a thing called Joe (as E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen told us in the song they wrote for CABIN IN THE SKY).

But to Lew Davies, happiness is a happy song. By that he does not mean merely a song that has "happy" in the title (although that is often a good clue). A happy song, to him, is a song that has an infectiously happy sound, a sound that communicates to the listener the airy feeling of well-being that we all know is part of those moments of living that we treasure the most.

Happiness can be a lively and a merry experi- ence. Or it can be a reflective, sitting-in-front-of- the-fire contentment. It can have several gradations in between. Lew Davies has touched on all its various points in these delightfully tingling performances.

The starting point for a happy song is rhythm. And you'll find that there are all kinds of happy rhythms as you listen to Lew Davies and his orchestra. There's a bright, happy rhythm that sends you whistling down the street in ZIP-A-DEE DOO-DAH. There's an easy, ambling, happy rhythm that brings on an amiable grin and makes you snap your fingers in ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET. And there's a gentle gossamer rhythm that lifts and swings you gently on CHEERFUL LITTLE EARFUL.

Over these foundations, Lew Davies has created all kinds of happy sounds – perky piccolos and flutes, dancing guitars, clowning xylophones and tuned bongos, merrily swinging saxophones, the big, nudging sounds of deep trombones and the mellowness of an organ or woodwinds.

Lew is the master mixer when it comes to creating a musical emotion that can completely envelop a listener and can actually lift you out of any other mood that you may be in. It was Lew Davies who wrote all those arrangements for the famous PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION series, played by Enoch Light and the Light Brigade – arrangements that sparkled with so much vivid excitement that a whole new world of musical recording was opened up by the recordings. Davies has worked hand in hand with Enoch Light since then, providing the unusual orchestrations that Light has brought to life with such sensational brilliance on the unequalled succession of hit albums that he has turned out.

Lew Davies did not achieve this mastery of musi- cal emotion overnight. Before he teamed up with Enoch Light he had written for the Perry Como Show and for Lawrence Welk and he had been developing his skills with a variety of great bands over a period stretching back to the 1930s.

All this hard-won knowledge and skill has been concentrated in this album toward a single goal - happiness, musical happiness. It's music for danc- ing or it's music for lying back and listening. It's music for reminiscing, for singing-along-with, for toe-tapping or finger-snapping or head-nodding. It's music for practically anything enjoyable that you feel like doing.

But primarily it's music for smiling.

SIDE ONE

IT'S A GOOD DAY. When Peggy Lee wrote the lyrics for this song, she caught that wonderful feel- ing of greeting a beautiful day, of stretching and looking out the window at the most brilliant azure sky, the sun gleaming on grass that never seemed greener, on a world that never looked brighter or cleaner. You can hear Lew Davies translate this feeling into musical terms. First, he sets up a pro- vocative rhythm with Tony Mottola's tight-stringed guitar and Dick Hyman's organ blending brightly. Then, in float the four saxophones - Phil Bodner, Al Klink, Walt Levinsky and Stanley Webb - with a billowing set of phrases that carry us along like a wave. The trombones move in - Bobby Byrne, Bob Alexander, Lou McGarity and Paul Faulise - setting a background from which Doc Severinsen's brilliant trumpet can emerge with an exciting shout. Walt Levinsky swings out on alto saxophone with a solo that leads into a flurry of conversation be- tween Mottola's guitar and the piccolos and organ. The whole thing sweeps and swings and sings along. That's the Davies happy touch.

HAPPY TALK. It's happy talk when you sing the Oscar Hammerstein lyrics but here it's the Davies happy touch that we hear again. But this time it's a little different. It's a little more coaxing, not quite as overpowering. You'll find all kinds of happy ideas here the soft, mellow combination of Tony Mot- tola's guitar and Dick Hyman's organ; the lilting charm of the flute ensemble and the merry little guitar blurbs that back up the trombones.

CHEERFUL LITTLE EARFUL. Whether you have been planning to dance or not, you might as well get ready now. No toes stand still when Lew Davies has the trombones splitting phrases with Artie Marotti's xylophone and Dick Hyman's organ. This sets up a bouncing, inviting rhythm that is carried all through the piece as all the musicians engage in a flowing, criss-crossing conversation that is full of warm laughter and happy thoughts.

EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES. Here's a happy idea a light and airy bossa nova treatment of the swaggering song that Ethel Merman sang in Gypsy, carried out with all the richness that those four trombones can summon up and underlined by the merrily insistent tinkle of a triangle, the softness of the flutes and the smooth, rhythmic pulsation of the organ.

ONCE OVER LIGHTLY. Lightly, but more than once, is the approach to this gay little melody writ- ten by Lew Davies and Enoch Light. It bounces merrily along from the airy flutes at the opening to the piquant piccolo at the end. Notice the variety of effects that Dick Hyman gets from his organ. At first it is brightly staccato, later it is darker but still staccato and, in the second chorus, it spreads out as a warm, soft cushion, blending with the trombones to support the sparkling sounds of the xylophone and the piccolo.

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK. Four piccolos are lined up to start us whistling on this work. Their perky, pulsing feeling is picked up by the high chords of Tony Mottola's guitar, answered in similar fashion by Dick Hyman's organ and swung in smooth swirls by the saxophones. Doc Severinsen shows how gently jaunty a trumpet can be when he comes in for a muted solo. To wrap it up, Lew Davies has had the piccolos and Tony Mottola on guitar, give us a sly, sliding ending.

SIDE TWO

LET'S ALL SING LIKE THE BIRDIES SING. This is sheer musical fun! You have never heard such coy bird whistles as Lew Davies uses in the intro- duction. And later Dick Hyman shows that his ver- satile organ can even turn bird-like. Flights of birds move in with the flutes in the second chorus. Spurred by a distinctly Lombardo-like bird-call, the arrangement moves to a conversation between Phil Bodner's piccolo and the sassy birds we've been hearing all through the piece, ending with a com- ment that is indubitably the bird.

PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Airy and casual is Lew Davies' approach to this old favorite. It has a soft- shoe flavor as the flutes dominate the first chorus and then takes on a stronger sound when the trom- bones and saxophones share the second chorus. Dick Hyman shifts to piano for this one.

ZIP-A-DEE DOO-DAH. Hyman is back at the organ to get this bright Disney tune off and dancing. It's the piccolos that give it light and air at first, followed by Doc Severinsen's smooth, flowing trum- pet. The happy excitement is caught by the swinging saxophones, by Tony Mottola's charging guitar and the agitation of the whole band as it rips into the finale.

ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET. Deliberate and sly is the tempo taken by Lew Davies this time. The saxophones and Doc Severinsen's trumpet are stacked against the gruffest of trombone en- sembles while Dick Hyman's piano trickles through. When Dick brings up some memories of Eddy Duchin, Don Lamond goes into a sandpaper soft- shoe sound that can make the laziest of us feel like getting up and doing a slinky shuffle.

PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES IN YOUR OLD KIT BAG AND SMILE, SMILE, SMILE. A suggestion of a slightly cockeyed march brings on Stanley Webb on alto flute to set out the melody on this World War I favorite. There's a special kind of humor in Webb's inflection, both here and in his jaunty solo at the end. Notice, too, the side remarks between the organ and baritone saxophone while the trombones are making their pompous statements.

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN. The cheerer-upper of the Depression days goes high and low in its blithe display of joy. All the sections have snatches of comment to make until Tony Mottola's guitar takes over with some dancing remarks that are shouted back by the brass. Al Klink is the tenor saxophonist who leads into the gusto of the whoop- up ending. Happy days! Happy nights! They're all here again with Lew Davies' happy sounds!