An Evening With Hugh Downs

 

Lord Of All Hopefulness

An Evening With Hugh Downs
Accompanied by Mundell Lowe and His Friends
Epic Records LN 3597
A product of CBS
1959

From the back cover: Perhaps this should be called: Hugh Downs Sings, Too. 

But then, if you're at all familiar with the illimitable Hugh Downs personality as it is uncovered on peerless Jack Paar's Monday-through-Friday late-night Witenagemot, you're not surprised to learn that Hugh sings, too. You probably know about his other sidelines: skin diver, astronomer, antique gun and furniture authority, student of American history, delver into philosophy and psychology, ardent volunteer worker in Mental Health Campaigns (he works with patients at Wards Island State Mental Hospital in New York), studious collector of symphonic recordings, composer, pianist, guitarist, artist, amateur physicist, hi-fi set builder, telescope maker, avid reader, husband and father. He supports all this activity by serving as the unruffled announcer-straight man-actor on the Paar show and host of NBC-TV's daytime quiz show, "Concentration."

(For those who may be keeping unofficial score in some kind of All-Time Universal Man Contest, it should be stated that there is really no race between Hugh and that pre-video universal man, Leonardo da Vinci, the 15th-century painter, sculptor, architect, who was also a musician, engineer, philosopher and scientist. Leonardo, as far as is known, never cut an album of songs for Epic and Hugh has never tried carving marble. So they're not evenly matched.)

THE ALBUM: Every six months or so, Downs makes what he calls his "semi-annual farewell appearance as a singer" on the Paar show. His last such performance led to (1) praise from Burl Ives and (2) this album, which includes tasteful show tunes, superb folk songs (some in the "rouser" vein, others "moody"), sea chanteys, hymns and some apt talk.

"I didn't think I'd ever make 12 songs sound different," Hugh said after it was all over. "But Mundell Lowe is a genius. He turned out arrangements with so much individuality and imagination that I was forced to outdo myself in trying to match his work. If there is any freshness in my numbers, it is all Mundell's doing."

Incidentally, Mr. "Big Daddy" Ives thought Hugh did so well he paid him the highest tribute. "Told me I deserved to wear a beard," said Hugh. "I told him I wouldn't grow one. I had a mustache for five years but I finally did it in. It was sapping my strength."

Actually, Hugh has had vocal training, but he doesn't want to be known as a singer. "I don't want to be known as anything. If someone wants a singer on TV, they can easily find one better than me. If they want Hugh Downs, why, nobody can be Hugh Downs better than I."

THE SINGER: Born in Akron, Ohio, on Valentine's Day, 1921, Hugh made his debut as a radio announcer at the age of 17 when he joined the WLOK staff (part-time) in Lima, Ohio, after graduating from Shawnee High School in nearby Shawnee. While attending Blufton College, he also worked as a church singer, putting to use his voice training. When he sang at his Episcopal Church, he could accept no remuneration. But when Baptist and Methodist churches required his baritone voice, Hugh quickly turned pro. His singing also approached operatic quality. (Never quite reached it, just approached it, you understand.) That adventure occurred after he attended Wayne University in Detroit and worked, again part-time, at WWJ and left to join NBC's Chicago outlet, WMAQ in 1943. He was a disk jockey, interviewer and emcee and, in his spare time, once sang in productions of "Pagliacci" and "Cavalleria Rusticana" at the Eighth St. Theater.

In 1954, after 11 years in Chicago, Hugh arrived in New York to serve as co-star and host of the "Home" TV show with Arlene Francis. (He can, as a result of this work, chat about cooking, sewing and decorating without a blush and with impressive authority when the occasion arises.) He was the announcer on "Caesar's Hour" during the 1956-57 season and was selected by Paar for "Tonight" (now "The Jack Paar Show") in July 1958.

Hugh's electronically-induced popularity hasn't short-circuited his modesty or his humanity. "The thought I keep in mind," he explains, "is that the downfall of the magician begins when he starts believing in his own magic. I'm not in this business for the acclaim, as pleasant as that may be for the ego. This is, for me, total expediency. I just want to make money. If I could earn the money I make now on the condition that I never appear on TV or before the public in any way, I'd do it. The reason is that the fuss people make over you is an insidious thing. It can warp your thinking if you're not careful.

"And I'm not after money for material reasons. I don't even own a car. I just find that in order to feed my curiosity about the world, I need money. And, naturally, I would like my kids to enjoy the world, too."

Hugh lives in a Manhattan apartment with his wife, the former Ruth Shaheen, and their two children, Hugh, 13, and Deirdre, 10. There's also an all-important 15-feet of shelf space on which Hugh keeps an impressive library of record albums.

INSIDE AND UPSIDE DOWNS: On camera, Hugh is an accomplished salesman of floor wax, paint, underwear, headache remedies or carpeting.. Off camera, Hugh relates his enriching pastimes to a serious quest for answers about man's role on earth and his relationship to his universe.

The common thread tying his seemingly varied interests together is Ultimate Truth. His studies of astronomy, physics, psychiatry, music, poetry and history all serve to help Hugh understand with more clarity our reasons for being. Like Socrates, he has disciplined himself "to investigate the reason of the being of everything-of every- thing as it is, not as it appears..."

His interest in cosmology, that branch of philosophy that treats the structure of the universe as a whole, has taken Hugh into the study of atoms and beyond.

"I have studied Einstein's theory of relativity enough to know that I probably haven't the mental equipment to master it. And that is quite a humbling feeling," said Hugh, a 175-pound, near-six-footer whose brown hair, at 38, is gray-tipped around the eartops. "I had believed that the ultimate truths reside in the cosmos, but I'm about to abandon it. I believe they will be found in man. Remember when the atom meant the smallest indivisible particle of a substance? Well, we've smashed the atom and that theory to ridiculousness and this shows me that maybe we are on the wrong track. Maybe the whole basic atomic theory is wrong.

"This is disheartening, but it leads me to believe that perhaps we cannot find the answers in technology. Maybe inner man holds the answer. So I go into other fields. And that has led to my interest in mental health. Maybe probing our minds may be our salvation. I think man's proper study now should be the relationship between the mind and heart."

The universality of Hugh Downs has one blind spot. "I like almost all kinds of music except the pop or hit parade music. That's of no interest to me. But," Hugh added, "I'm a big fan of the Nashville music, the Grand Ole Op'ry. I think Red Foley is one of the greatest singers of all time. And I include him with Caruso. This usually evokes laugh- ter, but I'm serious. His singing represents life and that's what music should do.

"Otherwise, I prefer the symphonic literature. I'm enamored of Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. I have everything Mahler ever wrote. At home, I plan Mahler music festivals that last a month. That's one advantage of our technology. It has made me better acquainted with him, through hi-fi, than the wealthiest concertgoer of his time. You know, someone was trying to sell me a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. That's quite a car. But I said no, that's the primrose path. I have Mahler's Second on disks and that's what counts."

His fondness for poetry, like his antique gun collection, starts with domestic samples. "It all ties in with my interest in history. I buy guns not because I'm interested in ballistics. It's because they tell something about our history. In poetry, I like the American poets. That sounds chauvinistic, I know, but I just like their flavor, their ways of reflecting our history. Stephen Vincent Benet is one favorite."

That, briefly, is Hugh Downs. A civilized man. – NOTES BY FRED DANZIG

Two Brothers
To Pass Away The Time
I Wonder As I Wander
The E-r-i-e Was A-risin'
Drink To Me With Thin Eyes
The Ride Back From Boot Hill
So Long, Blue Valley
Sweet Li'l Jesus Boy

Look To The Rainbow
The Delaware Light
Scarlet Ribbons
Lord Of All Hopefulness