Great Songs Of Hawaii - Harry Owens

 

Hawaiian Paradise

Great Songs Of Hawaii

Harry Owens and The Royal Hawaiians

Cover Photo courtesy of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel

Engineer: Thorne Nogar

Hamilton HLP 141

A Division of Dot Records, Inc.

From the back cover: "Aloha," often described as the greatest word in any language, means many things, all of them good: Good morning, good afternoon, cheerio, sweet dreams, I love you and, eventually, good bye. And Harry Owens ("Mr. Hawaii," as he's called by many) has possibly done more than any other individual to bring the true meaning of "Aloha" to the world... and to bring the world to his beloved Hawaii.

In addition to being the most famous exponent of Island music, Mr. Owens is indubitably the most prolific writer of Hawaiian songs. Born in Nebraska, raised in Montana, "Mr. Hawaii" first gained fame as a songwriter non-Hawaiian hit, "Linger Awhile" which catapulted him from the study of law into a full time career as author, composer and conductor.

He first reached the shores of Polynesia in 1934. Organizing his now famous Royal Hawaiians, he remained the principal entertainment attraction at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, in Honolulu, from that year until 1940 when he took his large troupe of entertainers on a tour of the United States and Canada. His return to Hawaii in 1941 was thwarted by the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.

Continuing "stateside," Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians became a feature attraction in motion picture, distinguished hotels and on recordings. In the late 1940's, Harry became one of television's pioneers. His one hour weekly show – first board cast on a Hollywood station – grew in popularity until its coverage was expanded to the Western States and Hawaii. Consistently among the top-rated shows, an additional tribute to the popularity of Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians is his enviable record of 8 years of continuous sponsorship. At the time of semi-retirement in 1961, Owen's compositions totaled close to 300.

Recently, Hamilton Records prevailed upon Harry to emerge from retirement to make this album which includes 12 of his greatest hits. He interprets them with the authentic touch of author-composer and these renditions will not only evoke memories among the millions who have visited the Islands but will delight all lovers of sentimental and gently rhythmic music.

And so, in this album, Harry Owens – the man who virtually put Hawaii "on the map" and who has done more than any other single person to bring statehood to his beloved Island – continues his love song to the once far-away land which took him to its heart. This love song is also a paean of praise and thanks to the gentle Hawaiian people who adopted him.

Also from the back cover: The excellent trio heard in this album in comprised of Bill Cole, tenor; Gene Merlino, baritone and Bill Lee, also a baritone and leader of the group. Each is heard, additionally, in solos. Adding vocal support in certain passages are the Tavares Brothers – Ernest and Fred. Members of Harry Owen's original Royal Hawaiians in Honolulu, each not only sings but plays steel guitar, Spanish guitar and the ukulele.

The delightful soprano voice in this album belongs to Louie Jean Norman. In addition to the thrilling clarity of tone so evident in her solo and obligato passages, Miss Norman manages an almost incredible tonal accuracy throughout a rang which extends from the lower notes of contralto to those of coloratura soprano.

The other members of the outstanding group on this recording are Mannie Kline, trumpet; Gene Cipriano, Justin Gordon and Johnny Rotella, reeds; Morty Cobb, bass; Tommy Romersa, drums and Milt Rogers, celeste.

Sweet Leilani 

Hawaiian Hospitality 

Hawaii My Island

Cocoanut Grove

Dancing Under The Stars

My Isle Of Love

To You, Sweetheart, Aloha

Syncopated Hula Love Song

Voice Of The Trade Winds

Princess Poo-poo-ly Had Plenty Papaya

Hawaiian Paradise

Aloha Oe

Starring Al Hibbler

 

I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance

Starring Al Hibbler

Vocal with Orchestra Directed by Jack Pleis

Decca Records DL 8328

1956

From the back cover: There is something magical and thoroughly original in the singing style of Al Hibbler. To put it into words what happens exactly when he opens his wonderful pipes is difficult at best.

His unique phrasing, his octave slides, his foggy, deep-throated quality, taken separately, might spell a limited performer. But add them up, together with Hibbler's highly personalized interpretation of a song – and what is says – and you have what is without question one of the most convincingly soulful, compelling voices in today's musical world.

Duke Ellington, an intellectual man with a gift for an occasional phrase, was so sold on what he called Hibbler's "tonal pantomime" that he featured him as his band singer for eight years.

Sytlewise, the Hibbler voice can never be narrowly categorized as pop, blues, or jazz. His is an "across the board" appeal which might better be simply labelled entertainment – as shown on the one hand by his smash successes in New York's Birdland, jazz headquarters for the throngs, and in other palaces of the night – but more impressively in his repeated returns to network TV via the Ed Sullivan show and his wide "all-market" appeal on single records as well as albums.

Other Al Hibbler albums have been made, it's true. But make no mistake, none can take the spotlight from the great new selection in this current Hibbler package. Here is the fascinating subject of love – love in various reflective moods. Here's the place perhaps where Hibbler shines, as jazzophiles would say, "the most!" – Red Grevatt

After The Light Go Low

I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance

You'll Never Know

Night And Day

Pennies From Heaven

Shanghai Lil

Stella By Starlight

September In The Rain

Where Are You

Count Every Star

There Are Such Things

Where Or When

The 5 Satins Sing

 

I'll Remember

The 5 Satins Sing

Mount Vernon Music MVM 108

1961

I'll Remember

Our Anniversary

Wish I Had My Baby

Wonderful Girl

Sugar

I'll Get Along

To The Aisle 

Pretty Baby

Our Love Is Forever

Jones Girl

Weeping Willow

Moonlight & I

Stride Right - Johnny Hodges & Earl "Fatha" Hines

 

C Jam Blues

Stride Right

Johnny Hodges & Earl "Fatha" Hines

Produced by Creed Taylor

Cover Design: Acy Lehman

Cover Photo: Lee Friedlander

Engineer: Rude Van Gelder

Director Of Engineering: Val Valentin

Recorded January 14, 1966 at Rudy Van Gelders

Verve Records V-8647

Johnny Hodges - Alto Sax

Earl Hines - Organ and Piano

Kenny Burrell - Guitar

Richard Davis - Bass

Joe Marschall - Drums

From the back cover: Johnny Hodges and Earl Hines stride right through the lengthening history of jazz like giants. Very early in their brilliant careers, they were established as influential stylists. Alto saxophonists everywhere tried to sound like Hodges and piano players like Hines, but these two were naturally gifted intuitive whose forms of expression involved skills and meaning that could only be approximated in imitation. In the course of time, most of the imitators moved on to other models, but the originals continued to be themselves – very much themselves.

In each case, the style was the man. The man did not stand still, nor did he change. Maybe he put on different clothes as the Colgate altered – Earl Hines can Inba will play you a very pretty bossa nova, and Johnny Hodges will accommodate you over as funky a back beat as anyone could desire – but the man and his animus remained essentially the same.

Astonishingly, neither has tried. Running deep, deep, their veins of invention seem inexhaustible, and the chances and encounters of everyday life provide their inspiration. Their responses, of, in other words, their musical reflexes, are quick and sure, for they are true professionals in the jazz art of improvisation and variation. They know how, and they do it easily, without fuss, so that the listener is not always fully aware of what magic has been wrought before him.

There was not much need for talk when they came together in the studio. They knew each other's capabilities and understood one another. "Johnny and I have been friends a long time," Hines explained simply. The group's instrumentation necessitated no complicated routines, and there would normally be no second take unless someone goofed. An almost unconscious emphasis on spontaneity was allowed to develop as the session progressed, as Hodges surprised Hines on Hines territory, and vice versa. – Stanley Dance

Caution Blues (Blues In 3rds)

Stride Right

Rosetta

Perdido

Fantastic – That's You

Tale Of The Fox

I'm Beginning To See The Light

C Jam Blues

Tippin' In

Great Gershwin - The Sunset Brass

 

I Got Rhythm

Great Gershwin

The Sunset Brass

Art Direction: Woody Woodward

Design: Gabor Halmos

Cover Photography: Peter Wharf and George Jerman

Sunset Records SUS-5240

A Product of Liberty Records

1969

An American In Paris

The Man I Love

Fascinating Rhythm 

Embraceable You

Liza (All The Cloud Will Roll Away)

Strike Up The Band

But Not For Me

I Got Rhythm 

Someone To Watch Over Me

Clap Yo' Hands

Bob Crosby In Hi Fi

 

Louise Louise

Bob Crosby and His Orchestra

In Hi Fi

Coral Records CRL 57062

1956

Trumpets - Conrad Gozzo, Frank Beach, Charlie Teagarden, John Best, 

Trombones - Elmer Schneider, Abe Lincoln, Joe Howard

Alto Sax - Jack Dumont

Tenor Sax - Eddie Miller, Jack Chaney

Baritone Sax - Den Eckels

Clarinet - Matty Matlock

Piano - Al Pelegrini

Guitar - Al Hendrickson

Bass - Morty Corb

Drums - Jack Sperling

From the back cover: Of all the great bands that made the Swing Era swing, none was as completely individual as Bob Crosby's band. It was a band with a genuine ensemble personality, a style that was immediately identifiable and a unique flair for musical cross-breeding.

At the root of its style was something which would be dismissed as a contradiction in terms if the Crosby band hadn't actually proved it could happen – orchestrated Dixieland. It takes a lot of light, bright energy and sparkle to make a 14-piece band bounce and skip along like a little six or seven-piece two-beat group, and it is one of the miracles of big band jazz that the Corsbyites managed to do it. The band played many of the old Dixieland standards, of course, but it also went forging in all kinds of musical fields to find material to adapt to its own swinging purposes. And at the same time, new – or shined up – works kept pouring out of the band, the majority of them by Crosby's brilliant bassist, Bob Haggart.

An amazing number of these adaptations and originals are now looked on as jazz classics. Significantly, most of them have not been taken up by other bands but have maintained their fame simply on the basis of the way they were performed by the Crosby band, a band which was scattered to four winds in 1942 by the demands of World War II.

Twelve of these Crosby classics are given their first high fidelity recording in this album. To make them, Bob brought together a band that mixes a couple of the most distinctive stars of his original band with some of the best musicians-in residence on the West Coast. Matty Matlock's cream-toned clarinet and Eddie Miller's urgent tenor saxophone are in their accustomed places. The trumpet solos are the work of Charlie Teagarden, who might be called a premature Crosbyite: he as not actually in the original Crosby band but he was an important cog in the Ben Pollack band from which the nucleus of the Crosby band came. The big-voiced trombone, an essential element of the Crosby formula, is played here by Abe Lincoln who has been one of the lustier buffers and puffers for the past quarter of a century.

That the Crosby band was much more than an over-sized Dixie outfit can be seen from the range of this group of selections. They emphasize, among other things, the important role the Bob Haggart played in the band's success: Five of these pieces list the indefatigable Haggart as either composer of co-composer.

Ray Baud, the old Crosby drummer, and Matty Matlock helped Haggart write the flamboyant Smokey Mary, an uptempo framework for solos – on this occasion – by Matlock, Teagarden, Miller, Lincoln, pianist Al Pellegrini and drummer Jack Sperling. On Haggart's lazy Dogtown Blues, the familiar redd voicing of the Crosby band sneaks in between Charlie Teagarden's two solos and the piece winds up with a typical rich-hued Crosby ride-out ensemble.

What's New is best known now as a ballad but Haggart originally conceived it as an instrumental showcase for Billy Butterfield's trumpet. In those days, before Johnny Burke had turned out lyrics for it, it was called I'm Free. Charlie Teagarden takes over Billy Butterfield's solo role in this hi-fi version.

Haggart was involved as both performer and composer on The Big Noise From Winnetka. This was an odd duet for string bass and drums, cooked up by Haggart and Bauduc during the Crosby band's long stand at the Blackhawk Restaurant in Chicago, in which each man plumed some of the depths of his instrument until Baud turned to Haggart's bass and started whacking the strings with his drum sticks while Haggart nonchalantly handled the fingering. It got its title from a boisterous enthusiast from Winnetka, Ill., who always requested it when he visited the Blackhawk. This new 1956 arrangement brings the whole band into the picture, with Morty Corb and Jack Sperling taking over the bass and drum assignments.

Probably the greatest of Haggart's collaborative contributions to the band – and certainly the number which is most readily associated with the Crosby band – is the joyous South Rampart Street Parade, conceived in 1937. It is one of the few numbers in the Crosby Book which has proved transferable to other bands.

Of course, the Crosby band had other sources of inspiration besides the fertile Mr. Haggart. It paid close attention to the work of some of the relatively neglected buy nonetheless great jazz pianists. Two of the band's treatments of piano solos – Honky Tonk Train and Gin Mill Blues – are included in this collection. The lat Bob Burke used both of them to build his meteoric reputation while he was the Crosby pianist. Honky Tonk Train, one of the showpieces of the fabulous boogie-woogieist, Meade (Lux) Lewis, is played here by Marvin Ash with his customary light touch. Gin Mill Blues was – and still is – a Joe Sullivan specialty which came into the Crosby book while he was playing piano in the band. It is given a full-band arrangement here with some solo piano by Al Pellegrini and a couple of Matty Matlock's mellow clarinet solos.

One of the charming quirks of the Crosby band was its habit of taking tired, light classical warhorses and electrifying them with a rambunctious two-beat. The Old Spinning Wheel and Skater's Waltz were two of the most successful ventures in this vein and the 1956 Crosbyites tangle with them with that full-bodies zest that has always typified the band's approach to these tunes. In the same spirit, the band picked up a novelty number from overseas that Rudy Valle had been crooning, Vieni, Vieri, and battered the croon out of it, leaving a jumping musical skeleton which is decorated by solos by each of the four featured horn men.

Besides all this, there was always the blues, of course. The Crosby band had a fine collection of lowdown blues but somehow, in their nimble hands even the lowest and downest blues came out with a wry cheerfulness. Louise, Louise and Milk Cow Blues are prized samples of this special talent, augmented here by the singing of Eddie Miller and Nappy Lamar respectively.

Considering the passage of years and changes they have brought in musical tastes, these are amazingly faithful reproductions of a style and feeling in big band jazz that seemed to have disappeared from the scene when the original Crosby band broke up. But here it is back again, large as life and more brilliantly recorded than it has ever been before. – John S. Wilson

Smokey Mary

Dogtown Blues

Honky Tonk Train

Louise, Louise

What's New

The Old Spinning Wheel

Skater's Waltz

Big Noise From Winnetka

Milk Cow Blues

Vieni Vieni

Gin Mill Blues

South Rampart Street Parade

Whispers - Jackie Wilson

 

Tears Will Tell It All

Whispers

Jackie Wilson

Arranged by Sonny Sanders

Vocals with Chorus and Orchestra Conducted by Gerald Sims

Produced by Carl Davis

Cover Photo by Hal Buksbaum

Chung Hwa Records CH-3091

1967

I Don't Want To Lose You

My Heart Is Calling

Who Am I

Whispers

The Fairest Of Them All

(Too Much) Sweet Loving (Vocal with Chorus and Orchestra by Alan Lorber)

I Can Do Better

Just Be Sincere

Only Your Love Can Save Me

To Make A Big Man Cry (Vocal with Chorus and Orchestra Directed by Dick Jacobs - Produced by Nat Ternopol)

I've Gotta Talk To You

Tears Will Tell It All

I Still Believe In Tomorrow - John & Anne Ryder

 

Seasons In The Sun

I Still Believe In Tomorrow

John & Anne Ryder

Arranged by Cy Payne

Produced by Mark Edwards

Engineers: Ted Sharp & Peter Gallen

Recorded at IBC and Lansdown Studios, London, England

Special Thanks to Pat Halling, Rex Bennett, Graham Todd

Decca Records DL 75167

1969

I Still Believe In Tomorrow

It's Getting Better

Everybody's Talkin'

Seasons In The Sun (Le Moribond)

Let It Be Me

All The Love I Have

Don't Forget To Remember

A Thing Called Love

A Sign For Love

Early In The Morning

Some Town

Universal Record No. 101

 

Universal Record No. 101

Universal Record No. 101

Summertime In The City - Loving Spoonful

Sunny - Bobby Herb

Mother's Little Helper - Rolling Stones

Somewhere My Love - Ray Conniff Singers

They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-haa - Napoleon XIV

Please Tell Me Why - Dave Clark Five

Wild Thing - Trigs

This Door Swings Both ways - Hermit's Hermits

Sweet Dreams - Tommy McLain

Summertime - Billy Stewart

Hungry - Paul Revere & Raiders

You Can't Hurry Me - Supremes

Universal Record No. 102

 

Universal Record No. 102

Universal Record No. 102

Sunshine Superman - Donovan

Guantanamera - The Sandpipers

Working In The Coal Mine - Lee Dorsey

Bus Stop - Hollies

Land Of 1,000 Dances - Wilson Pickett

Respectable - The Outsiders

See You In September - The Happenings

Yellow Submarine - The Beatles

Wade In The Water - Ramsey Lewis Trio

Say I Am (What I Am) - Tommy James & Shondells

Wipe Out - The Ventures

The Dangling Conversation - Simon & Garfunkel