Music For Listening - Al Sack

Pagan Love Song

Music For Listening
The Al Sack Concert Orchestra
Tops L1505-149
1956

If you find that you can't listen to the music… you can still enjoy the cover art.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
April In Paris
Dancing In The Dark
Hora Staccato
Carioca
Orchids In The Moonlight
I Can't Give You Anything But Love
I Don't Know What Time It Was
Adios Muchachos
La Cucaracha
Paradise
Pagan Love Song

Georgie Auld Play For Melancholy Babies

Georgie Auld
Plays For Melancholy Babies
Produced By Don Costa
ABC-Paramount
ABCS 287
1959

Available from online vendors so I will not be posting a sample.

From Billboard - September 7, 1959: Backed mainly by a swingy organ, Auld provides his usual sock sax solo work on a group of standards ranging in mood from the bouncy "The Dark Town Strutters Ball" to the tender "If I Had My Way." Fine Jockey Wax.

From the back cover: Georgie Auld talks through his sax: and he's an eloquent speaker, indeed! The tenor saxophone becomes one of the most expressive instruments anywhere in the sympathetic fingers of the world-famous musician. Every emotion flows through the golden horn at the Auld touch, perhaps with a more personal meaning than even words could convey. Coming to the United States from his native Canada, Georgie was first inspired by Coleman Hawkins. His job with the late Bunny Berigan's band in the thirties was the first of a chain of great name band associations – Artie Shaw, Jan Savitt and Benny Goodman. Fronting a band of his own, Georgie kept abreast of the times, adapting his style to the newest musical trends, sometimes even before the trend was established. In recent years, his singular talent soaring about band affiliations, Georgie's reputation as a soloist has reached the heights. When a top-flight tenor sax is needed for a recording, jazz concert or TV show, the cry invariably goes up, "Call Georgie!"

My Melancholy Baby
Down By The Old Mill Stream
Shine On Harvest Moon
For Me And My Gal
In A Little Spanish Town
Music Goes Round And Round
Always
If I Could Be With You
My Gal Sal
If I Had My Way
The Darktown Strutters Ball
Goodnight Sweetheart

For Jazz Lovers

For Jazz Lovers

Emarcy/Mercury Records

MG 36086

Compilation featuring a set of tunes that play well together. My favorite tracks would be Helen Merrill's End Of A Love Affair and Lilac Wine.

Most, if not all, tracks are available from online digital vendors.

Lonely Dreams - Julian "Cannonball" Adderley

It Shouldn't Happen To A Dream - Sarah Vaughan

The Masquerade Is Over - Julian "Cannonball" Adderley

Over The Rainbow - Sarah Vaughan

Autumn Nocturne - Terry Gibbs

Goodbye - Dinah Washington

What's New - Clifford Brown

More Than You Know - Dinah Washington

Young At Heart - Eddie Heywood

End Of A Love Affair - Helen Merrill

Misty - Errol Garner

Lilac Wine - Helen Merrill

Guitar Boogie

Heaven Is High

Guitar Boogie
Sutton SU 252

Raw and engaging small combo set preformed by uncredited artists on budget label, Sutton.

The Village At 4:00 A.M.
Milt's The Man
Run, Rock And Roll
Ice And Snow
Heaven Is High
Dan And Doreen
Theme To A Theme
Playback
Dig Ye Deep
Mother's Not Home

Accordion In Hi-Fi - Jo Ann Castle

Sway

Accordion In Hi-Fi
Jo Ann Castle
Cover Photo: Lester Krauss
Forum SF 9007
1959

From the back cover: Her musical talent has won her appearances on television with Ina Ray Hutton, Spike Jones and Arthur Godfrey. On the night club circuit, she has starred in such important showplaces as Ciro's and the Plymouth House in Los Angeles and at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vagas where she was backed by her own rhythm group of guitar, bass and drums. In addition to that, she composes many of her own tunes and arranges everything she plays. All this musical versatility, for those who are interested in this kind of information, is wrapped up in a tall, beautiful, blue-eyed blonde. What more could anyone ask.

Sparkling space age accordion set made notable by the clean, simple small combo arrangements which nicely blend Castle's playing with her session musicians efforts to create a complete group effort.

Tico Tico
Harbor Lights
Sway
The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise
September SOng
Cherokee
Bumble Boogie
Diane
The Breeze And I
After You've Gone
Charmaine
Cumana

Appearing Nightly - Mitchell-Ruff Duo

Appearing Nightly
Mitchell-Ruff Duo
Forum F 9074
1958

Available from at least one online vendor as "Mitchell-Ruff Duo" but featured without the cover art/information. I'm not sure why Forum decided to market the album by featuring the "cartoon" on the cover. The set is adult, subtle, smooth and inventive and seems as though it would have benefited from a more sophisticated illustrative jacket design. Cover art aside, this is an excellent late 50s jazz set all the way through.

From the back cover: Pianist Dwike Mitchell, a Floridian, studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Music under the Hungarian pianist, Agi Jamboor. It was while he was one of Miss Jamboor's outstanding students in 1953 that he played Bartok with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy. For the next two years he moved, in effect, to the opposite end of the musical planet by touring the United States and Europe with Lionel Hampton's boisterous and peripatetic band.

In the last months with Hampton, Mitchell's rhythm-section mate was bassist Willie Ruff. This was a reunion for them. They first met, several years earlier when they were in military service and it was then that they tried teaming their talents. Ruff, who plays both bass and French Horn, comes from Alabama and, after his service term, he studied at Yale University under Paul Hinemith, (pianist Mell Powell had been an earlier pupil of Hindemith's at Yale) and played some gigs with Benny Goodman. Ruff came away from Yale with two degrees tacked onto his name (Bachelor of Music in 1953, Master of Music in '54). He played at various times under the baton of Daniel Saidenburg, Jonel Perlea and Andre Kostelanetz. Then he joined his old friend and partner, Mitchell, in the Hampton band in the Spring of 1955 and played the first French horn ever to sprout in Hampton's hard driving band.

In the Fall of 1955, the pair set out on their own, at first alarming people by their choice of instruments but almost invariably winning both respect and interest by the musicianly use to which they put them and the wide-ranging variety of their personal musical interests.
Jordu
Angel Eyes
Thou Swell
Nearness Of You
Gone With The Wind
Pavanne
Fugue For Lulu
When I Fall In Love
Time After Time
My Reverie
That's All

Butterfield 8 - David Rose

Caress Me, Possess Me

David Rose And His Orchestra Play Theme From Butterfield 8
And Other Great Hits
MGM E3952
1961

From Billboard - March 20, 1961: Practically the only tune here that is well known is the "Theme From Butterfield 8." The only other familiar song would be "Thanks Heaven For Little Girls." All of the tunes are well played and well recorded, but the question would be whether the one tune could sell the album. Liz Taylor's picture on the cover, of course, could help.
From the back cover: David Rose was born in London. At an early age he came to Hollywood via Chicago where he was a network pianist and arranger. Later he joined the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. In 1938 David Rose became a member of the staff of the Mutual Broadcasting System in Hollywood.

Hollywood provided the ideal home for David Rose because he immediately associated himself the town's principal industry – motion picture. He had begun to do that work which has given him a world-wide reputation as a truly great composer, conductor and arranger. In 1959 he scored the U.I. motion picture Operation Petticoat, and in 1960 M-G-M's Please Don't Eat The Daisies. His top hits have included Holiday For Strings, Our Waltz and One Love.

A budget project from MGM featuring a thematically uneven set from Rose.

Theme From Butterfield 8
Chape
Circus Elephants
I Don't Know Why
Concerto
Caress Me, Possess Me
Perfume
Thank Heaven For Little Girls
Blue Autumn
Pretty To Walk With
Stringopation

Billie Holiday - George Wallington

Everything A Good Man Needs

Billie Holiday
With George Wallington
Lovely Blue Child
Spinorama M-139

Sold as a "Holliday" set even though the jacket features the title of a Wallington track. This LP is a budget Spinorama split disc featuring Holiday tunes on the A side and Wallington tracks on the B side.

The Holiday material is well known, whereas, the Wallington material (appearing as "The Artistry Of George Wallington" on the label), perhaps, less so.

Wallington's obituary suggests perhaps, that one of his first professional dates playing piano for a name artist, was gigging with Billie Holiday in a Greenwich Village club.

The Wallington side steals the show on this budget project making collecting the LP well worth the effort.

T'ain't Nobody's Business
Them There Eyes
He's Funny That Way
Detour Ahead
Everything A Good Man Needs
Lonely Blue Child
You Walked Out On Me Again
Melancholy Holiday

Beautiful Dreamer - Porter Heaps

Goin' Home

Beautiful Dreamer
Porter Heaps At The Pipe Organ
Summit Pipe Organ Records
SHF 107

From the back cover: Porter Heaps is recognized as one of the outstanding artist on the Pipe Organ having played concerts from Churches to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He has traveled as a representative for one of the world's larger organ markers and has appeared before 1000,000 professional and church organists and organ teachers.

Porter Heaps is a many of many degrees as you might well expect after listening to him play but he is especially proud of the time he spent studying under the tutelage of the great French organ master Marcel Dupre.

New York Times obituary

Bill Justis Plays 12 Smash Instrumental Hits - Cast Your Fate The Wind

Boss

Bill Justis Plays 12 Smash Instrumental Hits
Cast Your Fate To The Wind
Smash MGS 27031

One of three in a series of Smash/Justis albums to feature this cover design.

The tunes covered vary as if Justis was making a "house party" or "discotheque" record.

Also see Alley Cat - Green Onions

Cast Your Fate To The Wind
Fly Me To The Moon
Wild Weekend
Boss
Misirlou
Only You
Java
Zero Zero
Walk Right In
Mr. Cool (spelling on back cover track list)
Acapulco 1922