Howdy Folks! Welcome to The UnEarthed In The Atomic Attic album blog! Here you will find a wide variety of unusual Space Age Vinyl finds that feature good quality cover scans, jacket notes and audio samples for you to enjoy. I'm here to have fun and hope you will share in my process of discovery!
The Melachrino Orchestra Conducted by George Melachrino
Cover Photo: Ewing Krainin
RCA Victor LSP-1762
1958
From the back cover: It makes no difference whether or not you've been to Portugal, you'll never understand Lisbon nightlife of the Portuguese people until you've heard the fado – nostalgic little ballads telling of death, disappointment, drownings, stabbings and general heartbreak. If you like soap operas, you'll love fado.
Best place to hear fado is in the murky little cafes in the old quarter of Lisbon. Some of them used to be wine cellars; many are still lined with the great casks.
The conventions that govern fado singing are as rigid as diplomatic protocol. Two guitarists sit at a table – one plays the Spanish guitar, and the other plays the Portuguese type with six double strings and a special screw-type tuning. The singer, swathed in a somber black shawl, leans against the stone wall.
You can rate fado spots as one-shawl, two-shawl or three-shawl establishments, depending on whether the singers bring their own or pass the house shawls from shoulder to shoulder as they give out with the blues.
Amateurs can participate, too, and that's one of the highlights of the evening. After the audience gets warmed up with a few chronicle of blighted romance or foreclosed mortgages under the shawl, the real fun begins. Gentlemen with a grievance stand up and tell you their troubles – in a minor key. Other guests add extemporaneous stanzas or butt in to relate – still in song – how much worse their troubles are than anyone else's. No one in the audience makes a sound or twitches a muscle during the song. Even if your Portuguese is nonexistent, you can enjoy the spirit – because when it comes to the fado the Portuguese people have a wonderful time feeling terrible.
This album of Portuguese music will run you approximately $450 less than the round-trip economy-class air fare between New York and Lisbon, and next to being there it's the best way to catch the beat. George Melachrino set out to record authentic songs of Portugal in an instrumental setting after a visit last year. The Portuguese guitarist Raul Nery flew over to London to sit in on the recording sessions. He's one of the world's greatest virtuosos on this unusual instrument, and his ability to play from memory almost one thousand tunes has won him the title of "The Musical Memory Man." And Great Britain contributed her favorite guitarist, the popular Ivor Mairants.
The most famous of all fados starts off Side 2. As April In Portugal it became a world favorite, but under its original title of Coimbra it had been a popular fado for years. Barco Negro, originally called Black Mother, comes from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese possession in the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa – therefore its strongly African beat. It was first popularized by the famed Amalia, perhaps the greatest fado singer of them all. Song Of The Sea, at the end of Side 1, is a beautiful number that was featured in the film "April In Portugal." Una Casa Portuguesa is a very gay pop tune often sung at fado places. As contrast, I guess. – Richard Joseph, Travel Editor of Esquire
Arrangements by Benny Carter, Billy May & Nelson Riddle
Vocal Arrangements by Vince Deegen
Reprise R-6090
1963
From the back cover: Anybody who feels like getting sentimental over the music Tommy Dorsey and his great band were playing during the early forties has a perfect right to. After all, that was a pretty emotional kind of band. It could swing high, and thanks to Tommy and his set of sentimental singers, it also created many mellow musical moods.
Jo Stafford was one of those sentimental singers. She joined the band as the only girl member of the Pied Pipers, an octet that soon became a quartet, just about the time the year 1939 was joining 1940. A few weeks later a young singer named Sinatra left the Harry James band and moved into the Dorsey troupe too.
For the next two and a half years, almost everyone who listened to or who worked in the Dorsey band had a ball. For this was one of the most colorful and completely satisfying musical groups ever assembled. Under the dynamic leadership of Dorsey, who was not only sentimental but also very demanding (say Jo, "He always expected the best from you and was surprised when he didn't get it"), the band worked hard as it played – and its succession of hit engagements and recordings proved it.
But the band had fun too. Actually, any band Dorsey ever led was bound to have its share of good times. He may have been a disciplinarian, but there were times when he would play it strictly for laughs. And he was very generous toward his sidemen (and women), often spotlighting them far more than he would himself. This was especially true during those times when he was blessed with outstanding performers.
Certainly the band in which Jo sang was one of his best – if not THE best. It had a host of stellar musicians, like Bunny Berigan, Joe Bushkin, Ziggy Elman, Sy Oliver and Buddy Rich. It produced a whole raft of hit sides, a dozen of which are revived herewith in new musical settings arranged by Benny Carter, Billy May and Nelson Riddle, the last a Dorsey alumnus who joined the band after Jo had left to begin her successful career as a single performer. Jo's vocal arrangements here are by Vince Deegen.
On all of the tunes heard on these records Jo was a featured vocalist. She was the soloist on three of them – The Night We Called It A Day, Who Can I Turn To, and Yes, Indeed – and she sang lead for the Pipers on the remaining eight.
Times have changed since then, and so have the arrangements. There's even a lyric change in Let's Get Away From It All that recognizes the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the United States; and there's a singer, unknown to most people in the early forties who now takes over the role in Yes, Indeed, originally filled by the tune's composer, Sy Oliver. The new singer: Sammy Davis, Jr. And thought Tommy's voice may not be here on I'll Take Tallulah, one of the few vocals TD ever took, Billy May pays his respects by having the entire sax section play the trombone solo Dorsey originally blew on the record.
But there is one important way in which these records parallel the originals; they're all extremely musical. And so, of course, is Jo's singing. Did Tommy make a deep impression on her? "Of course he did," she admits. "With Tommy, perfection was always the norm, and anyone who worked with him had great training that way." And how about Dorsey's long, melodic way of phrasing? "I think it affected most of his singers. With me it may have come a little easier, because I had had five years of classical training and so I could sing those long phrases without too much trouble. But the influence wasn't a complete conscious one. It was never actually a case of seeing if I could sing as long as he could play, but we all followed his lead I guess."
Through the years, Jo has remained a great admirer of Dorsey – and of Sinatra, too. "He's the same now as he was then. He was always wonderfully kind and encouraging. I remember, I used to have about as much ambition as an old bunch of keys, but he always told me to keep on singing."
Another man within the Dorsey family whom Jo admired greatly was arranger Paul Weston. The admiration was mutual. So was the love. That's why today Jo is Mrs. Paul Weston and they have their own happy family.
Yes, a lot of good things have happened to Jo Stafford, ever since she and the other Pipers joined TD more than a generation ago – a lot of good things for which the Sentimental Gentleman of Swing was directly responsible. So you can't blame her one bit, can you, for getting sentimental over Tommy Dorsey! – George T. Simon
Getz/Gilberto Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto Featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim Recorded March 18 & 19, 1963 in New York City Recording Engineer: Phil Ramone Director Of Engineering: Val Valentin Cover Painting by Olga Albizu Produced by Creed Taylor Photo by David Drew Zingg Verve V-8545
From the inside cover: Paul Hindemith often expressed his disbelief in abstractions in music. Music should concern the making of music, not the speculative transcending of its limits. "The ear," he said, "should remain the first and last court of appeal."
The songs of Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim came to America like a breath of fresh air. Their music arrived here at a times when anemia and confusion were becoming noticeable in our music to anyone who knew enough to be concerned. The desperate craze for innovation had been overextending itself. Jazz literature was becoming increasingly pompous, complex and chauvinistic, theorizing and analyzing itself into a knot. Musical groups were disintegrating into an every-man-for-himself egomania. Soloists and sidemen were engaged in endurance tests of repetitious and/or outlandish endeavors, Sometimes they lost the audience. Worse, they often lost musical contact with one another.
A discerning minority of greats and true jazz aficionados everywhere remained in a state of apprehension concerning this questionable trend. Was it inevitable that jazz would lose its initial charm in the process of growing old? Did approaching maturity herald the eventual loss of the refreshing qualities which kept jazz apart from traditional music?
Then came the music of these Brazilians with an impact much the same as the one caused by the child's classic comment in H.C. Anderssen's Emperor and His New Clothes. If for nothing else the music world in indebted to them for exposing "this emperor" in all his nakedness.
Thus the ultimate making of this record was inevitable. We discovered an indestructible bond between us. Sebastiao and Milton as well as Joao and Ton understood little more English than I did Portuguese, but it didn't matter. We had the music, the excitement of playing together, and the feeling of mutual respect for one another.
Unpretentious, spontaneity and the poetry of honest emotion belong back in jazz. And don't let that gentleness fool you. These guys know how to swing harder than most, and they do it without pushing.
Had this record never been released, the making of it would have been gratification enough. – Stan Getz
Peace is a beautiful feeling.
To understand and be understood is a kind of peace.
I find great peace in real communication with another person. Getz is a person I understand, and who understands me even though we speak different languages. I would say that even if we could not exchange a word, the love that we have for music would be enough to make us friends.
Our talks – generally through our wives – are sometimes amusing. I do my best to speak English, and Stan uses all his knowledge of Latin languages: "Diga ao Joao..." When Stan gives an opinion I often exclaim, happened so often one night that I thought to myself, "I had better disagree once in a while or it will sound silly." The truth is that we agree on most everything.
Some years ago when I was young and searching in my country, I knew about Stan through he didn't know me. I was introduced to his music through Donato, a pianist friend of mine. Time and again we listened to Getz records with stirred emotions.
Despite our good friendship I never forget that Stan Getz is a great artist. There isn't any American whom I'd rather hear playing the music of my country. Jobim said "It's unbelievable the way Getz assimilates the spirit of the Brazilian music!" My good friend Dorival Caymmi, composer of Doralice, will be amazed at the swing and feeling Getz gives his authentic samba, so typical of Bahia.
Ary Barroso wrote the composition P'ra Machucar Meu Coracao. Barroso is an outstanding figure in the history of Brazilian music. Ary was ill when we recorded this album. I told Getz how happy I thought it would make Ary feel to hear his composition recorded by us. He will not hear it. Today as I write this, I know that he is dead. Now our version will remain as a humble homage to Ary Barroso from myself and from Getz who came to love him through his music without ever having met him.
Finally just a word about Asturd, my wife. She always liked to sing and we often sing together at home. I like the way she sings The Girl From Ipanema. Getz heard her sing it and asked her to record it with us. This is her first recording date, and I am glad she was among friends.
In many ways, then, this is more than a record. It is a friendship communicated by music. - Joao Gilberto
When in 1962, Stan Getz's LP Jazz Samba began racing up the sales charts, those denizens of the music business who are there not to contribute but to take from it, whose very survival in fact depends on the theft of ideas from others, began falling over each other in their haste to jump on the bandwagon. Imitations of the album poured from the presses.
In a few short weeks, the remarkable and significant Brazilian musical development that Stan had introduced to the North American public, a development that had promised to have a refreshing and healthy influence on the sick American music business, was ravaged and ground into the turf. When the fad was over and the takers ha gone on to other things, everyone thought bossa nova was dead. One group thought so because they weren't making so much money on it now; we who loved the music thought nothing so lyrical and exquisitely subtle could survive so brutal a treatment.
Both groups underestimated the vitality of bossa nova. We all should have realized that anything so valid had to survive. And it has. In the months that followed, jazz musicians of sensitivity began the legitimate incorporation of its melodies and rhythms into their work, though I have yet to hear anyone play it as well as Stan does with his quartet. Stan and Creed Taylor produced another bossa nova album with arrangements by Gary McFarland, a superb disc called Big Band Bossa Nova (V/V6-8494), and then another called Jazz Samba Encore (V/V6-8523), with Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfa – both of which, incidentally, have had phenomenal public acceptance, and continue to sell – long after the supposed death of bossa nova.
Now, nearly two years later, it seems that bossa nova has won: it has become a part of North America's musical life.
The present LP brings together the two Brazilians who launched the bossa nova movement in Brazil – the incredible singer-guitarist Joao Gilberto and the equally incredible composer-arranger-pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim – with one of the most astonishingly gifted musicians American jazz jazz has yet produced, Stan Getz. And I'm not using those adjectives lightly.
By the testimony of Jobim and Gilberto themselves, it was the "cool" school of jazz (a misnomer if there ever was one), and particularly the controlled-vibrato, straight-tone saxophone approach that Stan uses, that influenced the development of bossa nova. You need only compare Stan's tenor sound with Joao's vocal sound to see the parallel. It is a relaxed approach. The air moves effortlessly past the reed, in one case, or through the vocals chords, in the other. It is as if air were not so much pushed out as allowed to flow out. The approach demands that the player have superb assurance and absolute control of his instrument. Stan and Joao don't seem to make mistakes.
The record has an extremely warm feeling about it. I think it derives from the fact that the record date was to an extent a gathering or friends. Milton Banana has long been Joao's drummer. The girl's voice that you hear on the album is that of Asturd, Joao's wife, a sweet, quiet girl who is herself a composer – and, of necessity, Joao's English translator!
The Girl From Ipanema Doralice P'ra Machucar Meu Coracao Desafinado Corovado So Danco Samba O Grande Amor Vivo Sohando
Eddie Fisher Sings The 21 Academy Award Winning Songs, 1934 - 1954 Axel Stordahl and His Orchestra Continuity by David Carroll RCA Victor LOC-1024 1956
1934 - The Continental from the RKO Radio film "The Gay Divorcee" 1935 - Lullaby Of Broadway from the Warner Bros. film "Gold Diggers of 1935" 1936 - The Way You Look Tonight from the RKO film "Swing Time 1937 - Sweet Leilani from the Paramount film "Waikiki Wedding" 1938 - Thanks For The Memory from the Paramount film "Big Broadcast of 1938" 1939 - Over The Rainbow from the MGM film "The Wizard Of Oz" 1940 - When You Wish Upon A Star from the Disney-RKO film Pinocchio" 1941 - The Last Time I Saw Paris from the MGM film "Lady Be Good" 1942 - White Christmas from the Paramount film "Holiday Inn" 1943 - You'll Never Know from the 20th Century-Fox film "Hello, Frisco, Hello" 1944 - Swinging On A Star from the Paramount film "Going My Way" 1945 - It Might As Well Be Spring from the 20th Century-Fox film "State Fair" 1946 - On The Atchison, Topeka And Santa Fe from the MGM film "The Harvey Girls" 1947 - Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah from the Disney-RKO film "Song Of The South" 1948 - Buttons And Bows from the Paramount film "The Pale Face" 1950 - Mona Lisa from the Paramount film "Captain Carey, U.S.A." 1951 - In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening from the Paramount film "Here Comes The Groom" 1952 - High Noon (Do Not Foresake Me, Oh My Darlin' from the Kramer-United Artists film "High Noon" 1953 - Secret Love from the Warner Bros. film "Calamity Jane" 1954 - Three Coins In The Fountain from the 20th Century-Fox film "Three Coins In The Fountain"
Nat "King" Cole Sings Ballads Of The Day Orchestra Conducted by Nelson Riddle (Billy May on Angel Eyes) Capitol Records T680 1956
A Blossom Fell Unbelievable Blue Gardenia Angel Eyes It Happens To Be Me Smile Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup Alone Too Long My One Sin Return To Paradise If Love Is Good To Me The Sand And The Sea
Porgy And Bess Coronet Studio Orchestra and Chorus Directed by Bob Freeman Featuring: Margaret Young, Bill Marshall, Phil Conte and Gene Martin Coronet Records CXS-54
Overture Summertime I Got Plenty Of Nothin' Bess, You Is My Woman Now It Ain't Necessarily So A Woman Is A Sometime Thing My Man's Gone Now There's A Boat That's Leavin' Soon For New York Oh Lawd, I'm On My Way Finale
