August 2007
August 30
This week's Hit of the Week is brought
to you by
Hotel Galvez
Galveston, Texas
(from circa 1930s postcard)
Rudy Vallee
Where
Are You Dream Girl
Rudy Vallee And His Connecticut Yankees
1929
(Victor 22062-B)
A
Little Kiss Each Morning
Rudy Vallee And His Connecticut Yankees
1929
(Victor 22193-A)
Pretending
Rudy Vallee And His Connecticut Yankees
1929
(Victor 22062-A)
Gypsy
Dream Rose
Rudy Vallee And His Connecticut Yankees
1929
(Victor 22261-A)
Everything's
In Rhythm With My Heart
Rudy Vallee And His Connecticut Yankees
1936
(Victor 25233-A)
Rudy Vallee (née Hubert Prior
Vallée) was the first popular male vocalist to achieve mass media
superstar status. Vallee started his career as a saxophone
player. His idol was the famous saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft and his
playing Wiedoeft's records over and over again earned him the nickname
"Rudy" from his University of Maine classmates. After spending
a year playing with the Savoy Havana Band at London's Savoy Hotel in the
mid 1920s, Vallee enrolled in Yale where he formed a band, The Yale Collegians.
In 1928 Vallee landed an engagement at New York's Heigh Ho Club with
the assistance of bandleader Bert Lown and reluctantly agreed to handle
the vocals. The engagement resulted in additional exposure when the
performances were broadcast by a local radio station.
Vallee used a megaphone to amplify
his singing voice and it quickly became one of his trademarks along with
an early public persona that suggested a stereotypical raccoon coat wearing
1920s Ivy League college student. For a while whenever Vallee
made a public appearance he was mobbed by female fans in a manner similar
to that which was seen in later generations with Frank Sinatra and Elvis
Presley.
By 1929, Vallee was staring in his
first movie Vagabond Lover and, just four days before the stock
market crashed, he began his very successful Fleischmann's Yeast
Hour broadcasts on NBC. The Fleischmann's Hour
quickly became one of the highest rated network radio programs and remained
so throughout the early 1930s. The program pioneered
the variety show format that became a constant staple of network radio
and of network television through the 1970s. Vallee featured
a mix of famous and new talent and, because of its vast audience, a guest
appearance on The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour launched the careers
of a number of acts and stars who would later become famous including,
Alice Faye, Francis Langford, Milton Bearle, George Burns & Gracie
Allen, Joe Penner and Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthey. The highly
successful Aldridge Family radio program of the late 1930s and early
1940s started out as a skit on Vallee's broadcasts.
After his radio career, Vallee appeared
in a number of motion pictures and starred in the successful 1961 musical
How
to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He continued to
perform into the 1980s. He died in 1986.
Vallee was a prolific recording
artist. In 1928 he appeared on Columbia's Harmony/Diva/Velvet Tone
bargain labels before moving to Victor in 1929. He also briefly recorded
for the Hit of the Week label. When Hit of the Week folded in 1932
he went to Columbia which, itself, was in deep financial trouble.
He spent the rest of the 1930s bouncing back between Victor and the American
Record Company labels.
Of the recordings featured this
week, "A Little Kiss Each Morning" is my favorite, primarily because I
think the song has a very pretty melody. Recorded just eight days
after the 1929 stock market crash, its lyrics are rather appropriate and
are typical of a great many "cheer up" style songs which came along as
the Great Depression worsened.
I featured "Pretending" on a previous
update a few years ago before I had my current audio restoration equipment
so this update provides an opportunity to present a better sounding copy.
The record for "Gypsy Dream Rose"
belongs to regular guest contributor Matt From College Station who requested
that I include it on this update as a favor to someone who heard the recording
many years ago and wishes to hear it again. Matt tells me that
this is one of the harder to find Vallee recordings on Victor.
I include "Everything's In Rhythm
With My Heart" as an example of Vallee's mid-1930s recordings. Vallee's
band in 1929 was rather small for the era. The 1936 band
sounds much larger.
When I first started collecting
vintage records as a kid, I was not at all fond of Rudy Vallee's recordings.
To me, his voice sounded anemic and nasal. Over time, however,
his voice has, for whatever reason, grown on me and, today, I actually
enjoy many of his early records.
- Dismuke
EXTRA
This section will present
78 rpm recordings that do not fall within the range of the vintage pop
and jazz fare that I usually present. Here I will feature
recordings from a wide variety of eras, musical genres and nationalities
as well as occasional spoken word recordings.
Label detail for first selection
featured below. Anyone understand what it says?
Label detail for second selection
featured below. Anyone know what it says?
Unknown
Japanese Recording
Hibari Misora
1949
(Nippon Columbia A 736 mx 1211206)
Unkown
Japanese Recording
Hibari Misora
1949
(Nippon Columbia A 736 mx 2211207)
UPDATE: I want to extend
my thanks to those who wrote in with information about these recordings.
The singer on these recordings
is Hibari Misora who was a VERY famous post World War II vocalist in the
Japanese musical genre called enka.
My guess about the dates of the recordings was WAY off - both were recorded
in 1949 and issued in 1950 when Hibari Misora was only 13 years old.
At this
link is an article about her life and career. You can also
view a photograph of her at this
link.
The title of the first selection
translates to either "Red Rose of Tears" or "Tears of Red Roses."
The title of the second selection
translates to "My Boyfriend" using the English words with Japanese phonetics.
The reason the English word was borrowed was because there wasn't a native
tradition quite like the American custom of boyfriends and girlfriends.
Here is a Japanese 78 rpm that I
came across a few months ago and which will only temporarily be in my possession.
When I saw it, I figured that I would buy it to give to my friend and occasional
guest contributor Christian
Kohlhaas who thinks Japanese records are interesting. I
can't say that I have cared much for most Japanese 78 rpms I have listened
to and was quite surprised at how enjoyable I found this one to be.
The first recording is very pretty and the second is rather peppy.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how
to read Japanese or to even reproduce the alphabet on the credits so I
include a scan of the labels on both sides of the record for the benefit
of anyone who does. (If anyone is able to translate the labels, I
would very much appreciate hearing from you at dismuke@dismuke.org so I
can update the update and pass the information along. Please include
the word "Japanese Record" in the subject header so it does not get mixed
in with the heavy volume of spam that I unfortunately am subjected to.)
My guess is that the record
is from sometime in the 1930s - but I know very little about Japanese records.
The is something about the first
selection that reminds me of the music that one might expect to hear in
old Western movie - and this is not the first time I have made that observation
about an Oriental recording. There is a Chinese buffet restaurant
here in Fort Worth, Texas that I have nicknamed "The Temple of the Chinese
Marlboro Man" beacuse it used to play music that sounded like something
from one of the old Western themed Marlboro cigarette television
commercials except that all the lyrics were in an Oriental language,
presumably Chinese. So if anyone who is knowledgeable about
Oriental music can explain why there is such a similarity, I would also
be interested in knowing.
- Dismuke
August 2
This week's Hit of the Week
is brought to you by
White Rock
The leading mineral water
(from 1931 ad)
Note - I am very please to welcome
back guest contributor Matt From College Station as he shares some
more recordings from his excellent collection of 1920s and 1930s jazz and
dance band 78 rpm records.
All recordings and commentary
in this update, both the regular and the "Extra" sections, are from Matt.
My only contribution was to transfer and digitalize the recordings.
You can learn more about Matt
and find his contact information by clicking here.
Do
The New York
Victor Arden, Phil Ohman & Their Orchestra
1931
(Victor 22726-A)
Here
We Are In Love
Victor Arden, Phil Ohman & Their Orchestra
1931
(Victor 22726-B)
This week I would like to present
an orchestra which made many records for both Victor and Brunswick throughout
the 1920s - 1930s and is very popular among vintage music collectors.
Victor Arden and Phil Ohman first
collaborated in the early 1920's as arrangers for the QRS piano roll company.
Ohman was the jazzy one of the bunch and often added improvisation to their
arrangements.
They formed a team in 1924 and co-led
many pit orchestras for Broadway shows, including Lady Be Good (1924);
Tip
Toes (1925); Oh, Kay (1926); and Funny Face (1927).....all
Gershwin shows. They also filmed several Vitaphone sound shorts.
Their music remains vibrant and fresh to this day due to their superior
arranging style and skill.
"Do The New York" is one of Arden-Ohman's
best recordings. It is incredibly peppy and has a beguilingly complex arrangement.
Plus this tune captures the vibrant feeling and energy of the New York
City of that era.
"Here We Are In Love" is a sentimental
ballad that benefits immensely from the arranging skills of Arden-Ohman
. Note the piano solo under the vocal - it is very pretty.
Both of these tunes come from the
Ziegfeld
follies of 1931. It was sadly, the last of the Ziegfeld Follies and
ran for 164 performances. Ruth Etting, Harry Richman and Helen Morgan starred
in this production....it would have been something to see!
- Matt From College Station
EXTRA
This section will present
78 rpm recordings that do not fall within the range of the vintage pop
and jazz fare that I usually present. Here I will feature
recordings from a wide variety of eras, musical genres and nationalities
as well as occasional spoken word recordings.
The
Hour Of Parting
Victor Young And His Brunswick Orchestra
Dick Robertson, vocal
1931
(Brunswick 6116)
In
The Candle Light
Victor Young And His Brunswick Orchestra
Dick Robertson, vocal
1931
(Brunswick 6116)
Victor Young and his Orchestra and
vocalist Dick Robertson bring us two beautiful melodies in "The Hour of
Parting" and "In The Candlelight."
"The Hour of Parting" written by
Misha Spoliansky, is performed here as a tango fox trot. To me it
is both sad and beautiful - reminding me of how one feels when leaving
a loved one. I especially love the French horn or oboe after the
vocal.
"In The Candlelight" is also oa
hauntingly beautiful tune.
Victor Young's Orchestra was the
Brunswick/American Record Corporation house band for a number of years
and was also very popular on radio throughout the 1930s. Young was
also known as a composer of film scores of which he holds 200 to his credit.
- Matt From College Station
|