This is Waldorf on the wane. The actual label is Audition (which offered Supertone High Fidelity, no less!), but, of course, Audition was a Waldorf sublabel. I like Audition because it had such cool color covers, like this one, which is Tony Randall and (I think) Sheree North, from the 1957 movie No Down Payment. It's the movie that "inspired" the LP, so the jacket says, though I wonder if the verb is being misused to mean, "from," as in "This image is from the movie." Otherwise, "inspired by" makes no sense, given that the movie, according to IMDB's synopsis, is about four southern California married couples living in a housing development and experiencing marriage issues. Not sure how picks like Rock Around the Clock, The High and the Mighty, and Manhattan could have been "inspired" by a movie of that type, but I suppose there's a shortage of songs about marital struggles in southern California housing developments. (I haven't seen the flick, so maybe some of these numbers show up along the way in some form or other.)
Since the cover shows a pic from a 1957 movie, we can halfway safely assume this LP is from 1957 or 1958. These are all recycled Waldorf tracks, of course, save for (I'm assuming) the title cut.
There is, of course, no such thing as the Audition Studio Orchestra. There is, however (or was) the Enoch Light Orchestra, and that's who we get on six of these ten tracks. As for the other front jacket credits, maybe Bud Freeman is on here somewhere--not sure. But I've ruled out the presence of Bob Bollinger, Jack Brown, and Lois Winter. In their place(s), we get Bob Eberly, Margie Murphy, Artie Malvin (of course), and The Brigadiers. So, why didn't Audition list the actual artists? To be cute? No, I'm guessing someone simply forgot who was on the tracks. Someone misplaced the track sheet. "Um... let's just give Jack Brown and a few others the 'Starring' credit."--Jacket supervisor, confused. There was a Jack Brown at Waldorf, btw, but just not on this particular piece of vinyl.
So, we get April Love from "April Love," The High and the Mighty from "The High and the Mighty," Three Coins in the Fountain from "Three Coins in the Fountain," and Secret Love from "Secret Love." Er, I mean, from "Calamity Jane." Oddly enough, Audition decided not to associate Rock Around the Clock with "Blackboard Jungle," instead associating it with the movie Rock Around the Clock, a 1956 comedy of the unintentional type, in which Bill Haley demonstrated his inability to act. Wikipedia tells us that the flick (Rock Around the Clock) was one of two cheapies that exploited Haley's musical fame. Audition chose to title the song (We Gonna) Rock Around the Clock, instead of (We're...), for some reason. I kind of like it, actually, but it's probably a typo.
Extra-good audio quality on these--way better than they'd sound from those six-selection EPs churned out by this company. And no wonder--it's Supertone High Fidelity, after all. And we get three gorgeous Enoch Light instrumentals, so what's not to love? And it may or may not be Will Bradley on Three Little Words, and No Down Payment gets no artist credit in my listing, because I was unable to locate any Waldorf recording of that number. Otherwise, we're good to go...
DOWNLOAD: Themes from Hollywood Films (Audition 5911)
Around the World--Enoch Light and His Orchestra
The High and the Mighty--Enoch Light and Light Brigade
Three Coins in the Fountain--The Bridadiers w. Enoch Light and His Orch.
Three Little Words--Will Bradley Orch.?
(We Gonna) Rock Around the Clock--Artie Malvin w. The Light Brigade
Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)--Enoch Light and His Orchestra
April Love--Bob Eberly and the Monarchs
Secret Love--Margie Murphy w. Enoch Light and His oOrch.
No Down Payment--Unknown
Manhattan--Ashley Adams
Lee
13 comments:
Certainly resembles Tony Randall in his prime! Thanks Lee, great post!
I could swear that I read somewhere once that they got these movie still covers because someone knew someone somewhere. Might have been at BSN, but I'm drawing a blank this early in the morning. There were quite a few of them that utilized these stills, none of which had anything to do with the music at hand.
Diane--
My apologies--I accidentally hit "delete" instead of "publish" on your comment. However, I still have the text:
"Wow, this is fun! I see a ton of "movie theme" LPs in my thrifting jaunts, so I'll have to keep you in mind for them. The covers are usually beat to hell (if the records aren't, too), but you do such a great job cyber-resurrecting them."
Thanks, and I'd love to have any of those you find--so long as they show up at those fabulous GW prices you're enjoying! (-: I wish the GWs around here would take a cue from yours. They'd move a whole lot more vinyl...
Ernie,
While I was doing the post, I searched for a BSN mention of Audition but found none. It's possible I didn't look closely enough, though. Usually, they'll cover sublablels. I'll have to take a closer look. Discogs, at least, covers Audition and Colortone, the two big, late-in the-game Waldorf con jobs, but oddly enough Discogs only lists ONE "Music from Hollywood Films" for Audition, and it's not this one. That other LP was sitting at eBay for $2.98 or so, and I snapped it up--and then the dealer couldn't find it in her inventory. Order cancelled. I must have annoyed the vinyl god...
The vinyl god, of course, is the entity that oversees all sound recording finds and non-finds.
The download gods are not happy... anyone else having trouble downloading this file?
Sorry to hear--I just tried, and it worked fine for me. Maybe the site was slow (or down) temporarily? Let me know.
Thanks Lee. I temporarily disabled Malware Bytes and it downloaded fine. Burt
Thanks, Lee for this post. Nice to have another Enoch Light Lp in my collection. Plus the first Audition LP. I have a Colortone mp3 I think came from Amazon.de. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Colortone was released in Canada. Plus I seem to have read that the Canadian releases were a bit different than an American release. I can not remember if it was also the songs that might be a bit different, but I read they changed the credited artist's (different band) name on the LP. I can not for the life of me remember where I read this. I am always reading something on the web, then never finding it again. Anyway, do you think that Audition was a Canadian label or for some other country? Bryan
Hi, Byran.
Both my Audition and Colortone LPs are U.S. issues. There may have also been Canadian issues (and probably were), but the labels apparently originated in the U.S.--they use Waldorf's New Jersey address. I just checked my copies to make sure. Glad you enjoyed the LP!
Oh, and I have the same problem with internet sources--I can never find them a second time. I try to make it a habit to bookmark things, but I sometimes forget. Then I end up with an overloaded bookmark folder, and I realize I can't win...
A nice compilation of themes and songs from the area. Great listen, thank you as always. I recently scored a lot of ten 45 rpm EP Royale releases for around 10 USD, not bad for eBay, it was a no brainier to click the buy it now button. I am most active on my YouTube channel, "The World of Budget Vinyl Records".
An enjoyable listen. The Brigadiers are particularly good, and Artie Malvin of course is excellent with Rock Around the Clock.
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