Barry Frank, Edna McGriff, Enoch Light, Jack Hansen. the 4 "Dukes." (John Wayne doubles who sang?)

Seven tracks today, all worth a spin.  Two "pop" numbers, an R&B novelty, and four early rock and roll numbers.  All fake versions, but you can't have everything.  As far as fakes go, these are the real thing.

Think of this group of singles as an appetizer before the 24-track Waldorf LP to come.  Today we have Enoch Light on the Remington label with two outstanding 1951 numbers--(It's No) Sin, and one the best-ever semi-novelties, Undecided.  Written in 1938, Undecided, unable to decide which artist it wanted to be associated with, went through a number of versions, but this is the most successful of them all--or, rather, a fake thereof.  Specifically, this is (are?) the 4 "Dukes" faking the Ames Brothers.  And "The 4 'Dukes' faking the Ames Brothers" sounds like a specialty restaurant item.  ("I'll have the 4 'Dukes' faking the Ames Brothers, please.")  1952's Hambone, also on Remington, is unfortunately not a fake of Red Saunders' dynamite R&B version, but it is a very nice cover of the Frankie Laine-Jo Stafford pop version.  It may even have slightly more drive.

Today's Barry Frank and Edna McGriff offerings come from eBay miscellaneous-singles lots, and they were played extensively by their previous owner(s).  And not gently.  But I got more than adequate fidelity, and I made the labels look halfway nice, and the tracks were worth the effort, so I'm cool.  If you ask me, at least.  Neat to have some very early Barry Frank, though a little weird to have R&B singer McGriff singing the sanitized "pop" version of Work with Me, Annie, which was retitled Dance With Me, Henry for Georgia Gibbs (dunno if it originally had a comma or not).  No, wait a minute--it was Etta James' Wallfower, an answer song to Annie, that became Dance with Me, Henry.  My bad.  So, to sum things up, Wallflower was an answer  record to Hank Ballard and the Midnighters' Work with Me, Annie, an R&B hit in the R&B category known as "dirty," and Dance with Me, Henry (which really seems like a cleaning-up of Work with Me..., but what do I know?) was a family-friendly redo of Feelings.  No, wait.  Heck, I forgot what I was typing.

Okay, Edna is doing a fake of Georgia Gibbs covering Wallflower, and imagine how all this would sound if I really was on my seventh Pabst.

The original Hank Ballard side, by the way (Annie...), has Beach Boys-style "ow-ooms" in the backup vocals--another reminder that nothing is original.  Actually, a possibly little-known fact about surf music is that it stemmed from black rock and roll, going back to the late 1940s.  As for Barry Frank's versions of Earth Angel and Ko Ko Mo, I hate to report that they have nothing like the feel of early rock and roll ("early," in this case, referring to the time of r&r's entry into the pop charts).  But they're interesting as history.  That's my usual cop-out line at moments like this.  I'd go so far as to suggest that they're interesting in their wrongness.

Barry Frank had definitely not yet found his rock and roll groove in 1955, but, as demonstrated by the tracks shared by Eric (last post), he improved considerably within a few years.  And I wanted to express my annoyance with too many rock documentaries that treat rock and roll-era white adults as deluded for imagining that songs like Work with Me, Annie were obscene, because such songs banked on their (ahem) impropriety.  It doesn't take a celebrity-scientist gig on Cosmos to realize that ballads like Annie and Sixty-Minute Man were, as the modern term goes, adult-themed.  And sex-without-romance songs were not a welcome tradition in the "pop" realm.  Having said that, plenty of "crossover" r&r ballads weren't the least bit suggestive--Earth Angel, for instance.  My point?  Beats me.  Enjoy the fake-hits appetizer!




DOWNLOAD: Barry Frank, Edna McGriff



Earth Angel (Will You Be Mine) (Curtis-Williams)--Barry Frank, The Four Bells, Jimmy Carroll and His Orch. (Bell 1089; 1955)
Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So) (Wilson-Levy-Porter)--Same
Dance with Me Henry (Rogers-Otis)--Edna McGriff and the Bells, Sy Oliver and Orch. (Bell 1093; 1955)
Pledging My Love (Washington-Robey)--Edna McGriff, Sy Oliver and Orch. (Same)
Hambone (Saunders-Washington)--Jean Stamford and Francis Payne w. Jack Hansen and His Orch. (Remington R-45-68; 1952)
(It's No) Sin (Shull-Hoven)--Enoch Light Brigade feat. Bobby Doyle (Remington R-45-51; 1951)
Undecided (Robin-Savers)--The 4 "Dukes" w. Enoch Light and His Orch. (Same)



Lee

He was the world's most famous dance band leader. By 1956, he was doing fake hits for Waldorf.

Yup, Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra on Waldorf, faking the 1956 hits.  Of course, Paul got to do much more on the label besides sound-alikes--for example, he did a 50th anniversary LP, which is coming in the mail as we speak.  I got a great price on it.  Hope it plays as nicely as it looks in the pics.

In addition to fake hits, Paul did five LPs for Waldorf (for its Grand Award label), and I've yet to post his Grand Award Hawaiian Magic, a copy of which Buster sent me some time back.  I must get to that.  Paul recorded yet another Rhapsody in Blue for Grand Award (as part of the anniversary set), which features Eugene Weed on the piano.  This track was inexplicably reissued on a Synthetic Plastics Company boxed set called A Century of American Music, which you can presently get for a buck from Discogs (That's about what I paid for it).  Then again, it may not be the Waldorf version, given how loosely the SPC set plays with the credits.  For instance, it features the Phil Flowers recording of Rock Around the Clock but tells us we're hearing Bill Haley.  Ah, nope.  Something close to the same boxed set, with a different cover (and no Rhapsody in Blue), was also released by SPC, with a different cover and Vincent Lopez getting the blame.

But we're here to talk about today's offering,  8 Top Hits (Waldrof Music-Hall MH 3333; prob. 1956), featuring Paul Whiteman and a host of singers and quartets.  And my copy came without a cover, so I scanned my EP cover, with sports the same photo, so it's close enough.  The jacket image at Discogs isn't very good, so I passed on using it.  The sound came out better than I expected, and it was good to begin with, so we'll hearing some fine 1956 fidelity.  The surface is about a VG, but I killed all or most of the clicks and pops, as usual, so...  But there's the question as to whether Paul Whiteman was actually involved with these tracks.  That is, was his name stuck on the jacket simply to give this 10-inch LP extra cred?  I'm leaning in that direction.  Unfortunately, I don't have the EP singles (18 Top Hits 203 and 204) which contain seven of these tracks, and which might (or might not) confirm who did the conducting duties.  So I dunno.  However, at Discogs there's a listing for the Waldorf LP 18 Top Hits LP (33-TH-9), on which the orchestra credit for Miracle of Love is given to Enoch Light, not to Paul, as here.  You can't believe a thing you read on these cheapies--not even on the Waldorf labels, which were the closest things to legit issues in the world of budgets.

So we can probably assume that Paul's name is being used her for its celeb value, but it's still incredibly cool to see him associated with fake hits.  Loren Becker only gets two credits this time (!), with Artie Malvin getting four.  The Zig Zags Quartet appears twice, with the Rhythm Rockets getting only one shot.  (One shot!  Get it?)  The versions are very good, even if many are in that big band style that Enoch favored.  The very underrated songwriter Bob Merrill (who apparently was never forgiven for writing Doggie in the Window) is represented by the excellent Eileen Rodgers hit, Miracle of Love, well-faked here by Sylvia Textor.  True Love is beautifully sung by Artie Malvin and Lois Winters, and it's too bad I can't stand the number.  That it's by Cole Porter does nothing to endear it to me.  Blueberry Hill isn't very good, though maybe Artie Malvin would have had a more appropriate instrumental backing on Bell, for which he also sang.  In all, a fun set.

In terms of fidelity to the originals, our Bell label bonus singles are a whole different story.  The Bob Miller fake of Little Darlin' made the amazing choice to copy the Gladiolas original, not the monster-hit cover version by the Diamonds (which some argue is better than its source, which it may be).  It's a delight to hear such an effective copy of the "R&B" version (and I'm using quotes because traditionally, and in spite of what you've heard, "R&B" never referred to a specific style--rather, the R&B charts reflected what was popular with black record buyers--hence, Bing Crosby's White Christmas was an R&B hit as well as a "pop" smash).  And you wouldn't believe how much needle-dig noise I had to remove from the Little Darlin' rip.  But it was worth the trouble.  African-American saxophonist and bandleader Buddy Lucas is listed as the singer on Hound Dog and When My Dreamboat..., so I have no I have no reason to doubt it--and he has the right feel and the right kind of rough voice, so I'm fine with Bell's choice.  Then we get Artie Malvin doing The Green Door again--only minus the Enoch Light sound, which in this case is a good thing.  Marion Colby's Dim, Dim, the Lights is terrific in the way it captures the sound of the Bill Haley hit version, and the lovely and talented Edna McGriff  (a vocalist with Buddy Lucas' band) was somehow coaxed by the Bell sublabel Favorite (if you can imagine a sublabel of Bell) into waxing a superb version of Sh-Boom, that monotonous early rock hit which used the chords to I Got Rhythm (including the circle-of-fourths bridge), and which was brilliantly and brutally trashed by Stan Freberg.  (I personally like both versions--the original and the unkind parody.)  Edna's version is jazzy and sultry, which is quite an accomplishment when the material is so minimalist.

To the maybe-Paul Whiteman tracks and the Bell bonuses!






DOWNLOAD:  Paul Whiteman and His Orch.--8 Top Hits (Waldorf MH 3333; prob. 1956)


And the actual cover image, found at a WordPress site by Sky Raven, who provided the link.  Many thanks!  As you can see, identical save for the extra print:

8 Top Hits--Paul Whiteman and His Orch. (Waldorf Music-Hall MH 3333, 10-in. LP; prob. 1956)

Out of Sight, Out of Mind--The Zig Zags Quartet
Green Door--Artie Malvin w. the Rhythm Rockets
Cindy, Oh Cindy--Loren Becker w. the Zig Zags Quartet
Blueberry Hill--Artie Malvin
Hey! Jealous Lover--Loren Becker
Miracle of Love (Bob Merrill)--Sylvia Textor
True Love (Cole Porter)--Artie Malvin and Lois Winters
You'll Never, Never Know I Care--The Zig Zags Quartet

Bonus Tracks (All 45 rpm singles)

The Green Door--Artie Malvin (Bell 11; 1956)
Hound Dog (Leiber-Stoller)--Buddy Lucas w. Jimmy Carroll and Orch. (Bell 3; 1956)
When My Dreamboat Comes Home--Same
Little Darlin' (Maurice Williams)--Bob Miller w. the Michael Stewart Quartet (Bell 35; 1957)
Dim, Dim, the Lights (Ross-Dixon)--Marion Colby w. Gil Stevens and His Orch. (Bell 1083; 1955)
Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)--Edna McGriff and the Tomcats (Favorite 21000X; 1954)

                                                                                                                         Edna McGriff

Lee

8 Top Hits (Hits... Hits... Hooray!)--Waldorf Music-Hall DC-105; prob. 1957

Before I forget, dig the original Woolworth price sticker in the upper right-hand corner (99 cents).  Waldorf was "exclusively sold in Woolworth stores from 1954 to 1959," to exactly quote Wikipedia, though I'm fairly sure some of their stuff was mail-order.

Everything seemed too simple, too straightforward with this rip.  No conflict between jacket and label information, with the track count (eight) corresponding to the EP title ("8 Top Hits"), and few condition issues.  Granted, "Music-Hall" gets a hyphen on the label and not the jacket, and "78 RPM Standard Speed" (jakcet, upper right) is a little confusing, since 78 RPM was becoming old hat in 1957--unless the phrase was referring to the "standard" speed of 78 in the sense of "Not 79, and 77, but 78."  Except that makes no sense.  Oh, well.

But this time around, we don't have the usual collection of confusing or clashing details, and the disc gave me no hassles, editing-wise.  And the sound is very good.  It's Full Dynamic Range, after all.  Dig the full dynamics.  (I gave the bass a little boost, regardless.)

1957 would seem to be the year for island rhythms--the year of Calypso. I recall seeing a musical short, made around this time, which treated Calypso as the logical successor to rock and roll.  Boy, how prescient.  Exactly how it happened.  Meanwhile, Wringle Wrangle has always been a favorite of mine, and I don't know why.  Maybe because Merv Griffin recorded a very pleasant version for Decca.  It is weird that the song, being from a Disney flick, would have the very mildly suggestive lyric of "Got a woman to cook and wash... and things," though I suppose that would go over the heads of 1957 young people.  Not sure.  Never underestimate what kids of any era were aware of--all that stuff they weren't suppose to know about.

I took some sleep meds last night that worked too well, and I'm doped even at this hour.  This explains why I just entered "Enoch Light w. Enoch Light and His Orch."  Umm, no.  And when I think of Banana Boat Song, I hear the Belafonte version (and Stan Freberg's hilarious, and brutal, parody), but this is a copy of the Tarriers' version--hence, the "Hull and Gully Driver" part.  And I move on to the next paragraph, fully confident that what I just typed made total sense.

The fun Artie Malvin fake of Young Love totally misses the boat, stylistically, and this was the rule, initially, for Waldorf when it came to rock and roll--the label made the stuff sound more like big band.  This accounted for many fun but weird tracks--like Too Much, which tries hard to capture the feel of the original (singer Joe Pryor makes a halfway decent fake Elvis) but winds up sounding like a proposed chart for Frank Sinatra.  Blue Monday has some fabulous electric guitar, but the beat is pure Peter Gunn-style jazz, and Loren Becker sounds less like R&B than Pat Boone.  Actually, I suppose Boone didn't do as badly as critics maintain--it's just that, despite his great pipes, he was no Elvis.

I think it was Waldorf's initial failure to capture the sound of r&r that gave rise to the false notion that the sound-alike labels never adjusted to the new style--they did, of course, and they produced their share of fine fakes.  This EP is almost definitely from 1957, and it would only be another year before Waldorf, perhaps realizing that r&r was more than a passing fad, began producing very r&r-sounding rock and roll fakes.  A fun EP, but I still can't get over the lack of weird lapses.  These cheapos almost always contain one or two memorable disconnects.  But not this time.  Very strange.





DOWNLOAD:  8 Top Hits (Hits... Hits... Hooray!)--Waldorf Music-Hall DC-105; 78 rpm EP

(Blank back cover--hence, no back cover scan.)

Lee

"Go Ye"--The Crusaders Quartet (Grace Note 7829/7830; approx. 1962)

On my mp3 ID tags, or whatever they're called, I forgot to include the label's matrix numbers--7829 and 7830.  I did, however, include the all-important RITE matrix number that's scratched into the "dead wax," which dates this at approximately 1962.  There appears to have been any number of groups called "The Crusaders Quartet," and this is the Naked City.  (Wait...)  This particular Crusaders Quartet hails from Shipshewana, Indiana, and I bet you couldn't tell "Shipshewana" is an Indian word. The city had a population of 658 in 2010.  It has an Amish and Mennonite museum.  And a big flea market I want to be at, except it's too hot out today.  Here, I mean.  Probably there, too.

These guys being from Shipshewana, we might expect a conservative kind of sound.  And we'd be correct.  No accompaniment, even--a cappella all the way.  And I love hearing traditional hymns sung in a more or less from-the-hymnal fashion, because in church everyone sings the melody in unison--women, in a female range, and the men, in a male range.  "Unison" means "same note," and not "at the same time," as so many folks seem to think.  Even if it's the same note an octave apart, it's still unison.  That is, we don't get to hear four-part harmony in churches, unless there's a choir, and then they're singing someone's Gaither-style arrangement which the church had to pay a user's license to perform, when it could have simply sung from the hymnal for nothing.  And amateur choirs love to tackle arrangements that only sound good when Nashville studio pros are singing them. One of the weirder features of human nature.

These guys are pretty good, and it's a nicely varied playlist.  I've been wanting to put up more African-American gospel, but everything I have in that regard is either available on CD, or available in digital-download form, or both.  However, please regard this quartet's fine version of I Shall Not Be Moved as my tribute to the great John Lewis.

Varied "close" harmony on these tracks, with no set pattern in terms of who does melody duties--sometimes it's the first tenor, sometimes the second.  And one track starts with the bass singing the main part, only to have the baritone pick it up.  And, for all of the different definitions of "close" harmony out there, I personally think "close" means just that--close.  You've got four parts packed into the male tessitura, and so you have overlap.  This is why Barbershop-type singing is typically notated in treble-and-bass-clef fashion, with the upper clef to be sung an octave lower.  Of course, the "correct" way to do this is to put an "8" under the treble clef, to designate the octave drop.  But old tunebooks and songbooks always took the quirkiest routes available, just to confound people of our era.

Sound quality is decent for a low-budget production--no too-early machine shut-offs or thumping sounds between tracks.  It's always nice to not have to edit out such stuff.  This is a thrift gift from Diane--thanks, Diane!--and she did a great cleaning job with her record-cleaning machine.  The a cappella singing is either a welcome thing or a turn-off, depending on your ears' point of view--I find it refreshing, but you're not me.  But, hey, I'm not you, either, so we're even.

No time to do my usual author/composer checking, save for two numbers--After and O Happy Day, on which the refrain has traditionally been credited to one Edward F. Rimbault, 1854.  Text is from the 18th century.  There are two other famous O/Oh, Happy Day numbers, but this is the one with the "How dry I am" melody.  And reliable-sounding internet sources tell us that After has 1932 words and music by N.B. Vandall.

And remember--I'm just reporting history, not making it up.  I had no part in any of the events documented here, save for sound-editing the waveform.  Now, go ye to Go Ye.  And how often do I get to say that?






DOWNLOAD: Crusaders Quartet--Go Ye (approx. 1962)

Lee

Fully orchestrated, no less--Parade of Hits A'Poppin' 7802, Vol. 2 (1954?)

In case you're just tuning in, I recently established (last post) that Enoch Light started with the Prom label in December, 1951, and that he split in 1954, forming his own labels, which I collectively call "Waldorf."  He had Waldorf Music Hall, 18 Top Hits, Waldorf Record Corp., and Top Hit Tunes.  (I think I got those right.)  Among others.  And this post at Bob's blog appears (note: appears) to verify my theory that Prom was a Synthetic Plastics Co. label from the get-go.  (Thanks, Bob.)  The piece referenced by Bob notes that Enoch left SPC in 1954 to form "Waldorf."  Which is my shorthand for Enoch's labels, which means that the article stole the idea from me.  Except it couldn't have, because it was written when I was only eight years old.  Yet, somehow, I just know it was my original thought.

So, Enoch leaves SPC in 1954 to form Waldorf.  However... a couple problems, and they consist of two discs used in the making of today's playlists: Waldorf Record Corp. EPs which appear to hail from 1952 and 1953!  Behold:

And I've found at least one source which claims Enoch Light started Waldorf in 1952.  Which is two years before 1954.  So, who to believe?  What to believe?  Where to run and hide?  Why are they doing this to me?  Why?  And who are "they," anyway?  They can at least come out in the light where I can see them.

And I had concluded that the "Prom Orchestra" credit on the Prom label marked Enoch Light's exit from the label--namely, that any Prom single which features that generic credit can be presumed to be post-Enoch.  Well, it turns out there are, in fact, Enoch-era sides that say "Prom Orchestra."  Oh, and this is cute--on some of the Proms, it's the all-caps "PROM Orchestra."  Well, whoop-de-doo.

Some questions answered, some new ones raised.  Just another day... At the Blog! (Theme music, fade)

So, we start with the ten-inch Parade 78 shown above--a 78 rpm EP containing six Prom releases, two of them MY(P)WHAE reruns--The Darktown Strutters' Ball and There'll Be No Teardrops..., but they sound a bit better than before.  We're at a point in record history when 78s were still sounding better than 45s and LPs.  Plus, a spirited I Get So Lonely, and a good fake of Till Then--and the latter is a cover of the Hilltoppers, not the Mills Brothers, who had enjoyed great success with the same number a decade before.  The 1944 version was practically doo-wop--threw me for a loop when I first heard it.  The very lovely Till We Two Are One is very solidly put over by Artie Malvin, and I was suspecting that Tom Glazer had swiped a folk melody for it, as he did with the 1951 Merv Griffin hit, Twenty Three Starlets.  (Yes, Merv had early success as a solo singer.)  But it turns out Glazer did the words for Till We Two..., not the music.  Kills that theory.

Our six bonus tracks include "The Rockets" (Prom's whoever-was-available-to-sing-at-the-time vocal group) doing a quite good version of Oop-Shoop, along with the flip, Papa Loves Mambo, on which Tommy Scott proves he was no Perry Como.   Still a fun song.  Also, a decent Two Hearts, Two Kisses (Make One Love) a spirited Jambalaya, and okay versions of Pledging My Love and Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.  And here's a cool fact about the Karen Chandler original of Hold Me: its flip, One Dream (Tells Me), was penned by the late Joseph Stefano (as "Jerry Stevens"), the man who wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock's Psycho and produced the first season of The Outer Limits.  Now you know.

The first four bonus tracks are from Prom singles (a 78 and two 45s), and the last two come from the Waldorf Record Corp. EPs pictured above.  You know--the EPs that couldn't have existed in any logical universe, because their label had yet to be created.  But we're in the rack-jobber zone, where anything is possible.








DOWNLOAD: Parade of His A'Poppin' 7802, v. 2, plus bonus tracks

Lee