Forgotten Male Crooner/Jazz vocalists

bump!
one of my favourite recordings by Frankie!

 

and just because. brilliantly recorded!

 

I happened to find this same Guy Pastor vinyl LP today for 45 cents. I'd only heard of him once before and it was right here in your post. Yes, he can indeed sing. I'll be keeping this one.

Thanks!

 

Just received my first Glenn Yarbrough cd. I once had an LP with Baby The Rain Must Fall on it, and had a hankering to own it again.

 

I picked up a compilation called Sing Low - Sing Love that Capitol Custom did for the Shakey's Pizza chain. It has a couple of cuts by George Chakiris (Memories Are Made of This and I Left My Heart In San Francisco from the album Memories Are Made of These) that were surprisingly good. I've seen several of his LPs in thrift shops and may have to get them.

Has anyone here heard him at all?

 

Yes, he was good! Too many people ignore great male singers. It is always fun to discover one!

 

The great Billy Eckstine is one of my favorite forgotten male vocalists. Also appreciate Frankie Laine as I've grown older. Someone I think that gets overlooked today is Bobby Caldwell, what a superb singer and musician.

 

I wish there was a reissue of the COMPLETE Billy Eckstine MGM recordings. There are still songs never reissued at all. A complete box with a great large format book would be great. He was a huge star.

 

As Billy Joel would say, "only the good __ young." Within the second or third generation of classic pop singers to which he belonged, he was a fine one. Overall, cool-sounding guy. To me, he got better as he matured. I like the following vocal from his later years, which had the added interest of being a tribute (or sort of tribute) to one of his somewhat forgotten fellow female singers:



I believe that I am missing only one of the albums in which he is heard. His main ones:



The Capitol album has the advantage of featuring the work of Billy May, as Nathan Aaron already pointed out. For their part, the later albums have the added interest of including a few duets with Sue Raney, a good singer with a great voice that started recording in the 1950s and is still at it today (and sounding better than ever).

The other albums in which Tony appears are family affairs to which he contributes a few vocals, some solo and some with his father and/or his brother. Below are two of them. (There are more, but I thought I'd just pick two, to fulfill the five-pic limit per post.)

 

I know this isn't a "look what I just found!" thread, but I wanted to show some great singers I've snatched up over the past two weekends. Hit up an estate sale with tons of LPs, as well as a flea market over Labor Day, and walked away with a few obscure male vocalist albums! I'm pretty excited to give them all a listen! The Jack Carroll is particularly great! Reminds me of both Andy Williams and Frank Sinatra! Have these all been discussed?

 

Great finds. I think I have some other Jack Carroll.

Have you tried Tommy Leonetti? He made a small pile of LPs, but his very first (Dream Street, on the VIK label) is the best. Be sure to get the mono, as the stereo version dropped a song or two.

 

A crooner among the pigeons, a new angle

I believe I may have mentioned Jack Scott earlier in the thread.

 

That Larry Kert photo was taken on Broadway, because he was primarily known as a Broadway show singer. He was Tony in West Side Story, and introduced several standards to the world (Maria, Tonight). Later, he did this solo LP. Sadly, he died at age 60.

 

- The album I have is folk songs. Apparently they thought that was a good idea. I don't think he was well suited to folk songs.

 

In that time (the folk boom), many artists from different styles were doing folk albums, probably at the suggestion (or command) from the companies. Even if the performances themselves may not be of interest to a folk music fan, when you do comparative listening with other versions, they reveal interesting differences in approach.

 

Nice selection! That Marcos Valle LP doesn't come cheap, hope you got a deal!

One of my favorite sub-genres of crooner material is when they tried to move with the times, and Frankie Randall tackling "I Can See For Miles" and "Flowers in the Rain" is amazing. Maybe not good, kind of a little desperate, but definitely a different spin...

 

I used to think of that Marcos Valle record as common and easy to find in the $1 bins. That may have been in the "used to be" days. However, I bet it is still in dollar bins here and there.

 

I want to know the location of these dollar bins you speak of

 

They are usually down on the floor or underneath the browsing bins in large used record stores, of which there are still some left. They are all of the records in "charity" shops or what some used to call junk stores. They are the shelves and bins of records at large sized antique "consignment" or cooperative stores. They are ALL of the records sold at garage sales and estate sales all over the country. They are also in the boxes that dealers at record shows put in the corner.

Sure some have disappeared as record stores themselves have disappeared, or as some people think every LP on earth is worth at least $15-20.

Even though Seattle may have high rents that discourage the selling of low priced merchandise, I bet there are massive quantities of cheap vinyl in Seattle if you have the patience to look.

In this entire country, of ALL of the vinyl that is being offered during any one week, I bet at least 80% (probably more) is being offered for $1 or less. (Garage and estate sales alone offer massive quantities all the time, but it takes a lot of driving and a little luck). At this moment, there are probably many billions of vinyl LPs in existence in just the USA (not to mention CDs). Only a tiny percentage are fetching collectors prices, even very collectible and desirable records.

Some may think that low priced stuff is all crap or is in poor condition, but there is a lot of incredible music in good condition in there.

I bet there are at least a few hundred of those Marcos Valle records scattered around this country right now for $1. You just have to be in the right place at the right time, and have the eyes to spot a copy

 

Johnnie Ray
The missing link between Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

 

Some people say the link between Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley is not missing at all, though he has passed on. He was Dean Martin. I don't think there was a link to Sinatra. Nice visual link though! (Although Elvis didn't seem to cry very much, as Johnnie was known to do)

Dean was inspired by and emulated Bing, and Elvis was inspired by and emulated Dean (of course there were other influences, but these were big in each case)

 

- I don't believe you'd find this album in too many buck bins today! And yes, I got a deal ($1!)

 

When you hit a lot of sales at houses, many used record shops and many antique barns, you'd be amazed at what you see,

 

I think I have all of the American LPs that he released, including the rarer, non-Capitol one:



The ones I best enjoy are the first two on Capitol Records. They go for the lounge-y, cool and swinging sound of the 1960s. (I might like the third, too; I just don't remember it well. The fourth is not to y liking at all, though.)

Obviously, I like Mr. West Side Story's voice well enough. In the end, though, he falls in my personal "could-have-been-so-much-better" category. After I listen to two or three of his vocals in a row, I always end up with the thought that he is being much too careful, and needs to let loose more ... I find myself saying aloud, "pick up the pace, señor María. Faster, pussycat, faster!"

 

Got this at a record show last weekend (bought it for the cover!) - I think it was mentioned upthread a bit. I wasn't expecting much but this is really nice and mellow, he sings with a quintet and the orchestration is pretty spare. Might appeal to fans of Chet Baker's vocal albums.