1959: Today at the 30th Street Studio

Aha. But for general variety of fonts, I still go for Bridgeport . . .

 

April 17 (Friday) 1 of 2:

From 10am-1pm, Ed Kenny with Luther Henderson and His Orchestra recorded the songs

Hawaiian Wedding Song
Sweet Lelani
Blue Hawaii
Aloha Oe

Producer/A&R was Ernie Altshuler again.

Musicians employed

Leader and Piano:
Luther Henderson
Violin:
Paul Gershman
Sam Rand
Alex Cores
Morris Lefkowitz
Arnold Eidus
James Grasso
Rudolph Bochco
Eugene Orloff
Cello:
Abe Kessler
Harvey Shapiro
David Soyer
Saxophone:
Nuncio Mondello
Jerome Richardson
George Berg
Harold Feldman
Guitar:
Barry Galbraith (same guy as Joseph B. and Joe Galbraith I believe)
Charles Macey
Piano:
Harold Fonville
Drums:
David Francis
Joseph Venuto
Bass:
Frank Carroll

compiler ag

Seems like a pretty decent week for orchestra musicians at 30th St.

Was this that same Hawaiian album as the other sessions? I have more to write today.

 

April 17 (Friday) 2 of 2:

Letting the crew go home at a decent time today, the final session was from 2:30-5:30pm, and Jimmy Jones with accompaniment recorded the songs

You For Me To Love
In The Evening Time
Whenever You Need Me

A&R/Producer was Joe Sherman.

Musicians employed

Leader:
Jesse Stone
Contractor:
Edward Goldberg
Saxophone:
Albert Sears
Piano:
Bert Keys
Drums:
David A. Francis
Bass:
Doles Dickens
Guitar:
Don Arnone
Alexander E. Caiola

That's a group of session players with a lot of history! Everyone but Edward Goldberg is findable.

compiler ek.

Ah, we see that these names are more formal than what ag did. We'll see if that pattern holds true.

I thought at first that I was unfamiliar with Jimmy Jones, but looking into that article I was like, "Holy crap, this is the guy that did Handy Man", which is a song I heard a million times on Top 40 radio after it came out.

As it turns out, that song was also released in 1959, barely (December), but was recorded later than today, I believe, with Otis Blackwell as producer.

I just cheated and went Out Of Sequence to the end of the year to see if the Handy Man session was at 30th St. or any Columbia studio, but there is not a Report for it and I run out of Schedule in August, because it is so time-consuming to document and I ran out of time in NYC.

Still, Otis Blackwell frequented 30th St. during a certain time, and I found an interview with him in Time Barrier Express Magazine, conducted in July 1979 by Brandon Harris and Ralph Newman, in which Blackwell elaborates on some other people who we know were also in 30th St. at times, as well as recording practices at the time.

Here is the relevant excerpt in full:

-----------------------------------------------
"TBE - Wasn't it also during this period that you began producing Jimmy Jones?

"OB - yeah. Jimmy came to me with an idea for a song called" Handy Man," which Just needed a little work on it, a few words here, a few words there. We went into the studio and made a demo of it, which Goldie played for Arnold Maxim at MGM. They put it out, and it was the demo that they released, with a few little things added to it

"TBE - What that Jimmy Jones' very first solo record? (Dan's edit: This and the next paragraph ran together, but it had to be OB talking next.)

"OB: You know that earlier he had been in a group called The Pretenders. We almost got into a "court thing" over that! I didn't know that Jimmy had been in a group and that they had already recorded a song called 'Whistlin' Man." What made it so ironic is that "Handy Man" had whistling in it, which I did.The only reason I did that was because the flute player didn't show so I whistled the flute part. When I finally did hear 'Whistlin' Man' some years later, I had to admit that the two songs were pretty close.

"TBE - You went on to produce Jimmy Jones' 'Good Timing" and Roy Hamilton's 'Don't Let Go," neither of which you wrote, correct?

"OB Don't let go was a Jesse Stone song, which Jesse had arranged a little lower. When I came to the session, Jesse was kind of despondent 'cause Roy couldn't seem to get it the way he wanted it. So I said, "lets pick it up" and told Roy to holler 'uh uh" every time I tapped him on the shoulder. That was the "thing" at the time, everyone moaning and groaning.

"TBE - Who were some of the other artists you produced? With whom did you moat enjoy working?

"OB - What got me off the most was producing Mahalia Jackson, Before Arnold Maxim came to MGM, he was at Columbia- I was introduced to Mahalia and john Hammond, who was recording her. He asked me if I wanted to work with Mahalia and went over to the hotel where she was staying, played her a tape of a couple of tunes and she picked "For My Good Fortune,"* which was also done by Pat Boone. I wrote that song with Bobby Stevenson with whom I'd written "Hey little girl". He was also playing drums with me during the $3 per 'gig' days way back when I worked with Johnny Ray who I produced for Shalimar. It was the beginning of them using outside people to come in and produce.

"TBE - You didn't seem to get production credit in those days. That wasn't "in" at the time, right?

"OB - No, there were no production deals at the time. We were doing it because the publisher had an 'in' with the A&R; man."

*from Dan: For My Good Fortune was released in 1958 as a single and may not be on any album.

-----------------------------------------------

Back to today's session:

The Report said that Jimmy Jones' contract date with Columbia was "5/1/59 (pending)". Yeah, I guess something happening in the future is pending. The label for this session, something I haven't been diligent about reporting, was OKEH.

Two of the songs were released on 45:



Hey, those are on Epic!

They appear to have not been released on LP at the time.

Here is Whenever You Need Me

 

April 18 (Saturday):

No sessions today.

 

As I mentioned at some point, I've been reading again Ashley Kahn's great book "Kind Of Blue", and on p. 126 he says:

"...in (the) six week window between the two Kind of Blue sessions, something ultimately more consequential than a mere performance or magazine article would project Miles' name, face, and music coast-to-coast: Miles was taped for a national television broadcast in which he was also the featured star.

"The show was called 'The Sound of Miles Davis'. It was produced and directed by Robert Herridge, an intense, intelligent, cigarette-smoking Welshman who regularly invited CBS' late-night viewing audience to watch his in-depth, high-culture programming. With resourcefulness (and a sparse production style inspired by lean budgets), he had successfully adapted literature, drama, and musical performance to the small screen. Herridge's musical subjects had included the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ahmad Jamal, and an all-star group for his 1957 tour de force, "The Sound of Jazz". The program, a critical success that had drawn stacks of viewer response in the days before accurate TV ratings, had been produced with the input of noted jazz journalists Whitney Ballet and Nat Hentoff and featured once-in-a-lifetime performances and jams by Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rushing, and others."

...

"The taping of 'The Sound of Miles Davis' took place in CBS-TV's Studio 61, a large room Herridge had intentionally left bare of any sets or other theatrical artifices. Jimmy Cobb recalled arriving at the studio:

"It was at Fifty-Sixth Street and Tenth Avenue. I walked in the door and it looked like a warehouse or something. The room stretched out and it actually had a terrible echo in it. I walked around it and there was a chalkboard with everybody's name up.' "

He says that Adderley was absent due to a migraine, despite being credited at the end of the program. He also gives a nice description of the program you can watch in the quoted post.

"Though it would not air until over a year later (when it would provide invaluable promotional support for Kind of Blue and the rest of Miles' catalog), 'The Sound of Miles Davis' added several degrees to the steep angle of his career ascent."

...

"By the time 'The Sound of Miles Davis' aired, on July 21, 1960, 90 percent of American homes owned TV sets, quite a jump from 52 percent in 1956, the year Elvis Presley shook his way to stardom on The Ed Sullivan Show."

...

"Hentoff recalled Herridge's office being deluged with mail from viewers impressed by the show."

Again, I think this is a really interesting book and well worth a read. It illuminates a lot that we are interested in, and I'll quote from it another time or two about other things. It puts a lot into perspective.

 

April 19 (Sunday):

Two sessions today in the Schedule, 10am-1pm and 2-4pm, both for the same client, the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.

Although my notes show "Ford" as the A&R/producer, I am not aware of anyone named Ford at Columbia, so maybe the car company was the client for the jingles or whatever? They were indeed Transcription sessions.

 

I also want to point out that it takes me a fair amount of time to put these posts together, and I have no way AFAIK of knowing if anyone is actually reading them other than comments and likes. It's motivating to know that I'm not just writing all this for only W.B., lukpac, and myself, although that's mostly motivating enough.

 

Maybe this?

Ford Motor Company Ltd., Mitch Miller And His Sing-Along Chorus, Ward Bond - 1959 Ford Station Wagon Transcription

Although that is supposedly from March.

 

April 20 (Monday) 1 of 4:

From 10am-1pm today and tomorrow, Rosemary Rice with Anthony Alessandrini (known professionally as Tony Aless, as we'll see) and His Trio recorded too many "songs" to type out. You can read them on the labels below, and also see why the quotes around "songs".

A&R/Producer was Ernie Altshuler.

Musicians employed

Leader and Piano:
Anthony V. Allesandrini (one L above, two here)
Vibes:
Philip C. Kraus
Bass:
Burgher W. Jones
Drums:
Donald Lamond

compiler was ag

As you can see, this was an exercise album (which is how it was listed in the schedule with no other info than A&R) put out by Good Housekeeping magazine.





Rosemary Rice was an actress with some success in a long running live TV series Mama, which was filmed in a studio above the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. She also did commercial work, most notably to me in the Clairol commercials where she said "If I've only one life to live, let me live it as a blonde"!

Here she is in Mama, as daughter Katrin Hansen (upper left)



with clockwise co-stars: a very young Dick Van Patten (brother Nels), Robin Morgan (sister Dagmar), Judson Laire (father Lars Hansen), and Peggy Wood (Mama Marta Hansen).

I can't tell if that's her pictures on the album but I doubt it.

Here is the whole album



if you are so inclined.

Tony Aless/Anthony Alessandrini did some things; it doesn't say, but I bet he played on 52nd St. at one time or another.

All I could find about Burgher Jones was his death announcement from Jazz Beat on MTV, June 21, 2000:

"Burgher "Buddy" Jones, who played bass in big bands behind singers Peggy Leeand Frank Sinatra and toured with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, died of pancreatic cancer June 9 at his home in Carmel Valley, Calif. He was 76. A native of Hope, Ark., Jones attended the University of Kansas, where he met and befriended saxophonist Charlie Parker. Jones worked as a consultant with Lenny Niehaus and Clint Eastwood on the movie "Bird," a biography of Parker. In 1996 Jones was inducted into the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame."

 

April 20 (Monday) 2 of 4:

Also starting at 10am and continuing for 10 hours, but in the Hotel St. George Ballroom in Brooklyn, Isaac Stern, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, recorded

Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel's Franks, Op. 60
Beethoven: Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 61

Since Masterworks doesn't list A&R people in the Schedules, we don't know who it was.

Musicians employed (sic)

Isaac Stern, violinist
Leonard Bernstein, conductor
J. De Angelis, contractor
The Regular Personnel of The New York Philharmonic.

 

April 20 (Monday) 3 of 4:

From 7-10pm, Sylvia Syms and Ralph Burns with His Orchestra recorded

If I Had A Talking Picture
Without Love
Just Imagine
Falling In Love With Love

A&R/Producer was Mitch Miller.

Musicians employed

Leader:
Ralph Burns
Contractor:
Emile Charlap
Saxophone:
Albert Epstein
George Berg
Philip Bodner
Romeo Penque
Trumpets:
Carl Severinsen
Don Goldfield
Trombones:
Urbie Green
Chauncey Welsh (sic)
Violins:
Leo Kruczek
Lou Eley
French Horn:
Burt Fisch
Cello:
Lucien Schmidt
Piano:
Sanford Gold
Bass:
Milt Hinton
Jack Lesberg
Drums:
Don Lamond
Guitar:
Barry Galbraith
Harp:
Janet Putnam

compiler initials drastically cut off, but might be ek.

These songs appeared on her Torch Songs album; not sure if pictures have been posted yet but here they are

 

April 20 (Monday) 4 of 4:

Finally for today, from 11:30pm-2:30am Johnny Mathis with Abe "Glenn" Osser and His Orchestra recorded

Stranger In Paradise
Heavenly
A Ride On A Rainbow
A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening

Producer/A&R was again Mitch Miller.

Musicians employed

Leader:
Abe "Glenn" Osser (I've added the Glenn)
Contractor:
Arnold Eidus
Violins:
Max Cahn
Harry Lookofsky
Gene Orloff
Louis Graeler
Mac Cappos
Anthony DiGirolimo
Sol Shapiro
Harry Katzman
Julius Held
Leo Kahn
Ralph Silverman
Viola:
David Mankovitz
Isadore Zir
Harold Coletta
Richard Dickler
Cello:
George Ricci
Ray Schweitzer
Oboe:
Harry Shulman
Harp:
Margaret Ross
Piano:
Andrew Ackers
Bass:
Felix Giobbe
Guitar:
Al Casamenti
Drums:
George Gaber

compiler was ag

These songs are all on the "Heavenly" album.

 

I know on that report, Arnold Eidus was only credited as contractor, but he was also a violinist, so could he have also played that instrument in that session that we know not of?

Was the 'Cappos' in Mac a typo from the report's end, or transcribing therefrom? His surname is Ceppos.

 

Till Eulenspiegel's Franks, Op. 60? A parody of Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28? With sausages?

 

Beethoven's "Concerto In D Major For Violin And Orchestra, Op. 61" as by Stern, Bernstein and the NYP was issued on Columbia Masterworks ML 5415 / MS 6093. The front cover and labels of the mono (Bridgeport type, natch'):




No known release from the time exists of them performing "Till Eulenspiegel," though.

 

It's on Columbia ML 5625/MS 6225, 'Leonard Bernstein Discusses Humor in Music and conducts Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'.

 

Ah, so that explains everything. Sounds like one of his Young People's Concerts projects.

 

Info from Discography | Leonard Bernstein

 

Front cover and pertinent label from the stereo issue:

 

Arnold could very well have played violin on that session, but it seems like the compilers have been pretty good at stating when someone doubled, because I believe the player/contractor got paid more when they did. So it's in their interest to make sure the Report is correct that way. The player/contractor will later complain they didn't get paid what they were owed.

We've seen more than one instance when Frank Carroll was contractor but not bassist, but there's usually another bassist listed. This time there were LOTS of violins listed and maybe they didn't need one more?

Note that I'm inferring all this, I have no official information about how that all worked.

You are right about Ceppus. Those mimeographed/ditto'd* "e"'s look like "a"'s and vice versa sometimes. It takes looking closely at every single "e" and that is difficult when trying to get through a series of posts.

*From the color of these pages I'm remembering a reproducing process that I think was called "Ditto", where the freshly printed pages were wet with some alcohol-based liquid that was integral to the process. The print was not as sharp as mimeograph and certainly not as sharp as modern printers. Maybe you remember that, too?

 

Another misread, although looking at it closely it looks like it was an F first and they put a P over that.

 

April 21 (Tuesday) 1 of 4:

From 10am-1pm, Rosemary Rice with Anthony Alessandrini (Tony Aless) and His Trio continued recording, Ernie Altshuler A&R/producer.

 

April 21 (Tuesday) 2 of 4:

This is a case where it's really great having both the Reports and the Schedules, because there is a bad case of typos leading to mystery and possibly confusion.

The Reports have the studio double booked, from 11:30am to 2:30pm, which is impossible since Rosemary Rice et al are in there till 1pm, while the correct session following RR has no specific time, only hours.

Thankfully, the Schedule has info for both which fits.

So, from 2:30-5;30pm today and Thursday, Alphonse D'Artega Conducting The Symphony Of The Air Pops Orchestra with Roger Scime, Pianist recorded too many Gershwin songs to type out, with even more musicians:





Now we're getting some initials instead of first names, and it becomes harder to know exactly who that was. I feel like I recognize some people, so maybe this was that specific orchestra with some added players?

Is this the biggest orchestra we've seen so far?

A&R/producer was Joe Sherman.

I'll let you find that album.

 

Happy Easter to everyone in 2019!