Bing Crosby: “Rarities From the Hollywood Studios,” continued
(In which I expand upon my story from earlier this week in THE NEW YORK SUN)
This past Tuesday (May 21), my story in The New York Sun was about an exceptional new release of very rare recordings by the one and only Bing Crosby. I’ll link to the story here (if anybody reading this can not access the story on the New York Sun web page below, write to me and I’ll send you the PDF).
(and to order the CD set, here is a link to the Sepia Records home page.)
John Newton, the stalwart collector who spent over 50 years assembling this material (he tells a story about speaking to Crosby himself regarding one of these tracks), has generously supplied us with a number of scans of the original labels of these extremely scarce discs. Richard Tay, head honcho of Sepia Records, was unable to include these in the booklet - there’s a lot of data and verbiage associated with these tracks, and yes, those are expensive to produce.
I was able to include one of these labels (“Blue Moon”) in the Sun story, but these labels are so attractive that I thought I would try to include an assortment of them here, all courtesy John Newton. Only three of the eight sides pictured are actually in the Sepia Records package, which hopefully means that there’ll be enough material for further releases at some point.
John adds: “Those I just sent are not from any of the selections used in the Sepia release, but I sent them only because they might be more attractive as illustrations. Since the vast majority of such "movie records" rarely reached the hands of the public, and were made purely for limited internal studio use, little effort was ever made to make the discs appear more than simply informational... i.e. plain and simple.”
Starting chronologically, here are two very different discs from The King of Jazz (1930):
Here’s the “air trailer” (radio promotional disc) for The Star Maker (1939). No one ever thought of this as one of Crosby’s better pictures, but this medley does such a good job of “selling” the movie that now I’m anxious to see it again.
Two very spiffy numbers by Johnny Burke & Jimmy Van Heusen: the Oscar winning (Van Heusen’s first of four) “Swinging on a Star” from Going My Way (1944) and “Busy Doing Nothing” from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949). “Swinging” is included in the Sepia set, so hopefully no one will mind if I share it with you here:
Jumping ahead to 1956: the mouth waters at the thought that there may be more material out there somewhere from the classic High Society, the once in a lifetime triple threat teaming of Crosby, Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong. Leave it to The Great John N to find these!
One last label from John - in fact, I included this on my KSDS program (on Sing! Sing! Sing!) a few weeks ago, “Bing Crosby Sings Richard Rodgers,” a recording made for the 1959 Say One For Me but not actually used in the picture:
A LUCKY STRIKE EXTRA! Here’s another Bing Crosby film-oriented disc from the collection of the stalwart John Newton. This is not a soundtrack performance, but is listed as a “demonstration” of “I’ve Got a Pocketful of Dreams,” by Burke and his major pre-Van Heusen partner, veteran songwriter James Monaco. Famously, this became an all-time Crosby signature song, and the title went on to become the title of the first volume of Gary Giddins’s definitive, ongoing biography of Crosby.
Likely, this was the first time Crosby sang the song, and the disc appears to have been distributed only to a few Paramount Pictures executives. This is not on the new Sepia CD, but rather it was released in 2014 on a special CD produced to promote the excellent PBS TV documentary special, Bing Crosby Rediscovered.
On John’s original disc, the song title is given as “Pocket Full of Dreams,” as opposed to “Pocketful” - although Burke corrected the title by the time the film and the record came out. Also, the working title for the picture was Harmony For Three, before Paramountdecided on Sing You Sinners.
This is a great, fun, performance: Bing with just piano and guitar (Perry Botkin?), very relaxed. Halfway through, Bing playfully interjects, “Boris Morros sings the nest chorus,” a gag reference to Russian-born film producer and music supervisor Boris Morros. (Incidentally, Comrade Morros had quite a career even apart from music and movies, apparently as a spy for both the Soviets and the FBI.)
PS: John has other noteworthy discs from the Harmony For Three / Sing You Sinners project, two takes of “Laugh and Call it Love.” On one of them, Crosby announces the film title as Harmony For Three and that it will be directed by Reuben Mamoulian or Clarence Brown. The thought of Crosby working with Mamoulian, one of the great men of American musical theater (director of Porgy and Bess and Oklahoma!, among other ground-breaking works) is fascinating, but this is likely just a gag on Bing’s part. (Alas, there’s not room to include it here, but it was released, along with the second and longer take, on the Sepia CD Bing Crosby: Good and Rare Volume Three.)
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos! Also to Richard Tay of Sepia Records and that master of all things Bing - and all Bing things - Malcolm McFarlane.
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
To listen to KSDS via the internet (current and recent shows are available for streaming.) click here.
The whole series is also listenable on Podbean.com, click here.
May 25: Henry Mancini @ 100: A Century of Hank
June 1: The Rainbow Connection (For Pride Month)
Four Episodes of Sing! Sing! Sing on KSDS (88.3 San Diego) spotlighting the life and legacy of Tony Bennett:
SSS 59 2023-08-12 Tales of Tony
SSS 58 2023-08-05 Tony Bennett sings the George & Ira Gershwin Songbook
SSS 57 2023-07-29 Tony Bennett - Van Heusen, Burke, Cahn, Styne, Sondheim, Comden & Green
SSS 5 2022-07-30 Tony Bennett @ 96: The Johnny Mercer Songbook
SLOUCHING TOWARDS BIRDLAND is a SubStack newsletter by Will Friedwald. The best way to support my work is with a paid subscription, for which I am asking either $5 a month or $50 per year. Thank you for considering. Word up, peace out, go forth and sin no more!
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Hi Will, Please send me via PDF your recent article on Bing Crosby published in the New York Sun. Thank you,
Ric Ross