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Travellin’ Light - Great American Light Orchestras: Volume 2

GUILD MUSIC LIGHT MUSIC GLCD 5114 [76.49]

Crotchet Budget price

Victor YOUNG (1900-1956)
Travellin' Light
WALTER SCHARF AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Mercury MG 25192 1954 [2:51]
Leroy ANDERSON
Blue Tango
HUGO WINTERHALTER AND HIS ORCHESTRA - HMV B 10277 1952 [2:51]
Johnny MERCER and David RAKSIN
Laura (from the film "Laura")
DAVID ROSE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - MGM D 106 1952 [3:01]
Douglas FURBER and Philip BRAHAM
Limehouse Blues (from "Andre Charlot's Revue of 1924")
MORTON GOULD AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Columbia MM 706-1 c. 1950 [3:51]
George and Ira GERSHWIN
Mine (from "Let 'Em Eat Cake")
ANDRE KOSTELANETZ AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Columbia ML 4481 1952 [4:18]
Bernard LANDES
The Grasshopper
CONDUCTED BY CAMARATA - Decca DL 8112 1954 [3:07]
Ray NOBLE
The Very Thought Of You
RICHARD HAYMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Mercury MG 20048 1953 [2:56]
Fausto CURBELO and John A CAMACHO
The Girl With The Spanish Drawl (Wow! Wow! Wow!)
(PERCY FAITH AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Columbia 4-39783 1952 [2:08]
Herb MAGIDSON and Con CONRAD
The Continental (from film "The Gay Divorcee")
BOSTON 'POPS' ORCHESTRA Conducted by ARTHUR FIEDLER - HMV B 10098 1951 [3:08]
Arthur SCHWARTZ and Howard DIETZ
I Love Louisa (from "The Band Wagon")
THE PITTSBURGH STRINGS arranged and conducted by RICHARD JONES - Capitol L 534 1954 [1:15]
Billy VAUGHN
Joyride
BILLY VAUGHN AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Dot 15247 1954 [2:22]
Clarence GASKILL and Jimmy McHUGH
I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me
NELSON RIDDLE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Capitol CL 14158 1954 [2:55]
Nicholas ACQUAVIVA and Ted VARNICK
New York In A Nutshell
ACQUAVIVA AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Brunswick O 5270 1953 [3:13]
Kermit LESLIE and Walter LESLIE
The Little Toy Shop
KERMIT LESLIE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Epic LG 1019 1953 [2:30]
Meredith WILLSON
Calico Square Dance
MEREDITH WILLSON AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Brunswick LA 8628 1953 [2:35]
Oscar HAMMERSTEIN AND Jerome KERN
All The Things You Are (from "Very Warm for May")
GORDON JENKINS AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Brunswick LA 8540 1952 [2:31]
Leon JESSEL and Morton GOULD
Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
ROBIN HOOD DELL ORCHESTRA Conducted by MORTON GOULD - Columbia ML 4361 1949 [3:57]
Frank PERKINS
Kentucky Trotter
FRANK PERKINS AND HIS "POPS" ORCHESTRA - Brunswick O5263 1953 [2:41]
Fritz KREISLER
Tambourine Chinois
DAVID CARROLL AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Mercury MPT 7004 1954 [2:31]
Ralph Maria SEIGEL
Little Jumping Jack
CONDUCTED BY CAMARATA - Decca DL 8112 1954 [3:13]
Cole PORTER
I Concentrate On You (from film "Broadway Melody of 1940")
ANDRE KOSTELANETZ AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Columbia ML 4682 1953 [3:15]
Edward HEYMAN and Dana SUESSE
My Silent Love (Jazz Nocturne)
MORTON GOULD AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Columbia ML 2021 c. 1948 [3:26]
David ROSE
The Flying Horse
DAVID ROSE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - MGM 441 1950 [2:10]
Irving BERLIN
The Piccolino (from film "Top Hat")
THE PITTSBURGH STRINGS arranged and conducted by RICHARD JONES - Capitol L 534 1954 [1:53]
Morton GOULD
Tropical
DAVID CARROLL AND HIS ORCHESTRA - Mercury MPT 7004 1954 [2:18]
Helen DEUTSCH and Bronislau KAPER
Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo (from the film "Lili")
VICTOR YOUNG AND HIS SINGING STRINGS - Brunswick O 5159 1953 [2:36]
Leo Robin and Harold ARLEN
What's Good About Goodbye? (from the film "Casbah")
DAVID ROSE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - MGM C 754 1954 [3.04]

 

They keep coming from the Guild Light Music stable. Here’s volume 2 in their American Light Orchestras series with a full complement of top notch bands, arrangers, arrangements and songs and the result is naturally pleasurable and entertaining. I suspect Victor Young might have transatlantically lopped one "l" off Travelling but the song that gives the disc its title is a string-based classic complete with a classic B section bluesy clarinet solo. One can’t begrudge Leroy Anderson anything, even his gee-tar insertions in Blue Tango, still less when he writes so well for trombone and percussion. And David Rose, whose reissues are so splendid a feature of this and other recent discs, contributes a lush Laura though it sounds to have been taken direct from the soundtrack as the sound is rather dampened down. Morton Gould has a lot of fun with the Limehouse Blues converting it back away from its status as a jazz standard into a fully bedecked tone poem, with orientalism a-plenty, muted trumpets and portentous orchestration. Wittier is the Camerata-conducted Grasshopper one of the many genre animal pieces that kept bands so busy during the years.

Richard Hayman contributes a rather overblown The Very Thought Of You as if afraid to let Ray Noble’s song just unfold but the frolics of Latin Americana are very much to the fore in The Girl With The Spanish Drawl. This series has thrived on the variety and dextrous colouration of this type of material and this disc is no exception as one can hear in Nelson Riddle’s arrangement of I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me which is characteristically eloquent in its distribution of weight and sonority, and has a fine solo for his own instrument, the trombone. True, Aquaviva writes a strange tune in New York In A Nutshell which isn’t – but should be – subtitled, An American in New York so indebted is it to Gershwin’s cosmopolitan model but at least he laces it with a big, fat, hammy trumpet solo.

Throughout in fact we find witty orchestrations and charming moments of whimsy and humour – two tunes at once in the Calico Square Dance, a touch of the military in Rose’s The Flying Horse. I assume some linguistic fun was had at the expense of Kreisler’s Tambourin Chinois, which here becomes Tambourine and is bedecked in bongo drums and a tropical feel. What the man from Vienna felt, still very much alive at the time, must remain a mystery though doubtless the royalties didn’t go amiss.

This is very much an indication of the fun and warmth to be found here; unpretentious in spirit but often scrupulous in craftsmanship, especially the best known. Transfers are effective and the notes once more a pleasure.

Jonathan Woolf