Ross CARE/Record RACK: CHINATOWN - Part II

BORN TO DANCE - CLassic, witty '30s MGM/Cole Porter musical.

Composer/Songs: Cole Porter

Arrangements/Orchestrations: Edward Powell, (“Easy To Love” orchestrated by Powell and Leo Arnaud)

Born To Dance

Rhino Handmade RHM 27778, TT: 66.29, 18 tracks (mono and stereo) **** Quintessential

Producer: George Feltenstein, Performed: MGM Soloists, Studio Orchestra & Chorus, Musical Director, Alfred Newman

by Ross Care

            My admittedly biased opinion that Cole Porter is probably the greatest American songwriter (I once wrote a major Porter appreciation for the Library of Congress) has apparently been vindicated by the recent Porter media blitz. Four major Porter MGM musicals (including Kiss Me Kate and Silk Stockings) have been remastered on DVD, and the Rhino Handmade CD series which reissued The Pirate, has also released Porter’s first major original film score, MGM’s 1936 Born To Dance.

            Born To Dance was developed as a starring vehicle for MGM’s new dancing star of the 1930s, Eleanor Powell, but also introduced two of Porter’s most enduring vocal standards, “Easy To Love,” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. Porter recycled the former from a Broadway show in which the leading man was intimidated by the song’s octave and a half range, but, apparently unaware of its vocal demands, a young James Stewart delivers a beguilingly artless rendition. His ensuing duet with Powell (voice-doubled by Marjorie Lane) is followed by an elaborate set of orchestral dance variations that commence in a sleek, almost 1950s mode, and climax with a nod to Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours”. 

           Porter out-Berlins Irving Berlin with “Rap Tap On Wood,” one of the most infectious and rag-ish tunes Cole ever wrote. Both “Easy” and “Rap Tap” are presented in stereo that must make them two of the earliest Hollywood numbers yet presented in true spatial sound. (While the instrumentals are admittedly thrilling like this, the new mix does tend to overwhelm the vocals just a tad).

            Aside from its great solos Born To Dance features several equally elaborate ensemble numbers. “Love Me, Love My Pekinese,” a droll operetta pastiche/parody, somehow manages to fuse Kurt Weill, Gilbert and Sullivan, the sailor’s hornpipe, and a grandiose Navy chorus into a uniquely high camp moment, as funny on CD as in the film. In contrast, another piece, “Hey, Babe, Hey,” is one of the most deliberately corny (yet appealing) MGM numbers prior to “You Can Count On Me” from the later On the Town. BTD musical direction by Alfred Newman, now topping his precocious New York theatrical career with a supra-Broadway Hollywood sound, and orchestrations by Edward Powell, fuse to provide some of the most stylish and vivid orchestral playing for some of the most elaborate Hollywood numbers up to this point. (The final “Swinging the Jinx Away” runs nearly fifteen minutes!) There is excessive noise on some of the cues, but considering the age of these tracks (vintage 1936) the results are still amazing.

            This complete Born To Dance is a very special treat for lovers of early Hollywood musicals, exhilarating orchestral sound, and the late, truly great Cole Porter.

            (Now when will Rhino present us with the never-recorded On the Town with its wonderful Leonard Bernstein orchestral ballet music?)

Ross Care

           

OH DAD POOR DAD MAMA’S HUNG YOU IN THE CLOSET AND I’M FEELING SO SAD: Composer: Neal Hefti

by Ross CARE

BMG Music Spain S. A. 74321720602/RCA Victor (Re-Issue from Original LP), TT: 25.07,  11 tracks (stereo)  **** A Real DynaGroove

Orchestrations: Neal Hefti – Producer: Hugo & Luigi, Conductor: Neal Hefti

In the late 1950s, as the studio system gradually went dead in the water, old school Hollywood (symphonic) scoring slowly faded-out with it (though fortunately not terminally). But a new style of pop/jazz soundtrack did emerge at this time, pioneered by veteran arranger/composers from the big band 1940s who brought a fresh, playfully hip sound to the “new” Hollywood of the pre-psychedelic 1960s. Key among this new breed film musicians were Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel, and Neal Hefti, with Hefti especially well respected for his charts for Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Harry James, and William “Count” Basie.

            Hefti’s first major film was Sex and the Single Girl, a 1964 comedy loosely based on the book by Helen Gurley Brown, his score so successful that, with the exception of Harlow (‘65) and Duel at Diablo (‘66), the composer was generally typecast scoring comedies for most of his Hollywood career. The peak of his popular success, however, came with the campy 1966 Batman TV series and its colorful score including a dynamic blues-based theme punctuated by a chorus shouting out “Batman!” at key intervals. A “Downbeat” review of a reissued Batman CD recently praised Hefti for his “keen dramatic imagination” and “flair for zany, swinging popjazz entertainment”.

            Hefti also scored a major cult film, Lord Love A Duck in 1966, and in 1967 another film so far out that it has yet to touch down in even the outermost reaches of cultdom, an adaptation of Arthur Kopit’s Off-Broadway hit, Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feeling So Sad. Kopit’s play is a wicked send-up of momism with necrophiliac overtones. (Billboard called the movie version a “pitch-black film satire.” )  The plot, such as it is, deals with what happens when a domineering matriarch, Madame Rosepettle, vacations on a tropic isle with her neurotic son and the coffin containing the worldly remains of Dad, her late husband. Though the film version never quite worked and has pretty much dematerialized, Hefti’s score is brilliant, and very much of a piece with his Batman music; both scores were originally released as RCA LPs.

            The Oh Dad album is framed by a bizarre manifestation of the title song craze launched by High Noon in 1952, a singsong ditty for children’s chorus which attempts to “explain” the title (used intact) with the comment: “please remember, Mama’s always right!” Both tune and its equally catchy vamp are developed in ensuing cues.

            Like Batman, Oh Dad is pure appealing pop, a compendium of riffs from the big band ‘40s through hooks borrowed from miscellaneous early ‘60s pop. (The overexposed term, postmodern, does come to mind). Amazingly Hefti manages to fuse it all into a personal style which, while influenced by Mancini, is just as recognizable anddistinctive. Cues are tight, concentrated, and (like Mancini’s) specifically arranged for album listening.

Stylistically the score bears the influence of eclectic pop sources ranging from ‘50s instrumental hits such as Johnny and Hurricanes’ “Crossfire,” to Kai Winding’s two key surf albums on Verve Records. Technologically the influence of another big band veteran, Ray Conniff, hovers over the proceedings in Oh Dad’s heavily reverbed studio sound and subtly driving percussion/guitar rhythm tracks.

            Scoring comedy is an under-rated art, and Hefti is a master of the genre. His imaginative orchestrations showcase a Batman-style organ, electric and acoustic guitars, marimba and vibes, a few reeds, and lots of big band brass, all propelled by a rhythm section executing almost techno-precise beats. His seasoned instrumentalists display a righteous sense of style, attitude, and conviction that few ensembles today could muster, creating incredibly rich and contemporary-sounding blends of pop sonorities along the way.

Listen especially to the escalating instrumental layering of “The Revolt of Jonathan Rosepettle III,” and the Freudian over-determination of “This Is Mother”. “Home Movies” effortlessly melds from the bouncy to the ominous without missing a beat. “Heaven” is complete with harp, spacey cherubic choir, and a hint of Bach’s “Come, Sweet Death,” “Spooky Coffins” drolly macabre. For all its direct appeal, Oh Dad remains a sterling example of scoring that elusive genre, the black comedy.

            Hefti’s album is also one of the great pop statements to emerge from early ’60s Hollywood. Along with the Beatles’ white album, the penultimate Mamas and Papas LP, and fabulous soundtracks such as Charles Fox’s Barbarella, and Dave Grusin’s Candy, Oh Dad quickly became one of my favorite trip albums of the period. Recently re-issued as part of a BMG Spain series of classic RCA soundtracks, I’m relieved to report that it still gives my wig a solid flip, both for its high-gloss Dynagroove stereo sound, and, especially, for Hefti’s unique bubble-gum-with-edge sense of irony, satire, and pure unapologetic fun!

Franz WAXMAN: PRINCE VALIANT - Original Soundtack CD

PRINCE VALIANT: Composer: Franz Waxman- Film Score Monthly Soundtrack CD

Orchestrations:  Edward Powell – Film Score Monthly vol. 2, no. 3, TT: 62.17,  20 tracks (stereo)  *****  (Absolute Tops) 

Producer: Nick Redman, Lukas Kendall Performed: 20^th Century Fox Orchestra  Conductor: Franz Waxman

by Ross Care

The 1950s were a great period for Franz Waxman (1906-1967). The composer won two Oscars for his scores for Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun, and created a body of classic scores for a variety of films, among them The Furies, Elephant Walk, The Silver Chalice, The Nun’s Story, and Sayonara.  In between music for these generally  high-toned literary adaptations came a stirring and jovial score for a film version of a different kind of literature, for 20th Century Fox’s Prince Valiant, a 1954 epic swashbuckler based on the popular ‘50s comic strip.

            However, Fox expended the same attention to quality to Valiant that it lavished on its all-star film version of another less than high-toned literary property, the lurid best-seller, Peyton Place (which also produced one of Waxman’s great ‘50s scores). If you can get by star Robert Wagner’s ridiculous pageboy wig and wooden readings of lines such as (to Princess Aleta/Janet Leigh) “Oh, forget it,” Prince Valiant is a rousing and romantic action saga with an engrossing overlap of subplots and enough visual beauty and splendid medieval pageantry to fill every foot of the then-new CinemaScope wide screen. Add to all this Waxman’s equally splendid score and you have a film which (on DVD) is still great fun today.

 

            Prince Valiant  is one of my personal favorite scores and it’s great to have the original Fox soundtrack still available in Film Score Monthly’s wonderful 1999 original soundtrack release.  Waxman’s score is based on a series of stirringly lyrical motifs for the various characters, and I see the film as one of the (many) influences, both cinematic and musical, on the later Star Wars. Indeed the Main Title in which Val’s heroic theme is immediately followed by the lyrical love theme for Princess Aleta is almost of blue print for the Star Wars Main Title. Valiant’s Darth Vader is the Black Knight, the devious Sir Brack, with his throbbingly menacing  theme (though we hear none of Holst’s “Mars” here), and though we also have no light sabers there is a singing sword with which Val vanquishes the evil Brack in the film’s athletic climax.

            FSM’s CD presents all of the film’s profuse music in mostly chronological order. The film’s first half hour is almost completely underscored with some of the most thrilling music in the film, including a kind of prologue (“King Aguar’s Escape”) in which the plot is set in motion. This is also the basis for one of Fox’s characteristic CinemaScope “travelogue” introductions, in this case a series of wide-screen vistas of coastal Britain against Waxman’s atmospheric music. Unfortunately one of the most substantial (8.25) cues from this section suffers from tape deterioration and is placed with the bonus section. This cue (“The Pledge”/et al) features an idyllic pastoral transformation of Val’s theme for flute and strings as he rows into the Fens, and the first statement of the frightening  Black Knight music as Brack passes by hidden in his black armor. Waxman created some of the most haunting melodies in classic film music, and an interesting sidelight to the Valiant score is that his Princess Aleta theme was so lyrical that lyrics (by Ken Darby) were added and it was published as a song, “I Do,” though it is not sung in the film.

In glorious Fox stereo Waxman’s Prince Valiant  is one of FSM’s most welcome and durable releases.

            - Ross Care