The Songbirds Archives

Fifty years ago, on October 1, 1949, 37-year-old Buddy Clark was killed when his private plane crashed onto Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, cutting short a 15-year singing career that had finally, in the postwar years, accelerated. Well-liked by his musical peers, he was then a constant presence on radio, with over 160 Columbia sides and numerous chart hits to his credit, including frequent duet pairings with two of his Columbia label-mates, Doris Day and Dinah Shore.

Clark’s baritone combined the very best qualities of two seminal 1940s crooners: the buttery richness and resonance of Dick Haymes paired with the seeming ease, relaxation and affability of Bing Crosby. So although Clark may never be known as a real original, his singing style, examined fifty years later, has an edge over many of his contemporaries: He doesn’t sound all that dated. Realizing, perhaps, that he was no Haymes on the technical front, he rarely if ever tested the limits vocally. He was also no Crosby, and given the fact that some of the great Groaner’s work, with its many vocal trademarks, now sounds a little bit quaint, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Clark may now be a only footnote in the Encyclopedia of 20^th Century Balladeering, but anyone who seeks out his few available CD compilations will be pleasantly surprised to discover a singer of warmth, sincerity, directness, and unpretentiousness who, despite his untimely death, has aged very gracefully.

The Pennsylvania-based Collectables label recently released Linda, the most comprehensive compilation of Clark’s Columbia work yet available. Two of the 24 tracks come from 1942 sessions, just before he enlisted in the Army; the remaining 22 tracks feature his postwar work, 1946-1949, including his biggest hits, Linda, Love Somebody (with Day), Peg o’ My Heart (all three charted at #1), I’ll Dance at Your Wedding, and, again with Day, My Darling, My Darling from Frank Loesser’s Where’s Charley?. The disc includes several other tunes from hit Broadway musicals of the period, including How Are Things in Glocca Morra? and the particularly winsome If This Isn’t Love from Burton Lane and E. Y. Harburg’s Finian’s Rainbow; Here I’ll Stay from Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s Love Life; and, backed by Xavier Cugat’s orchestra, South America, Take It Away! from Harold Rome’s Call Me Mister.

Frustratingly, though, this largely enjoyable CD is of only minor consequence to Clark collectors. As the back of the disc clearly indicates, with a rare and welcomed disclaimer: "Tracks 1-20 previously released as CBS Special Products A-18848," specifically a still-available 1992 CD entitled The Buddy Clark Collection: The Columbia Years, 1942-1949. Tracks 21-24, meanwhile – K-K-K-Katy, Chiquita Banana, You Don’t Have to Know the Language and The Treasure of Sierra Madre – make their CD debut, but that’s small consolation considering how many of Clark’s Columbia sides languish in the vaults, including his takes on many Great American Songbook gems, both familiar and obscure, by Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Kurt Weill. His many duets with Day and Shore would likewise make for a very full and consistently bubbly CD compilation. There’s much more to be explored in the Clark discography, and this collection offers little of it.

The 20-track 1992 CBS Special Products version, though musically redundant for owners of the new Collectables disc, is hard to part with. It includes one of annotator Will Friedwald’s better essays, offering much detail on Clark’s life and career not found elsewhere, as well as a complete Clark Columbia-Okeh discography – a rare and unexpected resource. Buddies of Buddy who upgrade to the Collectables version would be wise to photocopy these notes before passing their outdated CBS Special Products discs on to friends.

Whatever the CD incarnation – the 20-track CBS or the 24-track Collectables – this is a welcome introduction to the friendly, unassuming charms of Buddy Clark. Who knows what he might, or might not, have accomplished post-1949, in the land of hi-fi?

When Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington entered a recording studio in early December, 1967, each of their places in musical history was already firmly cemented. But this pairing of the two musical giants still finds them both in near-top form, with the venerable Ellington Orchestra in "full swing" throughout. It is Sinatra, in fact, who’s responsible for the only disappointing moments during these sessions.

Recorded on two consecutive nights for Sinatra's own Reprise label, the Chairman's voice is noticeably tired on the track Follow Me, and his lackluster performance on Poor Butterfly is a shame. These two tracks were recorded December 12, during the second session, which also happened to be Sinatra's 52nd birthday. The other two songs recorded that evening – Sunny and I Like the Sunrise, the only Ellington composition on the album – fare better, but are still not what they could have been.

The previous night yielded richer rewards. Among them are Sinatra's jazzy vocal on All I Need is the Girl, an exceptional reading of Yellow Days, and the swingingest number on the set, Come Back to Me. The latter is given a rollicking, big band treatment that is hard to imagine being equaled by any other pairing of singer and orchestra. December 11 was also the night of the album's standout track, Indian Summer, which is arguably the definitive interpretation of this big band standard. It's Sinatra's only recording of the number – in fact, these are his only recordings of all the tunes here – and it's hard to imagine him topping this take. He sets the perfect mood for the tale of a summer romance that has reached its end. Saxophonist Johnny Hodges also gives an inspired solo midway, and continues exceptionally throughout the rest of the song.

The entire album has a languid feel, with mostly slow tempos apart from Come Back to Me and the jaunty All I Need Is the Girl. Billy May's arrangements are perfectly suited to the Ellington band, which is heard in top form, with most of its major players assembled. Francis A. and Edward K. is very different from most of Sinatra's other recordings during this period. Beyond the enchanting Sinatra and Jobim album, recorded earlier in the year, he mostly taped tunes in the pop vein, not well suited to his style, such as his July, 1967 cover of Petula Clark's hit Don't Sleep in the Subway. So this bold outing must have come as quite a pleasant surprise to his many fans who wondered what he was trying to accomplish by his efforts in the pop singles department.

The sound has been improved from the original CD release; this version features 20-bit digital remastering, resulting in a slightly more vibrant listening experience. This is an all-around wonderful reissue of one of Sinatra's best Reprise efforts, and perhaps his jazziest as well.

The passage of more than four decades has not dimmed the luster of this Mel Tormé classic, recorded for Bethlehem in 1956. Reissued with the original cover art – Burt Goldblatt's witty collage of Tormé's face assembled from sports-car cutouts – and meticulously restored and remastered, Lulu's Back in Town is the late singer's masterpiece.

Even today, the album's repertoire and arrangements still seem daringly ambitious. Apart from a few chestnuts (Fascinating Rhythm, The Lady Is a Tramp), Tormé focuses on offbeat material: two Rodgers and Hart obscurities; two vintage Vincent Youmans show tunes; a brace of seldom-performed songs (I Love to Watch the Moonlight, When April Comes Again); and The Blues, an excerpt from Duke Ellington's suite Black, Brown and Beige. Paich's brilliant charts, written for a ten-piece ensemble, were inspired by and expand upon recordings by Gerry Mulligan's Tentet and Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool Nonet, two innovative jazz groups of the early 1950s. The artistic success of this Tormé-Paich collaboration encouraged other vocalists to commission the arranger to write Dek-tette albums for them, most memorably Ella Fitzgerald's Ella Swings Lightly, Jeri Southern's Southern Breeze, and The Hi-Lo's and All That Jazz.

An achievement of this level transcends nit-picking. All one can do is catalog some of its splendors. The lively title track, with its distinctive single-note tuba intro, remained one of Tormé's signature pieces until the end of his career. (The original Bethlehem LP was simply called Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-tette, but over the years, fans came to refer to it as "the Lulu's Back In Town album," inspiring Avenue Jazz to retitle the CD reissue.) I Love to Watch the Moonlight opens with Tormé's a cappella vocal setting the song's jaunty tempo and fueling spirited solos by trombonist Bob Enevoldsen, saxophonist Bob Cooper, and trumpeter Don Fagerquist. Paich's deconstruction and recomposition of Fascinating Rhythm would have delighted George Gershwin, and his Ellingtonian voicings in The Blues’s instrumental interlude must have pleased Duke. Tormé's supple voice floats over bass and percussion on The Carioca’s first sixteen bars, kicking off Paich's hard-driving updating of Youmans' long-lined rumba.

The Lady Is a Tramp and I Like to Recognize the Tune feature a number of tricky, nimbly executed tempo shifts, complemented by the Dek-tette's mellow, restrained support on the introspective ballads Keepin' Myself for You and When April Comes Again. Lullaby of Birdland is arguably the album's centerpiece, beginning with a chorus of Tormé backed only by Red Mitchell's bass and Mel Lewis' drums, followed by a scat chorus interweaving his voice with the full band, and two additional choruses on which Tormé trades fours with brass and reed soloists (including quotes from Lullaby of the Leaves, Love Me or Leave Me, Blue Moon, The Blacksmith Blues and Moon Over Miami) before returning to the minimalist opening instrumentation. The sprightly Sing for Your Supper, bracketed by mock vocal exercises, closes the album on an effervescent note.

Tormé and Paich went on to create a string of excellent albums, among them a Fred Astaire tribute for Bethlehem, the much-reissued Prelude to a Kiss for Tops, and Tormé, Back in Town and Mel Tormé Swings Shubert Alley for Verve. After a long separation, they reteamed in the 1980s for several Concord reunion projects that contained new versions of some of their Bethlehem sides, but they never surpassed the exuberance of their initial collaboration. All praise to Rhino's new Avenue Jazz division for resurrecting this jazz vocal milestone.

Collectables Records (Buddy Clark)

Reprise Records (Frank Sinatra)

Official Frank Sinatra website

Rhino Records (Mel Tormé)

The Velvet Fog (Mel Tormé)