Anyone Else Into Pop Vocal Music (non-rock) of the '40s & '50s?

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This Bitter Earth

One of my favorites by Dinah Washington. Followed up by The Ballad Of All The Sad Young Men, this one done by various artists, Shirley Bassey for one. Not songs to listen to when you are in a down mood, but interesting in their own way. I rather like interesting and unusual music. Esquivil is fun for instrumental arrangements.

XM radio's Special Xmas is now over, but with the new Pioneer Inno that Santa bought, I was able to record a few hours of the station before it went off the air. My coworkers can't understand why I'm now laughing all the time. Tune to Channel 150 and find out!
 
A great Dinah Washington compilation CD is from Verve
in their Jazz Masters Series, might be still available its
#19 and worth every penny.

Slick Chick
What a difference a day makes
Please send me someone to love
this cant be love
new blowtop blues
cold cold heart
This bitter earth
a foggy day
darn that dream
you dont know what love is
pennies from heaven
long john blues
our love is here to stay
squeeze me
baby youve got wwhat it takes, (with brook benton)
unforgettable.. (very lush and stringy)
 
Good taste in music.

Count me in. All of the artists mentioned thus far are classics I love too.
As kids we listened to my Mother's records as well as my grandmother's records. I grew to love female vocalists (well, except YMA SUMAC).
Big fan of Dinah Shore and Dinah Washington, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald etc. LOVE KEELY SMITH. Saw her at the Martinique not that long ago. She is still grand on stage.
My sister and I used to drive Mom nuts by singing the lyrics on the flip side of old '45s. Needless to say those songs weren't always too good. Have you ever heard Gisele MacKenzie's "MR TELEPHONE" ? Not her best work.
I was given a best-of-Gisele-MacKenzie CD by a friend. (No, the disc was not blank...) She is French Canadian. Needless to say I like Edith Piaf.
 
Wonderful musical memories! Vaughn Monroe's Cool Water and Ghost Riders in the Sky on WSB AM in Atlanta which my mom had on in the morning while we were getting ready for school. That's where we first heard Billy Vaughn's The Ship That Never Sailed, a real piece of emotional overload. Dinah Shore, Mabel Mercer (a special favorite a little later in my life) and Perry Como. We watched his TV show and listened to his songs on the radio. The TV show was sponsored by DuPont and one night they washed and dried a blanket made of Acrilan in the new huge RCA Whirlpool Combo and all of the commercial breaks included a check on the blanket in the combo and sure enough, it was washed and dried in one hour and did not shrink. I remember our class singing Catch a Falling Star when I was in elementary school. It was a time before radio became segmented into special audiences. Even one of our Rock stations played Silver Threads and Golden Needles in the very early 60s. There was a lot more cross over music before the Beatles. My brother talked my parents into buying the Readers Digest 5 record collection The Swing Years(?) and both generations enjoyed it. Bert Kaemfert's recording of Wonderland by Night; Les Baxter's instrumental hit The Poor People of Paris; Hugo Winterhalter's Canadian Sunset & Blue Tango; music from Montovani & Percy Faith; Moments to Remember & Standing on the Corner by The Four Lads; Doris Day singing Que sera, sera; The Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant; Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford; Memories Are Made of This by Dean Martin; Jerry Vale; Vic Damone; Peggy Lee; Patti Page; Jamaica Farewell by Harry Belafonte; Tammy by Debbie Reynolds; Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White by Perez Prado & his orchestra. I guess I should stop, but what wonderful memories y'all have brought to me.
 
More great music

Perez Prado!! Oh boy, does that bring back memories!! During the "disco era", a lot of these great 40's and early 50's songs were re-mixed to a dance format; Tangerine, What a Difference a Day Makes, Brazil, etc. People wonder why I know the lyrics to some of these songs...blame it on the clubs! LOL

Our big band/swing radio station went off the air years ago. It's great to have XM around for such an ecclectic music selection. Sometimes you need a little swing and sometimes you need a little worldbeat!
 
You mean there are other kinds of music? ;-)

I'm a huge Rosemary Clooney fan; her version of "Tenderly" is the definitive one, I feel, and I love "Botch-a-Me" and "Come On-A My House". On the male side, I would have to say Perry Como is my favourite, I could sing "Hot Diggity" when I was four or five, and I was picking out "Catch a Falling Star" on the piano a year or two later. For pure Fifties silly fun, there's no song like Como's "Tina Marie".

Somebody mentioned Kay Starr, one of the most underrated singers of her time. She's still around, still singing, and even though she's thirty years older than I am, she looks better than I do. Her "Side by Side"- and its "B" side, "Noah!" are some of my earliest musical memories. Her "Wheel of Fortune" is great, too.

Don't forget Frank Chacksfield's "Little Red Monkey", and anything by Ferrante and Teicher. Even though I'm no fan of country, Patsy Cline's "Crazy" is one of the all-time great songs and performances. And if you've never heard her sing, I urge you to give Gale Storm (yes, "My Little Margie") a listen. She did some albums for Dot starting in 1955, and had a fair number of well-deserved hits.
 
Oh, and Lest We Forget...

There's also the late, great Dolores Gray! Her "Warm Brandy" album is one of the best late-night mood albums of all time. Besides being a great singer, Dolores was a movie star for a while there; she's Lalume in "Kismet", she's Sylvia Fowler in "The Opposite Sex", which was a remake of "The Women". Her best performance on film was probably as Madeleine Bradville in "It's Always Fair Weather", a Comden and Green followup to "On the Town". Dolores is hysterically funny, and she has the most mind-boggling production number ever filmed, called "Thanks A Lot, But No Thanks". There is a Rhino CD of the movie's soundtrack, and it has a track that Dolores recorded for the film, but which got cut. It's called "I Thought They'd Never Leave". Fantastic.

She looked like Lana Turner, she swore like a sailor, and she could outsing Ethel Merman, having all Merman's brass, AND able to sing sweet and low, too. Give her a listen if you want to hear one of the best singers of the century.
 
Ymama

I'm a big Yma Sumac fan. That is some seriously surreal and trippy stuff and the recording quality on her CDs is amazing. I guess Yma sort of fits in with my love of "bachelor pad" music.
 
Mikey!! I was wondering if/when you were going to weigh in on the subject. Good to see your handle on an AW post again.

I, too, am a fan of Yma. I have a couple of her albums in 45 rpm box-set format and I was delighted to find almost everything she released in the 50's is available at iTunes.

I'm impressed with the knowledge of all the '40s-'50s fans here! You've mentioned some names I'd forgotten and some I'm not familiar with. I'll be doing more searching, no doubt.
 
All of those titles that tom and dane mention are so familia

and brought back such warm memories from so far back I'd forgotten. What about Johnny Mathias' "Until the 12th of Never"--was that a 50's song.

On a personal note, when moved in here and the owner had yet to depart, he played strictly 40's stuff and it was somehow alien and depressing to me, but so was his presence; perhaps it was a case of transference rather than anything in the music. Is what's mentioned in T's &D's post mainly 50's era material.

How can I easily access these tunes now?

It's comforting to be maturing like fine wine, is it not, gentlemen?
 
...and ladies too!

Mickeyd:

'Tis far better to age like a fine wine than old cheese! ;-)

Steve118 had tons of downloaded classics on his computer. We played "Name That Tune" during his visit! Aside from that, XM Satellite TV has music lumped into some pretty amazing categories. Right now, I'm stuck on channel 801 (not sure if this would be the same in your area), which is 40's music with some 30's occasionally thrown in there.

One of the most unexpected artists that I heard on 801 was Betty Grable. They did a back to back of a couple of her "hits" from (I believe) 1949. This gal had great legs (ooh, so jealous) and could sing. Are there any more "unexpected" recording artists out there from the 1940's?
 
Faves are Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney and Julie London (got a boxed set of of Julie from Santa.)

I was listening to Yma Sumac at work one day and someone commented that it sounded like I was listening to a cat being strangled...

veg
 
Lydia Lunch?

How about the infamous Mrs. Miller. She may not have been a 50's icon, but she sure could butcher Petula Clark's "Downtown". I'll take Yma any day! ;-)
 
How About Julie London?

I loved all the women of the 40's and 50's music era, but don't forget the wonderful Julie London. That sultry voice, those silky lyrics--"Cry Me A River," "Girl Talk," and so many others. She even made the Marlboro cigarette jingle sexy..."filter, flavor, pack or box"!
 
See the classics before they die.

I still try to see classics in concert before they die.
Not long ago, in Chicago Rosemary Clooney was playing a concert in Grant Park. A friend and I went with Merlot, cheese etc. LOVED the concert. Got to see her before she died (Duh)... and got stinkin' drunk on Merlot. Thank God the booze kicked in after the concert.
I DID see Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca IN CONCERT in Chicago about 10 years ago. I laughed myself silly.
My concert history in short: David Cassidy, Rosemary Clooney, Keeley Smith.... and CHER.
 
'Splain me sometin.....

Is this the same Julie London that acted in the 70's television series "Emergency"? IIRC her character's name was "Dixie".
 
Yep, same Julie. Sadly, she died a few years ago after a long, long illness.

You mentioned Elva Miller, a.k.a. Mrs. Miller. For anyone who's not familiar with Mrs. M. (who was the William Hung of the 1960s) , here's a link:

http://www.mrsmillersworld.com/
The home page has a "Sights & Sounds in Stereo" link; it will take you to a page with a link to Elva's immortal rendition of "Downtown".

I forgot to mention another favourite of mine- Ella Mae Morse. Her "Blacksmith Blues" and "Cow Cow Boogie" can always put a smile on my face.
 

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