Perry Como
&
The Raymond Scott Orchestra
|
CD Listing |
Volumes
One,
Two and
Three |
Today's music radio is prerecorded music. Once in a while, scanning
the radio dial, we do happen on a live performance by an
up-and-coming cult band or a venerable jazz artist; it can be either
exciting or annoying to hear music performed in the studio at the
moment we're hearing it. The best performers, of course, come to
life before a live audience —
even an audience they must imagine,
as listening from houses and cars. Others reveal a disheartening
dependence of recording technology or the dazzle of a big stage
show.
 But whether a contemporary artist thrives on live radio or falls
apart under pressure will have virtually no impact on the artist's
career. Live performance is a novelty in mainstream radio.
It wasn't always that way. The phonograph did predate commercial
radio; for some years 78 rpm records presented the best technology
for delivering music to the home. But with the radio craze of the
twenties, radio and recordings began to struggle for dominance. The
symbiosis represented by playing records on the radio, so familiar
to us now, would then have seemed both technically cumbersome and
unnecessary: bands and orchestras were delighted to play entire
programs of live music for radio audiences equally delighted not to
be changing records every three minutes. Thus did radio come to
depend on live performance — and thus did live radio become a
crucial means of employment and exposure for artists in all musical
genres.
Perry Como began radio broadcasting in the late thirties — before
he had scored a single hit. The radio shows collected here in fact
provided Como with his first big springboard to recording success;
as a recording star Como would continue to appear regularly on the
radio. In the fifties he effectively made the transition to
television — first with a TV version of the brief radio shows from
which these sessions are drawn, later with an hour-long variety
show.
Como was born in 1912 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. At the age of
eleven, he became an after school apprentice to a Canonsburg barber;
briefly he owned his own barbershop.
But at nineteen, Como was offered a job singing for Freddie Carlone,
a Cleveland bandleader. For three years he toured with Carlone,
becoming popular with Midwestern audiences for his mellow, Crosby
influenced crooning.
In 1936, Como joined the Ted Weems Band, one of the most popular of
the thirties. Weems' band performed in the tradition of the "sweet"
— as opposed to jazz —
dance bands of the twenties; even as other white bands like Jimmy
Dorsey's and Glenn Miller's began to purvey a simplified version of
black swing, Ted Weems band remained placid. Como's crooning fit
right in — but he did not make a strong mark as a recording artist
during the thirties.
Shortly before these radio shows were launched, however, Weems' band
broke up. The United States had entered World War Two; Como planned
to return home and open another barbershop. But when CBS hired him
for live radio, he settled his family outside New York and began to
appear for fifteen minutes every afternoon on CBS shows that this
collection is drawn.
Later in 1943. largely as a result of the success of these shows,
Como would make a milestone appearance at the Copacabana; RCA would
immediately sign Como to a recording contract; soon he would move to
a nighttime radio show on NBC, RCA's affiliate, and enjoy enormous
success as a recording artist. In 1945, Como would sell an
unprecedented two million copies each of "If I Loved You" and "Till
the End of Time." Between 1944 and 1955, only Bing Crosby among the
male pop stars would have more hits; in the fifties, with the
changes brought about by rock and roll, Como would move to
television and continue to enjoy TV success through the early
sixties. As late as 1975, "Perry Como's Forty Greatest Hits" would
be a million-seller in England.
Thus on these
shows we hear a Perry Como whose big success is only months away. He
does not depart from the relaxed style he employed with Ted Weems'
band; Como would in fact never attempt to compete with the jumpier
swing band vocalists who were his contemporaries. His announcing and
singing do not invoke the nightclub; politely he knocks on the
listener's door at three in the afternoon. And despite the
popularity in the forties of both black and white swing, this
laid-back, serenading approach reached an audience of unprecedented
size. Looking backward to the pre-jazz days, pairing hits from
the "sweet" dance band era — and even from the turn of the century —
with new pop and show tunes, only barely flirting with jazz
sensibilities, Como was uniquely able to appeal to two or three
generations at once.
 The
singing on Como's hit records would not develop radically from the
style we hear on these shows. He ranges effortlessly from light
baritone to tenor; the traces of old-fashioned, pre-microphone
singing that we catch here might be eradicated later, but the vocal
style is already mature and controlled. Characteristically he mixes
the old and the new in his repertoire. Songs that would have
appealed to an older generation include chestnuts like "Girl of My
Dreams." "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes" is drawn from the
early country music of the Carter Family — an unusual choice for
Como, but the song had recently been covered on the pop charts. He
is careful to balance the :oldies" with hipper numbers like Duke
Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and Cole Porter's "You'd
Be So Nice to Come Home To," as well as brand new ballads like "Now
We Know".
The Raymond Scott
Orchestra, which served as the CBS staff band, takes over for a few
numbers alone; they extend Como's laid-back approach. Scott himself
was music director for CBS, and while he had hired jazz greats
Coleman Hawkins and Benny Morton for recording sessions, he
personally preferred the old-fashioned sweet style — making his band
the perfect counterpart to Como's singing. The orchestra's work on
"My Blue Heaven" represents this jaunty, even-tempered approach
perfectly. The World War Two period piece "Johnny Zero," however,
approaches swing, especially in some of the solo work.
As this collection
demonstrates, Perry Como was a natural for live radio, that
once-essential venue for musical performance of every kind. His
mellow singing and smooth announcing, holding out against the
prevailing jazz-influenced pop vocals of his time, take us back not
only to the bygone radio days but also to the pre-jazz roots of
American popular song.
William Hogeland
|
CD Listing |
Volumes
One,
Two and
Three |
|
(902)
701-2442 
