Dutton Vocalion's Morton Gould Showcase brings to the CD catalog a number of important 78-era recordings of
Morton Gould for the first time. Even those familiar with
Gould's famous recordings of
orchestral pop made for RCA Victor's Living Stereo imprint may not be familiar with the fact that
Gould originally pursued this musical tack in the 1940s for Columbia and yet earlier on radio -- he was truly one of the pioneers of the
easy listening genre. Yet not everything here would readily qualify as
easy listening ; his own tough, sassy, and jazzy Interplay for piano and orchestra as heard here could almost qualify as to what
George Gershwin might have written had he lived into the 1940s. Made in New York between 1942 and 1947, and despite issuance on horrible-sounding, rough-surfaced laminated Columbia 78s; these recordings were originally transcribed on state-of-the-art 16" lacquers running at 33.3 rpm. Alas, transfer engineer
Michael Dutton did not have access to these originals and appears to rely on British Columbia LP issues of these recordings from the 1950s -- not perfect sources, but at least better than the awful American 78s.
Dutton tastefully adds a tiny bit of reverb to help compensate for the dry, rather scrawny, and distorted sound of the sources, and the result is reasonably full bodied, if lacking in high end -- consumed by noise on the original pressings.
There are some real gems here, not the least of which is the 1942 recording of
Gould's famous Pavanne, the only commercial recording of the piece made by
Gould that reflects its dance band origins. Several of the
Gould arrangements in this early period may have sounded dated a generation ago, but now their brilliance is obvious.
Gould's wild, swirling, string-heavy take on Dark Eyes and his lush rendering of
Luther Henderson's The Birth of the Blues are exactly the kinds of pieces that made
Gould such a key figure in modern music when the radio airwaves were filled with this kind of splashy repertoire. One wonders why Columbia's successor Sony, who still presumably owns the originals, hasn't revisited these recordings since the dawn of the mono LP era, especially in light of the success enjoyed by RCA Victor in reissuing
Gould's Living Stereo recordings. For such a package from Sony,
Morton Gould devotees will have to wait, but in the meantime, Dutton Vocalion's Morton Gould Showcase makes for a nice stopgap. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide
