Search - Arthur Godfrey :: Best of Arthur Godfrey: The Old Redhead

Entertaining -- but definitely an acquired taste

Gene DeSantis | Philadelphia, PA United States | 02/06/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Young people listening to this album (assuming young people would) might ask, how did this guy get a recording contract? Simple: by being perhaps the biggest radio and TV star of his day.Arthur Godfrey was one of the first "crooning" announcers, disdaining the pompous, stentorian "March-of-Time" manner of early radio to speak to his listeners much as Bing Crosby sang to them -- one-to-one. A popular Washington DJ and personality, Godfrey gained national attention in 1945 for his moving commentary of FDR's funeral cortege and choking up at the end. A CBS show followed, and years of huge audiences; and in 1947 he signed with the network's sister Columbia label. For a decade he specialized in corny novelty numbers, with simple backings and a voice that sounds like a cross between a dignified banker and a dirty old man. Often (a bit too often) he'd indulge himself by singing in a mock-childish tone through his nose, or laughing while he sang -- for spontaneity's sake, so he probably told himself. (One imagines Larry King singing exactly this way, if he could sing.) In short, he made Mitch Miller's kind of music before that notorious A&R man even joined the label.Despite the corny tunes, the banal arrangements, the more than slight aura of self-congratulation, these songs work, because they make so little demand on the listener, and because they're gentle reminders of a gentler American culture. Godfrey was a big enough star to lure Mary Martin into two duets (one on a song that aspires to be "Baby, It's Cold Outside" but can't make it in); her gossamer tone somehow meshes with Godfrey's organ grinding. There are the inevitable ethnic tunes, including one with his long-forgotten TV discovery Carmel Quinn. And there's Godfrey on the ukulele, an instrument whose life he prolonged, singing a romance to his adopted river, the Potomac. In every one of these is the cozy feeling of your favorite shoe, or comfort food, or a gathering with your grandparents. At times, you want to tell Godfrey to shut up, but it doesn't come out. He won't let you.That we hardly ever hear of Arthur Godfrey anymore -- his number-one years all but ended when he fired his singing star Julius LaRosa on the air in a glorified contract dispute, though he soldiered on in radio through the seventies -- is a pointed reminder of the will-o'-the-wisp of fame and the harshness of posterity's judgments. And yet, and yet, this album is pleasant, quite pleasant, one song and by the dozen, and should remind the open-eared listener that in important respects maybe the good old days weren't so bad after all."