RCA 50 Years Of Hits In Stereo

From Amazon.com

Yep, the above is RCA's "50 Years of Hits in Stereo", a collection of 5 LPs that probably came with the new stereo when my parents bought it just before my birth. I used to see this and hear this all the time. I haven't seen it since I got back from Japan and asking my parents about its whereabouts just brings blank looks, so I'm ruefully assuming that they had thrown the entire set away when they got rid of the RCA Victor.

That would be too bad. There was a lot of music history in that set. And as much as I've said in the past that my music awakening began at the turn of the 70s into the 80s, music really had always been there with me in those first fifteen years of life. It wasn't just Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）, Kyu Sakamoto（坂本九）and others on the Japanese side, there was also Henry Mancini, The Ames Brothers and The Boston Pops with Arthur Fiedler along with the many other singers and groups involved in "50 Years of Hits in Stereo".

As such, I've already referred to that huge tome of records a few times since The Ames Brothers have gotten their due on the blog with their remarkably bright and chipper version of "September Song" while Mancini was of course behind the cool "Peter Gunn" theme, both versions which are on "50". I distinctly remember my mother playing the former song when I came home after a rotten day at school and I cheered right up. What I would eventually learn is that a lot of those songs that I grew up with were indeed actually cover versions of the original song but given a jazzier, more swivel-happy, and loungier touch. "September Song" by The Ames Brothers definitely falls into that category.

"Sing, Sing, Sing" was once the go-to song for all trailers of Hollywood movies set in the Jazz Age. A bunch of us fellow moviegoers figured that Benny Goodman's iconic swing classic was contractually obligated to be on any and every such trailer. But the Mancini version which is far shorter than the original is the first version that I had ever heard, and it's even swingier, cooler and more dangerous in that 1960s way. It even seems to tell a story of a major heist that suddenly turns very dangerous for its perpetrators and the the police coming after them. 

As with "Sing, Sing, Sing", Ann-Margret's take on "Moon River" was the first version I ever heard, not hearing the original by Audrey Hepburn from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or the popularized version by Andy Williams for many years. Apparently, her version first showed up on RCA Records in 1962.

"Lover" was the Rodgers and Hart song from way back in 1932 when it was sung by Jeanette MacDonald in the movie "Love Me Tonight" when her character sung it to a horse. It's been popularized as this grand pop waltz, performed by many an orchestra such as The Boston Pops. However, it's not that version which was included in "50", but the one by Marty Gold & His Orchestra. And this one has got to be the jazziest and most percussive march I will ever hear.

As with Mancini's propulsive version of "Sing, Sing, Sing", Perez Prado and his Latin jazz ensemble made "Caravan", a jazz standard from 1936 by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol, into this car-chase-through-the-city-streets thriller of a cover. There was another cover by Arthur Lyman, a vibraphone and marimba player from Hawaii, which was used in "Ocean's Eleven" (2001) for one scene where Ocean and Ryan are recruiting the Amazing Yen.

I finally caught most of the original 1956 movie "Around the World in 80 Days" with David Niven and Cantiflas with its royally sweeping theme song. The Boston Pops with Arthur Fiedler were back to give their take on the theme which also has its sweep but further seasoned with some Latin and enough excitement in the intro and outro to fuel a Saturn rocket launch. It does feel like a musical orbit around Earth.

From the Wikipedia article, I read that "Moonglow" is a jazz standard from 1933 by composers Will Hudson and Irving Mills with the words by Eddie DeLange. It's the one song in this sample tonight for which I have not heard any other version and that's fine with me although it's been covered by some of the greats including the aforementioned Duke Ellington. The Ames Brothers are more than satisfying with this smoky take that seems to be perfect for a performance in an equally smoky nightclub in Manhattan. I guess that the one I know from "50" had its intro truncated compared to the one above.

The above is merely and approximately 10% of the total output in the 5-LP set. I know that at least some of the other tracks among the records do exist on YouTube, so if there are any of you interested in the old-school pop, just cut-and-paste the artists and titles from that Discogs site that I linked you to at the top and try them out.

Let's see what some of the big hit singles in Japan that got released in 1965 were.

Yukari Ito -- Koi suru Hitomi（恋する瞳）

Saburo Kitajima -- Hakodate no Hito （函館の女）

Yuzo Kayama -- Kimi to Itsumademo（君といつまでも）

Mie Nakao -- Bye Bye Birdie（バイ・バイ・バーディー）

 

Well, let's see...Ann-Margret started off the article for "Begin the Beguine" when I posted it a couple of days ago, and now she's launching this article for "Bye Bye Birdie". I guess out of courtesy then, her name is gonna have to be entered into Labels, especially when I'm planning to have her spearhead a ROY article sometime in the foreseeable future. Welcome aboard, Ann!

In any case, I remember this movie showing up one lazy Sunday afternoon on one of the Buffalo affiliates and it starts off with Ann-Margret's Kim MacAfee singing her heart out for the titular theme of the 1963 comedy "Bye Bye Birdie". Couldn't get more lovelorn bobbysoxer teen than Kim as she vocally pines for her idol, Conrad Birdie. Didn't see the movie end-to-end so I didn't know that a slightly more grown-up Kim sings the theme again to end things.

Back in the 50s and 60s, the earliest aidoru, whether men or women, were usually covering Japanese-language versions of the American and British pop hits. As such, "Bye Bye Birdie" got its cover out in October 1963 and it was recorded by a teenaged Mie Nakao（中尾ミエ）as she also belts it out of the stands. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out who had taken care of the Japanese lyrics.

To emphasize how much time has flown by since Nakao provided hits such as "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Kawaii Baby"（可愛いベイビー）, she's now 78 years old (and still plenty feisty). I actually saw her last night on an NHK edutainment show focusing on senior citizens with the theme being on shared houses. Somehow, I'm not sure if I can really imagine her sharing a house with anyone, though.

Akira Nishikino -- Begin the Beguine（ビギン・ザ・ビギン）

 

"Begin the Beguine" is the old standard that was concocted by the legendary songwriter Cole Porter back in 1935, and its various iterations have been with me since I was literally a baby. For one thing, the sultry nightclub-friendly Ann-Margret cover with a touch of bossa nova in its jazz (although a beguine is a form of slow rhumba) was on that RCA Victor "50 Years Of Hits In Stereo" set that my parents had gotten along with the stereo.

Since then, I've also gotten familiar with Julio Iglesias' 1981 take on "Begin the Beguine" which was arranged in the disco fashion although disco was pretty much dead (or hibernating) by that point, I gather. The song even made its way onto NHK's 1983 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen when both Red and White teams got together for their usual kick-out-the-doors musical tribute. Porter would have loved it. Too bad that it hasn't gotten onto YouTube.

Entertainer Akira Nishikino（錦野旦）, who I've known primarily for his 1971 hit "Sora ni Taiyo ga Aru Kagiri" （空に太陽がある限り）, followed Iglesias' Latin disco style and recorded his own Japanese-language take on "Begin the Beguine". This was Nishikino's 27th single from June 1982 with Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）providing the Japanese lyrics and the great Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久） arranging everything pretty closely to the Iglesias version.

The Randy Van Horne Singers -- Meet the Flintstones

 

Before "The Simpsons", there were "The Flintstones", that modern Stone Age family. It was a daily ritual for me and my brother as kids to watch the antics of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble as they got through the daily grind in Bedrock while sometimes taking on side gigs which would usually end badly in front of their long-suffering spouses, Wilma and Betty respectively. Fred and Barney's favourite pastime of bowling wasn't lost on me since my father was also a fan of hitting the pins.

I always got a kick out of the snarky comments out of the animals that were used as appliances. Hanna & Barbera wouldn't get anywhere near the toilet though.

Of course, the other running gag on "The Flintstones" was how they brought on the celebrities and named them in their own hilarious way. The first time that I got to actually see Ann-Margret was through her appearance on the show as Ann-Margrock. And there were Stony Curtis and Cary Granite. If I had got onto the program, maybe my name would have ended up as J-Canucklestone.

A good chunk of my childhood was spent watching "The Flintstones" and I had assumed that I pretty much knew everything there was to learn about this program. But I was wrong. It was only in the last decade that I discovered "The Flintstones" had been the first animated program to get a prime-time slot on ABC; that's quite something considering that I had only seen Fred and Barney as afternoon cartoon characters.

On top of that, I only found out in the last few months that there had been a very different opening and closing sequence and a different theme song for "The Flintstones" in the first two seasons of its 1960-1966 run. The theme song used for both the opening and the ending was "Rise and Shine", a jazzy and upbeat instrumental by Hoyt Curtin. It was actually a song that I had heard as background music in the episodes but I never knew that it was the first theme. I also have to give thanks to YouTube and the uploader Steven Brandt for showing me the opening and ending credits for the very first time in my life.

Ah, as of Season 3, this was the opening credit sequence that greeted me after getting home from school or finishing off lunch. It was the swing jazz orchestra by Curtin and the Randy Van Horne Singers behind one of Western animation's most famous theme songs "Meet the Flintstones" right when Fred happily screams "Yabba-dabba-doo!" when work is done and it's time to head home. 

Although "Meet the Flintstones" wouldn't become the official theme until late 1962, Wikipedia has reported that its composition by Curtin along with Hanna & Barbera had taken place in 1961 so for this ROY, I'm gonna go with that latter year and find out what were the big hits in Japan during that time.

Kyu Sakamoto -- Ue wo Muite Arukou (上を向いて歩こう)

Mari Watanabe -- Tokyo Dodonpa Musume （東京ドドンパ娘）

Sachiko Nishida -- Coffee Rumba （コーヒー・ルンバ）