Endless Love-Part III

Roy Orbison

Today's blog subject, Oh, Pretty Woman is a song, released in 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The best-known guitar performance was by Wayne Moss, later of Barefoot Jerry. Although the official recording appeared in 1964, the Beatles recalled Orbison's having written and performed the song during a mid-1963 tour of the UK which included both acts.

Orbison posthumously won the 1991 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his live recording of the song on his HBO television special Roy Orbison and Friends, A Black and White Night. In 1999, the song was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award and was named one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it #222 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The lyrics tells the story of a man who sees a pretty woman walking by. He yearns for her and wonders if, as beautiful as she is, she might be lonely like he is. At the last minute, she turns back and joins him.

The title was inspired by Orbison's wife Claudette interrupting a conversation to announce she was going out; when Orbison asked if she was okay for cash, his co-writer Bill Dees interjected "A pretty woman never needs any money."

Watch Roy Orbison sing his hit on a Japanese TV show.

Endless Love-Part II

Lenny Welch

Today's blog subject, Lenny Welch, is most likely not known to most people. It's unfortunate. His biggest hit, one of the songs that will be sung at Orchestra Kentucky's Endless Love concert, has become a jazz/pop standard.

Lenny Welch was born Leon Welch on May 15, 1938, in New York City. He was raised in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His biggest hit, a cover version of the big band standard Since I Fell for You, reached number 4 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. His other hits included Ebb Tide, a1964 recording that was featured in the film Sweet Bird of Youth. He also recorded the first vocal version of A Taste of Honey in 1962.

Since I Fell for You was composed by Buddy Johnson in 1945 and was first popularized by his sister, Ella Johnson, with Buddy Johnson and His Orchestra.

Other notable versions:

Eartha Kitt (1950)

Dinah Washington (1961 sessions with Quincy Jones Orchestra)
Vince Guaraldi (1962)
Doris Day (1963)
Ramsey Lewis (1965)
The Rascals (1967) - from the album "Collections"
Barbra Streisand (1971)
Bonnie Raitt (1971)
Count Basie & Joe Turner (1974)
Charlie Rich (1976)
Tom Waits (various live shows, around 1979)
Al Jarreau, Bob James, and David Sanborn (1986) - This version peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.[3]
Michael Bolton (1992)
Natalie Cole and Reba McEntire (1993)
B.B. King (2000) - from the album Makin' Love Is Good for You
Ronnie Milsap (2004) from the album Just for a Thrill
Katharine McPhee (2006) (American Idol)
Gladys Knight (2006) from the album Before Me
Glen Campbell
Van Morrison

Listen to Lenny Welch's original recording.

Endless Love

Today begins a new blog series on Orchestra Kentucky's upcoming Retro Series concert, Endless Love. This all-new concert will feature the Rewinders, Retro Singers, and Orchestra Kentucky in an evening of great love songs from the '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s.  The concert is Friday and Saturday, February 11 & 12. It's the perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day.

The first song we will discuss is the 1960 hit, At Last, made popular by Etta James.

Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins) was born on January 25, 1938, in Los Angeles, California. She is a singer who covers many genres, including blues, soul, R&B, rock & roll, gospel and jazz. James is the winner of four Grammys and seventeen Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. In the 1950s and 1960s, she had her biggest success as a blues and R&B singer. She is best known for performing At Last, which has been featured in movies, television shows, commercials, and web-streaming services. James has a contralto vocal range.

At Last was written in 1941 by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical film Orchestra Wives, starring George Montgomery and Ann Rutherford. It was first performed in the film and on record by Glenn Miller and his orchestra, vocal by Ray Eberle and Pat Friday, although unreleased recordings of the song were made in 1941 for possible inclusion in the film Sun Valley Serenade. It was recorded in Chicago on May 20, 1942 and released by RCA Victor Records. The song was a major hit for Miller, reaching number 9 on the Billboard pop charts in 1942, staying on the charts for 9 weeks, and it soon became a standard. Nat King Cole recorded it in 1957 on his number one album Love Is the Thing. It was James' version that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.


Watch Etta James sing At Last.

Pop Goes the Orchestra-Part XI

Kurt Anderson, son of Leroy Anderson

Today, we conclude our series of blogs on Leroy Anderson.

Don't miss Monday's concert dedicated to his music.

In 1975, Anderson died of cancer in Woodbury, Connecticut and was buried there. For his contribution to the recording industry, Leroy Anderson has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1988 and his music continues to be a staple of "pops" orchestra repertoire. In 1995 the Harvard University Band's new headquarters was named the Anderson Band Center in honor of Leroy Anderson.

Listen to one of Anderson's most beautiful melodies, Forgotten Dreams, written in 1954.
 

Pop Goes the Orchestra-Part X

Anderson with Arthur Fiedler

Anderson would occasionally appear on the Boston Pops regular concerts on PBS to conduct his own music while Fiedler would sit on the sidelines. For The Typewriter, Fiedler would don a green eyeshade, roll up his sleeves, and mime working on an old typewriter while the orchestra played.

Fiedler performed Anderson's Fiddle-Faddle so much that Boston audiences began calling it Fiedler Faddle.


Published in 1947, Anderson wrote the piece as one of a number of pieces commissioned over time by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Written in classic "song-and-trio" form, it is based on the childhood nursery song Three Blind Mice. It was recorded many times in the late 1940s and early 1950s by a variety of musical ensembles. Prominently featuring the violins, as the title would imply, the opening and closing sections rely on rapid sixteenth note passages, followed by pizzicato playing in the trio.

Watch Danny Kaye conduct the New York Philharmonic in Fiddle Faddle. I had the pleasure of playing under Kaye's baton as a music student. It was for an ABC-TV special, celebrating the opening of Disney's EPCOT Center in the early 1980s. For someone who is not a trained musician, he is amazing. And he was a very kind gentlemen, too!

Pop Goes the Orchestra-Part IX

In 1958, Anderson composed the music for the Broadway show Goldilocks. Even though it earned two Tony awards, Goldilocks did not achieve commercial success. Anderson never wrote another musical, preferring instead to continue writing orchestral miniatures.

Goldilocks book is by Jean and Walter Kerr with the lyrics by the Kerrs and Joan Ford.


A parody of the silent film era when directors made quickie one-reelers overnight, it focuses on Maggie Harris, a musical comedy star retiring from show business in order to marry into high society, until producer-director Max Grady arrives to remind her she has a contract to star in his film Frontier Woman. The two battle and slapstick situations ensue as the movie evolves into an epic about Ancient Egypt and filming extends well beyond the amount of time Grady promised it would take to make the movie.

Following tryouts in Boston and Philadelphia, the Broadway production, directed by Walter Kerr and choreographed by Agnes de Mille, opened on October 11, 1958 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, where it ran for 161 performances, closing on February 28, 1959. The cast included Elaine Stritch, Don Ameche, Russell Nype, Margaret Hamilton, Pat Stanley, and Patricia Birch.

Musicals Tonight! presented the musical in concert in June 2000 in New York City. 42nd Street Moon, San Francisco, California presented the show in a staged concert in 2001.

An original cast recording, orchestrated by composer Anderson and Philip J. Lang, was released by Columbia Records.

Jean Kerr later recounted the trials and tribulations of creating a new musical in her books Please Don't Eat The Daisies, The Snake Has All the Lines, and Penny Candy.

It's no wonder the musical had such a short run. Also playing in New York a the time was The Music Man and West Side Story!

Pop Goes the Orchestra-Part VIII

Erich Kunzel

Happy New Year! Today's blog continues our dicussion of Leroy Anderson. Don't forget to get tickets for next Monday's concert, featuring the music of Leroy Anderson.

Anderson wrote his Piano Concerto in C in 1953 but withdrew it, feeling that it had weak spots. In 1988 the Anderson family decided to publish the work. Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra released the first recording of this work; three other recordings have since been released. It is a conservative Romantic work in sonata form, heavily influenced by Rachmaninoff and American popular music, and somewhat resembles Copland's tonal works in style.

Listen to a movement from Anderson's piano concerto.