Some Short Bits
will soderburg sure sounded good in his live whfr broadcast this afternoon.
if you read this before 9pm ET turn on "The Mystery of the Wax Museum" on TCM. It runs till 10:30.
Reasons to watch:
1. Lionel Atwill
2. Fay Wray
3. Michael Curtiz directed it.
4. Wax figures melting in 2-strip technicolor
5. It's followed by "House of Wax." There has been
a LOT of good stuff on TV this weekend for some reason
Ask Uncle Dave
Q: (A lady) wanted to know if there were CD or tape compilations of hit songs from the "Your Hit Parade" radio and TV programs 1935-1955. She was hoping
that there was such a collective compilation so as having to avoid looking for the individual recordings.
A: Such a "Hit Parade" compilation is sorely needed, and nowhere available. I have researched this program as Raymond Scott was the bandleader on the
TV program. I just wanted to give you an idea as to how very far we would be from assembling such a compilation, even on tape.
"Your Hit Parade" was hosted by Lucky Strike tobacco and went on the air in CBS on June 12, 1936. It moved to television in 1950, but was on the ABC network, with other sponsors joining on with Lucky Strike. The entire cast was fired at the end of the 1956-1957 season, including Scott and his wife Dorothy Collins, but Dorothy alone returned within a few months and was still with the program when ABC finally yanked it a couple of weeks short of the end of the 1958-1959 season. The TV "Your Hit Parade" was the 1950s equivalent of "American Idol" minus the context of competition: a cast made up of dependable professional singers bringing their talents to bear on hit songs recorded by others.
Radio transcriptions of "Your Hit Parade" exist in great numbers. Scott recorded not only the shows but the rehearsals beforehand, and there are many transcriptions which exist outside of the Raymond Scott collection. The big performer on "Hit Parade" in the years 1943-1944 was Frank Sinatra. At one time Kurt Nauck had a scan of an airshot disc from 1943 of Sinatra on "Hit Parade" with the orchestra led by Scott's brother and predecessor on the show, Mark Warnow. Anything involving Sinatra in terms of a re-issue or compilation neccessarily involves his family, which is reputedly a tough nut to crack.
Collectors who have copies of such recordings would often not admit that they are in posession of them.
Some of the performers on the TV edition of "Hit Parade" made commercial recordings.
June Valli was the only Hit Parade performer to chart with a song sung on the actual show, with "Crying in the Chapel." That has been re-issued
somewhere - you may wish to search Valli on my employer's site, www.allmusic.com Snooky Lanson, Artie Malvin and other singers on the Hit Parade made "Hit Parader" recordings for the Waldorf
Music Hall label (and it's 78 rpm cousin, 18 Top Hits). There is no discography for this series. They are so common in junk shops not many collectors pick them up, and they usually get thrown out in the end. But these could be mined for studio recordings of the YHP cast performing songs done of the show.
There are many kinescopes of the TV show itself in existence, but they are scattered. I have bits and pieces of several episodes, but they contain only material in which Scott is seen or wrote - the intro, outro, commercial jingles and "extras." The private collector Alan Cooperman has about 10 episodes, one or two appeared on the Video Yesteryear
imprint and there are certainly more - the TV show ran to about 330 episodes. I have no idea how many episodes on radio, but very, very many. In some cases entire broadcast runs of old time radio shows are found in the form of downloadable mp3s on the web. But these are skewed towards dramatic programming, and music programs are almost
impossible to find in this way - there's so little interest.
I write this long letter because if you are really interested in this subject, I would encourage
you to pursue it and would be glad to help in any way that I can. But if you just need a compilation of "Hit Parader" hits for a short-term study or purpose, I just wanted you to know just how far we are from having anything like that at our disposal.
Uncle Dave Lewis