Tag Archives: George Gershwin

CDs, Celebrity Chatter, Music, TV

Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme’s son, David, resurrects their recording career

They were the greatest interpreters of the Great American Songbook. And then some. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme—more often and most lovingly known in one fell swoop as SteveandEydie—entertained generations with pitch-perfect harmonies and playful banter for more than 50 years. Steve and Eydie cumulatively recorded 1,000 songs. According to executive producer/music guru Jim Pierson, “Eydie as a solo artist recorded more than 400 songs with Steve responsible for well over 300 on his own and together they duetted on approximately 200 masters.”

Their first album recorded together? The aptly-titled We Got Us, winning them a Best Vocal Group Grammy in 1960. They also kept the musical gems alive on the small screen; they were frequent guests on TV shows, winning Emmys for their television salutes to George Gershwin and Irving Berlin.

In 2000, the couple announced plans to reduce touring; in 2008 Eydie retired and Lawrence embarked on a solo music tour. Even recording was no longer begin done—with one important exception. In 2014, during the seventh decade of his career, Lawrence recorded what has become his last CD, When You Come Back to Me, dedicated to his beloved wife who died in 2013. (They married in 1957.)

As Steve says: “Eydie has been my partner on stage and in my life for more than 55 years. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her and even more the first time I heard her sing. While my personal loss is unimaginable, the world has lost one of the greatest pop vocalists of all time.”

And now, with the support and guidance and love of their son, David, Steve and Eydie are making a comeback. Think of it as two stars being born. Again.

In conjunction with Gordon Anderson, Co-President of Real Gone Music, Lawrence plans to remix and remaster the best of his parents’ multi-track recordings and reissuing them over the next two years. The first CD of this collaboration, the critically-acclaimed That Holiday Feeling, has been remastered from the original 1965 two-track master and was released on November 11, 2022.

Considered by many fans and music professionals as one of the best holiday recordings ever made, the CD was loaded with eight additional bonus tracks that were never part of the original 1964 release. these bonus tracks are from various recordings during their years at Columbia Records that Lawrence promises, “are sure to enchance that ‘holiday feeling as you listen.'”

Lawrence knows and understands the importance of his parents’ career; there’s no ego or conceit when he calls his mother “one of the top five vocalists of the 20th century.” (The others include Barbara Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland and Billie Holiday.)

Steve and Eydie’s main office has all of the original 24-track masters from their recordings with Columbia Records. Los Angeles home is filled with his parents’ two-track master recordings. “When my parents signed a contract with Columbia [in 1962], part of the deal was that they got the masters back after 25 years,” Lawrence explains. So in the early 1990s, Steve and Eydie digitally transferred those recordings to CD and began selling them on their website through their label, GL Music.  Years later Real Gone Music entered the picture “on and off” until the company’s Co-President Gordon Anderson and Lawrence committed to properly remaster and remix (if possible) their recordings with Columbia.

“I am basically going through which masters are most important to their careers and are in the best physical shape with which to work,” Lawrence says.  The next remix and remaster will most likely be “Don’t Go to Strangers, Gorme’s 1966 seminal album that features her Grammy-winning single “If He Walked Into My Life”.

Another goal: A Legacy series box set of Eydie’s Spanish recordings with the Trio Los Panchos, and a “best of” series for both of them, together and individually. Vinyl collectors take note: There may also be limited-edition vinyl pressings. Anderson and Lawrence promise feedback from fans is important and will help shape future releases. “Real Good Music and I want to make sure that fans will be able to hear these magnificent recordings as pristinely as possible.”

Lawrence pauses. “My Mom and Dad were the first duo to introduce American Popular Music with amazing swing arrangements by the greatest arrangers and orchestrators of the time,” he says. “In that respect, they continued the legacy of this genre that began with Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle, only as a Duo. My hope is that these remasters will reach new audiences and continue to thrill their existing audience.”

For more information: realgonemusic.com

CDs, Music

Sony Classical releases important Oscar Levant Box Set

At the height of his popularity, Oscar Levant was the highest-paid concert artist in America. He outdrew Horowitz and Rubinstein, with whom he shared the distinction–rare among classical pianists–of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He performed under conductors including Arturo Toscanini, Sir Thomas Beecham, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Fritz Reiner and Eugene Ormandy, and was the definitive interpreter of his friend George Gershwin.

Levant’s 1945 recording of Rhapsody in Blue with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra topped the Billboard classical chart and remained one of Columbia Records’ best-selling albums for a decade. That classic interpretation and all his other recordings for the label, spanning the years 1941 to 1958, have now been collected in a new Sony Classical eight-disc box set.

https://youtu.be/nVOl49AHD6Q

The vast majority of them are appearing for the first time ever on CD, in a 10″ x 10″ fully illustrated 124-page hardcover book. The book contains previously unseen photographs and images of facsimile documents and covers. The edition sees the first ever release of Levant’s own composition Blue Plate Special, which only exists in his 1947 recording and would otherwise have been lost forever. It reflects his compositional style and musical eccentricity at its best. The other world premiere is Levant’s recording of Bach’s Partita No. 1, the only example of him playing Bach. According to his daughter Lorna, the Partita was a piece Levant loved and played often at home.

Levant’s Columbia recordings, on which his fame as a pianist has always been based, began with Gershwin, as they do in this new Sony complete collection. From 1942 there are the Concerto in F with André Kostelanetz conducting the New York Philharmonic along with the Three Preludes. That applies as well to the 1945 Rhapsody in Blue with Ormandy, which is also here, of course, together with the famous 1949 recordings of theSecond Rhapsody and “I Got Rhythm” Variations with Morton Gould and his Orchestra.

Among the other CD premieres are Levant’s 1949 recording of Honegger’s charming Concertino with Reiner conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra as well as many solo performances from the 1940s and 50s of pieces by Beethoven (including the “Moonlight” Sonata), Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Rachmaninoff and Copland (selections from the ballet Billy the Kid, arranged for piano by Lukas Foss). There is also a track of Levant playing his own music, a jazzy, almost manic little piece called Blue Plate Special, recorded in 1947.

Another rarity is taken from Warners’ 1946 movie Humoresque, one of the few films centered around classical music. Franz Waxman received an Oscar nomination for his original score and arrangements. The young violinist hero is portrayed by John Garfield, his wealthy older lover by Joan Crawford, his confidant and pianist by Oscar Levant, and his violin playing by Isaac Stern. The movie climaxes with one of the glories of 40s cinematic kitsch. As she listens to the strains of Wagner’s Liebestod being played by the Garfield character on the radio, the distraught Crawford character drowns herself in the Pacific. On the soundtrack, it is Stern and Levant who are revelling in Waxman’s irresistibly schmaltzy Wagner arrangement for violin, piano and orchestra. No Oscar Levant set would be complete without it.

“In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.” Music lovers now have an unprecedented opportunity to judge Oscar Levant’s self-adulating, self-abasing appraisal for themselves.