Luck Be A Lady: Cherry Red’s él Label Reissues The Kirby Stone Four’s “Guys and Dolls,” Ron Goodwin, More

November 3, 2015 By Joe Marchese — 1 Comment

Guys and Dolls Like TodayCherry Red’s él label continues to deliver an array of some of the most eclectic sounds of the pre-Beatles era with a recent pair of reissues.

The Kirby Stone Four’s Guys and Dolls (Like Today) reinvented Frank Loesser’s classic 1950 Broadway score for 1962 in the group’s “Go Sound” style fusing jazz, swing, tight harmony vocals and even a dash of freewheeling rock-and-roll spirit.  It’s been paired on one CD with the quartet’s Laugh Along with the Kirby Stone Four at the Playboy Club and bonus tracks.  Singer-instrumentalists Eddie Hall, Larry Foster, Michael Gardner and Kirby Stone – a.k.a. The Kirby Stone Four – had a Top 30 hit in 1958 with “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” from the musical Kismet; the song even earned them a Grammy nomination.  The Columbia LP Guys and Dolls (Like Today) opened with a most unusual “Libretto-ture” in which the album’s musical director and arranger Dick Hyman and lyricist Stone told the musical’s story set to a medley of Loesser’s tunes.  The “Libretto-ture” was followed by inventive and whimsical reworkings of score highlights like “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” “If I Were a Bell” and “Luck Be a Lady.”  An ensemble of male and female singers (billed as “The Guys” and “The Dolls,” natch) joined The Kirby Stone Four along with an instrumental group featuring some familiar names like Tony Mottola, Alvino Rey, Al Caiola and Shelly Manne.

The quirky, fizzy fun of Guys and Dolls (Like Today) is joined on él’s CD by At the Playboy Club.  Recorded in 1961, the album spotlights the humorous side – impressions, song satires and spoofs, etc. – of The Kirby Stone Four’s output, which was familiar to their audiences via nightclub and television appearances.  (One of their patrons, Ed Sullivan, is feted on the LP’s “It’s a Really Big Shew.”)  A couple of Kirby Stone Four bonus tracks are included (Harry Warren and Jimmy Carroll’s “Coffee Time” and the beatniks-meet-Poe story song “Raven” with Peggy Powers) as are two bonuses pertaining to the Playboy Club (a radio excerpt of Lenny Bruce visiting Playboy’s Penthouse and composer-pianist Cy Coleman’s famous “Playboy’s Theme”).

Ron Goodwin - Out of This WorldThe él label is also going Out of This World! with another two-for-one release drawn from roughly the same period.  That’s the title of the 1958 album from composer-conductor Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra, recorded at Abbey Road with producer (and future legend) George Martin.  Retitled Music in Orbit for its American release, this LP was Goodwin’s contribution to the realm of “space age pop” – that lighthearted, peppy and unusually-orchestrated pop subgenre conjuring up images of what might lie in the farthest reaches of space.  So Out of this World features tracks, all written by Maestro Goodwin, like “The Venus Waltz,” “Martians on Parade,” “Jumping Jupiter” and “Playtime on Pluto.”

Out of This World has been paired with one of the albums that reportedly inspired it: Russ Garcia and His Orchestra’s Fantastica: Music from Outer Space, from 1958.  Bandleader Garcia, like Goodwin, penned all of the tracks on his excursion into orbit.  Garcia employed wind instruments, ethereal choruses cooing wordlessly and electronic effects for his serious-minded yet playful aural journey.  Marni Nixon, the onscreen singing voice of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, among others, provides the voice on “Volcanoes of Mercury.”  Other titles include “Lost Souls of Saturn,” “Monsters of Jupiter” and “Red Sand of Mars.”  These exotic adventures in sound are joined by three bonus tracks from Sweden’s chart-topping space-age pop-surf group The Spotnicks: “Rocket Man,” “Moonshot” and a cover of Joe Meek’s “Telstar.”

Both of these titles, made possible via current U.K. public domain laws, are available now through Cherry Red’s él label.  You can check out the track listings and pre-order both releases below!

The Kirby Stone Four, Guys and Dolls (Like Today) / The Playboy Club (él ACMEM293CD, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

  1. Libretto-ture
  2. Fugue for Tinhorns
  3. Adelaide’s Lament
  4. A Bushel and a Peck
  5. Adelaide
  6. Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat
  7. If I Were a Bell
  8. Take Back Your Mink
  9. Sue Me
  10. Luck Be a Lady
  11. I’ve Never Been in Love Before
  12. More I Cannot Wish You
  13. Guys and Dolls
  14. Coffee Time – The Kirby Stone Four with Jimmy Carroll & His Orchestra
  15. Raven – The Kirby Stone Four and Peggy Powers
  16. Everything is Coming Up? (Everything’s Coming Up Roses)
  17. Lazy River (Impressions)
  18. British Rock ‘n’ Roll (St. Louis Blues)
  19. Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart
  20. Show Stopper (Birth of the Blues)
  21. It’s a Really Big Shew
  22. In the Good Old Summertime
  23. Lenny Bruce Visits Playboy’s Penthouse
  24. Playboy’s Theme – Cy Coleman with Orchestra

Tracks 1-13 from Guys and Dolls (Like Today), Columbia LP CS 8514, 1962
Track 14 from The “Go” Sound, Columbia LP CS 8097, 1959
Track 15 from Cadence single 1328, 1957
Tracks 16-22 from Laugh Along with the Kirby Stone Four at the Playboy Club, Columbia CS 8446, 1961

The Spotnicks, Ron Goodwin and Russ Garcia, Out of This World! (él ACMEM294CD, 2015) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K.)

  1. Rocket Man
  2. Moonshot
  3. Telstar
  4. Departure
  5. The Moon
  6. Sally the Satellite
  7. The Venus Waltz
  8. Mercury Gets the Message
  9. The Sun
  10. Jumping Jupiter
  11. Martians on Parade
  12. The Milky Way
  13. The Rings Around Saturn
  14. Playtime on Pluto
  15. Return My Love
  16. Into Space
  17. Nova (Exploding Star)
  18. Lost Souls of Saturn
  19. Monsters of Jupiter
  20. Water Creatures of Astra
  21. Venus
  22. Red Sand of Mars
  23. Goofy Peepl of Phobos
  24. Volcanoes of Mercury
  25. Birth of a Planet
  26. Frozen Neptune
  27. Moon Rise

Tracks 1-3 by The Spotnicks, rec. 1962
Tracks 4-15 from Ron Goodwin and His Orchestra, Out of This World, Parlophone PCS 3006, 1960
Tracks 16-27 from Russ Garcia and His Orchestra, Music from Outer Space, Liberty LST 7005, 1958

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Joe Marchese
Joe Marchese

JOE MARCHESE (Editor) joined The Second Disc shortly after its launch in early 2010, and has since penned daily news and reviews about classic music of all genres. In 2015, Joe formed the Second Disc Records label. Celebrating the great songwriters, producers and artists who created the sound of American popular song and beyond, Second Disc Records, in conjunction with labels including Real Gone Music and Cherry Red Records, has released newly-curated collections produced and annotated by Joe from iconic artists such as Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Spinners, Johnny Mathis, Bobby Darin, Meat Loaf, Laura Nyro, Melissa Manchester, Liza Minnelli, Darlene Love, Al Stewart, Michael Nesmith, and many others.

Joe has written liner notes, produced, or contributed to over 200 reissues from a diverse array of artists, among them America, JD Souther, Nat "King" Cole, Paul Williams, Lesley Gore, Dusty Springfield, BJ Thomas, The 5th Dimension, Burt Bacharach, The Mamas and the Papas, Carpenters, Perry Como, Rod McKuen, Doris Day, Jackie DeShannon, Petula Clark, Robert Goulet, and Andy Williams.

Over the past two decades, Joe has also worked in a variety of capacities on and off Broadway as well as at some of the premier theatres in the U.S., including Lincoln Center Theater, George Street Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, and the York Theatre Company. He has felt privileged to work on productions alongside artists such as the late Jack Klugman, Eli Wallach, Arthur Laurents, Betty Comden and Adolph Green. In 2009, Joe began contributing theatre and music reviews to the print publication The Sondheim Review, and in 2012, he joined the staff of The Digital Bits as a regular contributor writing about film and television on DVD and Blu-ray.

Joe currently resides in the suburbs of New York City.

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1 thought on “Luck Be A Lady: Cherry Red’s él Label Reissues The Kirby Stone Four’s “Guys and Dolls,” Ron Goodwin, More”

  1. gary brewer

    i followed the link to the amazon page for this cd (i’m primarily interested in the ‘live at the playboy club’ portion of the cd). but, the track listing on amazon doesn’t seem to reflect all the songs. i was getting ready to order it, and am hoping that’s just an oversight – correct?
    also, are the original liner notes that appeared on the back of the lp included?
    thank you.

    Reply

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