Ira Wright & Orchestra: The Music Man & My Fair Lady (Rondo-Lette)

Rondo-lette was one of the better labels Eli Oberstien ran in the late 50's. These albums featured stereo releases complete with full color jackets and liner notes, but no inner sleeve for some reason… Many of these releases were cheaply recorded instrumental albums, such as this split album. This album features 4 selections from "The Music Man" and 5 selections of "My Fair Lady", on sides A and B respectfully. My copy came to me without it's original jacket, and like all the Rondo releases I have ran a crossed, it's really beat up. If you see a NM copy of any Rondo or Rondo-lette release you have a real rarity! 

I rushed through the transfer process, basically removing the largest pops, and running it through DeClick and DeNoise to remove a good majority of the artifacts plaguing this copy. It's not a perfect transfer, however it's still very listenable.

Tracks are as follows

Side A

76 Trombones

Goodnight My Someone

Lida Rose

Till There Was You [Not sure if the track on this album is actually this song, sounds more like a Jazzy filler track to me. See my "Till There Was You (Halo Records)" video for the correct recording]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji4cg-M4gAg

Side B

I Could Have Danced All Night

Get Me To The Church On Time

With A Little Bit of Luck

On The Street Where You Live

I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

Ira Wright Orchestra and Singers: Memories Are Made Of These (Rondo-lette)

An interesting album which features a collection of tracks which either feature a famous musician or composer's music or playing style played by an no name studio group. The mass credit of Ira Wright Orchestra is merely a pseudonym and that was a standard practice for budget labels. Often they made recordings with a bunch of low wage session musicians and pay them a flat fee with no royalties as a condition of employment. This allowed them to reissue material without having to pay anyone other then music copyright companies, but they only had to do this when the used non-public domain music.

Tracks are as follows:

(Artists and composers listed bellow are listed only to demonstrate who they were "tributing", with the expection of the Ken Griffin track, which is actually a recording of that artist)

Side A

Tommy Dorsey- Dark Eyes

Glenn Miller- Anvil Chorus

Dave Rose- Spanish Serenade

Leroy Anderson- Blue Tango

Ken Griffin- After The Ball

Side B

Al Jolson- Swanee

George M. Cohan- Yankee Doodle Dandy

John Philip Sousa- King Cotton

Stephen Foster- O Susanna

VIctor Herbert- Because You're You

Varsity Operetta Singers and Orchestra: Songs from Oklahoma (Varsity Records)

This Varsity record's release from 1952 contains just four songs from the Broadway musical "Oklahoma". These four songs are crammed into three tracks.

The second side contains four filler tracks from a variety of sources. The second side makes for great background background listening.

Tracks

Side A

1.Oklahoma-People Will Say We're In Love
2. People Will Say We're In Love (Piano and Rhythm)
3. I Can't Say No-Out Of My Dreams

Side B

1.Waiting For You
2.Waiting
3.Waiting A Fire
4. My Heart Is Waiting

National Concert Dance Orchestra: Selections from Porgy and Bess and others (Halo Records)

This is one of those Halo Record releases that screams low budget. The cover is the only real reason you want a copy of this record. After all, only five Porgy and Bess tunes are on the record! The cover art is lovely, to say the least. Oberstien, for his Halo record line, got the New York Graphic Society to let him use prints of top-grade paintings for his label's record jackets.

As you can see in the video below, this cover is worthy of framing. It's too bad the content of the enclosed record needs to reach the expectations set by the jacket art. Also, the artist's attribution is generic. The staff at Record Corporation Of America (The company that Eli Oberstein used to release these budget records) got into a heated argument on what generic name they would use for the artist credit on this release. I imagine it must have been a stalemate between "The National Dance Orchestra" and "The National Concert Orchestra," and somebody stepped in and made a compromise with "The National Concert Dance Orchestra" so everyone could move on with their lives.

The music on this record could be better as there are only three Porgy and Bess tracks. The rest of the album is comprised mainly of cheap classical recordings. The last filler track on side A is the only one that breaks the reasonable canned classical music mood. It is a track from the Royale record album "Strictly Instrumental: Broadway Hits, arranged by Russel Bannett" (catalog number 1241). I have the complete album uploaded here on YouTube. The track "Hoops" is not the only recording on this album taken from that album. "Summertime" on this Halo release is also the previously mentioned Royale album.

The copy I had was rather worn, which makes for noisy vinyl rips when combined with a styrene pressing. The A side is boisterous. However, DeNoise, my noise reduction program for cleaning up my transfers, pushed the noise under the desired audio level. The first track on side A had some severe problems with needle jumps throughout the first minute of the track. The track is also worth listening to, as the unknown vocalist has an almost operatic style that makes for exciting listening. The rest of the album suffers from surface noise and related artifacts that are impossible to remove with software. The album is still quite listenable, however you will need to be able to tolerate some noise to enjoy this album. 

Side A

1. I Got Plenty O' Nottin' & Bess You Is My Women (0:11)
2. It Ain't Necessary So & Woman Is A Sometime Thing (3:47)
3. Summertime (6:37)
4. Intermezzo
5. Traumerei
6. Minute In G
7. Hoops (18:04)

Side B*

1. None But The Lonely Heart
2. Minute In G
3. Serenade
4. To A Wild Rose
5. Souvenir
6. Traumerei
7. Andante Cantabile
8. Intermezzo

*The label on side B lists "American In Paris," "Rhapsody In Blue," and a bunch of Show tunes that would have made this record worth every penny. However, the label completely misrepresented the actual content, as it is all cheap canned classical music, which I fall asleep to almost every night.