Billy Daniels - The Masculine Touch & At The Stardust

Many singers have in their repertoire one dependable – even obligatory – hallmark song.  Think Ralph McTell (Streets of London); Joan Armatrading (Love and Affection); Peter Sarsted (Where Do You Go To My Lovely) and Astrud Gilberto (The Girl From Ipanema).  In the 40s and 50s; anyone who paid to see nightclub singer Billy Daniels would have surely expected, even demanded, that he performed his racy and comic reading of That Old Black Magic.

 Billy Daniels’ hilariously camp rendition of his signature song has to be heard to be believed.  Whilst verging on self-parody, the record deliberately ridicules overblown cabaret schmaltz and shtick.  Although first recorded in 1948 (and released in the UK in 1952), the definitive version (in my opinion) of That Old Black Magic is to be found on the 1958 LP The Masculine Touch.  The song was routinely performed as a set closer, complete with gags interjected by his pianist and musical director Benny Payne.  But the humour and novelty of Billy’s Greatest Hit can often obscure the legacy of his enormous talent.  To quote the sleeve notes from the original American version of the MGM album At The Stardust, Las Vegas –

“A compelling voice, a fabulous energy, a spell-binding sense of drama, a split-second sense of musical timing, an incomparable feel for styling - these are the factors that add up to the inimitable performances of Billy Daniels...”

Despite a highly successful career on stage, on record and in the movies, combined with an occasionally scandalous private life - it is sad to report that Billy Daniels is today something of a forgotten figure.  For those wishing to read up on the man, his Wikipedia page is highly recommended, as is the obituary from The Los Angeles Times.  Those albums currently available on CD are shoddy assemblies of out-of-copyright recordings, largely dubbed from 78s or radio performances.  Here, then, are two rare and complete Billy Daniels LP records, recorded with Benny Payne. 

The first album featured here - The Masculine Touch – was originally released in the US in 1958 on the Verve label.  It was subsequently issued in the UK on HMV.  It is a genuine in-concert recording, made at The Mocambo club on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.  I have the HMV version, however the sound quality of this edition is dreadful.  It was not unusual for EMI to license MGM and Verve’s records in the 50s and early 60s, but the finished products were often very below-par in terms of fidelity.  (Many Verve and MGM LPs by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Gary McFarland and Stan Getz released in the UK on the HMV label sound as if they were sourced from third or fourth generation tapes, with all the life, high frequencies and dynamics surgically removed from the original recordings.)

Thankfully, Polydor had the sense to reissue The Masculine Touch in the mid-1970s, albeit as a budget edition featuring a different cover and album title (the record now called, somewhat unfortunately, Bubbling Black Magic).  It is from this superbly mastered stereo copy that I have ripped the album.  It is the ultimate Billy Daniels album, one that captures the intimacy, intensity and wry humour of his nightclub performances.  Typical of mid 70s budget releases, the LP sleeve contains very little information outside of song titles and composers.  The sound quality, however is genuine Polydor – that is to say, exquisite – high levels of separation and very quiet vinyl. 

The second album - At The Stardust, Las Vegas - is in fact a studio recording with applause dubbed-in between tracks.  The attempt to create a nightclub ambience is unconvincing to say the least, but the performances are nevertheless sensational.  The album originally appeared (as far as I can tell) in 1959 on the MGM label. 

It was subsequently reissued in the UK on The World Record Club label as The Daniels Touch, with a dreadful new jacket design.  The new sleeve notes, however, are excellent - they are reprinted in full below. The monophonic World Record Club issue has been used for the rip found below.  In common with World Record Club albums, the playing surface is very quiet indeed.   

Fans of Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra and Billy Eckstine should investigate these albums.  At the time of writing, there are very few Billy Daniels records to be found on the internet – only the shoddy, copyright-free re-treads of his old 78s exist; CDs that have been compiled to gas-station or thrift store standards.  Conversely, the two LPs available here for download represent the man at his best.  These are high fidelity long playing albums, sourced from the cleanest available vinyl.  Hit the download button – an evening of scotch-on-the-rocks nightclub cool awaits.   

The Masculine Touch

1.      Summertime        

2.      On The Street Where You Live    

3.      I Could Have Danced All Night     

4.      Long Before I Knew You   

5.      On The Sunny Side Of The Street

6.      Around The World           

7.      Blue Turning Grey Over You        

8.      Kiss Of Love          

9.      A Masculine Touch           

10.  Bye Bye Baby       

11.  I Need Your Love  

12.  A Hundred Years From Today      

13.  My Gal Sal

14.  You Were Meant For Me

15.  That Old Black Magic

(Verve MGV 2085) (UK edition HMV CLP 1200)

At The Stardust, Las Vegas

1.      Who's Sorry Now

2.      I Got It Bad           

3.      Tenderly   

4.      The Beat Generation        

5.      Don't Worry 'Bout Me      

6.      Oh, Lady Be Good

7.      The Birth Of The Blues     

8.      Old Man River      

9.      I've A Tendency To Fall In Love    

10.  Temptation          

11.  Star Dust  

12.  Begin The Beguine

(MGM E3762) (UK edition MGM-C787)

download here

  Sleeve notes from World Record Club edition of The Daniels Touch A.K.A. At The Stardust, Las Vegas

The more battered of our pop musical journalists can sometimes be found standing about in little silent groups, their cynical old eyes screwed up against the glare as they scan the horizon for signs that “real music is coming back’’. I can understand their feelings. If you're down there in the thick of it, deafened by the amplifiers, hypnotised by the incoherent incantations of what a writer in the magazine Crescendo piercingly called the Nit Parade, then things must look pretty grim. If nothing else, all those echoes must play hell with one's sense of direction. But, to be fair, good music never really went away. That a large part of the record trade has become a sort of supermarket with only a very limited number of rapidly changing branded items on show has tended to obscure the fact that quality goods can still be had if you know where to look.

During the quarter century or so that Billy Daniels has been singing, some hundreds of lesser talents have been prodded on to the stage, and have made their funny noises, scooped up the hatful of coins tossed to them, and departed for ever. Meanwhile real singers have worked on, singing some good songs for people with some sort of taste. In spite of the cynics, then. I see a big audience for this fine LP of standard and near-standard tunes  -  that music that never went away.

Billy Daniels first came to prominence in this country when his electrifying (as distinct from electrified) version of That Old Black Magic was released here in 1952. This number was already an “oldie’’ (who invented that dreadful word, I wonder?), having been written some nine years earlier by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for the film Star-Spangled Rhythm.

It had become associated with Billy Daniels before he recorded it. Needing something strong to open his act in Atlantic City one night - he had to follow some spectacular West Indian dancers - he decided on his now famous treatment of Black Magic. That was in 1949*. He was then 33.

Billy had begun broadcasting right at the beginning of the thirties while he was still at college at his hometown of Jackson, Florida. In 1933 he went to Columbia University, New York, and through the good offices of the illustrator Adolph Robinson got a number of auditions, one of which landed him a singing spot at Dicky Wells’ club. He was, of course, still studying by day.

By the middle thirties, he was featured vocalist at the Ubangi Club in New York, and this in turn led to the offer of a job from trumpeter-bandleader Erskine Hawkins. The Hawkins band had a big club following at the time, and club owners began to take notice of the new vocalist. Daniels thereupon decided to try his luck as a single. At first his luck was out. After a period of getting nowhere, he actually gave up singing for a whole year. But he came back to it with renewed optimism, and this time he made the grade. After a clutch of successful dates in New York at places like the Onyx Club, the Ebony Club, and the Famous Door, he got a Broadway part in the musical Memphis Bound.

After war service in the United States Merchant Marines, he started to build the exciting, uninhibited act which British audiences saw for the first time at -the London Palladium in 1952. After a number of sensational cabaret seasons, Hollywood studios beckoned, and Billy appeared in such films as When You’re Smiling, Sunny Side of the Street, and Cruising Down the River.

Billy Daniels has one of those big voices. No doubt when he was first coming up the word “crooning” was being applied to all male singing in the pop field, though anything less croon-like would be hard to imagine. This is real bravura stuff, with all the strength of an Al Jolson but without the attendant mawkishness. This doesn’t mean he is devoid of tenderness. But it is the tenderness of power under restraint rather than of the feebleness which sometimes passes for gentleness.

His regular MD is pianist Benny Payne. Nothing could illuminate the hazards of being an MD, constantly on tour, constantly dealing with all sorts of odd musicians, than a story connected with a rehearsal by Daniels and Payne in a theatre in Rochdale, Gracie Fields' birthplace. In a rather grim collection of pit musicians was a somewhat lifeless old bass player. In an effort to get a little more spring into the rhythms Payne suggested to him that it might be better if he stood up to play instead of sitting all the time on his high wooden stool. The bass player looked at him balefully for a moment and then said, “I never stood up for our Gracie, and I’m not bloody standin’ up for thee”.

Most of the numbers here will be familiar, though some of their origins may not. Who’s Sorry Now goes back to 1923 and the song-writing partnership of Harry Ruby and  Bert Kalmar, who met as vaudeville performers. For this very famous song they were joined by Ted Snyder.

Oh, Lady Be Good Comes, oddly enough, from the show Lady Be Good, which was the first Gershwin score for which George’s brother Ira wrote all the lyrics. That was in 1924. Birth Of The Blues Came Out of George White’s series of Scandals in the late twenties, and was written by that prolific trio, Ray Henderson (music) and Buddy de Sylva and Lew Brown (words), who also gave us such songs as The best things in life are free.

Old Man River is one of the most famous songs from one of the most famous of all musical plays - Show Boat. First produced in 1927, it has been revived and filmed on a number of occasions.

Temptation is by the splendidly named Nacio Herb Brown and lyric writer Arthur Freed, from the 1933 film Going Hollywood.

It came as a shock to discover in one of Sigmund Spaeth's books on popular music that Stardust was originally written as a fast, raggy piano solo, and only acquired its words two years after Hoagy Carmichael had written the tune (in 1929). In view of this it is interesting to remark that the verse - the longish introduction which most songs have, but which frequently goes unperformed  - is seldom omitted from Stardust. Think of that strain speeded up, and you have a very passable ragtime tune indeed.

Begin The Beguine was a bit of a sleeper. It was not until some time after its appearance in Cole Porter’s Jubilee in 1935 that it became widely popular. But like the other songs here, and like the performer of them, it had a durability which shows that the art of the popular song is not an ephemeral one after all. Music never goes away.

PATRICK JAMES

* Wikipedia records that the song was first recorded by Daniels in 1948 for the Apollo label