Rarities

Album review

This ten-song CD, originally a 1980 LP, hasn't been treated nearly as well as the music on it should merit. There's not a single word of annotation or explanation anywhere to account for the presence of any of the material here, or its origins -- that is a bizarre oversight, in view of the fact that not a single track here had ever been officially released before. The songs are all either alternate takes of well-known hits, or were rejected for release altogether at the time of their recording. "Six Jerks in a Jeep" is a bouncy novelty tune that the trio featured in the 1942 film Private Buckaroo, but which was rejected by the Decca label for release; "You're Just a Flower From an Old Bouquet" was, similarly, a ballad from the film Give Out, Sisters, released that same year but never issued by Decca; "Long Time No See" was an early version of a song that they recut for release slightly later in 1939, and "I Love You Much Too Much" an early outtake of the subsequent single. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" has a distinctly different solo trumpet part and a different arrangement for the horn and trombone sections, and although the trio's performance is almost identical to their work on the hit version, Patty Andrews isn't nearly as uninhibited on this take as she is on the released version. "A Jitterbug's Lullaby," which is actually the first section of a two-part song, is a reject from an August 1938 session. "Six Times a Week and Twice on Sunday" dates from 11 years later, and is the kind of cute novelty tune that was helping to kill popular music; Glenn Miller alumnus Jerry Gray does little credit to himself or his history with his work here. "Hit The Road," a song playing on slang (co-authored by Don Raye of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" fame) came from Argentine Nights, the same movie that introduced "Rhumboogie," but it isn't nearly as effective a song, though the trio makes the recording worth more than the composition with their vocal interplay. The sound is clean but otherwise unexceptional, and the absence of any notes make this a potentially confusing CD, but it is worth hearing for hardcore fans -- these are the kind of cuts that would show up interspersed with the trio's released work in a Bear Family box.

© Bruce Eder /TiVo