June Records

Honest U.S. isolationists last week got some help from recorded music that they would rather not have received. Released by the "Almanac Singers," a carefully anonymous Manhattan Communist ensemble, was an album of seven Songs for John Doe.

Professionally performed with new words to old folk tunes, John Doe's singing scrupulously echoed the mendacious Moscow tune: Franklin Roosevelt is lead ing an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war. The ballad of Billy Boy observes that

It wouldn't be much thrill

To die for Du Pont in Brazil.

Chorus of The Ballad of October 16 (draft registration date):

Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt;

We damned near believed what he said.

He said, I hate war, and so does Eleanor,

But we won't be safe 'till everybody's dead.

Other, more popular recordings:

Daniel Saw the Stone (The Golden Gate Quartet; Okeh). The sort of exciting harmony and tempo usually heard only from colored spiritual singers in the remote Southeastern backwoods, and not in Manhattan nightclubs--where, it so happens, the Golden Gate Quartet does sing.

Rumba Rhapsody (Cuarteto Caney, Decca). The Cuarteto's pianist, Rafael Audinot, improvises impressively on a rumba theme. A Latin-American record collector's item.

The Hut Sut Song. Thirteen recorded versions of this pandemic double-talk ballad are available. The refrain--Hut sut rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla, soo-it--is not Swedish, as Composers Leo V. Killion, Jack Owens and

Ted McMichael mischievously would lead their public to believe. At its present rate of sheet-music sales (150,000 to date), it may well top the nut songs it succeeds: 1936's The Music Goes 'Round and Around (350,000), 1939's Three Little Fishies (250,000). B.M.I.'s first smash, it bids fair to make its writers $5,000 apiece, its publisher $50,000.

>An immensely difficult coloratura soprano aria, even for markswomanly singers, is the one in Mozart's Magic Flute in which the Queen of the Night declares that she is boiling with fury. Last week a recording of this air, advertised entirely by rumor, enjoyed a lively little sale at Manhattan's Melotone Recording Studio.

It was recorded--to sell to her friends at $2.50 a copy--by Mrs. Florence Foster Jenkins, rich, elderly amateur soprano and musical clubwoman. Mrs. Jenkins' night-queenly swoops and hoots, her wild wallowings in descending trills, her repeated staccato notes like a cuckoo in its cups, are innocently uproarious to hear, almost as much so as the annual song recital which she gives in Manhattan. For that event, a minor phenomenon in U.S. music, knowing Manhattanites fight for tickets. Mrs. Jenkins is well pleased with the success of her Queen of the Night record, and hopes to make others. Her fans hope so too.

Other records of the month:

SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Pepusch-Gay: The Beggar's Opera (Glyndebourne Opera Company, with small orchestra conducted by Michael Mudie; Victor; 12 sides; $6.50). Poet John Gay's gusty ballad opera, with tunes of the day (1728) arranged by Dr. Johann Christoph Pepusch, here gets a nearly complete recording. Well sung but mumbly, and Victor has neglected to supply printed lyrics.

Kleinsinger: I Hear America Singing (Baritone John Charles Thomas, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union radio chorus, Victor Symphony Orchestra conducted by Nathaniel Shilkret; Victor; 4 sides; $2.50). George Kleinsinger, 27, one-time dentistry student, dance-band pianist, CCC camp music director, is the latest composer to trade yawps with good, grey Walt Whitman. This "cantata" on Whitman poems, first sung at an I.L.G.W.U. pageant, is in the vein of last year's popular, patriotalky Ballad for Americans, and sounds like a seller.

Suk: Serenade for String Orchestra (Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vaclav Talich; Victor; 8 sides; $4.50). Already half-forgotten, Josef Suk (1874-1935) was Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak's talented, prolific pupil and son-in-law. The Czechs, still performing in Prague, give his lush Serenade a fine performance.

Mendelssohn: Concerto in G Minor for Piano and Orchestra (Jesus Maria Sanroma, pianist, with the Boston "Pops" Orchestra conducted by Arthur Fiedler; Victor; 5 sides; $3.50). Steely-fingered Mr. Sanroma, the Boston Symphony's pianist, makes a long-retired war horse scamper like a colt.

Stravinsky: Firebird Suite (All American Youth Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski; Columbia; 5 sides; $3.50). Early Stravinsky, both sweet and hot, well grooved by Stokowski and his 1940 brood. On the sixth side is a beautiful Stokowski orchestration of a Shostakovich piano prelude.

Brahms: A Recital (Lotte Lehman, soprano, with Paul Ulanowsky, pianist; Columbia; 8 sides; $4). Soprano Lehmann, one of the finest of Lieder singers, is Columbia's newest captive in its long, furious war with Victor. In her debut album she sings to perfection ten songs, only one of which she has ever recorded before.

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