November Records

Phonograph records for children last week began their seasonal boom. Victor, most kiddie-conscious of disc makers, released its Christmas list: six sides from Walt Disney's Dumbo, and eleven Bluebird (Victor's cheaper label) albums. Seven of the eleven albums are the work of Helen Myers, who is the Rodgers & Hart of pint-sized music. Miss Myers, onetime Oklahoma City Junior Leaguer, Phi Beta Kappa, concert and jive pianist (a year at Manhattan's Rainbow Room), composer of moderately successful popular songs, has been with Victor for two years, dreaming up ideas for the children's list. In the current lot are: Long-Name-No-Can-Say (about a Chinese baby with a long name); One String Fiddle (about a Tennessee mountain boy named Irby and his dog Billiam) ; Owl and the Pussy Cat and Other Nonsense Songs--verses by Edward Lear, old friend to many a parent, deftly set and orchestrated for the first time (except the title song).

Not for sheltered youngsters is Decca's current children's list: Tarzan of the Apes and Superman's Christmas Adventure. Both Decca and Victor offer recordings of Dickens' Christmas Carol; in Decca's, the Scrooge is Ronald Colman. Columbia puts out Prokofieff's musical fairy tale, Peter and the Wolf. The music is well handled by Leopold Stokowski and his All American Youth Orchestra, but Basil Rathbone's narration lacks the imposing resonance of Richard Hale in the earlier Victor set.

Other records of the month:

POPULAR

Modern Design (Sammy Kaye; Victor). The celebrated boo-eeps of Pall Mall's radio plug. Listeners to the record are supposed to join in with their own boo-eeps, as Sammy Kaye's audiences do.

Baby Mine (Claude Thornhill; Columbia). Sweet one from Walt Disney's Dumbo.

I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (The Ink Spots; Decca). No. 1 on the jukes and networks, beautifully sung by Decca's four Negroes, who used to be $12-a-week theater porters.

Flamenco Music (Jeronimo Villarino; Musicraft album). Fiery Spanish guitar work and shouting by a nightclub gypsy.

Richard Dyer-Bennet, Lute Singer (Keynote album). Minstrelsy by a light-voiced youngster (TIME, Oct. 13), ranging from the 17th-Century Golden Vanity to a current Anzac favorite, The Swagman (or Waltzing Matilda).

Deep Sea Chanteys and Sod Buster Ballads (Almanac Singers; two General albums). In the former, the vagrant, gusty Almanackers toss off Blow the Man Down, Blow Ye Winds High-O, etc. The other set is a random survey of such Americana as Ground Hog ("Up comes Sal with a snicker and a grin, Ground Hog grease all over her chin").

SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto in B Flat Minor (Vladimir Horowitz, with Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony; Victor; 8 sides; $4.50). The piece which most people know (from its opening themes) as Tonight We Love, Concerto for Two, etc., gets a brilliant recording, with "The Old Man" driving his Son-in-law Horowitz and the orchestra without mercy.

Mozart: Cos`i fan tutte (Glyndebourne Festival Opera Company, conducted by Fritz Busch; Victor; 40 sides in three volumes; $21.50). A fluent, pulsing performance of Mozart's comedy of rococo love, the last of his operas to be recorded complete. Cos`i fan tutte, like the recorded Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro, was expertly given before the war at John Christie's Glyndebourne Manor, Sussex, England. Conductor Busch and the soprano star of Cos`i fan tutte, Ina Souez, figured in Manhattan performances of the opera last month.

Bach: The Art of Fugue (E. Power Biggs, organist; Victor; 20 sides; $11). Like the late Ring Lardner (How to Write Short Stories), J. S. Bach demonstrated by doing. The Art of Fugue, his last great work, consists of 14 increasingly complex fugues on the same basic subject. Organist Biggs plays them soberly, soundly on Harvard University's limpid-toned "baroque" organ.

Schumann: Symphony No. 4 in D Minor (Chicago Symphony, conducted by Frederick Stock; Columbia; 6 sides; $3.50). Dr. Stock and his men, specialists in warm, romantic works, give this one a much-needed new recording.

Mozart: Concerto No. 3 in E Flat Major for Horn and Orchestra (Aubrey Brain and the BBC Symphony, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult; Victor; 4 sides; $2.50) and Duo No. 2 in B Flat Major for Violin and Viola (Jascha Heifetz and William Primrose; Victor; 5 sides; $3). Two out-of-the-way items, finely tooled.

Richard Strauss: Don Juan (Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by Fritz Reiner; Columbia; 4 sides; $2.50). An excellent new recording orchestra puts life in Strauss's jaded rake.

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