Los Angeles photographer Don Jim on the set of Hollywood Record Room.
The wide angle complete studio set photos that Don Jim took of the initial episodes of Bobby Troup’s Hollywood Record Room were absent from his later coverage of the program where surviving photos focus on the individual guests who were appearing. Such is the case with the June 15, 1961, show with George Greeley, Patricia Morison, and Paul Horn. The booking of George Greeley provided a segue of sorts to the previous show with Conley Graves as they both were featured pianists on the Capitol Records album, Romantic Themes for piano & orchestra.
Paul Horn began his musical studies as a child. His mother was Irving Berlin’s pianist, and his first instrument was the piano before taking up the clarinet and then the saxophone when he was 12. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in music from Oberlin College and a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music. His multi-reed arsenal included flute, alto flute, multiple saxophones, clarinet, piccolo, and other woodwinds.
He played lead tenor with the Sauter-Finegan orchestra in the summer of 1956 before joining the Chico Hamilton Quintet later that fall. Horn was active in the Hollywood studio scene during 1958-1959, and recorded his first albums as leader for Dot Records.
He formed a quartet that included John Pisano on guitar, Gene Estes on drums and vibes, and Lyle Ritz on bass. The quartet played a concert at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont Colleges, on January 9, 1959. The jazz-poetry concert featured Bob Dorough reading works by Dylan Thomas, Kenneth Rexroth, Carl Sandburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Walt Whitman, and other poets accompanied by Horn’s quartet. During the intermission at McKenna Auditorium copies of the World-Pacific album, Jazz Canto Vol. 1, were given away to attendees at the concert. Horn was a member of the Jack Montrose group on the World-Pacific album.
The Pasadena Art Museum presented a “Concert on the Crest” concert on March 22, 1959. The first half of the program, the classical music portion, presented a live demonstration of “life-like” stereo. The Niiya Quartet performed Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25, in their normal configuration on the stage. Then members of the quartet moved to opposite sides of the stage and repeated the last movement again to provide a “stereo” version for the audience. The last piece performed by the Niiya Quartet was Impressions for Piano and Strings by Tak Shindo. The Paul Horn Quartet was scheduled to perform on the second half of the program, the modern jazz portion, but had to cancel when they were summoned to New York for a recording session at Columbia Records with Frankie Laine.[1] Bud Shank, Billy Bean, Chuck Flores, and Gary Peacock subbed for the Horn group.
The Paul Horn Four were performing at Club Renaissance, 8424 Sunset Boulevard, when Dick Bock scheduled a recording session at the club on March 28, 1959. The Horn group was conceived at the Club Renaissance according to Ben Shapiro, director of the club.[2] Club Renaissance opened during the heyday of espresso cafés in Los Angeles in the late 1950’s. It occupied the space formerly known as the Mocambo and the Cloister. The remodel included a small space for theatrical presentations. The quartet members worked from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and resumed recording after a thiry-minute break from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. The resulting album, Paul Horn Four: Impressions!, WP-1266, mimicked the Pasadena Art Museum concert. Side one of the LP presented classical works by Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky; and side two presented straight-ahead jazz tunes. The album cover, a black & white photo of pine branches was originally designed for the aborted Gerry Mulligan album with the Vinnie Burke string quartet. The classical-jazz concept was panned by Gene Lees in his two-star Down Beat review. “The Paul Horn Four take jazz instrumentation to a group of impressionist compositions, a courageous attempt but foolish, the re-voicing of the music disrupts it.”[3] Robert A. Perlongo was more open-minded in his Metronome review. “This album is just what most albums usually aren’t and should be – a carefully conceived and executed program of music, a session with a purpose.”[4] Album production included a stereo release that failed to meet quality standards, it was released as a mono recording only. Paul Horn’s quartet continued to perform as a group and appeared at the “Jazz Revue” staged at the Wilshire Ebell Theater on May 17, 1959, where they shared the stage with the Victor Feldman Quartet and Allyn Ferguson’s Chamber Jazz Sextet.
Horn continued to be active on the West Coast as a first call studio musician and recorded another album as leader for the Hi-Fi Jazz label in 1960, Something Blue. He signed with Columbia Records in 1960 and recorded his first album for the label in March, The Sound of Paul Horn, CL 1677.
George Greeley was an Italian-American pianist, conductor, composer, arranger, recording artist and record producer who was known for his extensive work across the spectrum of the entertainment industry. Starting as an arranger and pianist with several notable big bands in the 1940s, he segued into the Hollywood radio scene, working on several nationally broadcast variety programs.
After conducting an Army Air Force Band during World War II, he was hired by Columbia Pictures as a staff pianist and orchestrator. He worked as pianist on several hundred motion pictures, worked with many famous composers orchestrating their soundtrack compositions, and created original compositions of his own in several dozen movies. It was Greeley’s hands that performed the piano parts that Tyrone Power mimed in The Eddy Duchin Story.
Concurrent with his work at Columbia Pictures, George Greeley also worked at Capitol Records as music director, pianist, and conductor for many artists such as Gordon MacRae, Jane Powell, Jo Stafford, Frankie Laine, and Doris Day. He was hired in the late 1950s by the newly established Warner Brothers Records. George Greeley arranged, orchestrated and performed as primary artist for a series of hit recordings entitled “Popular Piano Concertos.” As music tastes changed in the late 1960s, Greeley had already moved into television, composing themes and music for popular TV series like My Favorite Martian, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor, and Small Wonder. He performed as featured piano soloist and as guest conductor in concert appearances around the world. He died from emphysema at age 89 in Los Angeles, California.[5]
Eileen Patricia Augusta Fraser Morison was an American stage, television and film actress of the Golden Age of Hollywood and mezzo-soprano singer. She made her feature film debut in 1939 after several years on the stage, and amongst her most renowned were The Fallen Sparrow, Dressed to Kill opposite Basil Rathbone and the screen adaptation of The Song of Bernadette. She was lauded as a beauty with large blue eyes and extremely long, dark hair. During this period of her career, she was often cast as the femme fatale or “other woman.” It was only when she returned to the Broadway stage that she achieved her greatest success as the lead in the original production of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate and subsequently in The King and I.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Morison made several appearances on television, including several variety shows. Among these were a production of Rio Rita on Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) and a segment from The King and I on a 1955 broadcast of The Toast of the Town starring Ed Sullivan. She also appeared in 1952 on the Christmas Party episode of the Honeymooners segment of Jackie Gleason’s show playing herself as Trixie Norton’s former Vaudevillian friend. Morison also appeared in General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein broadcast March 28, 1954 on all four American TV networks of the time.
Morison and Alfred Drake recreated their Kiss Me, Kate roles in a Hallmark Hall of Fame production of the play broadcast in color on November 20, 1958. After a long absence from the screen, Morison portrayed George Sand in the 1960 Franz Liszt biopic, Song Without End.[6]
Special thanks to Michael Owen for assisting with the identification of artists who appeared on the series. Don Jim’s photography from Hollywood Record Room can be licensed for commercial use through CTSIMAGES.
[1] Bud Shank Group in Crest Concert, Pasadena Independent, March 21, 1959, page 2.
[2] Liner notes, Paul Horn Four: Impressions!, WP-1266, World-Pacific Records.
[3] Jazz Reviews, Down Beat, September 3, 1959, page 25.
[4] Record Reviews, Metronome, September 1959, pages 28-29.
[5] Wikipedia, accessed May 10,2024.
[6] Ibid.
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