Al Sherman Articles

“A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You!” (1932)

“A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You!” Words and Music by Al Lewis, Al Sherman, and Lee David (1932). Recorded in London at Studio 1, Abbey Road on July 22, 1932 by Ambrose and His Orchestra with vocalists Sam Browne and Elsie Carlisle. HMV B-6218.

Personnel: Bert Ambrose dir. Max Goldberg-Harry Owen-t / Ted Heath-tb / Joe Crossman-cl-as-bar / Billy Amstell-cl-as-ts / Harry Hines-as / Joe Jeanette-cl-ts-?pic / Ernie Lewis-Teddy Sinclair-Peter Rush-vn / Bert Read-p / Joe Brannelly-g / Don Stutely-sb / Max Bacon-d1

A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You ! – Ambrose and his Orchestra

Transfer by Lilian Harvey – YouTube

In the very first Elsie Carlisle discography, Elsie Carlisle – With a Different Style (1974), Edward S. Walker indicates that Ambrose’s version of “A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You!” has a Sam Browne/Elsie Carlisle duet, and yet Elsie’s vocal has been ignored by every subsequent discography, including even my own Croonette: An Elsie Carlisle Discography (published earlier this year). The record would appear to be comparatively rare, and I only discovered “Lilian Harvey’s” transfer on YouTube last week. (The omission will be remedied in the second edition of Croonette, which should be ready for online publication very soon.)

The songwriters include Al Sherman and Al Lewis, who would later collaborate on “No! No! A Thousand Times No!” and Lee David, who would team up with Darl MacBoyle to write “That Means You’re Falling in Love”; the latter song was recorded in 1933 by Sam Browne and Elsie Carlisle. The title “A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You!” recalls the earlier “A Bungalow, a Radio, and You” (Dempsey-Leibert; 1928), but that is where the similarities end. Another song in which the singer says that all he needs is one thing, another thing, “and you” is “A Cup of Coffee, a Sandwich, and You” (Meyer-Dubin-Rose; 1925).2

Ambrose’s version of the song has a mostly instrumental introduction, except that very near the beginning a piccolo plays three series of notes which Elsie can be heard to mimic vocally. The piccolo continues to intervene playfully, even comically, throughout the song. Then Sam Browne begins to sing, describing himself as standing beneath someone’s window and telling her that all he needs is a bungalow, a piccolo, “and you.” Sam’s fun and comparatively brainless love song proceeds until the piccolo takes over for a moment. It is at that point that something incredibly cute occurs: Elsie again has an exchange with the piccolo in which she imitates it with her voice, but this time she scats. Even better, she boops (“Boop-a-doo!”), and then repeats Sam’s sentiments about needing a bungalow, a piccolo, “and you.” Overall, her contributions to the recording are brief but incredibly bright, joyful, and memorable.

While the songwriters were all American, I have not been able to locate any American recordings of “A Bungalow, a Piccolo, and You!” There are plenty of other British dance band recordings, however, including those by Henry Hall’s BBC Dance Orchestra (v. Val Rosing), Billy Cotton and His Band (v. Cyril Grantham), Terence McGovern (as Terry Mack and His Boys; v. Joe Leigh), Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (v. Pat O’Malley), Jack Payne and His Band (v. Jack Payne, Bob Manning, and Charlie Asplin), Nat Star (as Billy Seymour and the Boys; v. Fred Douglas), Jay Wilbur and His Band (as Jack Grose and His Metropole Players; v. Leslie Holmes), and Lew Stone and the Monseigneur Band (in a medley).

Notes:

  1. These are the personnel according to Rust and Forbes’s British Dance Bands on Record; for the tentative identification of Joe Jeanette as the piccolo player, I have Nick Dellow to thank. Jeanette apparently played piccolo and flute in the British army years before joining Ambrose’s orchestra.
  2. My thanks to Jonathan David Holmes for pointing out the resemblance.

Elsie Carlisle Medley (1937)

Elsie Carlisle committed her last Decca record to shellac on January 31, 1936 and would not start recording again with HMV until October 25, 1937 — a hiatus of one year and nine months in an otherwise consistently busy period of fifteen years (1926-1942). We must not assume a low point in her career, however, but much the opposite. Elsie’s status as “Idol of the Radio” was at an all-time high, as suggested by the evidence of newspapers and industry magazines, and her stage activities seem to have kept up unabated.

The BBC Genome project shows a fair number of BBC appearances in 1936 and 1937. Importantly, a December issue of Melody Maker prints the results of a nationwide poll showing Elsie Carlisle as the most popular British female singer1. Meanwhile, a 1935 stage show featuring Sam Browne and Elsie Carlisle (accompanied by pianist Ronnie Aldrich and Freddie Aspinall) morphed in 1936 into an act that featured solely Elsie. This act would continue into at least July 19372 and seems to have featured “Home, James, and Don’t Spare the Horses,” ending with “No, No, a Thousand Times, No!”

It should not be a surprise, then, that within days of returning to recording, Elsie recorded a collection including those two songs that went under the name “Elsie Carlisle Medley.” It was the first of two such medleys that would be released under her name in a three-month period. The medleys, which include songs that must have been perceived as somehow representative of her whole career up to that point, must reinforce her special status as a premiere vocalist.

“Elsie Carlisle Medley.” Part 1: “Gertie, the girl with the gong,” “Home James, and don’t spare the horses,” “No, No, a thousand times no.” Part 2: “Dirty hands, dirty face,” “Little chap with big ideas,” “Little man, you’ve had a busy day.” Arranged by Con Lamprecht. Recorded on November 8, 1937 in London at Studio No. 1A, Abbey Roads by Elsie Carlisle under the musical direction of Ronnie Munro. HMV B.D. 476 matrices OEA 5869-1 and OEA 5870-1.

Elsie Carlisle Medley (1937)

This medley, arranged, according to Richard J. Johnson, by Con Lamprecht,3 begins with Ronnie Munro’s own “Gertie, the Girl with the Gong” (Sonin-Munro; 1935), which Elsie famously recorded with Ambrose and His Orchestra in 1935 (Decca F. 5486). The next two numbers were, as I have already noted, famously a part of Elsie’s stage show, but they had also been memorably recorded with Ambrose and His Orchestra on Decca F. 5318 (“Home, James, and Don’t Spare the Horses” [Fred Hillebrand; 1934]; “No, No, a Thousand Times, No” [Sherman-Lewis-Silver; 1934]).

Part 2 of the “Elsie Carlisle Medley” is a group of songs with childhood themes. According to Richard J. Johnson,4, it was originally supposed to include “He’s an Angel” (Michael Hodges; 1936; recorded by Elsie Carlisle on Decca F. 5902), but that song was not ultimately recorded for the “Medley” session. Instead, Part 2 begins with “Dirty Hands, Dirty Face” (Leslie-Jolson-Clarke-Monaco; 1923), which Elsie had never recorded. Perhaps it was part of her stage act, or perhaps she had broadcast it on the radio. The song’s popularity was long-lived, especially after Al Jolson featured it in The Jazz Singer (1927). Elsie had not recorded the next song, either: “Little Chap with Big Ideas” (Drake-Damerell-Evans) was a new song in 1937, and Elsie may very well have sung it on the radio. The last song, “Little Man, You’ve Had a Busy Day,” was one that Elsie had recorded twice in 1934, first solo, and then with Ambrose and His Orchestra on Brunswick 01790.

Newspaper ads for the first “Elsie Carlisle Medley” described it as “Elsie Carlisle sing[ing] a medley of her successes,”5 and the tabloid Illustrated Police News (Thursday, February 10, 1938, p. 15) included the following delightful review:

Croonette

Elsie Carlisle is probably the ace girl vocalist of the radio—British radio, at any rate. She has made a record of some of her most popular hits under the heading “Elsie Carlisle Medley.”

Elsie croons through these numbers in just as delightful fashion as she does when heard “on the air….”

The success of this collection of songs may be gauged by HMV’s decision to have the “ace croonette” record “Elsie Carlisle Medley No. 2” in January 1938, which similarly included four songs that Elsie had recorded in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as a couple that she had not recorded, but that she must have been associated with in some other way, whether through broadcast or stage.

Notes:

  1. Melody Maker 12.187 (Dec. 19, 1936) 11.
  2. The Stage issue 2,937 (July 15, 1937) 7.
  3. Elsie Carlisle: A Discography. Aylesbury, Bucks. (1994) 33.
  4. Ibid.
  5. In the Belfast News-Letter (Wednesday, February 2, 1938) 11 and elsewhere.

“No! No! A Thousand Times No!” (1934)

“No! No! A Thousand Times No!” Words and music by Al Sherman, Al Lewis, and Abner Silver (1934). Recorded by Ambrose and His Orchestra on November 20, 1934, with vocal chorus by Sam Browne and Elsie Carlisle. Decca F. 5318 mx. GB6772-2 (also Decca F. 7204 and Brunswick A. 81929).

Personnel: Bert Ambrose dir. Max Goldberg-t-mel / Harry Owen-t / t / Ted Heath-Tony Thorpe-tb / Danny Polo-reeds / Sid Phillips-reeds / Joe Jeannette-as / Billy Amstell-reeds / Ernie Lewis-Reg Pursglove-others?-vn / Bert Barnes-p / Joe Brannelly-g / Dick Ball-sb / Max Bacon-d

Ambrose & His Orchestra (w. Sam Browne & Elsie Carlisle) – “No! No! A Thousand Times No!”

In “No! No! A Thousand Times No!” Sam Browne and Elsie Carlisle evoke the spirit of Victorian stage melodrama with its stock heroes: the damsel in distress, the villain, the hero. By 1934 melodrama risked seeming hackneyed and passé, and this novelty waltz accordingly treats the genre as a source of bathetic farce. The orchestra serves as a competent background to a long series of dramatic lines almost belted out, or even shouted out, rather than sung, with Sam and Elsie employing strangely exaggerated pronunciations to emphasize their ridiculously stylized sentiments.

“No! No! A Thousand Times No!” seems to have made quite an impression on the public. The 1934 Wills’s and 1935 Ardath Elsie Carlisle cigarette card reverse sides suggest it as one of Elsie’s two most popular songs, which is interesting, as she sang quite a few memorable songs in those years, including other very good ones with Sam Browne. That this comical waltz had staying power is attested to by its appearing in Elsie’s top-two list in her 1977 London Times obituary.

“No! No! A Thousand Times No!” was recorded in America by Harry McDaniel and His Orchestra in November 1934. It seems to have been more popular with British artists, however, with versions done in late 1934 and early 1935 by the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra (under the direction of Percival Mackey, with vocals by Bobbie Combier), Jan Ralfini and His Band, Phyllis Robins and Pat O’Malley, and Leslie Sarony and “Girl Friend” (identity unknown). In May 1935 Max Fleischer released a Betty Boop short film featuring the themes and music of “No! No! A Thousand Times No!” under the same title.

I discuss this song in greater detail in my article “Elsie Carlisle’s Top Hits, Then and Now” in the December 2014 issue of the Discographer Magazine.

"The Idol of the Radio." British dance band singer of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.