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Jay Wilbur, Solo Recordings

“He’s Not Worth Your Tears” (1931)

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“He’s Not Worth Your Tears.” Words by Mort Dixon and Billy Rose, music by Harry Warren; composed for the musical Sweet and Low (1930). Recorded in London on February 25, 1931 by Elsie Carlisle (as Gracie Collins) under the musical direction of Jay Wilbur. Eclipse 50 mx. JW-173-3.

Personnel: Jay Wilbur dir. Max Goldberg-Bill Shakespeare-t / Ted Heath or Tony Thorpe-tb / Laurie Payne-Jimmy Gordon-cl-as-bar / Norman Cole-?another-vn / Billy Thorburn or Pat Dodd-p / Bert Thomas-g / Harry Evans-sb / Jack Kosky-d

He’s Not Worth Your Tears – Gracie Collins (Elsie Carlisle) – Eclipse 50

Transfer by Jonathan David Holmes

Sheet music and record labels assert that “He’s Not Worth Your Tears” originated in the 1930 Broadway revue Sweet and Low, and yet sources for original casts and the like omit the song.1 Perhaps it was cut from the show but continued to be marketed as having been in it? At any rate, it was recorded by quite a few artists, Elsie Carlisle among them. This is her only record side with the budget Eclipse label (sold in Woolworth’s), and one of only four small, eight-inch records that she ever made.

This song showcases Elsie as a torch singer capable of appealing to our deepest sympathies for whatever lost or unrequited love she claims to have experienced. And yet this torch song has a bit of a twist: Elsie is not complaining so much about the lover who left her as the people who are trying to comfort her. “He’s not worth your tears,” they tell her to her annoyance. I find the lyrics of the B part particularly memorable:

They never bother an old weeping willow —
They leave it drooping there.
So if I want to confide in my pillow,
Why should strangers care?

Elsie is at her most mournful in this song. There is something deeply attractive about the way that her voice sounds as if it is about to break, but never does. I have listed the personnel that Richard J. Johnson identifies as having made up Jay Wilbur’s studio band at the time,2 but I only hear a pianist and a trumpet player; the latter has a short but memorable solo.

Eclipse 50 was the second Elsie Carlisle record that I ever bought. I put off sharing a transfer of it because my copy is rather worn and I was hoping to find a better one, but it would appear that this is a comparatively rare record. I was very pleased when Jonathan Holmes found a good copy and shared it on YouTube; his transfer is the one used at the beginning of the article. Readers might like to compare my copy, though, as it is take 2, not take 3, and there are interesting little differences in the pacing:

“He’s Not Worth Your Tears.” Recorded in London on February 25, 1931 by Elsie Carlisle (as Gracie Collins) under the musical direction of Jay Wilbur. Eclipse 50 mx. JW-173-2.

Elsie Carlisle – “He’s Not Worth Your Tears” (1931)

Elsie used the pseudonym Gracie Collins on Eclipse 50; the reverse side, “Homesick Blues,” is also supposed to be by Gracie Collins, but it clearly has Betty Bolton’s voice. If that is not confusing enough — having two very different singers pretending to have sung both sides of one record — there also exists a take 1 of “He’s Not Worth Your Tears” that was recorded by a singer named Elaine Rosslyn. I have not heard it myself.3

In America in 1930-1931 there were versions of “He’s Not Worth Your Tears” recorded by Doris Robbins, Marion Harris, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra (v. Helen Rowland), Aileen Stanley (two takes rejected by Victor), Jimmie Noone’s Apex Club Orchestra (v. Mildred Bailey), and Ben Selvin and His Orchestra (v. Helen Rowland).

There were British dance band versions in 1931 by Jack Harris and His Orchestra (“She’s Not Worth Your Tears” — apparently mislabeled as “It’s Not Worth Your Tears”; v. Cavan O’Connor) and by the Debroy Somers Band (also “She’s Not Worth Your Tears”; v. Dan Donovan).

Notes:

  1. E.g., The Guide to Musical Theatre. ↩
  2. Richard J.  Johnson, Elsie Carlisle: A Discography, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: Richard J. Johnson, 1994, 12. ↩
  3. For more about Eclipse’s “Gracie Collins” pseudonym, see Arthur Badrock’s comments in Talking Machine Review 88 (Autumn/Winter 1994): 2559-2560. ↩
Carroll Gibbons

“Ya Gotta Know How to Love” (1926)

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“Ya Gotta Know How to Love.” Words by Bud Green, music by Harry Warren (1926). Recorded on October 6, 1926 by Elsie Carlisle with piano and vocal accompaniment by Carroll Gibbons. Zonophone 2815.

"Ya Gotta Know How to Love" label. Zonophone 2815.

Elsie Carlisle – “Ya Gotta Know How to Love” (1926)

Original 78 rpm transfer by Erik Høst

In his famous November 4, 1938 article in Radio Pictorial (which either originated or, at the least, strongly reinforced Elsie Carlisle’s epithet “Radio Sweetheart No. 1”), reporter Ralph Graves recounts Elsie’s first meeting  with American pianist Carroll Gibbons (who would, the next year, become the bandleader of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans):

Now for another scene.

This time not a swank lunch, but a very informal party.

Elsie was asked to sing.  No, she hadn’t her music, but a quiet, bespectacled young man at the piano knew all the latest numbers, and could instantly transpose into any key Elsie wanted.

She sang several numbers which went down well, but the outstanding thought in Elsie’s mind was what a good accompanist this young man was.  And when he played some piano solos on his own afterwards her opinion of him went up.

She asked who he was.

“That chap at the piano?  Oh, he’s a Mr. Gibbons.  Just come over from the States with Rudy Vallee, you know.  Carroll Gibbons I believe his name is….”

That was in the days when Carroll was striving to make a name for himself.

Elsie and Carroll used to meet quite often after that party, as they held each other in mutual esteem.  Well, now here’s a secret.  Even his best friends will admit that Carroll has a “queer” voice.  Those melodious deep tones, so very “Southern” are a characteristic.  His announcements are fun, but you can’t imagine him as a singer, can you!

Yet it is a fact that Carroll and Elsie not only made gramophone records together, but on at least one of them Carroll sang part of the vocals!  Yes, that vocalist is a fine pianist!

Graves later ends his article by teasing

But if you want to hear Elsie in another vocal team, just try to get one of the old copies of a certain Zono record!  If you’re lucky, you’ll hear a then unknown singer, a Miss Carlisle, singing with a certain Mr. Gibbons, a new pianist, trying to make a name for himself as a Bing Crosby!

Graves’s article overstates quite a few things, among them the idea that Carroll Gibbons had a very notable vocal part on Zonophone 2815 (his piano playing is audible throughout, of course), but it is still a treat to hear Gibbons’s faint antiphony in “Ya Gotta Know How to Love” and in the song on the reverse side of the record, “My Cutey’s Due at Two-to-Two Today.”

“Ya Gotta Know How to Love” is a Harry Warren tune that is infectious in spite of, or perhaps because of, the simplicity of Bud Green’s lyrics.  It does not develop its theme much past the idea contained in the title of the song, namely that in a love relationship, a certain savoir faire is required (with the additional warning that one’s “baby” will be inclined to want expensive things). Elsie Carlisle adopts the persona that she has in many of her early recordings, that of the fetching, frenetic flapper.

“Ya Gotta Know How to Love” was recorded in America in 1926 by Sam Lanin and His Orchestra (as Chick Nelson’s Collegians) with Arthur Fields as vocalist,  Irving Aaronson and His Commanders (with vocals by Harold Saliers), Esther Walker, the California Ramblers (with Frank Harris, who may be Irving Kaufman going under a pseudonym), Fess Williams, the Varsity Eight, the Locust Sisters, Peggy English, and Betty Marvyn  (unissued).

In Britain, in addition to Elsie Carlisle’s recording, there were versions of “Ya Gotta Know How to Love” by Bert Firman’s Cabaret Novelty Orchestra and by Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (with Jack Hylton providing the vocals).

Carroll Gibbons

“I Love My Baby” (1926)

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“I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me).” Words by Bud Green, music by Harry Warren (1925). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle with piano accompaniment by Carroll Gibbons on May 25, 1926. Zonophone 2772.

Elsie Carlisle – “I Love My Baby” (1926)

Video by bsgs98 (YouTube)

Elsie Carlisle began her career as a recording artist 89 years ago today. Already an accomplished 30-year-old actress, she had started to do musical radio broadcasts on March 1, 1926. On May 25 she was joined at the Gramophone Company’s Studio B at Hayes in Middlesex by Carroll Gibbons, who was to be her piano accompanist — he was not yet the famed director of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans. In his 1938 journalistic paean to Elsie Carlisle (“Radio Sweetheart No. 1”), Ralph Graves tells how the two first met:

Now for another scene.

This time not a swank lunch, but a very informal party.

Elsie was asked to sing. No, she hadn’t her music, but a quiet, bespectacled young man at the piano knew all the latest numbers, and could instantly transpose into any key Elsie wanted.

She sang several numbers which went down well, but the outstanding thought in Elsie’s mind was what a good accompanist this young man was. And when he played some piano solos on his own afterwards her opinion of him went up.

She asked who he was.

“That chap at the piano? Oh, he’s a Mr. Gibbons. Just come over from the States with Rudy Vallee, you know. Carroll Gibbons I believe his name is….”

That was in the days when Carroll was striving to make a name for himself.

Elsie and Carroll used to meet quite often after that party, as they held each other in mutual esteem. Well, now here’s a secret. Even his best friends will admit that Carroll has a “queer” voice. Those melodious deep tones, so very “Southern” are a characteristic. His announcements are fun, but you can’t imagine him as a singer, can you!

Yet it is a fact that Carroll and Elsie not only made gramophone records together, but on at least one of them Carroll sang part of the vocals! Yes, that vocalist is a fine pianist!1

At this particular session Gibbons did not sing, but his piano accompaniment is flawless, as it would continue to be throughout his period of collaboration with Elsie Carlisle that year. The two songs that they recorded at their first session were a prescient snapshot of the Anglophone popular music of the time, insofar as Harry Warren’s “I Love My Baby” was paired with “So Is Your Old Lady,” whose lyricist was Al Dubin, the man now most associated with Warren. Those two men had already collaborated at that point, but it would be many years before they would begin their famous stint as the great songwriters for Warner Bros.

“I Love My Baby” expresses the enthusiasm of silly young lovers at an insistent tempo that is entirely infectious and is somehow as definitively redolent of the decade of its composition as “The Charleston.” Elsie Carlisle intones the lyrics with just the slightest hint of a chatty, dramatic delivery, and she adds color with vocal effects such as her husky second repetition of the refrain (most reminiscent, perhaps, of the versions recorded a few months earlier by Aileen Stanley and Lee Morse — see below). The persona Elsie takes on is one familiar from her later work, an example of brilliant, brainless fun such as we hear in her 1929 “Come On, Baby” with the Rhythm Maniacs. Elsie would appear on the sheet music for “I Love My Baby” that year.

Noteworthy early American recordings of “I Love My Baby (My Baby Loves Me)” date from the autumn and winter of 1925-1926, and include those of Aileen Stanley, Mike Speciale and His Orchestra (with vocals by Jimmy Flynn), Sam Lanin’s Dance Orchestra (with vocalist Irving Kaufman), The University Six (with singer Ed Kirkeby), Bailey’s Lucky Seven (with vocals by Arthur Fields), The Little Ramblers, Esther Walker (with the piano accompaniment of Rube Bloom), Lee Morse, Isham Jones, Owen Fallon and His Californians, Peggy English (with Rube Bloom on the piano), Sally Freeman, and Jack Glassner and His Colonial Inn Orchestra.

Other British 1926 versions of the song are those of the New Princes’ Toronto Band (under the direction of Hal Swain, with vocalist Les Allen) and Don Parker and His Band; Frances White recorded it for HMV with the Kit-Cat Band, but it went unissued.

Elsie Carlisle c. 1926
Elsie Carlisle c. 1926

Notes:

  1. Radio Pictorial (November 4, 1938) 251 p. 8. The boldface is Graves’s and typical of the bombastic editorial style of the magazine. Graves is presumably referring to Gibbons’s faint antiphony in the 1926 “Ya Gotta Know How to Love” (Zonophone 2815), another composition by Bud Green and Harry Warren, as well as in the song on its reverse side, “My Cutey’s Due at Two-to-Two Today.” ↩
Solo Recordings

“You’re My Everything” (1932)

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“You’re My Everything.” Words by Mort Dixon and Joe Young, music by Harry Warren (1931). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle with an instrumental trio in Manchester on September 23, 1932. Decca F-3193 mx. KB-135-2.

Elsie Carlisle – “You’re My Everything” (1932)

An effusive expression of affection, “You’re My Everything” has its origins as the hit song of of a 1931-1932 two-act Broadway revue entitled The Laugh Parade, produced by and starring Ed Wynn, a comedian who twenty years later would provide the voice for the Mad Hatter in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The music for the play was composed by Harry Warren, with lyrics provided by Mort Dixon and Joe Young. It was French actress Jeanne Aubert and American actor Lawrence Gray who introduced the signature tune.

Elsie Carlisle, in her 1932 recording of the song, brings sincerity to its hyperbolic lyrics. Hers is a surprisingly straightforward and touching interpretation of the composition; we find absent the coyness of her torch songs, the levity of her racier music. The band provides a suitably atmospheric accompaniment to her professions of love and awe for the lucky “you” of the song.

“You’re My Everything” was recorded in September 1931 by the Arden-Ohman Orchestra (with vocals by Frank Luther) and in October by Abe Lyman and His Orchestra (Dick Robertson, vocalist). In 1932 America heard versions by Russ Columbo, Ben Selvin and His Orchestra (Helen Rowland, vocalist), Jack Miller and the New Englanders,

 Britain produced recordings of “You’re My Everything” later in 1932, with versions by Roy Fox and His Band (with Al Bowlly as vocalist), Syd Lipton (as Sidney Raymond and His Commanders), the Blue Mountaineers (with vocals by Sam Browne), Ray Noble and His New Mayfair Orchestra (as part of a “Paul Jones” medley), Bertini and His Band (with vocals by Tom Barratt), and by Anona Winn and Jack Plant (as “Bob Mackworth”).

"You're My Everything" sheet music (from "The Laugh Parade," 1931")
“You’re My Everything” sheet music (from “The Laugh Parade,” 1931″)

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