This is Waldorf on the wane. The actual label is Audition (which offered Supertone High Fidelity, no less!), but, of course, Audition was a Waldorf sublabel. I like Audition because it had such cool color covers, like this one, which is Tony Randall and (I think) Sheree North, from the 1957 movie No Down Payment. It's the movie that "inspired" the LP, so the jacket says, though I wonder if the verb is being misused to mean, "from," as in "This image is from the movie." Otherwise, "inspired by" makes no sense, given that the movie, according to IMDB's synopsis, is about four southern California married couples living in a housing development and experiencing marriage issues. Not sure how picks like Rock Around the Clock, The High and the Mighty, and Manhattan could have been "inspired" by a movie of that type, but I suppose there's a shortage of songs about marital struggles in southern California housing developments. (I haven't seen the flick, so maybe some of these numbers show up along the way in some form or other.)
Since the cover shows a pic from a 1957 movie, we can halfway safely assume this LP is from 1957 or 1958. These are all recycled Waldorf tracks, of course, save for (I'm assuming) the title cut.
There is, of course, no such thing as the Audition Studio Orchestra. There is, however (or was) the Enoch Light Orchestra, and that's who we get on six of these ten tracks. As for the other front jacket credits, maybe Bud Freeman is on here somewhere--not sure. But I've ruled out the presence of Bob Bollinger, Jack Brown, and Lois Winter. In their place(s), we get Bob Eberly, Margie Murphy, Artie Malvin (of course), and The Brigadiers. So, why didn't Audition list the actual artists? To be cute? No, I'm guessing someone simply forgot who was on the tracks. Someone misplaced the track sheet. "Um... let's just give Jack Brown and a few others the 'Starring' credit."--Jacket supervisor, confused. There was a Jack Brown at Waldorf, btw, but just not on this particular piece of vinyl.
So, we get April Love from "April Love,"The High and the Mighty from "The High and the Mighty,"Three Coins in the Fountain from "Three Coins in the Fountain," and Secret Love from "Secret Love." Er, I mean, from "Calamity Jane." Oddly enough, Audition decided not to associate Rock Around the Clock with "Blackboard Jungle," instead associating it with the movie Rock Around the Clock, a 1956 comedy of the unintentional type, in which Bill Haley demonstrated his inability to act. Wikipedia tells us that the flick (Rock Around the Clock) was one of two cheapies that exploited Haley's musical fame. Audition chose to title the song (We Gonna) Rock Around the Clock, instead of (We're...), for some reason. I kind of like it, actually, but it's probably a typo.
Extra-good audio quality on these--way better than they'd sound from those six-selection EPs churned out by this company. And no wonder--it's Supertone High Fidelity, after all. And we get three gorgeous Enoch Light instrumentals, so what's not to love? And it may or may not be Will Bradley on Three Little Words, and No Down Payment comes with no artist credit, because I was unable to locate any Waldorf recording of that number. Otherwise, we're good to go...
DOWNLOAD: Themes from Hollywood Films (Audition 5911)
Lee