Fred Waring

Review: For many years Waring and his Pennsylvanians entertained America with radio and tv broadcasts, as well as stage shows and a multitude of recordings. Culled from the Waring archives, the spontaneity and energy of these live recordings comes through from the first cut. Featured are famous Pennsylvanian soloists and the incomparable Waring Glee Club on these 21 wonderful (all big band accompanied) songs of Christmas. We can't really pick favorites here. The jazzy "Jingle Bells" perhaps, or the Teen Trio's solo on "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" that segues into manic sound-effect silliness." Certainly the "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow Medley," Frank Davis' soulful solo on "One for the Little Bitty Baby," and Jack Best and Gordon Goodman on "Twas the Night Before Christmas." Oh, and we have to include Jane Wilson's solos on "Away In A Manger" and "Cantique De Noel" (Oh Holy Night). The bottom line is, this is great, classic entertainment by, in our opinion, the premier choral organization of all time. Christmas music just doesn't get any better than this!

Songlist: Opening: I Hear Music, Jingle Bells, Christmas Was Meant For Children, Santa Claus is Comin' To Town, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, One For The Little Bitty Baby, Medley (Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow, The Sleigh, Winter Wonderland), White Christmas, The Christmas Song, 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, Medley (Adeste Fidelis, The First Noel, Carol Of The Bells), Beautiful Savior, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman, The Twelve Days Of Christmas, Rise Up Shepard And Foller, Oh Gathering Clouds, Behold That Star, Medley Of English Carols (Suzzani, Coventry Carol, Gloucestershire Wassail), Away In A Manger, Cantique De Noel (Oh Holy Night), Silent Night/Come Unto Him, Closing Sleep

Review: Tchaikovsky's beloved Nutcracker Suite is given a twist as performed by Fred Waring and the Pennslyvanians. Conceived by arranger Harry Simeone he combines the charming lyrics written by Jay Johnson, Frank Cunkle, Daisy Bernier and Fred Waring. The arrangement was debuted on October 27, 1947 on Waring's radio program for General Electric and recorded for Decca Records later that year. It has been delighting audiences ever since. The performance heard here was originally broadcast August 19, 1948.

Songlist: The Overture, Dance of the Sugar Plums, Trepak, Dance of the Toy Flutes, Waltz of the Flowers

Review: Called "the man who taught America how to sing" Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians were a fixture on radio in the '40's and '50's and these 23 songs were recorded in 1949 and 1950 when at the height of their popularity. The group, including the instrumentalists, was over 50 members strong and sing beautifully some of the classic songs from the era. The arrangements were from some of the top choral arrangers in the country such as Roy Ringwold and Harry Simeone. A great trip down memory lane.

Songlist: I Hear Music, I Feel A Song Comin' On, Sentimental Journey, Here I'll Stay, Country Style, Someone to Watch Over Me, I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Japanese Sandman, Moonlight and Roses, Runnin' Wild, April Showers, The Continental, Somebody Loves Me, Ballynure Ballad, Temptation, Ain't Misbehavin, It's Only A Paper Moon, I Only Have Eyes for You, Riders in the Sky, Hit the Road to Dreamland, Roumanian Rhapsody, What Makes the Sunset, Sleep

Review: Songs of patriotism and inspiration were always part of Fred Waring's broadcasts and stage shows. By popular request, Songs of Freedom was compiled from recordings in their collection. Selections include John Philip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" from Miss Liberty by Irving Berlin and "Battle Hymn Republic," which was made popular by Roy Ringwald's arrangement and won a gold record. Also included is Fred Waring's "love song for America," "My America." Waring wrote the song for his bicentennial shows in 1975.

Songlist: Pledge of Allegiance, Stars and Stripes Forever, America, The Beautiful, God Bless America, This Is My Country, No Man Is An Island, America, Where Are You?, America Our Heritage, You're A Grand Old Flag, Stars of Glory, Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, My America, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Star Spangled Banner

Review: Volume 2 of the Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians legend compendium features cuts from early 1929, the last months of the Flapper Era, through 1932, the first years of the Depression, but the time of some of Waring's greatest fame and success. The very soul of optimism, fun and silliness, the group was a hit performing in movie theatres, on the radio, on records and ultimately in the movies themselves later in the 30s. "Broadway Years" features 24 (all accompanied) digitally restored and remastered songs from the Pennsylvanians in their prime: "Button Up Your Overcoat," "Alma Mammy," "I Want To Be Happy," "Tea For Two," "Let Me Sing And I'm Happy," "Elizabeth," "Sing A Little Jingle," "Dancing In The Dark," "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," "I Say It's Spinach (And To Hell With It!)" and "Well! Well! Well! Beautifully produced, funny, hip, smooth, always with a catchy "hook" to sing along with-this is top-40 pop before there was such a thing. This series is fascinating on many levels and a joy to listen to!

Songlist: Button Up Your Overcoat, Then You've Never Been Blue, Navy Blues, Alma Mammy, With You, Crying for the Carolines, We want to Be Happy, Tea For Two, Let Me Sing and I'm Happy, Thank Your Father, Love for Sale, Where Have You Been?, Elizabeth, Oh Donna Clara!, Sing A Little Jingle, Dancing in the Dark, Let's Have Another Cup O' Coffee, I Say It's Spinach, On A Room in Manhattan, How'm I Doin'?, Rhymes, Old Yazoo, The Old Man of the Mountain, Well! Well! Well!

Review: In the early 1920s Fred Waring was a student at Penn State, where he formed Waring's Pennsylvanians (which featured a trademark glee club) who entered radio on pioneer station WWJ in Detroit. This generous, fascinating compendium of 24 (all accompanied) songs is from 1925 to 1928, a boom time of heady first success for the Pennsylvanians. Fred's amazing career as a bandleader stretched from the 1920s to the 1970s, enjoying his greatest success in the 1930s, appearing in many movies. These songs have the "jazz age" manic optimism that fit so well in the backgrounds of early cartoons. This is feel-good, funny, tongue-in-cheek dance music with titles like "Keep Sweeping The Cobwebs Off The Moon," "Don't Sing Aloha When I Go," "Syncopation Sal," "How About Me?," "What Do You Say?" and "Any Ice Today, Lady?" (with a bit that sounds like Popeye singing to Olive). It's not possible to be in a bad mood while listening to a Fred do the vocals on a truly silly song like "Bolshevik." Great stuff, digitally restored and remastered!

Songlist: Collegiate, Syncopation Sal, Mighty Blue, Freshie, I Love My Baby, Collegiate Blues, Any Ice Today, Lady?, Bolshevik, Don't Sing Aloha When I Go, I Love the College Girls, My Regular Girl, Hello, Swannee, Helllo, Wob-A-Ly Walk, ICE CREAM, Keep Sweeping the Cobwebs Off the Moon, If I Can't Have You, The Yale Blues, Who's Blue Now?, What Do You Say?, Lila, Farewell Blues, Hello! Montreal, How About Me?, Glorianna

Review: From the cherished Christmas carol, the sincere warmth of the spiritual, the cheer of the drinking song, to the tenderness of the love song, Fred Waring was the delineator, the innovator, the voice and interpreter of the language of 1960s youth in song. This all-accompanied, 2 CD, 2-lp compilation, originally released on Reprise in 1964, tours the world's greatest popular love songs. Composers and authors of course include Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, the Gershwins, Hammerstein and Jerome Kern, and we have the contrast of the studio-recorded lp, "To You Forever," and the live "In Concert" lp. The 11 songs on "Forever," smooth and sweet as you please: "You Do Something to Me," "Embraceable You," "All of You" and "All the Things You Are"-are listed in the dictionary under "Romantic." "In Concert" features an intro to the audience by Fred, and is a lively collection, from folk tunes like "Mr. Frog A Courtin'" and "On Top Of Old Smokey," spirituals like "Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and show tunes like "Hello, Dolly" to movie tunes like "Chim Chim Cher-ee" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious" from "Mary Poppins." This is entertainment!

Songlist: The Very Thought of You (Noble), (You'd Be So) Easy to Love, You Do Something To Me, The Nearness of You, You and the Night and the Music (Schwartz, Dietz), Embraceable You (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin), You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to (Cole Porter), You're Driving Me Crazy (Donaldson), There Will Never Be Another You (Warren, Gordon), All Of You, All The Things You Are (Kern, Hammerstein II), I Hear Music and Sleep, Sleep, Sleep (Waring, Doph/Waring, Geibel), Mr. Frog A Courtin' He Did Ride (Traditional), Hello Mudduh, Hello Faddah (Bush, Sherman), The Swingin' Shepherd Blues (Koffman, Roberts, Jacobson), Joshua Fit De Battle Of Jericho, On Top of Old Smokey (Traditional), 12th Street Rag (Bauman), Sweet Sue - Just You (Harris, Young), Vilia (Lehor), Cecilia (Dreyer, Ruby), Nola (Amdt, Skylar), Hello, Dolly!, Dance of the Hours (Ponchielli), Nutcracker Suite Overture and Anitra's Dance and Fugue in C Minor and Our, Love (Tchaikovsky), Jada a la Dixieland (Carleton), Jada (Carleton), Ritual Fire Dance (Defalla), Chim Chim Cher-ee (Sherman, Sherman), Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious (Sherman, Sherman), Battle Hymn of the Republic (Howe, Steffe), Sleep, Sleep, Sleep (Waring, Geibel)

Review: It's hard to imagine having a career in music more sheer fun than Fred Waring's. Starting a banjo orchestra with his brother and friends while a student at Penn State University, the band did so well he had to choose between that and architecture, and chose music. By 1922 the 9-member band toured locally, growing to 11 members on their tour through Canada, playing snappy, fast-paced numbers. Success in the Detroit-Chicago area led to a Victor recording contract and "Sleep," their first smash hit. Movies (Harold Lloyd's "The Freshman," RKO's "Syncopation," the Broadway musical "Hello, Yourself," and Fred and the Pennsylvanians were a top box office draw on a level with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. Fred's own 1930 musical comedy "Rah Rah Daze" became a smash on Broadway called "The New Yorkers." Millions tuned into his regular radio programs with the band and Waring's "Glee Club," from 1933 through the war years, finally ending in 1957. During this time he had a regular TV slot from 1947 to 1954 and a daytime show in 1957. Concert tours continued through the 1970s, finally playing at Reagan's inaugural in 1981. Finding time to invent the famous Waring blender, Waring died at Penn State, where it had all begun, in 1984. Included here are 24 upbeat, funny, fun tunes, all orchestrally accompanied, songs like "Collegiate," "Does My Sweetie Do-And How!," the title tune, "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy," H'lo Baby," "Red Hot Chicago," "Dancing in The Dark," Irving Berlin's "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" and "I Say It's Spinach," "Fit as a Fiddle" and ending with their first hit, "Sleep." This is great stuff from a more innocent time, and plenty of it. Highly recommended.

Songlist: Collegiate, Does My Sweetie Do - And How!, I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream, Who's Blue Now?, Collegiana, Navy Blues, Let Me Sing and I'm Happy, H'lo Baby, Good for You, Bad for Me, Red Hot Chicago, So Beats My Heart for You, Little White Lies, Love for Sale, Sing A Little Jingle, Dancing in the Dark, Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee, I Say It's Spinach, How'm I Doin'?, Rhymes, A Picnic for Two, You'll Get By, Fit As A Fiddle, Young and Healthy, Sleep

Review: Famous American, chorus leader, showman, glee club pioneer, golf tournament host, and entrepreneur--the man who taught America how to sing! Fred Waring was all of these and more, an enigma who held together a major musical organization for sixty-seven years, a man at ease on stage but loathe to sit through meetings, a man so earnest in his patriotism that by the 1980s he was considered almost an endangered species. Virginia Waring, his wife of thirty years, chronicles both his many achievements and his shortcomings with candor and affection in Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Her gracefully written biography traces Waring's childhood in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, his rise to fame as a bandleader, development and promotion of the Waring Blendor, leadership of Shawnee Press, concert tours, radio and television programs, and his legacy of the highest possible standards in music as in life.This intimate portrait of an American legend is accompanied by a compact disc with twenty-eight selections recorded by the Pennsylvanians over a forty-year period. They range from Adam Geibel and Tom Waring's "Sleep," recorded in 1928, through Cole Porter's "Love for Sale," Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," the traditional "Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child" and "Dry Bones," to Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson's "September Song" and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening." A native Californian, Virginia Waring is a concert pianist who studied in Paris with Robert Casadesus and toured for ten years as the Morley half of the famed duo-pianists Morley and Gearhart. She was married to Fred Waring from 1954 until his death in 1984.

Songlist: Prologue: The Man Who Taught America How To Sing, The Victorian Warings, Entrepenuer, Penn State, The Brash Kid from Tyrone, Milk Trains, Stairway to Fame, Paris, Fred Loses His Shirt, Ballet, Classics, and the Roxyettes, Radio Days, Henry Ford & Co., The Legalities of Interpretation, The Waring Blendor, Burgeoning Empire, Hollywood, "A Cigarette, Sweet Music, and You", My Debut, For The Sake of One Singer, Music Worship, Television, The Anti-Semitic Rumor, Life with Fred, Golf, "On The Road Again", Ike and the Famous, Crucible of Professionals, Stroke, Timing, Phaetons, Zephyrs, and Model A Fords, What Glorious Music

Review: This excellent Christmas carol collection supplements Hawley Ades' best-selling general collection, the Fred Waring Songbook. Hawley Ades, long regarded as one of America's most skillful arrangers of music for singing, has been associated with the Fred Waring organization since 1937. This long and fruitful relationship is reflected in the imaginative treatment of the music in this book and in the many other published settings by Mr. Ades. Over 30 a cappella carols for either SATB, SSA and TTBB.

Songlist: Angels From The Realms Of Glory, As Lately We Watched, Bring A Torch, Jeannette Isabella, Christ Was Born On Christmas Day, The First Noel, Friendly Beasts, Fum, Fum, Fum, Glad Christmas Bells, Go, Tell it on the Mountain, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Good Christian Men Rejoice, Good King Wenceslas, Here We Come A-Caroling, Holly And The Ivy, I heard The Bells on Christmas Day, I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In, Joy To The World, Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming, Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child, March Of The Kings, Masters In This Hall, O Christmas Tree, O Come Little Children, O Come, O Come, Little emmanuel, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, Pat-a-Pan, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Shepards Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep, Sing We Now Of Christmas, Snow Lay On The Ground, There's A Song In The Air, Wassail, Wassail, We Three Kings, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks