Complaining about CDs with inadequate information on the labels has become a blood sport. My most recent beef is a record from a well-known British company which shall be nameless (Carlton Communications). This, a big-band compilation, boasts a track of the Teddy Wilson outfit doing More Than You Know but doesn't appear to know itself, or care, that the singer is a Ms Billie Holiday.
Further along, the Harry James band has an equally uncredited vocalist on All Or Nothing At All who just happens to be that skinny kid from Hoboken NJ, in one of his first recording sessions.
Lack of information is one thing; screwed-up information is another. I buy the odd CD while travelling on the Continent, because they seem to be able to turn out records at a decent price there. The downside - for some maybe, but for me a bonus - is that they can be a source of unintentional musical hilarity.
When I lived in Belfast I used occasionally to hear the semi-detached denizens of that city make reference to the following popular singers: Cliff Richards, Petulia Clark, Roy Orbinson and Barbara Streisland. I haven't spotted these ill-pronounced warblers credited on CD boxes, but there's more than enough to be going on with.
Who is this Al Johnson on my Gershwin CD carolling Swanee? Could he by any chance be related to the Al Jolson who allegedly sings Embraceable You two tracks down? Except when you get down there, that Al Jolson seems to be doing a remarkably faithful impersonation of Judy Garland. And look, here's I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket by a certain Luis Armstrong. With a Hispanic moniker like that, surely it should be I'm Putting All My Basques In One Exit?
On the label of one purchase in Zurich ("Made in the Switzerland") there appears a hitherto unfamiliar track by the Ellington orchestra called How Night The Moon. And from a (double?) Dutch label, please put your hands together for something by the name of A Long Last Love (for the uninitiated, that's Cole Porter's At Long Last Love). Best of all, relax to the golden sound of the Glenn Miller band putting across that old favourite, At Least (Warren and Mercer's At Last, folks).
If Harry Warren were still alive, he'd be turning in his grave. Warren used to complain bitterly that the directors of the musicals in which his songs featured didn't give a flattened fifth when he would diffidently point out from the sidelines that the performer was singing his song wrong.
And in the same ball-park, I'm no great fan of Sarah Vaughan as a singer, but I keep searching the racks for one of her tracks, first brought to my attention by the late Benny Green. The song is Aren't You Kinda Glad We Did? (G.& I. Gershwin); it's from a movie called The Shocking Miss Pilgrim; and buried in the lyrics somewhere is the phrase "without a chaperone". Believe it or not, the Divine Miss Sassy sings this as "without a Chapter One". And it was released like that.
While we're in Gershwin mode, there's a calumny abroad that their father, who was an immigrant from Russia, found it difficult to get his tongue round the English language and used to pronounce Fascinatin' Rhythm as Fashion On The River. I take leave to doubt that. Mr G senior was a sophisticated man, by all accounts, who greatly enjoyed the company of the arty types George and Ira used to bring home to the family duplex on Riverside Drive, New York.
The deliberate mistakes can be just as much fun as the inadvertent ones. With Bike Up The Strand, Gerry Mulligan was committing a knowing spoonerism on George Gershwin; but it was the lyricist Sammy Cahn who was the master of parodic titling, making great sport, not only of other people's songs, but his own as well.
Such as If They Asked Me I Could Bite A Rook. Or This Is My First Affair (So What Goes Where?). Or What Is This Thing Called, Love? Or I Saw You Last Night And Got That Old Feeling. Or I Water The Front Cover. This side of the Atlantic, Denis Norden came up with People Will Say We're In Hove.
Inevitably, one has been trying to make one's own contribution to this arcane and perverse canon. But the best I can manage so far is with It Must Have Been Something I Dreamed Last Night. With posthumous apologies to Messrs Fain, Magidsen and Yellen, I hesitantly offer It Must Have Been Something I Ate Last Night. Or how about Tim Jones's great hit, Predecease Me, Let Me Go? Must try harder.
