Helen Carr

Graphics and music courtesy of Uptown Records

A reader from Ithaca, NY---let's call him Mister X--- writes in to ask:

Dear Dr. Chilledair:

I appreciate your website. I was wondering if you have written about Helen Carr? Biographical data about her is very hard to find.

Regards
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Dear Tom, I mean Mister X:

I have not written about the very fine Carr, but I don't find a great lack of info about her. The big problem seems to be contradictory stories as to the cause of her death. The journalist Scott Yanow wrote the following
on the net in 2003:

"She was born in 1922 or 1924 in Salt Lake City. Carr recorded "Say It Isn't So" with Charles Mingus in 1946 in Los Angeles. She married pianist-arranger Donn Trenner and worked with him in a group called The Donn Trio And Helen. She sang for short periods of time
with the big bands of Charlie Barnet (there is a Snader transcription film clip of her singing "My Old Flame"), Georgie Auld, Chuck Foster, Skinnay Ennis, Stan Kenton (for one month in 1952) and Buddy Morrow. She sat in with Charlie Parker a couple times [there is a photo of at least one of the occasions] and made two albums for Bethlehem; one in a quintet with trumpeter Don Fagerquist, altoist Charlie Mariano, Donn Trenner, bassist Max Bennett and drummer Stan Levey, and one with a trio comprised of trumpeter Cappy Lewis, guitarist Howard Roberts and bassist Red Mitchell. These are either from 1953 and 1954 or both from 1955, depending on the discography one looks at. They have been reissued on a single CD (The Complete Bethlehem Collection) and find her displaying a soft voice that at times sounds eerily like Norah Jones (!) although the music is much more jazz-oriented and her phrasing is influenced by Billie Holiday. Her only other recordings were two songs with Max Bennett in 1955 and two cuts on an Atco single in 1958 (Ific/YouMade Me Love You) released under King Curtis' name; I've never heard the latter. Helen Carr died sometime in 1960, either from a car accident or breast cancer. I have three sources apiece for both of those."

The Bethlehem two-fer also contains a lot of info, but nothing there---I seem to recall---about the cause of death. I don't know why Yanow didn't just call Carr's husband, Trenner. He's in the book.

Hope that helps.

Best,

Dr. C.

Vinylity

There's a great deal of excellent music to be found lurking within the grooves of all those budget LPs from the 1950s, i.e Tops, Hit Hits Hooray, Waldorf Music Hall, etc. You know the kind; the ones that offered 12 top hits for a buck-forty-nine by "Great Hollywood Vocalists and Orchestras" that no one, for the most part, has ever heard of. I bought them in high school because we were so poor we had to eat the family dog. Sometimes, though, the performers were not so obscure. And the recordings often weren't half bad at all. Themes From the Movies (Tops L1519) is one I've long kept my eyes open for during my regular thrift shop perambulations. I finally found it last week at the Jewish Women's Council Thrift Shop on Fairfax in L.A. (along with a clean copy of Sammy Davis' LP All the Way and Then Some) both for a buck each, if you must know. I've been looking for the album because it contains two tracks by the nowadays somewhat forgotten, but nonetheless quite fabulous crooner Ronnie Deauville. Kind of a sad story there, and with a bittersweet ending. But he sounds terrific on his two tracks, "Young at Heart" and "Three Coins in the Fountain" from "Themes from. . .." Obviously meant to evoke Sinatra, but Deauville is clearly his own man here.

Page Pics

A few photos taken by David Ehrenstein at Page Cavanaugh's birthday party last Friday.

Page, Nancy Sinatra and Steve Tyrell. Nancy is recording a CD with Page.

Cinema legend Ann (GWTW) Rutherford asks: "This way, or. . ."

". . .this?"

Actually, Ann, it doesn't make any difference. You look perfectly smashing both ways.

all photos © 2007 David Ehrenstein

Back to low-fi mono

In what was only his second live performance as a singer, the other night Kurt Reichenbach held a full house totally spellbound with an 80-minute presentation that was one of the best such shows I've ever witnessed. It was especially fascinating to me because I happened to be aware that the pianist with whom Kurt HAD BEEN rehearsing secured a last minute high-paying road gig, and Kurt only had a few hours to rehearse with a total stranger of a new pianist, Jim Cox.

Fortunately, I recorded the evening. A fairly crude artifact, but I think you can tell from the track linked here how good Kurt and Jim sounded together. Did he even take a breath in his high speed interpretation of this great song from "The Yearling"?