Elmer Bernstein’s “Hud,” The Return of “Carrie” Among Latest Trio of Titles from Kritzerland

It’s been an incredibly busy morning for the Kritzerland label!  While you have the chance to win some of Kritzerland’s best releases of 2012 today only for Second Discmas, the soundtrack specialists have just announced three new limited edition albums to close out the year: a two-fer from Elmer Bernstein and Nathan Van Cleave of Hud and The Lonely Man, respectively, plus another from Alex North and Adolph Deutsch of Hot Spell and The Rainmaker, and finally, a special Encore Edition release of Pino Donaggio’s score to Carrie!  All three titles feature some incredibly rare film music, including a complete alternate recording of Bernstein’s short, unusual score to Hud, and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s rendition of the title song to The Lonely Man.

After the jump: the complete details on all three sets, including pre-order links!

And Now She Sings! Chita Rivera Solo Albums Coming to CD from Stage Door

Chita Rivera was the toast of the musical stage in 1961, reprising her New York triumph in Bye Bye Birdie in London’s West End.  Over fifty years later, the resplendent Ms. Rivera is still the toast of the musical stage, wowing audiences nightly as the decadent Princess Puffer in the Broadway revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  Yet the triple-threat dancer/actress/singer who originated roles in musicals including West Side Story and Chicago has made all too few trips to the recording studio outside of preserving her stage roles on original cast recordings.  And anyone who knows any of those cast albums knows that Rivera is as compelling a vocal stylist as she is an onstage presence.  In 2009, Rivera released her third and most recent solo album on the Yellow Sound label, but thanks to Stage Door Records, listeners can now revisit her first two such solo recordings.  On February 25, 2013, the label will unveil the CD premieres of 1962’s Chita! and 1963’s And Now I Sing! on one disc.  (Rivera tipped her hat to the 1963 album when titling her jazzy 2009 effort And Now I Swing!).

Rivera was starring as Rose opposite the Albert of future Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall in the London production of Bye Bye Birdie when she entered the Philips label’s U.K. studio with arranger Alyn Ainsworth for her first-ever solo album, Chita!.  The respected bandleader oversaw a 12-track collection primarily of theatre and film songs, many of which predated Rivera’s own original-cast Broadway debut in the 1955 musical Seventh Heaven.  (Rivera, billed as Conchita del Rivero, had been a replacement in the ensemble of Can-Can prior to Seventh Heaven.)  These songs included Rodgers and Hart’s “Ten Cents a Dance” from Simple Simon (1930), Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg’s “Old Devil Moon” from Finian’s Rainbow (1947) and Frank Loesser and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Small Fry” from the movie Sing You Sinners (1938).  Loesser and Lane were also represented with “The Lady’s in Love with You,” their 1939 standard.  Of a more recent vintage were “Love, Look Away” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (1959) and the rollicking “Get Me to the Church on Time” from Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady (1956), plus Bart Howard’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” first recorded in 1954 by Kaye Ballard as “In Other Words.”  By the time Rivera got around to the song, it had already been recorded by a “Who’s Who” including Eydie Gorme, Peggy Lee, Nat “King” Cole, and Johnny Mathis.  (The famous Frank Sinatra/Quincy Jones rendition followed in 1964.)  And though it’s hard to picture Rivera starring in Oklahoma!, the album features her take on “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”

A similar approach to the repertoire was taken for follow-up album And Now I Sing!.  This time, Rivera recorded the LP on her home turf in New York under the baton of musical director Joe Cain for the Latin music label Seeco.  (A truly diverse label, Seeco’s catalogue included Cy Coleman and Eartha Kitt alongside Celia Cruz and Perez Prado.)  An accomplished trumpeter and Latin music legend who worked with artists such as Tito Puente, Seeco’s in-house arranger and A&R man Cain guided Rivera through new arrangements of songs ranging from Rodgers and Hart once more (“Isn’t It Romantic”) to Mancini and Mercer (the Academy Award-winning “Moon River”).  Rivera even put her own stamp on “Falling in Love Again,” Marlene Dietrich’s signature song.    She returned to Loesser and Lane’s songbook for their “I Hear Music,” and revisited Hoagy Carmichael’s catalogue for “The Nearness of You,” with lyrics by Ned Washington (“When You Wish Upon a Star”).

There’s more after the jump including a pre-order link and full track listing with discography!

On the Fifth Day of Second Discmas…

Here at The Second Disc, the holiday season is the perfect time to do what we love to do best: share the gift of music. For the second year in a row, we have we reached out to some of our favorite reissue labels and we’ve teamed with them to play Santa Claus to our awesome and faithful readers. It’s called – what else? – Second Discmas, and it’s going on now through Christmas!

The fifth day of Second Discmas is a celebration of all things stage and screen!  We’re offering two amazing gift sets from our friends at the Kritzerland label, a torch-bearer for film scores from Hollywood’s Golden Age as well as classic Broadway musicals.

The first prize pack features producer Bruce Kimmel’s entertaining new memoir Album Produced By…,  joined by (what else?) two albums produced by Bruce Kimmel: the revelatory remix and remaster of Stephen Sondheim’s seminal Follies: The Original Broadway Cast Recording; and Bruce’s latest album and one sure to be a holiday staple, Sandy Bainum’s This Christmas!

For fans of the silver screen, Kritzerland has also created a prize pack with two rare and out-of-print selections from its catalogue plus one title celebrating a recently departed legend.  The label’s latest sell-out, an Alfred Newman two-fer of Love is a Many-Splendored Thing and The Seven Year Itch, can no longer be purchased from Kritzerland, but it can be YOURS!  Ditto for the amazing expansion of Henry Mancini’s ravishing and unique score to The Molly Maguires!  Lastly, the late Marvin Hamlisch can be remembered with his captivating soundtrack to Romantic Comedy!

How can you make these prizes yours? Click on the graphic up top to head over to Contest Central for the complete rules! And there’s still more great free music coming your way, only at The Second Disc!