Red Garters/Irving Berlin's White Christmas

Performer: Rosemary Clooney
Distributor: Gotham Distributing Corp.

Notes: 2 LPs on 1 CD: RED GARTERS (1954)/IRVING BERLIN'S WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954). Principal cast includes: Rosemary Clooney, Guy Mitchell, Joanne Gilbert. Originally released on Columbia. This two-fer CD from reissue label Collectables Records licenses a couple of 1954 albums originally issued in the 10" LP format by Columbia Records containing music from films featuring Rosemary Clooney, Red Garters and White Christmas (or, as the songwriter who ruled over the latter project would have it, Irving Berlin's White Christmas). Neither of the two discs is exactly a full-scale "original soundtrack" album, although Red Garters was billed as such. In fact, of the eight tracks on that LP, only four ("Red Garters" itself; "This Is Greater Than I Thought," ably sung by Joanne Gilbert; "Bad News"; and "Man and Woman," a feisty duet by Clooney and Guy Mitchell) actually came directly from the movie. The rest had been recorded subsequently in a studio. As for White Christmas, the Clooney album was the product of a contractual anomaly: since Decca Records had rights to the soundtrack album and Clooney was an exclusive Columbia artist, Decca simply replaced Clooney with Peggy Lee on its "soundtrack" album with other stars Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, while Columbia had Clooney record her own solo album of songs from the film. Happily, it turned out to be one of Clooney's best efforts. She effectively re-created her two big ballad moments in the film, her solo "Love -- You Didn't Do Right by Me" and "Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep," done in the movie as a duet with Crosby. She borrowed "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing," which had been taken by Kaye. And, best of all, she dragged her sister Betty Clooney, once her partner in the Clooney Sisters, out of retirement temporarily to perform the clever "Sisters." Of course, with selections such as the title song and "Snow," the album also functioned as a Rosemary Clooney Christmas album. Red Garters' score of songs by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, sometimes sounding like a pale imitation of Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, is not in the same league, but the two albums make for an appropriate matching of Clooney "soundtrack" albums. ~ William Ruhlmann

An iconic American vocalist, Rosemary Clooney often blurred the line between pop and jazz, occasionally even venturing into country and international styles. She started out as a singer with the Tony Pastor band in the 1940s, and her solo career started taking off at the end of the decade. Under the stewardship of Mitch Miller, she had numerous novelty-oriented '50s hits, but later on she dedicated herself to more serious, jazzier work, making some of her finest albums, like 1956's BLUE ROSE. Clooney was also active in films and TV (for a time she had her own television show), and continued performing and recording tirelessly until her death in 2002.

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