Horace Heidt – THE HITS AND MORE

An excellent cross-section of Horace Heidt’s most successful and highest-quality work which embraces both his most sophisticated numbers and his biggest hits, beginning with “Gone with the Wind” in 1937 and ending with “Now Is the Hour,” cut a decade later. Larry Cotton is the featured vocalist on eight of the 24 cuts, and shines on most of them (“The Masquerade Is Over” is worth the price of the disc all by itself for his performance); the King Sisters handle the singing on “Little Heaven of the Seven Seas”; Mary Martin shows up on the “Pound Your Table Polka” from 1942; and various ensembles do the singing elsewhere. The most charming of these is “Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs’ Marching Song),” a number 12 hit that’s as entertaining as the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, whence it came. The ensemble Donna and Her Don Juans, which briefly included Art Carney & Gordon MacRae, appear on three songs from 1941, including “The Hut-Sut Song.” The band itself is nothing to overlook — they had a breezy, bouncy sound, best displayed on numbers like “I’ll Get By (As Long as I Have You).” The sound is clean throughout, and except for a little harshness in the texture of the two earliest cuts, is surprisingly smooth and supple. The notes are reasonably thorough, and this is a satisfying collection of some of the most successful popular music of its period.

1. Gone with the Wind (#1 Pop, 1937) [ Listen ]
2. Little Heaven of the Seven Seas (#3 Pop, 1937)
3. Heigh Ho (The Dwarf’s Marching Song) (#12 Pop, 1938) [ Listen ]
4. Ti-Pi-Tin (#1 Pop, 1938)
5. This Can’t Be Love (#6 Pop, 1938)
6. (I’m Afraid) This Masquerade Is Over [ Listen ]
7. I’ll Get By (As Long As I Have You)
8. The Man with the Mandolin (#2 Pop, 1939)
9. Over the Rainbow
10. Good Morning
11. It’s a Blue World
12. I’m Just Wild about Harry
13. When You Wish upon a Star (#12 Pop, 1940)
14. G’Bye Now (#2 Pop, 1941)
15. The Hut-Sut Song (A Swedish Serenade) (#3 Pop, 1941) [ Listen ]
16. I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire (#1 Pop, 1941)
17. B-I-Bi (#10 Pop, 1941)
18. Pound Your Table Polka (One More Chorus) (#22 Pop, 1942)
19. This is the Army, Mister Jones (#20 Pop, 1943)
20. Pennsylvania Polka (#21 Pop, 1942)
21. That Old Black Magic (#11 Pop, 1943)
22. Don’t Fence Me In (#10 Pop, 1945)
23. Lucky to Be Me
24. Now Is the Hour (Maori Farewll Song)