Although widely associated with swing, the mainstream pop music of the late 1939s and '40 was also characterised by the strand of easy-on-the-ear orchestral dance band music with featured vocalists - sometimes called "sweet" music - performing the prolific output of fine new songs from Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley. None was more typical of that strand than the Blue Barron Orchestra, whose record labels during the first era of it's career referred to them with the words "Music of Yesterday and Today Styled the Blue Barron Way". Blue Barron was the stage name of bandleader Harry Friedman, who launched his orchestra on the Floating Palace showboat New York in 1936. This 48-track 2-CD set comprises selected A & B sides from his releases on the Bluebird, Hits by Blue Barron and MGM labels during these years, in a recording career which was interrupted by service in WWII. It features all his career hits, including the No. 1 "Cruising Down The River", and the Top 20 chart entries "At a Perfume Counter, "Darn That Dream", "You Walk By", "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba", "You Were Only Fooling", "A Strawberry Moon", "Powder Your Face With Sunshine" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight". It includes performances by his featured vocalists Russ Carlyle, Clyde Burke, Babs Ryan, Charlie Fisher, Betty Clarke, Dolores Hawkins, George Nolan, Bobby Beers, Johnny Goodfellow, Susan Laughton & The Blue Notes
8 It's a Lonely Trail (When You're Travellin' Alone)
9 Heart and Soul
10 Then Came the Rain
11 Roller Skating on a Rainbow
12 I Didn't Know What Time It Was
13 It's a Whole New Thing
14 Darn That Dream
15 If It Wasn't for the Moon
16 So Long
17 Trade Winds
18 Sometimes I'm Happy
19 You Walk By
20 In Copacabana
21 Elmer's Tune
22 This Love of Mine
23 I Tipped My Hat and Slowly Rode Away
- Disc 2 -
1 Midnight Masquerade
2 Chi Baba, Chi Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)
3 Tennessee (T-E-Double N-E-Double S-Double E)
4 Let's Be Sweethearts Again
5 You Were Only Fooling
6 Somebody Else's Picture
7 A Strawberry Moon in a Blueberry Sky
8 Cruising Down the River
9 Powder Your Face with Sunshine (Smile! Smile! Smile!)
10 Whose Girl Are You?
11 I Had My Heart Set on You
12 Send Ten Pretty Flowers to My Girl in Tennessee
13 Are You Lonesome Tonight?
14 Honestly, I Love You
15 I Ain't Gonna Take It Sittin' Down
16 (Who Knows, Who Knows) That's the Way It Goes with Love
17 Till the End of the World
18 Let Me in
19 You'll Always Be the Sweetheart of My Dreams
20 I Want Another Chance with You
21 Tears (For Souvenirs)
22 All By Yourself in the Moonlight
23 Did Anyone Call for Me
24 Under the Sweetheart Moon
25 That's Amore (That's Love)
Although widely associated with swing, the mainstream pop music of the late 1939s and '40 was also characterised by the strand of easy-on-the-ear orchestral dance band music with featured vocalists - sometimes called "sweet" music - performing the prolific output of fine new songs from Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley. None was more typical of that strand than the Blue Barron Orchestra, whose record labels during the first era of it's career referred to them with the words "Music of Yesterday and Today Styled the Blue Barron Way". Blue Barron was the stage name of bandleader Harry Friedman, who launched his orchestra on the Floating Palace showboat New York in 1936. This 48-track 2-CD set comprises selected A & B sides from his releases on the Bluebird, Hits by Blue Barron and MGM labels during these years, in a recording career which was interrupted by service in WWII. It features all his career hits, including the No. 1 "Cruising Down The River", and the Top 20 chart entries "At a Perfume Counter, "Darn That Dream", "You Walk By", "Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba", "You Were Only Fooling", "A Strawberry Moon", "Powder Your Face With Sunshine" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight". It includes performances by his featured vocalists Russ Carlyle, Clyde Burke, Babs Ryan, Charlie Fisher, Betty Clarke, Dolores Hawkins, George Nolan, Bobby Beers, Johnny Goodfellow, Susan Laughton & The Blue Notes
