|
||||||||||
 |
 |
Chapter II. First Records Coral & Carlton Records, ABC-Paramount & Don Costa, national TV with Jackie Gleason & Telly Savalas, Mitch Miller & Columbia Records... August 28, 1952... ah, free at last... After my two years in the Army was up, I went back to Chicago. I worked nights in clubs like Mr. Kelly's, La Bistro, the Brass Rail, etc. with different groups. I appeared daily for a month on a local early morning Chicago radio show called Don McNeil's Breakfast Club. Me and a girl singer each did a couple of songs ourselves and a couple of duets, including hymns, which I had never sung in my life and I was always worried about screwing up on the hyms. It's like screwing up the national anthem. I also appeared daily for six months on a local Chicago TV show called the Richard Llewellyn Show, a giveaway type of show, singing four songs a day. I learned a lot of songs doing that show. Another local Chicago TV show I was on was called In Town Tonight along with Caesar Pettrillo's big band orchestra. I did the show for a month and wound up with a fantastic wardrobe from one of the show's sponsors. Around this time I cut my first sides on a couple of small labels - Coral & Carlton - which got some minor airplay around the Chicago area.
CORAL Records
9-61552 (with the Don Newey Orchestra) 45-88810 Move It Or Lose It (D.Davis) 45-88811 I'm Throwing Rice (At The Girl That I Love) (S.Nelson-E.Nelson-E.Arnold) CARLTON Records
463 CRC-151 The Better To Love You (D.Shapiro-C.Parman) CRC-152 Can This Be Love (J.Miller) A lot of fond memories working with this trio to the right... We called ourselves The Socialites so we could get the high paying society gigs at some of the highbrow functions in and around Chicago. We worked clubs, TV, and radio shows in and around the Windy City.  Harry Slottag (piano) and I would write arrangements and rehearse them at least once a week. We developed a pretty extensive repertoire in a short period of time. Harry was a musical genius. He had perfect pitch, which would un-nerve me at times because he always knew what notes I was playing wrong or right at any given time. He had the ability to write symphonies at a desk or on a bus without the aid of a musical instrument. Reed Lawson (bass) was also a psychologist. His stock answer to everything was, "Nothing really matters." Somewhere around this time I recorded some vocal sides for Mercury Records (with the Lew Douglas Orchestra) that were never released: Can This Be Love
I'm So In Love (In Love) With You Slowly I Know The Better To Love You How I came to record my first album (for ABC Paramount): I had always been very impressed with a fairly unknown arranger on the scene in New York City named Don Costa, who was working as an A & R director for ABC-Paramount records. I called him and asked him if he would write some arrangements for a few songs I planned to record. Unfortunately, he had to refuse because he told me that Paramount didn't like for him to do any outside work other than sessions for their company. So I booked and paid for a small recording session at Universal Recording Studios in my hometown Chicago with some of my musician buddies. Coral records put it on the market (see above) but didn't get behind it as far as any reasonable distribution etc. About a year later I got a gig at a club not too far from New York City. The gig turned out to be a huge mismatch for my jazz trio... thanks to a very inept booking agent - typical. We were stranded. No money, a dog, three adults in an old four-door Buick with ropes on the hood to keep it from flying off while we struggled to maintain the required minimum 45 MPH speed limit on the highways. On our way back to Chicago, I thought: let's take a short detour and stop in New York and see if I can audition for Don Costa at ABC-Paramount. (Complete off-the-wall insanity!) Anyway, we were on our way to the Big Apple with enough money to conquer the town in two days. When we arrived there I was able to get Costa on the phone (first miracle) and he remembered our phone conversation about trying to hire him to write some arrangements for me a year ago (second miracle). Then he asked, "How far away are you from my office?" "About 5 minutes," I said. "Come on up," he said. So my guitar and I did just that. After I sang and played a few tunes for him, he said, "Let's do an album." We talked for a while longer and then later he told me that he was thrown by my calm response to his "Let's do an album."  He said most people he says that to flip out completely. But evidently I didn't, although I was completely flabbergasted. I think it was partly because I had just finished driving hundreds of miles, was tired as hell, and busted. Anyway, he booked three sessions at Rudy Van Gelder's (a renowned jazz studio engineer) studio, plus he hired Osie Johnson on drums, Jerry Bruno on bass, and six violins to do the sessions with me. He borrowed a great guitar for me to use for the sessions. Realizing that I was broke, he advanced me $200 and made me the leader of the band (because the leader gets extra money). Ironically, I blew the first session by being too hoarse to sing, due to the fact that I hadn't been singing for the past month, traveling, etc. Costa told me that the very same thing happened the week before during a session with another singer. I'm sure he made up that whole story to keep my confidence up and assure me that it was still not all over. He told me to take a week off, get my voice in shape, and we'd resume as planned. As it turned out I was able to finish the whole album in the two remaining sessions, resulting in my first album, which I considered a miracle.
ABC-PARAMOUNT Records:
Album: ABC-140 Johnny Janis... For the First Time (Produced by Don Costa) 1956
Come Rain Or Come Shine (Arlen-Mercer)
Just The Way You Look Tonight (Kern-Fields) Hush-A-Bye (Galvin-Spencer) I've Got Plenty of Nothin (Hayward-G.Gershwin-I.Gershwin) Something I Dreamed Last Night (Fain-Yellen-Magidson) Golden Earrings (Young-Livingstone-Evans) When The Sun Comes Out (Arlen-Koehler) I Get Along Without You Very Well (Carmichael) I'm Gonna Live Till I Die (Hoffman-Kent-Kurtz) Cryin' For The Carolines (Young-Warren-Lewis) Get Out Of Town (Porter) Single: 45-9800 Pledge Of Love (Redd) b/w I Played The Field (Fairbanks) Pledge Of Love was a #1 song in Chicago, Philadelphia, and around the Washington D.C./Baltimore area... entering the Billboard charts on 4/29/57 & getting to #63... it apparently sold over 400,000 copies, although I never got a cent from it. Big breaks on national TV with Jackie Gleason & Telly Savalas: In one of the biggest breaks of my career, Jackie Gleason was looking for a fresh new talent for his hugely popular TV variety show and somehow found my records and invited me to appear on the show in September of 1956. He didn't give my name - he wanted people to ask for it he said - and they did. I received about 50,000 letters from that one appearance and he invited me to appear again in June of '57. Due to a very deceptive manager- that short lived popularity was not exploited. In this business you have to strike when the iron is hot, or else. Around 1960 (I'm terrible at dates - my wife Dale is helping me put all this in chronological order) Tony Bennett saw me performing and wanted to help my career. Tony's manager Dee Anthony signed me and got me on Columbia Records and also on national TV. My first acting job was a scene with a truly great actor, Telly Savalas, in the TV show Diagnosis Unknown. During my on-screen dialogue with Savalas (who was acting very angry at me) I dive into a swimming pool and get electrocuted upon entering the water (short scene). Also, the show introduced my first single (Gina) released on Columbia Records, recorded specifically for the show. I was so inexperienced as an actor and Telly Savalas was so good at acting angry at me that I actually stopped the scene at some point and said to him, "Hey man, we're only acting!" and I meant it. The cast and crew couldn't keep from breaking up with laughter. How I landed a contract with Mitch Miller & Columbia Records etc: My manager Dee Anthony booked a two week engagement for me into a very well known showcase room in New York called The Living Room. Record producers, Broadway show producers, TV directors, booking agencies - they all came to the club looking for new talent. As it turned out during that two week engagement Dee showed up at the club with Mitch Miller (the man at Columbia Records), a TV director, and a major guy from the MCA booking agency. I wound up with a Columbia recording contract, a management contract with MCA, and an acting part with Telly Savalas on a major TV show. How about that? Thanks to Dee, all in a matter of two weeks. It just shows you the power of a great agent. A funny note... the TV director had asked Dee, "Can he swim?" and Dee answered, "Like a fish." Then he turned to me and very quietly asked, "Can you swim?" I answered very quietly back, "Like a fish" because it happened to be true!  The first thing Mitch Miller said to me when we were planning my first record session was, "I want you to know that this session we're doing today will only be one of many more that I'll be doing with you, so think of it as only the beginning of more to come." As it turned out, when he arrived at the recording studio, he took me aside and said, "I won't be able to do the session with you today because I feel very sick to my stomach due to some bad food I ate a short time ago." Then he said, "I'll assign someone to do the session with you today and if you're not completely satisfied with the results, we'll do it all over again." When I did do later recording sessions with him he would get on the phone after a good take and very enthusiastically call a disk jockey or two and get them all excited about playing my new record. He was a thoughtful person and a great record producer. COLUMBIA Records Singles: 4-41797 JZSP 51473 Gina (P.Vance-L.Carr) JZSP 51274 If The Good Lord's Willin' (N.Gimbel-A.Hoffman-B.Hart) 4-42040 (also produced as 33 - see below) JZSP 54062 Save A Thought For Me (G.Regney) JZSP 54063 (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas (D.Cochran-Sanders) 3-42040 (also 45 - see above) Z Lp 54064 Save A Thought For Me (G.Regney) Z Lp 54065 (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas (D.Cochran-Sanders) 3-41933 Z Lp 51277 As I Was Walkin' (H.David-S.Edwards) Z Lp 52736 Catch A Falling Star (P.Vance-L.Pockriss) Album: CL 1674 The Start of Something New... introducing... Johnny Janis (1960) I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good (Webster-Ellington) Let Me Love You (B.Howard) It's The Talk Of The Town (Symes-Neiburg-Livingston) In Other Words (Howard) The Nearness of You (Washington-Carmichael) Guilty (Kahn-Akst-Whiting) How It Lies, How It Lies, How It Lies (Webster-Burke) (This Could Be) The Start Of Something (Allen) So In Love (Porter) Day By Day (Kahn-Stordahl-Weston) On A Slow Boat To China (Loesser) Taking A Chance On Love (LaTouche-Fetter-Duke) if you want to continue reading... Chapter I. Growing up in Chicago... love for Jazz guitar... drafted into the U.S. Army & stationed in Germany 1950-52 Chapter III. Playboy years & Hef... Fred Foster & Monument Records Chapter IV. More recordings... what I'm up to these days (See My Music Store page for samples and ordering information.) |
 |
 |
||
