Who, I hear you asking about Seeley and Fields (if not Hutton)? The duo were vaudeville headliners, famous in their day (1910s and 20s), but forgotten today.
I don't know why the Paramount folks thought fit to disinter the careers of Seeley and Fields, but they did for this production, which turned out to be Hutton's last musical on their lot. My guess is that they were following up on the late-career successes of Seeley's male counterpart, Al Jolson, and the box office business that The Jolson Story had done.
In some ways, it wasn't a bad idea. Sure, Hutton was far more glamorous than Seeley and did not sound like her, and the film itself isn't very good (I watched it in the line of duty). But the soundtrack (or "songs from the film" as this 10-inch record is dubbed) is excellent. It is certainly the best thing I have heard from Hutton. And Seeley and Fields were talented performers. So for this post, I have added 11 vintage 1911-1950 recordings by the two to go along with the soundtrack LP from Somebody Loves Me.
About Seeley and Fields
Let me back up and give you a clue as to the importance of Seeley and Fields. The star of this married duo was Seeley, who was a headliner well before she met Fields. She was raised in San Francisco, and by 1910 was prominent enough to introduce "Some of These Days," a song soon identified with her rival Sophie Tucker. A star of vaudeville, Seeley came out of the minstrel show tradition. Accordingly, many of her songs express her longing for the dear-old Southland (where she never lived) or indulged in distasteful minstrel-show stereotypes (e.g., Irving Berlin's Lazy). That said, she was quite a skilled and powerful performer who deserved her renown.
Benny Fields joined Seeley's act as a backup singer in 1921; they were married the following year and formed a duo. Fields himself was a talented vocalist whose easy-going manner and mellow baritone contrasted well with Seeley's trumpeting.
As far as I can tell, Seeley and Fields did not make records together until the 1950s, when Decca had them put together a rival set to the Somebody Loves Me soundtrack. But they did appear as a duo in a few short films, which can be seen on YouTube - "Hello Bluebird" from 1927 and "Why Don't You Practice What You Preach" from 1935.
The download includes seven Seeley solo recordings and four from Fields. More about those recordings in a bit; first, let's discuss the soundtrack LP.
Somebody Loves Me
The truth is that Hutton had recently encountered vocal problems and could no longer shout the house down as she once did. She turned instead to a more subdued style that is far more appealing, at least to this listener. As mentioned, she sounds nothing like the Seeley you will hear on her singles. In the film, her rendition of the wonderful "Rose Room" wouldn't have been heard past the second row of the theater.
The film's song repertoire is largely drawn from Seeley's trunk, but I suspect that "Somebody Loves Me" was chosen for its convenient title. Seeley did not introduce it and didn't record it when it was new (1924), as far as I can tell. To supplement the oldies, Paramount brought in the team of Livingston and Evans to supply a few new numbers. One was "Love Him," which was useful in the plot. Another was "Mr. Banjo Man," because the studio apparently thought there weren't enough stereotypical minstrel numbers in existence.
"Mr. Banjo Man" figures in the film's most elaborate number, where it leads into one of those "longing for the South" songs, "Dixie Dreams," done in blackface. This may be one of the last such scenes in a major American film; the only one more recent that I can recall is in Joan Crawford's Torch Song the following year. (The soundtrack LP from that film is available here.) Somebody Loves Me even had a lobby card with Hutton in blackface (included in the download).
The nine songs on the LP are all Hutton, except for a duet in "Jealous" with Pat Morgan, a Canadian singer who apparently dubbed the singing voice of Ralph Meeker for the film. Meeker is miscast; he was more comfortable playing Mickey Spillane than Benny Fields. But Morgan actually sounds like Fields, so that's a win.
The music director for the film and conductor for the LP was Emil Newman, brother to Alfred and Lionel. I've read that the album includes both material from the soundtrack and re-recordings. I am not certain about that, although I did notice that "Mr. Banjo Man" was redone at least in part for the LP.
 |
| 1952 ad (click to enlarge) |
Seeley first became popular in her native San Francisco. By 1911 she was in New York, and Columbia had engaged her to record "He's Coming Back." This appears to be her first record, according to discographer Brian Rust. The accompaniment is anonymous, but Rust speculates it is by Prince's Band.
Seeley's next release was not for another 10 years, the oddly titled "Funeral Blues (Eat Custard and You'll Never Break a Tooth)," again with an anonymous accompaniment.
She also is stellar in the next two selections, a coupling of "Lazy" with "Don't Mind the Rain" from 1924. For the first time, the band is named. It is the Georgians, an ODJB-style ensemble that is well suited to the singer's style. The group, a subset of the Phil Specht orchestra, was led by trumpeter Frank Guarente, with arrangements by pianist Arthur Schutt.
 |
| The Georgians (click to enlarge) |
The sound on all of these is very good, with the exception of Fields' 1936 disc, which has surface noise. All the Seeley-Fields materials were remastered from lossless files on Internet Archive, except for the 1911 disc, which is from the University of California-Santa Barbara. The soundtrack LP is from my collection. The download includes more photos, label scans, and so on.