Ralph Flanagan - Hot Toddy: Hits & Selected Singles 1946-56 (CD)

Ralph Flanagan was a pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader, who worked with the orchestras of Charlie Barnet, Boyd Raeburn, Hal McIntyre, Sammy Kaye, Alvino Rey and Blue Barron before launching his own band in the late 1940s, based very much on the sound of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, being signed to RCA by Glenn Miller's former A&R man. Performing a range of straight orchestral and swinging jazz pieces, along with the hot songs of the day sung by his featured vocalist Harry Prime and his vocal group The Singing Winds, he had a string of over twenty hits between 1949 and 1953, including his signature Top 10 composition "Hot Toddy". This great-value 51-track 2-CD set comprises selected A & B sides on the Rainbow, Bluebird and RCA-Victor labels during this era. It features all his 21 career chart entries, including the Top 10 hits "Don't Cry Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go)", Rag Mop", "Nevertheless", "Harbour Lights", "Slow Poke", "I Should Care" and "Hot Toddy". His music was very much of it's era, typifying a particular strand of the pop scene of the post-war decade, and this collection offers an enjoyable selection of his work.

Track List:

Disc: 1

1. Make Believe
2. Low Gear
3. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
4. St. Louis Blues
5. You're Breaking My Heart
6. My Hero
7. Don't Cry Joe
8. Dear Hearts and Gentle People
9. Rag Mop
10. Joshua
11. Stars and Stripes Forever
12. To Me You're a Song
13. If I Had a Magic Carpet
14. Tzena, Tzena, Tzena
15. Mona Lisa
16. Toreador
17. La Vie en Rose
18. Nevertheless
19. The Red We Want Is the Red We've Got (In the Old Red, White and Blue)
20. Harbor Lights
21. I've Never Been in Love Before
22. Oh Babe
23. Melody of the Breeze
24. I Remember the Cornfields
25. I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time

Disc: 2

1. Slow Drive
2. Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life
3. Oklahoma
4. You for Me
5. The Blues (American in Paris)
6. Slow Poke
7. Just One More Chance
8. One Alone
9. Baltimore Rag
10. Singing Winds
11. Be Anything
12. I'm Yours
13. Delicado
14. I Should Care
15. Hot Toddy
16. A-L-B-U-Q-U-E-R-Q-U-E
17. Rub-A-Dub-Dub
18. Stranger in Paradise
19. Reverie in the Rain
20. From the Vine Came the Grape
21. In the Chapel in the Moonlight
22. Little Brown Mambo
23. I Belong to You
24. On the Beat
25. Beep Boop
26. Out Last Night