REVIEW POTPOURRI: Singers: Ken Marvin; Patti Page and Frankie Laine; John Hammond; Columbo

by Peter Cates

Ken Marvin

Ken Marvin

A ten-inch 78 (Mercury 6373) features two country and western songs – (A Heartsick Soldier on) Heartbreak Ridge; and Missing in Action; both sides focused on a soldier fighting in Korea and the horrors of separation from home, wife and family amidst the noise of exploding shells.

The listed singer Ken Marvin was a stage name for Lloyd George (1924-1991) who had originally been part of a popular 1940s country music duo, Lonzo and Oscar, who achieved extra fame and fortune for their 1947 hit record, I’m My Own Grandpa.

While George had a decent singing voice, the songs were of average quality; the record attracted me as yet another document of the perpetually fascinating 1950s both in the United States and abroad.

Patti Page and Frankie Laine

Patti Page

Frankie Laine

Mercury Records began its operations in 1945 in Chicago and had signed up such artists as Patti Page, and Frankie Laine by 1950 . Page’s hits The Tennessee Waltz and How Much is that Doggie in the Window and Laine’s Mule Train were among the several dozen dusty old 78s gifted me by my maternal step-grandfather who retrieved them from a jukebox in the diner run by him and my grandmother back during the 1940s.

Unlike RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca which spent vast amounts of money promoting their records via the radio disc jockeys, Mercury used the less expensive juke boxes.

By 1948, Mercury’s New York City headquarters had work tables occupied by four key record producers – Mitch Miller for pop music, John Hammond for folk and blues, Norman Granz for jazz and David Hall for classical (Hall would, a few decades later, settle permanently in Castine).

John Hammond

In 1929 at the age of 19, John Hammond worked briefly for the Portland Evening News under then-editor Ernest Gruening.

Both Hammond and Gruening shared a passion for social justice.

Within a few years, Gruening moved to the Alaskan Territory, served as governor and, after Alaska became a state in 1959, was elected U.S. Senator. As a Democrat, he was one of two Senators who voted against the 1965 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and vociferously opposed United States involvement in Vietnam.

Columbo

Peter Falk

Lee Grant

I recently rewatched for the third time what might be my favorite Columbo episode, the pilot March 1, 1971, Ransom for a Dead Man. And with all due respect to the supporting cast, I was enthralled from beginning to end by the most continually captivating collaboration of Peter Falk as the bumbling and never to be underestimated lieutenant, and Lee Grant as the charmingly amoral murderess Leslie Williams.

This pilot may have been what convinced NBC executives to bankroll season one of the series.

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