Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby: selected hit recordings 1943-1951

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1943

Pistol Packin’ Mama (Al Dexter)

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Jingle Bells (James Lord Pierpont) originally published, with a different chorus, as One Horse Open Sleigh in 1857.

Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters with Vic Schoen and his Orchestra — Recorded 27 September 1943 in Los Angeles (Matrix L3199-A), issued as Decca single 23281 A, b/w Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. Chart success: #19 in 1943; #21 after re-release in 1947. Discogs.com and 45cat.com document a 1950 reissue as Decca catalog number 9-23281.

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1944

Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby (Louis Jordan, Billy Austin)

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A Hot Time in the Town of Berlin (Joe Bushkin, John DeVries)

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Don’t Fence Me In – music by Cole Porter, lyrics by Robert Fletcher and Cole Porter

• See detailed discussion of the songwriting credits in my page Cole Porter, part 1: standards and selected hits 1928-34.

Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, with Vic Schoen and his Orchestra — issued in November 1944 on the 78 rpm single Decca 23364, b/w “The Three Caballeros”

recording date disagreement:

• 25 July 1944, according to A Bing Crosby Discography – part 1b at bingmagazine.co.uk
• 26 July 1944, according to 45worlds.com

Evidently later reissued in 1946 on the 78 rpm single Decca 23484, and in 1950 on the 45 rpm single Decca 9-23484, b/w “Pistol Packin’ Mama” in each case

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1945

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive (Harold Arlen, w. Johnny Mercer)

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

[“Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”] is sung in the style of a sermon, and explains that accentuating the positive is key to happiness. In describing his inspiration for the lyric, Mercer told the Pop Chronicles radio documentary “I went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was ‘you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.’ And I said ‘Wow, that’s a colorful phrase!'”^[1][2]

Mercer recorded the song, with The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston’s orchestra, on October 4, 1944, and it was released by Capitol Records as catalog number 180. The record first reached the Billboard magazine charts on January 4, 1945 and lasted 13 weeks on the chart, peaking at number 2.^[3]

Within a matter of weeks, several other recordings of the song were released by other well-known artists…[read more]

Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded the first cover on 8 December 1944. The record entered the Billboard pop singles chart in late January 1945 and stayed there nine weeks, peaking at number 2.

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The Three Caballeros (Ernesto Cortázar, Manuel Esperón, Ray Gilbert)

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Along the Navajo Trail (with Bing Crosby)

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(above) Betty Garrett singing South America, Take It Away in a scene from Call Me Mister

1946

South America, Take It Away (Harold Rome) was introduced by Betty Garrett in the musical revue Call Me Mister, directed by Robert H. Gordon, which opened on 18 April 1946 at the National Theatre.

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(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66 (Bobby Troup) — with Vic Schoen and his Orchestra

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1947

The Freedom Train (Irving Berlin)

From Wikipedia:

The United States has seen two Freedom Trains. The 1947–49 Freedom Train was a special exhibit train that toured the United States in the later half of the 1940s. A similar train called the American Freedom Train toured the country for the United States Bicentennial celebration in 1975–76. Both trains were painted in special red, white and blue paint schemes, and both toured the 48 contiguous states with displays of Americana and related historical artifacts. The two trains took different routes around the 48 states, but they both stopped for public displays in each of them.

The Freedom Train even had an official song, written by Irving Berlin and performed by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.

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(below) Peggy Lee, Johnny Mercer, Benny Goodman, Margret Whiting, The Pied Pipers & Paul Weston’s Orchestra — recorded 12 September 1947

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Santa Claus is Coming to Town (J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie), and was first sung on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in November 1934. It became an instant hit with orders for 100,000 copies of sheet music the next day and more than 400,000 copies sold by Christmas. The song is often used to tell children that Santa knows when they’ve been bad or good and that they should be good. — wikipedia

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1948

You Don’t Have To Know the Language (m. Jimmy Van Heusen, w. Johnny Burke) — performed by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in the film Road to Rio (1947). The film was released on Christmas Day, 1947.

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1950

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You (Scotty Wiseman)

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Quicksilver (Irv Taylor, George Wyle, Edward Pola)

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1951

Sparrow In the Treetop (Bob Merrill)