The Helen Morgan Page

… 1929, Helen Morgan recorded two songs from the Kern-Hammerstein stage musical, Sweet Adeline.

Curiously, she did not record all of her numbers from Sweet Adeline, as she did with Show Boat in 1928.

Thanks to her efforts, the two sings she recorded on this day, “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” …

… and “Why Was I Born?” …

… became standards.

And while we should remain grateful Victor Records gave us what they did, it raises the question, why didn’t they record her other three songs from Sweet Adeline?

Good question.

A mere eight days before, Morgan recorded “What Wouldn’t I Do for That Man” from her films Applause and Glorifying the American Girl, with a song (“More Than You Know”) from the soon-to-open stage musical Great Day.

Clearly, the issue wasn’t a fear of oversaturation. In October 1929, Victor was quite bullish on Helen Morgan.

Nor was it a lack of enthusiasm for Morgan’s other material in the show: they recorded two of her other numbers, “Here Am I” and “‘Twas Not So Long Ago” … with other artists.

What’s particularly odd is that, in the stage musical, “Here Am I” and “‘Twas Not So Long Ago” were Morgan solos. “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” was introduced as a duet, and a triumphant, full-throated duet at that. Only later in the show did Helen reprise it as a torchy solo.

Odder still is that critical reaction in 1929 more often praised Morgan’s other numbers over “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” That’s not to say that critics and the public did not care for “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” – they did, but not with the same level of enthusiasm shown to her other songs in the show, as displayed by Brooks Atkinson’s review in The New York Times:

That fifth Sweet Adeline number, “The Sun About to Rise” was another duet (with chorus) she sang in the show with Robert Chisholm. The baritone cut only a couple of commercial tracks … and for Brunswick, not Victor. Still, the thought of a Morgan-Chisholm disc of “The Sun About to Rise” coupled with “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” – alongside a Morgan solo disc of her other numbers, is the stuff dreams are made of.

But, at the end of the day, Victor had its chance to record all five Morgan numbers from Sweet Adeline and chose only two. Within a few months, the Depression cast its pall over everything. Morgan would wax only two more discs for Victor – one in 1930 and one in 1934 – before cancelling her contract.

Morgan continued to sing her other Sweet Adeline songs in concert and on the radio, as the roster from a September 1929 appearance on The Majestic Theatre on the Air so tantalizingly indicates:

If only someone had recorded that performance!

For more on Sweet Adeline, there’s this.

This site serves as a companion to the book Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star.