Decca 8289
Orchestra director: Morris Stoloff
Track listing: To Love Again (Main Title) / Manhattan / Shine on Harvest Moon / It Must be True / Whispering / Dizzy Fingers / You’re My Everything / Chopsticks / On the Sunny Side of the Street / Brazil / La Vie En Rose / To Love Again (Finale)
October 13, 1956
1 Week
Pianist-bandleader Eddy Duchin had an incredible life filled with triumphs and heartbreak. His story was so interesting that Columbia Pictures opted to make a film about his life five years after his 1951 death from leukemia. The film starred Tyrone Power — a close friend of Duchin, who visited him in the hospital shortly before his death — and Kim Novack. The movie features a score performed by another famed pianist, Carmen Cavallaro.
The young Duchin was trained as a pharmacist and was expected to carry on the family business. His father owned several drug stores. Duchin, however, opted to pursue his dream of being a professional musician. Initially, in the late ’20s, he played piano in Leo Reisman’s Orchestra before setting out on his own.
In 1935, with his career in full swing, Duchin married Marjorie Oelrichs, an artist and decorator, together they socialized with New York City’s elite. Tragedy stuck two years later, when Marjorie died shortly after giving birth to the couple’s son, Peter.
Duchin carried on and became even more popular, appearing in such films as Coronado in 1935 and The Hit Parade in 1937. In 1941, he scored his biggest hit when “You Walk By,” which featured Johnny Drake on vocals, reached number six. With the outbreak of World War II, Duchin enlisted in the Navy and eventually worked his way up to lieutenant-commander.
After the war, the resumed his career and remarried, but in March 1950 Duchin began to feel ill. He continued to perform an engagement at the Waldorf Hotel Wedgewood Room, but soon his condition deteriorated. He spent Christmas with his family before he died the following February.
Cavallaro was a natural choice to score the film, since he was a friend of Duchin and had a similar style of piano playing. He also was contracted to Decca Records, which had secured the rights to the film’s soundtrack. “We were one of the first labels to get into promotion soundtrack albums from movies,” says Milt Gabler, Vice President of Artists and Repertoire for Decca.
Prior to his work on The Eddy Duchin Story, Cavallaro racked up a number of hits from films, including “Can’t Begin to Tell You.” The song, which featured Bing Crosby’s vocals and Cavallaro’s piano, spent six week at Number One in late 1945. It was featured in the Betty Grable film The Dolly Sisters.
Cavallaro’s greatest commercial triumph, however, had to be The Eddy Duchin Story, since it was an LP release. “The picture was so great and Cavallaro’s recording was so nice that the album sold incredibly well,” says Gabler.
The film was so popular, in fact, that Columbia Records, Duchin’s final record label, tried to cash in on the success of the movie by releasing an album full of Duchin’s original recordings. The Eddy Duchin Story, however, was the album that ended up topping the chart. It would be the first and only time an album that Duchin and Cavallaro were associated with reached Number One on the Billboard chart.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of October 13, 1956
1. The Eddy Duchin Story, Soundtrack
2. The King and I, Soundtrack
3. My Fair Lady, Original Cast
4. Calypso, Harry Belafonte
5. High Society, Soundtrack