"Breakfast with Music," WNBT-TV, 1952, and a recording of "Fugue for Tinhorns"

From October through December of 1952, after her time on the television program Your Hit Parade, my mother sang on a weekday morning TV show, Breakfast with Music, which starred comedian Morey Amsterdam.  It was a local show, seen on New York City's NBC station, WNBT-TV (now WNBC). The show also starred musical director Milton DeLugg, who oversaw a small ensemble of musicians, on the program, including pianist Dick Hyman, and bassist Eddie Safranski.  The show was seen for an hour each morning, after the Today show, which had begun airing in January of that year, with host Dave Garroway.

Breakfast with Music was the last television show my mother was affiliated with, during her New York career.  In January of 1953, my parents left New York for the Boston area.

Left to right: Milton DeLugg, Sue Bennett, Morey Amsterdam, 1952
(Photo copyright: WNBT/WNBC-TV)

After one of the Breakfast with Music telecasts, in 1952, my mother joined Milton DeLugg and the legendary composer and lyricist Frank Loesser, DeLugg's good friend (DeLugg and Loesser were also periodic songwriting partners) in a recording session; Loesser wanted to put on tape some demonstration recordings of his songs. Singer Stubby Kaye, who was starring on Broadway, at the time, in Guys and Dolls (the songs for which were written by Loesser; the play had had its debut in 1950) was also at the recording session.  

One of the songs recorded that day featured Loesser, DeLugg and my mother singing "Fugue for Tinhorns," from Guys and Dolls. (Stubby Kaye--as "Nicely-Nicely Johnson"--was, famously, one of the singers of the song, in both the play, and, later, the film.)

Forty years after the recording session, a CD was released, titled An Evening with Frank Loesser (DRG Records).  It featured demo recordings, over the years, of Loesser singing his own songs--from Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella (1956), and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961). The CD included the recording of "Fugue for Tinhorns" that my mother was a part of in 1952.

Here is the recording, via YouTube. The first voice heard on the song is Frank Loesser's; he is joined, in turn, by my mother, and then Milton DeLugg. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yN7pyls3cA

In addition, here is the well-known performance of the song in the 1955 Guys and Dolls film. Stubby Kaye sings first, followed by Johnny Silver (seen at the right), and then Danny Dayton (at the left).  (A note, by the way, about a particular moment in the video. As Johnny Silver is about to sing, at approximately :30, he flicks his cigarette out of camera view. It is, I think, a nicely-executed gesture.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIlVCStp3c

I don't know the exact date of the 1952 "Fugue for Tinhorns" demo recording. Milton DeLugg would have been 33 or 34 years old, when the recording was made; he died in 2015, at age 96.  Frank Loesser died in 1969, at age 59. At the time of the recording, in 1952, he was 42. 

Morey Amsterdam, who died in 1996, at age 87, was 43 or 44 when the above Breakfast with Music photograph (which appears in my book about early TV) was taken.

My mother was 24 at the time.  She died in May of 2001, at age 73, almost sixteen years ago. A little more than a week ago, had she still been alive, she would have turned 89.