Ann's First Time, Rose's Chee-Chee, Ja'Net's Father, Olivia And John, Plus A Feel-For-You Secret Song!

She's that kind of woman. Big blue eyes, provocative curves and a look that says, "I'm gonna cut you up."

The Jetsons Are Here! Plus More Porgy And Bess, Rozsa's Madame Bovery, Herrmann's Hitchcock And A Pine-Fresh Secret Song!

"His boy Elroy!" If you grew up at a certain time, then you'll probably recognize just that one single snippet of song lyric. It was drilled into your head on Saturday mornings while you ingested cups and cups of toxic sugary cereal. Remember? I do. And yet you never threw up (or at least I didn't).

If you still think fondly of those Saturday mornings, then today's your lucky day. Bring the sugar-shock back with this ultra-deluxe collection of "Jetsons" tunes and music (along with a bit of "Jonny Quest" tossed in for good measure), but don't say I didn't warn you. It's giggly fun, yes, but it just might rot your teeth.

As some of you might know, I have a special fondness for "Porgy And Bess" - in all of its varied incantations. So I just couldn't resist when I happened upon this Cheerfully Summertime Exclusive! It's the 1976 "Collector's Series" edition of "Porgy" with the one, the only, Cab Calloway.

This version also features several popular opera performers of the day, like Eleanor Steber, one of the first big-time US opera stars, and Robert Merrill, who worked in operas as well as on Broadway and in movies. I wasn't familiar with any of them until I happened upon this LP, but if you love this musical, then you'll love this version (which includes an especially haunting version of "Gone, Gone, Gone" by The Robert Shaw Group). And, yes, Calloway absolutely kills on his rendition of "It Ain't Necessarily So." But you knew that already.

Have you ever seen Vincente Minnelli's "Madame Bovary?" It was advertised in 1949 with this irresistible slogan: "Whatever it is that French women have, Madame Bovary has more of it!" Yeowza! Now that's how ya' advertise a movie. Pauline Kael found it "hopelessly overscaled," but I kind of enjoyed all the keyed-up sumptuousness - as only Minnelli can supply; he wasn't derided as a "mere window dresser" for nothing - and Jennifer Jones is surprisingly effective.

So why am I bringing up this movie? To inaugurate a Super Cheerful Exclusive!, the 15-CD treasury of music by famed Old Hollywood composer Miklos Rozsa. Hooray! This generous anthology brings together all the best of Rozsa, who wrote "Madame Bovary's" rapturous score, and of course many more. "Bovary's" been newly restored for this first CD and it's an absolute must.

Did you know? Rozsa was taught piano as a child by his mother Regina. She, in turn, had studied as a child with students of (wait for it) Franz Liszt. By age eight, Rozsa was already composing and performing in public. Oh, and get this: once arrived in Hollywood, Rozsa angrily vowed never to work with Hitchcock again after penning the score for "Spellbound." Hitchcock was gravely disappointed in the score; Rozsa found Hitchcock a major pain in the touchas. Meh, it happens.

Speaking of Old Hollywood masters, what do Lillian Gish and Alfred Hitchcock have in common? Yes, you guessed it, Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the score for TV's "Alfred Hitchcock Hour," including music for an episode entitled "Body In The Barn" starring Lillian Gish, who was in her late 60's at the time.

Interestingly, this aired well before "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," which started the so-called "Hag Horror" trend - or horror movies with aging movie queens - in the late 1960's. Some even credit it with with starting the trend to begin with (you can click on Lillian to see more).

I won't argue the finer points of "Hag Horror" - though my Cuban Luvuh knows the genre well - except to say that finding more Herrmann is always a happy event. And this delightfully moody CD is chock full of Herrmann at his best.

The Secret Song File will be watching the Oscars this weekend with a bewhiskered Euro paramour in a swank hotel suite. Maybe too swank. She absolutely loathes those awful bowl sinks - you know, the ones that certain designy folk seem to think are so "stylish" and "fashionable" - because when it's time for a quick wash (ahem), no one likes the edge of a bowl cleaving into their midsection (just sayin').

Similarly, The Secret Song File despises new electronica music, since the whole genre seems like it's stuck in the mid 1990's (I'm talking to you, "Air). But this multilingual, American-born, "pine-scented" chillwave artist is different. And in his spanking new second CD, he exhibits gratifying humor and playfulness, not to mention an almost suspenseful track list - you never know where he's going from one track to the next. This is unlike the bewhiskered Euro paramour, who's slightly pretentious and oh-so-predictable; he really seems to think "Amour" will sweep the Oscars this Sunday. Oh, hahahahaha! Silly boy.

To be blunt, I could only stomach the first half of "Les Miserables."

Leave your Oscar picks or anything else on your mind in the comments!

Tis The Season With Bing, Abbe, Dimitri, Plus Exclusive Burlesque, More Herrmann And A Monster Secret Song!

Have you seen "It's A Wonderful Life" a million times? Me, too. By now, when I see bits of it here and there while switching channels during the holiday season, I'm reminded not so much of the movie's story or the actors, but where I was when I first saw it, or who I once watched it with - family, various friends throughout the years (once, I saw the awful/hilarious Ted Turner colorized version in which everyone seemed to have the exact same beige-sludge skin color) - and those memories are happy enough. I actually never need to see it again. Ever.

So I was surprised when I played the Dimitri Tiomkin soundtrack. It's happier and gentler then I remember, and I guarantee, if you play a few tracks at your next holiday gathering, people may not know what it is right off - but they'll know it's from an old movie they love. Just wait; the memories will come flooding back. To add to the fun, this CD also includes tracks from "Miracle On 34th Street" and a suite of music from 1951's "A Christmas Carol."

Bing Crosby, if he's remembered at all today, is mostly known for his Christmas LP with the Andrew Sisters and the movie "White Christmas" (a few of you might might recall him as an aging orange juice TV pitchman) (or performing a duet with, of all people, David Bowie) (I'm still trying to "un-see" that; they so didn't belong together).

But Crosby (he's the demure one in blue feathers with a sly Danny Kaye at his side) was a wildly popular singer in the 30's, 40's and 50's. His "Stephen Foster" LP - here in a gorgeous restored version - is a fine example of how effortlessly warm, even soothing, his vocal delivery could be - it's not quite sexy, but it's not neutered, either (like the dreary Perry Como, whom I loath).

There's a good selection of songs, including "I Dream Of Jeanie With The Long Brown Hair" (no, really); the only person I've ever heard singing that before is Bugs Bunny (this, apparently, is what Bugs was lampooning). For some reason, even though none of the numbers are Christmas songs, just hearing Crosby singing reminds me of the holidays.

Abbe Lane does not remind me of the holiday season, but this hot-cha Broadway and nightclub bombshell is welcome all year-round:

Did you know? She was "the swingingest sexpot in show business," and once said, "Jayne Mansfield may turn boys into men, but I take them from there." For those quotes alone, how can you not like her?

Of her marriage to Francesc "Cugat" de Deulofeu, the famed and notoriously volatile Cuban-born bandleader, she offered this terse sum-up, "Oh, those (gossip) columnists. He was never really jealous or mean. Just Latin."

And yet in 1992, she wrote the novel "But Where Is Love?" I haven't read it (yet), but it sounds like a deliciously campy roman a clef wherein Julie, a fictional Broadway beauty, falls helplessly in love with...Paco, a tyrannical and jealous Latin bandleader. Why didn't she just write her memoirs? Maybe they're coming (we can only hope). In the LP "The Many Sides of Abbe Lane," marvel at her vamping and cooing and teasing. She wasn't dubbed "Too Sexy For TV" for nothing.

Speaking of cooing and moaning and general carrying on, many kids these days seem to think they're, like, "soooooo hawt" - and more so than the previous generation, which is what I thought of my previous generation. And on and on.

But I'm beginning to think that all those young 1920's flapper girls and their rum-running boyfriends had it a lot hotter than any of us. Everything they did was illegal. Illegal hootch, cocaine for days, partying till dawn in secret speakeasy clubs, guys with tight pants, girls with sheer spangled dresses - they scandalized an entire nation which, just before them, was practically Victorian. And what did they listen too?

Find out in this jazzy Cheerful Exclusive!, which brings together a remarkable collection of music from the flapper girl era. There's singers like Cab Calloway, whose song "Minnie The Moocher" is still rousing (and haunting); Slim and Slam, who use hipster scat and vocalese improvisation (Slim was still performing in the 1970's), Louis Prima, Fats Waller and many more.

To get an idea of how revolutionary these songs were, imagine how the emergence of rock and roll and Elvis changed music forever. In this period, the switch was even more stark; from twittery 1800's-era numbers like "The Fountain Song" ("While strolling through the park one day, in the merry-merry month of May...") to hot, unexpurgated jazz. Give a listen. You'll be riveted.

Be joyful Herrmann-heads! It's time for parts 9 and 10 of the delicious 14-CD Herrmann overview at Fox. Included this time is Herrmann's only western score for "Garden Of Evil," a little-seen 1954 release with Gary Cooper and Susan Hayward.

The score is wonderful - it's Western to the nnth degree - but the movie itself? I forgot I saw it almost before it was over. The most I can recall are a few blink-and-you'll-miss-them scenes with this Latina tempress:

Oh, yes, mis queridos, it's Miss Rita Moreno, who played a character known only as "Cantina Singer." Happily, this release includes, for the first time, both of her numbers. There's also Herrmann's score for "The Egyptian," which sounds as grand as ever.

"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now? What'cha wearing? Really? Tee-hee. I'm only wearing culottes. Oh, don't say that! What are you, some kind of monster?"

As the Secret Song File knows, if you ask for a monster, make sure that's what you want! And, yes, that was a hint, though it may not help, because this talented Brit has barely been on the scene for a year (if that), but already, his groovy 4-song EP collection is catching fire. Just remember, sometimes a creature is spelled with a "k." And if that makes any sense at all, then ka-learly you've had too much eggnog.

Sometimes monsters stand under the mistletoe, so be careful!

Spread a little holiday cheer in the comments, if you like.

Porgy, Porgy, Porgy!

I've become obsessed lately with "Porgy & Bess," the Gershwin/Heyward opera first performed in 1935, then reshaped, revised and recut for subsequent generations, lately arriving as a passionless, if hotly controversial, Broadway musical. This new Broadway version reminded me that I'd never seen the 1959 movie adaptation with Dorothy Dandridge.

Surprisingly, the movie isn't available on DVD (or even a mangy VHS). Why? Because even though it's been selected for preservation by the U.S. National Registry, the Gershwin estate doesn't much like it, and so it's likely to remain unavailable until hell freezes over until they change their mind. Happily, I got my paws on a watchable bootleg.

Even though the movie is stagy to a fault - one can only imagine how much better it might have been if the boorish Otto Preminger hadn't replaced director Rouben Mamoulian - it does bring together a stellar cast, most of whom were reluctant to participate at all given the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The movie's story, which included drug dealing, poverty and prostitution, was regarded as racist, or at the very least, something that wouldn't exactly help the cause. Yet despite racially-charged content and the movie's clod-hopping direction, the cast deliver terrific performances.

And that includes not just Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier (Dandridge and Poitier had their singing dubbed by Adele Anderson and Robert McFerrrin) (yes, he was the father of Bobby McFerrin), but Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Maya Angelou, Geoffrey Holder and, of course, Sammy Davis, Jr., who nearly obliterates the movie's period setting by dancing and singing as if he were in a hot-cha! jazz-hands! Fosse musical (but he's allowed).

Better still is how plastic and bendable the score has become over the years, subject to endless rethinks and re-interpretations. My favorite these days is the one above by The Oscar Peterson Trio, which stays close to the score's melodies, but otherwise lightly gambols into its own springy jazz territory, especially during the inimitable "It Ain't Necessarily So," with a piano riff that's pure smooth-jazz delight.

In fact, it seems as if "Porgy & Bess" has become catnip to the best jazz vocalists and musicians . Everyone from Joe Henderson to Lena Horne to Louis Armstrong to Cab Calloway (on the "Porgy & Bess/Girl Crazy" twofer below) have put their mark on the Gershwin/Heyward opera.

Most of the LPs here are Cheerful Exclusives!, including a certain LP by a certain hot-cha! jazz-hands! performer who redeems his hammy movie turn with several surprisingly sensitive renditions from the score. And, yes, it helps a great deal that he's accompanied by Carmen McRae, whose version of "Summertime" ranks right up there with Lena's and Ella's and Adele's and Helen's and...the list seems infinite, doesn't it? It's an embarrassment of musical riches!

Which begs the question, if a woman is a sometime thing, what's a man?

If you ain't got no shame, leave a comment, why dont'cha?