Whatever Happend To

Discussion about Ruby Murray.
Graham Bunn
Posts: 193
Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:17 am

Whatever Happend To

Post by Graham Bunn »

Hi Bernie,
I think you may be the only one who may know the answer to this question.

As we all know Ruby sang several songs with other artists ie Norman Wisdom,Brendan O'Dowda,Diana Decker,Ray Burns,Ronnie Harris and Michael Holliday.

I would like to find out what happend to Anne Warren?

How did she get to sing with Ruby? It must have been a thrill for her firstly to sing on a recording with Ruby and secondly to see it shooting up the charts.

Have not been able to get on the website for a couple of weeks but I see you are still trying to get a winner with your teasers.

Best Wishes
Graham

Bernie Burgess
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Location: Sutton Coldfield

Whatever Happened to Anne Warren?

Post by Bernie Burgess »

Hello Graham,

Ruby recorded 'If Anyone.....' long before I came on the scene, so I cannot tell you about Anne Warren. If her involvement was arranged through the usual channels it would have been done via a 'fixer'. A fixer acted as a type of agent for selecting musicians and singers for recordings. If an arrranger wants, say - 3 trombones, 3 trumpets, 3 violins, and backing singers etc. etc. he would ask a 'fixer' to supply them for a particular studio on a particular day at a particular time. The arranger might have a few specific musicians in mind that he might prefer to use on a session, perhaps because of how he has arranged the songs, but then he would ask the 'fixer' to see if they are free, then the 'fixer' completes the task. That was what normally happened, but a lot of water has gone under the bridges since those days and the whole system has changed completely.

With the arrival of 'beat groups' as they were called then, individual session musicians began to feel the draught and call for them dwindled quite a bit. The same applied to backing singers.

I heard, or read, about Anne Warren quite recently but unfortunately I cannot remember where it was, or what it was. I wish that I could have been a little more informative Graham, but sorry.

Your name has been conspicuous by it's absense on the teaser front so I'm glad you are back in action.

Adios Amigo. Bernie.

Brian Henson
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:27 am
Location: Ilford, Essex, UK

Anne Warren

Post by Brian Henson »

Anne Warren made one other recording for Columbia, and that was another duet - 'Open Up Your Heart' with Tony Brent. She takes a bigger part in this record, singing throughout the song. On DB3579 it was just one number earlier than 'If Anyone Finds This, I Love You', so the two tracks may have been recorded on the same day.

I'm wondering if she was the daughter of someone connected with EMI. This may be barking up the wrong tree but at about the same time there was a singer on Parlophone, another EMI label, named Alma Warren. Could she have had a daughter, I wonder. Alma Warren was actually Lita Roza's sister.

A Jeff Warren had also recorded for Columbia in the early 1950s - on London Cast recordings of songs from the shows 'Call Me Madam' and 'Wedding In Paris'.

Brian

Bernie Burgess
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Location: Sutton Coldfield

Whatever Happened To

Post by Bernie Burgess »

Graham,

We are very lucky Graham, we have a music encyclopedic source at the ready on the R.M. website, by the name of Brian. This YOUNG man frightens me sometimes, he is so quick, and most times he comes up with the correct answers to most musical questions.

Thanks for the information Brian.

P.S. Here is a thought for you Graham, Lita Roza has a website, you could possibly place your question there and find the answer.

Adios Amigo. Bernie.

Brian Henson
Posts: 98
Joined: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:27 am
Location: Ilford, Essex, UK

Post by Brian Henson »

Thanks for the 'young' bit, Bernie - you've made my day. But I'm likely to fall off that pedestal you've hoisted me on to. I'm really not confident about the Alma Warren link - it was just a wild idea that came to me. However, it's an interesting question, Graham, and do let us know if you get any positive info about young Ann.

It's a scary thought, but if she's still around, she must be about 60 years of age by now.

Brian

Brian Henson
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Location: Ilford, Essex, UK

Post by Brian Henson »

Was there ever a photograph taken of Ruby with Anne Warren? I can't recall seeing one, but I've just come across a pic of Anne Warren with Tony Brent. If you refer to my earlier message you will note that they recorded a duet together about the same time as Ruby and Anne cut 'If Anyone Finds This I Love You'.

If anyone would like to see the pic of Tony and Anne, I will try and scan it into the Library.

Brian[/i]

Graham Bunn
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Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:17 am

Post by Graham Bunn »

Hello Brian,
Thanks for the new information on Anne Warren......I for one would like to see the photograph of Anne with Tony Brent.....I have imagined a face for so long singing on Rubys version of "If Anyone Finds This I Love You" that it would be nice to see how she really looked

Take Care
Graham

MARTIN FOSTER
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Post by MARTIN FOSTER »

Hi guys,

Hope everyone is well and Bernie is getting over his 27th birthday.

Would Anne have sung on 'Quite Contrary' with Ruby when she sang 'If anyone finds this I love you'? If so can anybody around in those days remember this or remember Ruby on the series?

Martin :)

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Jk
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Location: Wigan

Post by Jk »

Hi Martin, yes it was on 'Quite Contrary' that Anne Warren sang with Ruby, I can remember it quite well, Ruby came onto the stage and on the right hand side they had put a small house, and Ruby started to sing and Anne Warren was stood at a window looking down at Ruby has she sang.
And I am only 26.
Regards
John.

Bernie Burgess
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Post Subject

Post by Bernie Burgess »

Hello John K.
Wait a minute now John, in doing my sums I've made a discovery, if you are 26yrs old you wouldn't have been around to see 'Quite Contrary'

A very observant 27yr old octogenarian. Bernie.

MARTIN FOSTER
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Post by MARTIN FOSTER »

Hi John,

Thanks for that.

Shame there are no recordings of those early TV shows. :(

Gerald Lawrence
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Post by Gerald Lawrence »

Brian - I would also love to see a picture of Anne Warren. Like John, I have often wondered what she looked like. Presumably your picture will be of a young girl singing, if it was at about the same time as "If Anyone Finds This" and that is how I guess most of us will remember her.

John, what a fantastic memory you have! I cannot recall ever seeing Ruby sing this song, and I am sure I read somewhere that she never sang it in public because of the problem of needing to get Anne to sing with her (never, apart that is from the appearance on Quite Contrary, which would surely have been to promote the record, so would have been around March 1955). This being the case, it is quite remarkable that the song reached number 4 in the charts and was in the Top Twenty for 11 weeks (there is a document in the Library which shows this kind of statistic if you haven't already seen it).

While I loved this song, I have to say that it was the B side which I preferred - "Before We Know It".

Martin, sometimes we don't realise how lucky we are nowadays with all the different digital recording techniques at our disposal. I remember very clearly the BBC news programme announcing that the BBC engineers had invented a way of recording video onto tape. The machine was called VERA (I think it was Video Electronic Recording Apparatus) and they demonstrated it by playing back an earlier part of the news which we had already seen. Unfortunately, this was long after Ruby was at her most popular on TV. The only way they had in her day was something which I think was called Telecine, in which they literally filmed the programme directly off a TV set. As you can imagine it was very expensive to do this, and was generally reserved for flagship programmes like dramas. I remember the play 1984 was one of those that was recorded and shown again later in the same week.

The techies among you might like to know that the VERA system relied on very high tape speeds to get the bandwidth high enough for video, and was almost immediately superseded by an American system which used the rotating head system that came to be used in VHS recorders also. (For clarification, it was the recording head that rotated, not that of the performer!!) :lol:
Gerald

Brian Henson
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Joined: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:27 am
Location: Ilford, Essex, UK

Post by Brian Henson »

I've just posted the picture of Tony Brent & Anne Warren to the Library (miscellaneous images) - but the image has somehow become scrambled during the upload. Help Gerald! This happened on a previous occasion, and I think at the time you explained what I'd done wrong (and managed to correct it) but I obviously couldn't have been paying proper attention to your good advice. I'll e-mail the file to you, Gerald, if I may - and hope you can wave your magic wand over it.

As you will see, the photograph was to publicize the Tony/Anne duet, 'Open Up Your Heart', and it appeared on the front of Columbia's new release booklet for the month of March 1955. Inside the booklet, the record is described as 'a new number in the Hits class', and we are told that Anne is 12 years old. The song was also recorded by Rosemary Clooney with her sister Gail, and Joan Regan with her son Rusty (along with several other versions). Joan's was the only one to chart (it got to No.19 in the NME best sellers), but the song did rather better in the Best Selling Sheet Music chart, climbing to No.12 during a 14 week run.

I wonder if the pic of Tony and Anne was taken at their recording session. As that release and Ruby's (with Anne) had consecutive catalogue numbers it seems likely they were recorded on the same day. So if a photograph was taken of Tony and Anne, surely there would also have been one of Ruby and Anne - but presumably it was never published.

Brian

Graham Bunn
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Post by Graham Bunn »

Hi Brian,
Thanks for the posting.........I must say Anne looks nothing like I imagined her to be but you have put a ghost to rest for me.
Many thanks
Graham

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Jk
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Post by Jk »

Hi Everyone, If you click on the photo to enlarge it you will find it is quite clear.
Regards
John.

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