DICK HAYMES: THE TROUBLED CROONER

In the golden age of crooners, Dick Haymes’s voice was velvet. Born in Buenos Aires in 1918 to a rancher father and a musically inclined Irish mother, Haymes seemed destined for the stage. By the 1940s, he was one of America’s most beloved vocalists, rivaling Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. His duets with Helen Forrest and Judy Garland lit up wartime radios, and his performances in musicals like State Fair made him a Hollywood darling.

But behind the spotlight, Haymes’s life was a symphony of heartbreak.

He never served in World War II — not out of defiance, but because he was technically an Argentine citizen. This led to public backlash and even a deportation scare. The press painted him as unpatriotic, and the stain lingered.

His personal life was a carousel of marriages and divorces. He wed six times, including to screen legends Rita Hayworth and Joanne Dru. Each union brought glamour, but also turbulence. Haymes battled alcoholism, and as the 1950s ushered in television and rock ’n’ roll, his style fell out of favor. The man who once filled concert halls now struggled to fill a lounge

Financial woes mounted. He declared bankruptcy, and at one point, was arrested for unpaid child support. The crooner who sang of dreams and devotion was drowning in legal battles and loneliness.

Yet, in the twilight of his life, Haymes found a flicker of redemption. He toured Europe, where audiences still revered his voice. Though he never reclaimed his American stardom, he sang until the end — a voice weathered by time, but still rich with emotion.

Dick Haymes died in 1980, aged 61. His legacy, like his life, is bittersweet: a reminder that fame is fleeting, but artistry endures...

MY FIVE FAVORITE MALE SINGERS

Music has played such an important part in my life. It really is the soundtrack to my life. As everyone knows, I love the old singers. I last published my favorite male singer list in 2013, so here is my updated list. They all had a way with a song...

5. DICK HAYMES (1918-1980)   

Dick Haymes burst on the scene in the early 1940s after paying his dues as a vocalist with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey Orchestras. His deep baritone highlighted many songs of the era like: "You'll Never Know', "Little White Lies", and "It Might As Well Be Spring". Signed with Decca Records, Dick got second choice of songs due to Bing Crosby being the main crooner at the studio. Dick had trouble with alcohol and marriages in the 1950s and 1960s, but his voice remained rebust and engaging until his death from lung cancer. 2013 ranking: 6

4. TONY MARTIN (1913-2012)

I had the opportunity to see and hear Tony Martin perform live in 1999, and he remained a great vocalist throughout his career. His recording career started in the mid 1930s, and he emerged as a very capable singer. He had numerous hits throughout his career like: "It's A Blue World", "Tennement Symphony", "I Get Ideas", "Stranger In Paradise", and "All The Things You Are" among countless other songs. He faced a lot of heart ache in later years. His wife, the beautiful Cyd Charisse died in 2008, and his only son Tony Jr died in 2011. 2013 ranking: 10

3. BOBBY DARIN (1936-1973)

Bobby Darin filled more living and life in his 37 years on this earth than most people do in a lifetime. He burst on the scene with his hit "Splish Splash" in 1958. He wanted to be bigger than Sinatra, and in ways he was a more dynamic performer. He had many signature songs like "Mack The Knife", "Beyond The Sea", and "Artificial Flowers". He acted in movies, was a top draw in Las Vegas, and made countless records. Unfortunately, his life was cut short when he had heart surgery and never recovered. He was way too young to die.  2013 ranking: 3

2. DEAN MARTIN (1917-1995)

Dean Martin was one of those singers that made singing look so easy. It looked like he was lazy but in the 1940s and 1950s he worked hard to become a great crooner like his idols Bing Crosby and The Mills Brothers. He gained wide recognition being a part of a comedy team with Jerry Lewis, but when he broke up with Lewis in 1956, Dean became a superstar. He had numerous hits in his career like "That's Amore", "Memories Are Made Of This", "Sway", and "Volare" among others. He was one of the biggest television stars of his time, headlining his own variety series from 1965 to 1974. Dean was never the same after his son was killed in 1987, and Dino died alone on Christmas Day 1995.  2013 ranking: 2

1. BING CROSBY (1903-1977)

Bing Crosby has the most widely recorded voice in the history of humankind. During World War II, Bing was voted the most widely respected person in the world. He recorded his first record in 1925, but it was not until the 1930s that Bing soared to super stardom. He first recorded with Brunswick Records and had hits like: "Please", "Brother Can You Spare A Dime", and "I Surrender Dear". He made his starring movie debut in 1932's The Big Broadcast. Bing was a top movie draw at Paramount Studio from 1932 to 1956, and he was signed to Decca Records from 1935 to 1957. Bing was the first multi media star, and I could write for pages what Bing did for the entertainment industry. He was and is and has been my favorite singer for decades. I doubt that will ever change.  2013 ranking: 1

Again, this is just my list and only my top five favorites. My five runners up would be: Buddy Clark (1912-1949), Vic Damone (1928-2018), Nat King Cole (1919-1965),  Al Jolson (1886-1950),  and Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). I have numerous singers that I love and collect, but these are my favorite...

DICK HAYMES AT 100

There was a time when the name Dick Haymes meant more to the record buying audience than Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. However, September 13th marks what would have been Haymes 100th birthday. Many people will not remember this crooner with one of the best voices in the business. Dick Haymes was most popular in the 1940s but early on he worked with several bandleaders before beginning a solo career that took him to Hollywood stardom. His brother, Bob, was a successful songwriter. (Bob Haymes wrote the standard "That's All").

In 1937, the family briefly settled in California, where Dick’s mother hobnobbed with movie stars, before returning to New York. Both brothers set their sights on singing. Many auditions later, Haymes landed a spot with Bunny Berigan’s orchestra in 1939 but left after only a few dates. Berigan’s band was in serious decline at that point, and Haymes had other ambitions.

Haymes found sporadic work singing on the radio and decided to try his hand as a songwriter. After pitching his work to bandleader Harry James, he ended up being hired as a vocalist. His deep baritone voice quickly won over both the critics and the public. He remained with James until the end of 1941 when, expecting his first child, he left for greener pastures.

In January 1942, Haymes signed with CBS for his own three times weekly radio series, and in May, he organized his own band in which he was to play piano as well as sing. The endeavor quickly fell victim to the draft, and he joined Benny Goodman as vocalist. He left Goodman at the end of 1942, finding a new home with Tommy Dorsey.

Haymes stayed with Dorsey for only a few months, going solo in May 1943. He signed a recording contract with Decca and in August signed a film contract with Twentieth Century Fox, beginning what would be a very successful screen career. He starred in many of the top Fox musicals of the era, including Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe and State Fair. He hosted his own new CBS radio program from 1944 to 1948, teamed up with singer Helen Forrest in the first two years. The pair often recorded together. Haymes also appeared on various other radio programs in the 1940s and 1950s.

Near the end of the war, Haymes faced the prospect of being drafted, and he registered as a resident alien, waiving his right to citizenship in order to avoid being called to duty. He claimed he only did so due to a family crisis which needed his attention. He later volunteered for the service but was refused on medical grounds, so he became one of the USO’s most ardent volunteers instead.

In 1947, when his Fox contract ran out, Haymes signed with Universal for two pictures. His records still sold well but a troubled home life began to take its toll. Problems with drinking and his handling of money caused his career to suffer. During the early 1950s, he appeared in several B movies and starred in an action/adventure radio series on ABC. His contract with Decca ended in 1952.

He made a few outstand recordings for Capitol in the late 1950s before moving to Ireland in 1961, where he spent the decade cleaning up his life. When he did manage to make records, they are all wonderful and shows a crooner in great voice. He began to make a comeback in the 1970s and returned to the U.S. in 1972, but his chance at good fortune was short-​lived. Dick Haymes died in 1980 after losing a fight with lung cancer. Dick Haymes deserves to be remembered especially now on his century birthday...

MUSIC BREAK: HARRY JAMES & DICK HAYMES - BLUEBERRY HILL

MUSIC BREAK: DICK HAYMES - MORE THAN YOU KNOW

IN DEFENSE OF DICK HAYMES

Here is an excellent article that was published in the Jazz Times on September 6, 2010. It is an excellent story and very well written. I wanted to share it here...


In Defense of Dick Haymes
by Christopher Loudon

One of the great, openly sung, rivalries of the 1940s pitted Frank Sinatra against Dick Haymes. Ultimately, of course, Sinatra achieved massively greater success than Haymes; but between the late 1930s, when both enjoyed their first flush of success, and the late 1940s, when both of their careers spiraled downwards, their popularity was neck-and-neck. Actually, though their record sales and appeal as movie stars were comparable, Haymes earned more gold records during that decade (thanks, in part, to his frequent vocal partnerships with Helen Forrest) than did Sinatra.

The career parallels between the two are quite remarkable, with Haymes, it seems, forever playing catch-up. When Sinatra concluded his brief association with Harry James’ band in 1939, Haymes stepped in to replace him. Three years later, when Sinatra famously parted company with Tommy Dorsey, Haymes was again his successor. Both made their screen debuts with Dorsey. By 1945, as both were elevated to major screen star status — Sinatra with the MGM blockbuster Anchors Aweigh and Haymes with the Hollywood adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s State Fair — their solo careers were in high gear. Then both hit the professional skids as the 1950s dawned. Soon afterward, both were embroiled in tempestuous marriages to fiery screen idols, Sinatra with Ava Gardner (who helped salvage his career) and Haymes with Rita Hayworth (who did nothing to boost Haymes professional standing, but did help bolster Sinatra’s meteoric career recovery, playing opposite him in Pal Joey, the film that would cement his image as a likable cad.)

As anyone with even an inkling of Sinatra rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-mega-riches story knows, his early ’50s comeback, propelled by his Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity, was primarily fueled by his renewed recording success, at Capitol. Working primarily with arrangers Nelson Riddle and Billy May, Sinatra released 16 top-selling albums, many considered the finest of not only his career but of the entire era, before launching his own label, Reprise, in 1961.

A fact that usually goes unnoted is that Haymes also signed with Capitol in the 1950s, marking the only time the archrivals toiled for the same label. Haymes produced only two albums, plus a handful of singles, for Capitol. Neither LP was a strong seller, and Haymes’ tenure with Capitol, begun in 1955, was over in less than two years. There has since been much conjecture that sales of Haymes’ Capitol releases were marred by headline-grabbing tales of his near-deportation (born in Buenos Aires, he had never become an American citizen) and his stormy relationship with Hayworth. (Though equally explosive gossip about Sinatra and Gardner’s turbulent marriage didn’t hurt his sales).

It has often been reported that Capitol offered Haymes the opportunity with Riddle or May, but the he opted to instead work with neophyte Canadian arranger (later turned successful screenwriter) Ian Bernard. One must, however, wonder if Sinatra, surely not eager to have his one-time rival working with either or both of the arrangers who had fueled his dynamic return, might have had a hand in the decision. It is hard to imagine why, given the tatters his career was in, that Haymes would have backed a virtual unknown in favor of two pros with a proven record for career re-ignition (unless it was perhaps to distance himself from the Sinatra sound).

Truth is, Haymes did extremely well by Bernard. The two, ballad-heavy albums — Rain or Shine, captured just prior to Christmas 1955; and Moondreams laid down in April ’56 — are the finest recordings of Haymes’ career. Indeed, both can hold their own against any of Sinatra’s Capitol (or Reprise) sessions. That Haymes’ was, among white singers, possessor of the greatest baritone voice of the 20th-century was never better evidenced than across these 24 tracks.

In an obvious attempt to recapture some of Haymes’ fans from a decade earlier, Rain or Shine is a somewhat nostalgic affair, including new renditions of three of his biggest 1940s hits, “You’ll Never Know,” “Little White Lies” and “It Might As Well Be Spring.” Haymes remains in a warm, deeply romantic mood throughout, delivering impeccably beautiful readings of, among others, “The Very Thought of You,” “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “The More I See You,” “Where or When,” “Love Is Here to Stay” and the quasi-title track, “Come Rain or Come Shine” (the latter two arranged by a young Johnny Mandel).

Moondreams continues in the same romantic vein, though there is no backward-glancing among the 12 tracks, and Haymes (never one to swing with Sinatra fervor) does manage to balance such heartbreakers as “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “What’s New” with breezy covers of “I Like the Likes of You,” “Isn’t This A Lovely Day” and “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” I defy you to find more tender or heartfelt interpretations of “Imagination,” “When I Fall In Love” or “The Way You Look Tonight.”

Haymes’ nine Capitol singles, two of which were never released, are comparatively weak, due largely to the inferiority of the material. Two 1956 tracks, recorded with Billy May’s orchestra — the suggestively torrid “C’est La Vie” (a ’55 hit for Sarah Vaughan) and the playful “I Never Get Enough of You” (which bears a striking similarity to the Four Lads’ 1958 hit “There’s Only One of You”) — easily rise above the rest.

When Rain or Shine and Moondreams fell disappointingly flat with the record-buying public, Haymes struck out on his own to deliver the optimistically titled Look at Me Now! Turned down by all of the major and second-string labels, Haymes finally found distribution with Hollywood Records, an ineffectually tiny L.A. outfit. Though the album features decent (if occasionally overwhelming) arrangements, backing by the Maury Laws Orchestra and Cy Coleman at the piano, the limits of Haymes’ financial backing are evident in the extremely poor production values. So budget-driven was the project that, to reduce royalty fees, only 10 of the dozen recorded tracks were included on the finished album. It tempting to consider how superb Look at Me Now! might have been if handled with the skill and care that were Capitol hallmarks. But the platter does have its merits, particularly a satiny “This Time the Dreams on Me” featuring just Haymes and Coleman, and a dark, sensuous “A Sinner Kissed An Angel.”

Haymes delivered just one more album before drifting into semi-retirement in the early 1960s. Again tied to a small label, Warwick, with inadequate distribution muscle, Richard the Lion-Hearted — Dick Haymes That Is! is far better than its corny title and equally silly cover design, featuring a puffy-looking Haymes sharing his copy of Variety with a seemingly nonplussed jungle cat, suggest. Rust has started to appear at the edges of Haymes’ rich baritone, the decay surely accelerated by his losing battle with the bottle, but it only marginally diminishes his surprisingly peppy handling of “Pick Yourself Up,” “Blue Champagne,” “Anything Goes,” “I’ve Heard That Song Before” and “Lulu’s Back In Town,” featuring brassy, sophisticated arrangements by Ralph Burns. Of special interest is Haymes cover of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s “Playboy Theme.” If ever there was a tune custom-tailored for the ring-a-ding-ding Sinatra, it was this one. But Sinatra never touched it, leaving Haymes’ loose, urbane (and distinctly Tormé-esque) reading to stand on its own. The album’s best track is, rather ironically, the one that harkens back a decade-and-a-half to the pinnacle of Haymes’ popularity. It is a rousing, and impressively robust, update of the State Fair gem “That’s For Me.” Though Haymes would return to the recording studio in the 1970s and manage a minor resurgence, it seems a fitting adieu to an underappreciated master who spend too much time in an even bigger giant’s shadow.

Fortunately, Haymes’ has fared well on the CD front. Most of his hit recordings from the 1940s, including those with Helen Forrest, have been reissued in various combinations. For a long while, the Capitol albums were only available as extremely pricy and difficult-to-find Japanese imports. But in 2006, EMI released The Complete Capitol Collection with all 24 tracks from Rain or Shine and Moondreams plus all of the singles and a couple of rare outtakes. The set is still in print, and also downloadable on iTunes. Look at Me Now! has also found its way onto CD (again as a Japanese import), complete with all 12 of the tracks originally intended for the album plus two bonus tracks: 1957 radio transcriptions of “What’s New” and “Moonlight Becomes You.” It doesn’t come cheap (Amazon.com currently lists it at over $50), but is available. Intriguingly, it is part of a series advocated by the Sinatra Society of Japan. And, like so many jazz rarities of the 1950s and ’60s, Richard the Lion-Hearted was, in 1990, released on CD by Barcelona-based Fresh Sound Records. It has since drifted out of print, but used copies are relatively easy to find via Amazon or eBay...

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