Description

Ray Noble Plays Ray Noble & Others
1935 – 1950

Sports writers are fond of referring to multitalented athletes as “triple-threat” artists, individuals capable of performing with outstanding skill in several roles of activity. The same description applies to composer-arranger-bandleader Ray Noble, who excelled at all three of these musical undertakings to the extent that he could have had a successful career in any one of them. Instead, without any obvious effort, he pursued parallel lines, and did so in highly original styles that are readily recognizable.

During his career, he approached everything he did – arranging, composing, band-leading, acting – without pretense and with a quiet, meticulous taste evident in the songs and arrangements he wrote. Those arrangements were put together with deceptive simplicity, but with such superb musicianship that they still hold up well after more than half the century that has gone by since they were written. The recordings he made are still admired as among the finest of all time.

1. Cherokee (Noble) Oct 1938
2. Sleepy Time Gal (Alden-Egan-Lorenzo-Whitting) Jan 1940
3. Seminole (Noble) Jan 1940
4. Iroquois (Noble) Sept 1939
5. Where Was I (Dubin-Harling) Dec 1939
6. Comanche War Dance (Noble) Sept 1939
7. Why Stars Come Out at Night (Noble) Jul 1935
8. I’ll Dance at Your Wedding (Magidson-Oakland) Oct 1947
9. You’re So Desirable (Noble) Oct 1938
10. Harlem Nocturne (Hagen) Aug 1940
11. A Handful of Stars (Lawrence-Shapiro) Oct 1940
12. Moonlight on the Ganges (Wallace-Myers) 4 Nov 1950
13. I Hadn’t Anyone Till You (Noble) Feb 1938
14. Sioux Sue (Noble) Jan 1940
15. You That I Loved (Noble) Oct 1938
16. Along the Santa Fe Trail (Dubin-Coolidge-Grosz) Oct 1940
17. Far Away (Noble) Jan 1940
18. From Oakland to Burbank (Noble) Aug 1940
19. What a Sweet Surprise (Noble) Jan 1945
20. Carolina in the Morning (Kahn-Donaldson) May 1940
21. It Isn’t a Dream any More (Newman-Samuels) Nov 1941
22. A Little Imagination (Miller-I. James) Dec 1947
23. Those Things Money Can’t Buy (Al Goodhart-Ruth Poll) Oct 1947
24. In a Moment of Weakness (Mercer-Warren) Oct 1938