“Day In, Day Out”
Composed by Rube Bloom (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyric); arranged by Johnny Watson.
Recorded by Jan Savitt and His Top Hatters live from a broadcast from the Blue Room of Hotel Lincoln in New York City on August 15, 1939 over the NBC Blue Radio Network.
Jan Savitt, directing: Jack Hansen, first trumpet; Jimmy Campbell and Johnny (Agostino) Austin, trumpets; Al Leopold, first trombone; Robert “Cutty” Cutshall and Miff Sines (Dominic Sinischelcci), trombones; George “Gigi” Bohn, first alto saxophone; Jack Ferrier, alto saxophone; Eddie Clausen and Gabe Gelinas, tenor saxophones; Gene (DePaolo) DePaul, piano; Guy Smith, guitar; Morris Rayman, bass; Russ Isaacs, drums; Carlotta Dale, vocal.
The story:
The story of what was going on in the development of Jan Savitt and His Top Hatters in the summer of 1939 is told in the post here at swingandbeyond.com on “Ring Dem Bells.” (That post can be accessed at endnote 1.) For the purposes of this post, I will say that at the time this broadcast recording was made, they were well-into a nine-month residency at the Blue Room of Hotel Lincoln in Manhattan. As an ensemble, the Savitt band was excellent. Jan was a talented, well-trained and experienced musician, and he knew how to rehearse a band to get top-notch musical performances. The main soloists in the band were Al Leopold on trombone, Johnny Austin on trumpet, and newcomer Eddie Clausen on tenor saxophone. In addition, George “Gigi” Bohn could and did play swinging alto saxophone and clarinet solos. The band had two of the best vocalists of the swing era: George “Bon Bon” Tunnell, who was versatile enough to scat madly one minuet, and then sing a ballad with great feeling the next. (At right: Jan Savitt conducts while young Eddie Clausen awaits his cue.)
The band’s girl vocalist was Carlotta Dale. Her way with a song, particularly those exploring feelings of love, was winning. She had a fine contralto voice,(*) a precise sense of pitch; good range, and the ability to swing a lyric with apparent ease. She was also a very attractive young woman. Audiences responded very favorably to her. (At left: Carlotta Dale.)
Carlotta Dale was the stage name for Carlotta Angela Cloverdale (1915-1988). Born in Ardmore, Pennsylvania and raised in Philadelphia, Ms. Dale lost her father at an early age and lived in the home of her maternal grandmother until her mother remarried in the 1920s. An exceptionally talented singer, she began appearing on Philadelphia radio station WCAU in 1933, and had her own CBS radio program in 1935 before joining Jan Savitt’s band at WCAU in 1936.
From November 1937 through the next two years, Carlotta Dale performed with and was often recorded with Jan Savitt and His Top Hatters. Ms. Dale left Savitt at the end of August 1939. It is unclear why this happened because she was one of the most popular members of the Savitt band.(2) In a cryptic comment in Metronome a short time after Ms. Dale departed, George T. Simon said this: “Spent the evening with Carlotta Dale (who was then singing with Will Bradley’s band), who spilled her version of the Savitt split-up.”(3)
Jan Savitt and his band in the Blue Room of Hotel Lincoln in April of 1939. Possible identifications: L-R -front: Sam Sachelle, Frank Langone, Gabe Gelinas, Eddie Clausen; Carlotta Dale is at the microphone; Jan Savitt; middle: Norman Sipple, Cutty Cutshall, Fred Ohms; rear: Jimmy Campbell, Johnny Austin, Jack Hansen, Bob Spangler and Morris Rayman. Pianist Jack Pleis and guitarist Guy Smith are not visible.
She took a vacation in early September, then resumed working, participating in a recording session with a small band led by pianist Jess Stacy on September 26, 1939. By early October, she was the regular vocalist for trombonist Will Bradley’s new band. She remained with Bradley until mid-April 1940, when, to get off the road, she returned to Philadelphia. In Philadeplhia, she sang with guitarist Dick Wharton’s band at the Hotel Adelphia, and then Chuck Gordon’s orchestra later that year. 
In the summer of 1941, she worked with Barry McKinley’s band at the Bay Shore Beach Club in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 1942, she began her own local radio program on Philadelphia radio station WIP.
Ms. Dale was first married in 1936. Although a Billboard magazine blurb indicated that she and Savitt planned to get married, later articles and official documents give the name of Dale’s husband as Pearson Lessy, identified by Billboard and Down Beat magazines as a radio singer, but by a local newspaper as a Camden (N.J.) hardware salesman. Lessy and Ms. Dale divorced in 1938. She married Edwin G. Dellheim of Oak Lane, Pennsylvania on April 23, 1942 in Jenkintown, PA, and withdrew from show business into private life. They established domicile in Melrose Park, PA where they lived out the next 46 years of an evidently tranquil marriage.(5) Curiously, Ms. Dale gave her name as Angela Stevenson Lessy on the Dellheim marriage license application. She and Dellheim had a son.
The music:
Alec Wilder, in his monumental treatise on American Popular Song, said this about “Day In, Day Out”: “It’s an absolutely great song. …It is fifty-six measures long. The melodic line soars and moves across the page like a lovely brush stroke. It never knots itself up in cleverness or pretentiousness. …Within the confines of the spectrum of popular music, this song has, remarkable for any pop song, …passion. It achieves emotional intensity. …Of course, its lyric (by the great Johnny Mercer), superbly supports the music.”(6)
This dance arrangement by Jan Savitt’s chief arranger Johnny Watson presents the Top Hatters in smooth style. After a brief introduction, the Savitt saxophone quartet, one of the most well-integrated of the late 1930s, sings the A melody of “Day In, Day Out” for sixteen bars, with warm asides provided by the cup-muted brass. Then the open trombones present the B melody for eight bars, with those saxophones now in the background.
A transitional sequence/ modulation (eight bars), highlighted by the swirling saxophones at the end, provides Ms. Dale with a lovely entry into her vocal chorus. George T. Simon of Metronome magazine heard the band in-person during their Blue Room engagement, and was particularly impressed by Carlotta Dale: “Carlotta’s was a very emotional yet very musical style of singing. She was one of the very few girl singers I ever heard who could sound dramatic without resorting to melodramatics. She sang with conviction and with taste, and in-tune. She was also an exceedingly attractive girl…”(7)
All of those musical qualities are displayed in her performance of this song. In addition, her utterly relaxed singing floats over the shuffle-rhythm and various instruments backgrounds that appear then recede behind her.
The band handles the ensemble passages and mini-climax, then Carlotta returns for the finale.
(Above left: the original sheet music for “Day In, Day Out.” The Bob Crosby band were featured on this summer 1939 publication because they were then working with Johnny Mercer on a version of the CBS radio show The Camel Caravan. (Benny Goodman was on the other version then.) The song was introduced on a Crosby band Decca recording.)(8)
The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.
Notes and links:
(*) One of the most famous female singers who has a contralto voice is Cher.
(1) Here is a link to the Savitt band playing Duke Ellington’s “Ring Dem Bells”: https://swingandbeyond.com/2019/07/04/ring-dem-bells-1939-live-jan-savitt-and-his-top-hatters/
(2) Although it has been reported that Ms. Dale left the Savitt band in 1939 because of injuries she sustained in an auto accident during which she fell from a moving car driven by Savitt, that accident appears to have happened in the spring of 1939.
(3) Metronome, December 1939, 45.
(4) Much of the information about Carlotta Dale has been extracted from the article on her at the website called bandchirps.com. Here is a link to that article: https://bandchirps.com/artist/carlotta-dale/
(5) See: https://memphorg.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/carlotta-dale-obituary-she-sang-a-good-song/
(6) American Popular Song …The Great Innovators 1900-1950, by Alec Wilder 436-438.
(7) The Big Bands, by George T. Simon (1967), 408.
(8) Although Teddy Grace was the band vocalist for the Bob Crosby band when they made the first recording of “Day In, Day Out” on July 24, 1939, Gil Rodin, the actual leader of the Crosby band, induced Helen Ward to sing the lyric on that recording. It is she who is pictured on the original sheet music.
(9) Here is a link to another wonderful recording by Carlotta Dale with Jan Savitt: https://swingandbeyond.com/2016/08/14/you-go-to-my-head-jan-savitt-carlotta-dale/
Thanks Mike. This is a number I have always adored, right from first hearing it many decades ago. Then, it was a British version by Joe Loss, and sung by the excellent Chick Henderson.
And right from the start, the thought was; “If this hadn’t been from 1939, I’d swear it had been written for Mr Sinatra.
Much later (in those pre-internet days), I heard his interpretations, though oddly it was the swinging Billy May version I’d imagined, rather than the wistful Stordahl/ Riddle readings.
This is lovely, and I’ve pinched it for a playlist!