Sammy Timberg - Boop-Oop-A-Doin': The Songs of Sammy Timberg From Betty Boop, Popeye, Super

Boop-oop-a-doin', subtitled The Songs of Sammy Timberg From Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman, and Other Musical Classics is a long overdue record that does for the fondly remembered 1930s songwriter Sammy Timberg what the Beau Hunks' re-recordings of the Little Rascals/Laurel & Hardy music did for composer Leroy Shield, except there's singing here (and good singing, at that). Mora's Modern Rhythmists are the players, using Timberg's original arrangements, and Shannon Cullem and Richard Halpern providing the voices once furnished by Helen Kane, Mae Questel, and Jack Mercer. There's even a track with Timberg singing and playing his own "I'm Glad We're Through." This is a bright, breezy, funny, and highly illuminating CD. Even if one knows the songs, chances are that one doesn't really know the arrangements, which were often obscured by dialogue and sound effects -- this is the best opportunity to hear the music fully exposed, and it holds up on its own, evoking the best elements of Dixieland, swing, ragtime, and the popular music of the 1920s and 1930s. The only track that doesn't really fit is the original "Superman March," from the 1940s cartoon opening, but that's here simply to present Timberg's range as a composer. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide