Reggie Van Gleason III Bats Once Again

The star rating system normally employed with “From the Vaults” is the epitome of reader-friendly journalism but some albums don’t lend themselves to this system--albums that speak to private passions in ways that make it difficult to give them universal scores.

So we will suspend the star rating periodically to focus on albums in this category. Today’s packages will speak best to those whose passions are stirred by the names Joe the Bartender, Irwin Allen or Roy Barcroft.

Jackie Gleason’s “And Awaaay We Go!” (Scamp). Lucy was great. So were Bilko, Dick Van Dyke and Maxwell Smart. But my favorite sitcom from the ‘50s and ‘60s was “The Honeymooners,” starring Gleason as the loudmouthed but soft-hearted bus driver Ralph Kramden.

But Kramden was only one of Gleason’s marvelous characters. In his weekly variety show that gave birth to “The Honeymooners” in the ‘50s, Gleason also portrayed the sweet Poor Soul, playboy Reggie Van Gleason III, friendly Joe the Bartender and loudmouth Charlie Bratton.

This album--from the New York specialty label that also reissued the Robert Mitchum and Maya Angelou calypso albums--salutes the humor and music of that variety show. It brings together Gleason’s “lost” vocal album from 1954 (which featured each of his famous characters in musical numbers) as well as theme and sketch music from his show, including its theme song, “Melancholy Serenade.” For baseball fans, there’s an extra treat: Reggie Van Gleason III’s highly stylized reading of “Casey at the Bat.”

“The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen” (GNP Crescendo). This noteworthy, six-disc box set will be of interest to students of film music, even ones who never saw any of the producer’s science-fiction adventure TV shows from the ‘60s.

That’s because it contains some of the TV work of Oscar-winning film composer John Williams, who wrote for the shows “Lost in Space,” “The Time Tunnel” and “Land of the Giants.” Other composers showcased in the set, which also contains music from “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” are Jerry Goldsmith, Alexander Courage, George Duning, Paul Sawtell and Joseph Mullendore.

The set--which also has cast interviews and sound effects from the various shows--is an especially well-designed package, from its colorful graphics to its helpful liner notes. Not only did Williams go on to acclaim for such scores as “Star Wars” and the Indiana Jones series, but Allen also produced several hit disaster movies, notably “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno.”

“Cliffhangers! Music From the Classic Republic Serials,” Varese Sarabande. Here’s my nominee for the least likely album ever to make it to CD: almost an hour’s worth of music from the thrill-a-minute serials from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s that lured kids back to the theaters each Saturday to see how the stars would escape certain death.

Dozens of the classic Republic serials--featuring such heroes and villains as Kane Richmond, Clayton Moore and Roy Barcroft--have been available for some time in video, setting up a limited audience for this musical salute by conductor James King and the CinemaSound Orchestra. The album includes Victor Young’s Republic logo theme and selections from 11 serials, from “Perils of Nyoka” (one of the many serials that influenced the Indiana Jones films) to “Mysterious Dr. Satan.” The Studio City record label, one of the most dependable of the CD reissue firms, has also released “Shoot ‘Em Ups!,” a companion piece saluting music from the Republic Westerns.