New Pop Records

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Columbia; 2 sides LP). Arthur Schwartz's lively score is as full of good spirits and front-stoop romance as an old-fashioned block party. Marcia Van Dyke and Johnny Johnston sing the love songs (I'll Buy You a Star, Make the Man Love Me, etc.) straight from the shoulder; veteran Comedienne Shirley Booth comes through with a fine Brooklyn boid in her verce.

Piano Moods (Max Miller, Eadie & Rack; Columbia; 4 sides LP). Three new headliners in Columbia's program to corral the top U.S. pop pianists for its Moods series. Chicagoan Miller will please "progressives" with his tricky beat and boppish chording. Eadie and Rack's mile-a-minute keyboard calisthenics have more flash than form.

Sharkey's Southern Comfort (Sharkey Bonano; Capitol; 6 sides 45 r.p.m.). One of New Orleans' favorite jazz combos helps prove, with spirited renditions of Temptation Rag, Basin Street Blues and four others, that the Dixieland tradition still flourishes in its old home town.

Mama Will Bark (Frank Sinatra & Dagmar; Columbia). A canine switch on Baby It's Cold Outside; also the year's low, so far, for coyly off-color novelties.

Tom's Tune (Georgia Gibbs; Mercury). Like Sam's Song and Elmer's Tune, this new novelty implies that the American male likes nothing better than a bouncy, mildly monotonous fox trot.

Red Sails in the Sunset (Mercury); When It's Springtime In the Rockies (Capitol). Driven into the ground by bandleaders and songsters of the '30s, these hardy shrubs seem to be sprouting again. Current cultivators: Frances Langford, Jo Stafford and Gordon MacRae.

Il Barkio (Spike Jones; Victor). The City Slickers do a bumptious doghouse lampoon of Arditi's coloratura favorite, Il Bacio. For all their hectic enthusiasm, it falls far short of Clara Cluck's classic henhouse version of the same old standard in the '30s.

The Letter (Phil Harris & Alice Faye; Victor). Velvet-voiced Alice going to waste on the caboose end of one of husband Harris' cornball specials.

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