This is me at the age of 13. I know that because my tits hadn’t blossomed and I’m not sporting one of those ridiculously long cigarette holders because I haven’t taken up smoking yet. This was taken at a vintage photo shop in San Francisco; I’m not dressed in classic flapper style because I sensed that the proprietor was one of those guys who would follow me into the dressing room.

Alicia and I had a wonderful time at the Bloomsday Festival, where we followed the entire path of Bloom’s one-day journey through Dublin and nearly drowned ourselves in Guinness. The only thing we skipped was the traditional breakfast loaded with animal innards, opting instead for a modest repast of scones and tea. On the journey home, I couldn’t stop smiling, looking forward to re-reading Ulysses for the umpteenth time.

Though most of the festival goers who chose to wear costumes dressed in Edwardian-era clothing in keeping with the novel’s setting in 1904, some wore Roaring 20s outfits either in honor of the publication date (1922) or because they’d been watching too many BBC series lately. Inspired by 20s fashion, I decided to finally address the music of one of the most bizarre decades in human history.

As noted in my bio, “I am a lifelong music lover who has explored and studied many forms of music, with a particular interest in the history of popular (i.e., non-classical) music dating back to the 1920s, the early stages of commercial recording.” Technically speaking, popular music has existed for centuries, but I have no plans to go back and review the hits of 1646, 1792, 1845 or even 1919. Here’s why I chose that particular decade, courtesy of Byron Morgan on Medium:

Until the 1920s, the music business was dominated not by major record labels, but by song publishers and big vaudeville and theater concerns. In those days, sheet music consistently outsold records of the same hit songs, proving that most of the music heard in homes and in public back then was played by people, not record players. A hit song’s sheet music often sold in the millions between 1910 and 1920. Recorded versions of these songs were at first just seen as a way to promote the sheet music, and were usually released only after sheet music sales began falling.

It’s hard to imagine a world where someone hears a song that catches their fancy and says, “Boy, I gotta get my hands on that sheet music,” but the image of family and friends gathering around the piano to sing the latest hit is kinda sweet.

I’d been fiddling around with the idea of surveying 1920s music and had started a few drafts, but I ran into several problems. Every compilation I checked out was full of holes, largely ignoring the contributions of black and country musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Jimmie Rodgers. The second problem involved the terrible recording quality of many classics, particularly those recorded in the first half of the decade before electrical recording allowed for more sensitive microphones. Though the best vocalists somehow managed to overcome the limitations, most sound like they’re singing from inside a lunchbox, and the complete lack of a bottom results in a tinny listening experience. The white female vocalists generally fall into three categories: brassy, cutesy-wootsy and sopranos who failed their tryouts at the opera house. With a few notable exceptions, the men (especially those you’ve never heard of) aren’t much better. Recording problems aside, many of the songs covered in this review have stood the test of time, and several made their way into the Great American Songbook.

Unlike my coverage of the 30s and 40s, I will not be reviewing a specific compilation but a playlist chosen from various sources. Americans won the lion’s share of the slots because of their dominance in the budding field of jazz, but I managed to include a few contributions from the U.K. and Germany. To complete the picture, you’re more than welcome to read my reviews of Louis Armstrong and Jimmie Rodgers via the 20s menu bar.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I feel obliged to explain why I used the label “bizarre” to describe the 1920s. Most people think the Roaring 20s were a great time to be alive, and in many ways, that is true. From Wikipedia: “The 1920s saw the large-scale development and use of automobiles, telephones, films, radio, and electrical appliances in the lives of millions in the Western world. Aviation soon became a business due to its rapid growth. Nations saw rapid industrial and economic growth, accelerated consumer demand, and introduced significant new trends in lifestyle and culture. The media, funded by the new industry of mass-market advertising driving consumer demand, focused on celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars, as cities rooted for their home teams and filled the new palatial cinemas and gigantic sports stadiums. In many countries, women won the right to vote.” Throw in the widespread availability of bootleg liquor in the United States, the rejection of Victorian mores by the young and restless, the emergence of jazz as the leading form of popular music and packed dance halls all over the States and Western Europe, and one could easily conclude that the average Joes and Janes of the 20s were having the time of their lives.

Beneath the surface, the age was rife with contradictions, latent knock-on effects and signs of cancerous obliviousness that paint a different picture. While Black musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington became quite popular, membership in the Ku Klux Klan rose to disturbing levels. The increase in consumer spending led to a whole-hearted embrace of materialism, and the seemingly endless rise in stock prices spawned the notion that greed is good, leading to heartfelt admiration for the super-rich. The literature and poetry published in the decade depicted a world in deep doo-doo and frequently contained sharp criticism of the new materialism, but hardly anyone took those doomsayers seriously. Laws were passed to make wife-beating a crime, but it continued unabated behind closed doors. Most importantly, the populace was too busy dancing the night away to pay any attention to what was going on in Germany, where the ridiculously punitive reparations imposed by the Allies after WWI opened the door for a guy with a Charlie Chaplin mustache that no one took seriously to build a following that would eventually lead him to power and another ghastly war.

The last thing people in the 20s wanted was another war, but in retrospect, they did everything they could to ensure one. I find that quite bizarre.

Note: As mentioned in my review of 30s music, chart rankings in the pre-Billboard era are guesstimates at best.

1920

Prohibition goes into effect in the United States on January 16, 1920, ensuring a bright future for gangster movies. Women get to vote in presidential elections for the first time, helping to elect Warren G. Harding, who would hold the record for leading the most corrupt administration in U.S. history until Trump wipes his sorry ass from the record books. The U.S. transmits a big fuck you to the rest of the world when the Senate votes against membership in the League of Nations, kicking off a lengthy era of isolationism. The first commercial radio station opens in Detroit and women are admitted to study for full degrees at Oxford. The film Flapper inspires women to raise hemlines to the knees and bob their hair. Notable births include DeForest Kelley, who would turn out to be uniquely qualified to revisit the era of his origins via time travel in the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever.”

“The OKeh Laughing Record (Lachplatte),” Otto Rathke & Lucie Bernardo:

Let’s skip my blabbering and go straight to my source, “The Bizarre History of the OKeh Laughing Record” by R.J. Wilson on Weird. 

Described by the Library of Congress as “one of the most unusual, (in its way) influential, and surprisingly enduring novelty records ever recorded,” “The OKeh Laughing Record” is exactly what its name implies. It begins with a cornetist playing a sad, mournful tune. Suddenly, a woman’s laugh interrupts the performance, temporarily stalling the solo. As the cornet continues to play, the woman keeps laughing, and soon, a male laugh joins her.

That’s really all there is to it. “The OKeh Laughing Record” is fundamentally simple, but also strange—and its unusual nature quickly made it into an international sensation . . .

At the time, the record industry didn’t keep sales figures, but by modern estimates, “The OKeh Laughing Record” sold around one million copies. That would make it one of the most popular recordings of the era, and certainly one of the most popular novelty tracks.

The recording session took place in Berlin and probably featured opera singer Lucie Bernardo as the female voice, Otto Rathke as the male voice, and Felix Silbers on the cornet; no one knows for sure. When I first listened to the track, I thought, “Geez, they would have recorded anything back in the 20s,” and immediately dropped it from the playlist. For reasons unknown, my curiosity got the best of me a few days later, so I decided to do some research. When I saw the sales numbers, I was flabbergasted. Why on earth would a million people buy such a silly record? The only answer I could come up with was that the Spanish Flu pandemic must have caused massive brain damage in the population.

Eventually, it clicked. A good chunk of the world’s population had experienced a war marked by unimaginable brutality: 40 million military and civilian casualties, 20 million deaths, and 7 million permanently disabled veterans. Food shortages led to malnutrition and starvation in many countries, and diseases were rampant. When the war ended, the Spanish Flu claimed another 17 to 25 million people. After living through the horrors of World War I, people needed to experience the healing balm of laughter to move forward, and the “OKeh Laughing Record” provided an ample dose of laughter’s medicine. Lucie Bernardo’s laugh is quite contagious.

Warren Harding might have been a flop in the Oval Office, but as a campaigner, he knew exactly what people wanted more than anything else: a “return to normalcy.” Americans wanted a break from “foreign entanglements” (ignoring their continuous meddling in Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and the Dominican Republic) and have some fun for a change. Though the first two years of the decade were marked by a mini-depression, a powerful recovery would begin in 1922, and with a booming economy, a gradual loosening of moral standards and plenty of bootleg liquor, Americans of the 20s would embrace carpe diem and party like tomorrow would never come.

“Ain’t We Got Fun” Van & Schenck with the Charles A. Prince Orchestra (Kahn-Egan-Whiting):

“Don’t talk so much, old sport,” commanded Gatsby. “Play!”

“IN THE MORNING, IN THE EVENING, AIN’T WE GOT FUN”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote those words to expose the superficiality and obliviousness of the rich, as the lyrics to “Ain’t We Got Fun” are about poor people trying to keep their heads above water while “the rich get richer and the poor get laid off.”

Ev’ry morning, ev’ry evening,
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh but honey
Ain’t we got fun?

The rent’s unpaid, dear,
We haven’t a bus,
But smiles are made dear,
For people like us.

In the winter, in the summer,
Don’t we have fun?
Times are bum and getting bummer,
Still we have fun.

There’s nothing surer,
The rich get rich and the poor get children,
In the meantime, in between time,
Ain’t we got fun?

The lyrics can be interpreted in two ways. Some might read the lyrics as a tribute to American optimism when facing hard times. Commenting on George Orwell’s opinion that the song was centered on working-class unrest, writer Larry Portis had a slightly different take:

He [Orwell] could just as easily have concluded that the song revealed a certain fatalism, a resignation and even capitulation to forces beyond the control of working people. Indeed, it might be only a small step from saying, “Ain’t we got fun” in the midst of hardship to the idea that the poor are happier than the rich—because, as the Beatles intoned, “Money can’t buy me love.” It is possible that “Aint We Got Fun,” a product of the music industry (as opposed to “working-class culture”) was part of a complex resolution of crisis in capitalist society. Far from revealing the indomitable spirit of working people, it figured into the means with which they were controlled.

As Van & Schenck specialized in comedy routines, my take is that Richard A. Whiting’s lyrics are satiric and incorporate both meanings: the poor are screwed and the poor do their best to keep their chins up in the face of difficulties. Like Marie Antoinette, the Gatsbys of the world would have never gotten the hint that they might want to invest some of their riches in ensuring social stability by helping to raise the living standards of the poor.

The song is a foxtrot with a quarter-note melody and a noticeable lack of syncopation, which makes Van & Schenck sound like music teachers trying to get kids to sing the exact notes on the sheet music. The good news is that their exacting orientation results in clear lyrical enunciation—an important consideration when performing a message song.

“Margie,” Eddie Cantor with orchestra (Conrad-Robinson-Davis): Actor, comedian, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter, radio program host, author and cartoon character in many a Looney Toons production, Eddie Cantor was one of the most popular performers of the era and beyond. Christened “Banjo Eyes” for his eye-rolling song-and-dance routines and perfectly shaped orbs, Cantor also devoted his boundless energy to many good causes, coming up with the name for a charity founded by FDR in 1938: The March of Dimes. He was so well-respected in the USA that when he used his radio show to urge listeners to mail a dime to President Roosevelt, other celebrities followed suit and soon the White House was awash in dimes: 2,680,000 dimes, to be exact.

His one glaring flaw was his willingness to perform in blackface. During his stint with the Zigfield Follies, he found a mentor in Bert Williams, a “negro” from the West Indies. Though Bert was black, both he and Cantor wore blackface during their performances. Eddie became aware of the obstacles non-white people faced in society when hitting the bars with his fellow performers, but the awareness had its limits. From “Eddie Cantor and Black Lives Matter” on jewthink.org:

Despite his concerns about Williams’ mistreatment, Cantor still used burnt cork to darken his face every night, playing into vile racist stereotypes while performing. Indeed, even after Cantor had achieved stardom while performing without blackface, he continued to wear it, off and on, for years. His 1930 film Whoopee!—best-known for its title song, “Makin’ Whoopee”—includes not only blackface but redface as well. It’s hard to watch today without cringing.

It’s important to understand blackface in its historical context. At the time, it was commonplace. Producers required performers to wear it. Cantor wore it to get ahead. You can’t blame him for adhering to the norms of the times he was born into, except . . . of course, you can, and you should. Blackface is oppressive now, and blackface was oppressive then, too.

We’ll look at another perspective on blackface in a bit, but questionable behavior aside, Cantor possessed a voice that was unique and unusually appealing. His phrasing involves frequent shifts to conversational rendering, a mastery of comedic and romantic expression, and he had no qualms about adding lyrics of his own. He comes across as friendly, playful and a bit mischievous.

“Margie” is now a jazz standard, covered by a wide range of musicians from Dave Brubeck to Fats Domino. Though qualified as jazz, Cantor’s version is somewhere between Vaudeville and pop. The song was named after Cantor’s five-year-old daughter, but she is not the Margie in the song. The official lyrics involve a relationship in the courting stage (“My little Margie, I’m always thinking of you, Margie!/I’ll tell the world I love you; don’t forget your promise to me”) but become much more interesting when Cantor inserts one of his own lyrical riffs:

My little Margie,
I’ve even cut out liquor
Margie, one sip and I get sicker
You are like a little doctor to me;
When I’m nervous, you just put me back in service.
Margie, in some café we’ll wine and dine the whole night through.
And, Margie, when we’ve had our fill,
You know who’ll pay the bill, Margie, Margie it’s you.

I don’t know whether to call him a cheapskate or a proto-feminist, but I do appreciate the defiance of Prohibition.

1921

The Harding Administration warns the tired and poor from Southern and Eastern Europe to stay the hell away from the USA with the Emergency Quota Act, which should have been labeled the “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet Act.” Empowered women go ape shit over a bill introduced in Congress to ban them from smoking in public in the District of Columbia; the bill dies a justifiably horrible death, but women smokers are still generally viewed as sinful sluts. The Pittsburgh Pirates defeat the Philadelphia Phillies 8-5 in the first baseball game carried over the airwaves. The Tulsa Race Massacre destroys a vibrant black neighborhood known as the “Black Wall Street,” and no one is convicted of inciting violence. Moviegoers flock to the theatres to catch The Kid, written, produced, directed and edited by featured star Charlie Chaplin. Ulysses is banned from publication in the United States (grrrr). Meanwhile, in the U.K., unemployment peaks at 2,200,000.

“April Showers,” Al Jolson with orchestra (Silvers-DeSylva): Now we’ll look at another aspect of blackface that might surprise you. From Wikipedia:

Black songwriter Noble Sissle, in the 1930s, said “He was always the champion of the Negro songwriter and performer, and was first to put Negroes in his shows.” Of Jolson’s “Mammy” songs, he adds, “with real tears streaming down his blackened face, he immortalized the Negro motherhood of America as no individual could.”

While growing up, Jolson had many Black friends, including Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who became a prominent tap dancer. As early as 1911, at the age of 25, Jolson was noted for fighting discrimination on Broadway and later in his movies. In 1924, he promoted the play Appearances by which became the first production with an all-Black cast produced on Broadway. He also brought a Black dance team from San Francisco that he tried to put in a Broadway show, and demanded equal treatment for Cab Calloway, with whom he performed duets in the movie The Singing Kid.

Jolson read in the newspaper that songwriters Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, neither of whom he had ever heard of, were refused service at a restaurant because of their race. He tracked them down and took them out to dinner, “insisting he’d punch anyone in the nose who tried to kick us out!” According to biographer Al Rose, Jolson and Blake became friends and went to boxing matches together.

As Ted Gioia put it in the article “Al Jolson: A Megastar Long Buried Under a Layer of Blackface,” “This is heavy baggage for Al Jolson. True, he was the comeback kid of his day. His cinema career revitalized his flagging popularity in the late 1920s, just as “The Jolson Story” brought him back into the limelight 20 years later. Even after his death, Jolson somehow managed to keep center stage, commemorated in a huge monumental grave site within eyesight of the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, dazzling thousands of commuters daily with a six-pillar structure towering over a 120-foot waterfall. Here, one finds an almost life-size statue of Jolson down on one knee with palms outspread, almost as if he is imploring motorists to give him one more chance. Perhaps they will someday, but for the time being, Jolson promises to be remembered less for his talent, and more for his makeup.”

Though there were performers who used blackface to ridicule African Americans and portray them as “humorously ignorant,” Al Jolson was not one of them. People forget that Al Jolson had two strikes against him from the start: he was a Jew in a WASP-dominated culture where anti-semitism was commonplace, and as a Lithuanian immigrant, he experienced the widespread resentment towards Eastern Europeans that would eventually lead to the immigration ban in 1921. As an outsider himself, he could empathize with other outsiders who had to work twice as hard to earn a place in society. I find blackface as offensive as anyone, but the cultural norms of long ago have to be taken into consideration. In comparison to Thomas Jefferson and many of the Founding Fathers, who bought, sold, bred and punished slaves, Al Jolson’s blackface qualifies as a misdemeanor.

Quite simply, Al Jolson was one of the greatest singers and performers America ever produced. In Singing Jazz: The Singers and Their Styles, Bing Crosby talked about Jolson’s impact: “His chief attribute was the sort of electricity he generated when he sang. Nobody in those days did that. When he came out and started to sing, he just elevated that audience immediately. Within the first eight bars he had them in the palm of his hand.” The recording he made of “April Showers” in 1921 suffers from poor recording quality, but Jolson’s engaging delivery, excellent vibrato and sensitive phrasing come through loud and clear. When he sings the key lines in the coda, “So keep on looking for a bluebird/And list’ning for his song/Whenever April showers come along,” you get the sense that he’s singing to you and only you, pleading with you to embrace optimism and view temporary setbacks as opportunities. His plea feels completely authentic, and you know he’s been there, battling the blues and searching for a path to happiness.

If the recording quality of this version turns you off, Jolson re-recorded “April Showers” under more favorable conditions—in 1932 (with Guy Lombardo) and in 1946 for the biopic The Jolson Story. Most of the Jolson compilations feature updated versions of his 1920s hits.

“Wabash Blues,” Isham Jones Orchestra  (Meinken): Most sources identify 1920 as the beginning of the Jazz Era, but many of the tunes presented as jazz in the 20s sure don’t sound all that jazzy. The instrumentation is there, but the rhythms are kinda clunky and improvisation is non-existent or severely limited. What’s missing—particularly in the jazz performed by all-white bands—is swing, the practice of emphasizing the offbeats to create a propulsive effect that makes you want to wiggle your fanny. The basic technique involves a shift from quarter-notes to eighth-notes, lengthening the initial eighth note to create syncopation. Ragtime featured syncopated melodies, but not the kind of rhythm that encourages ass-shaking.

My sense is that the conservative, baby-steps approach to jazz had to do with a combination of American puritanism and racism. Like most forms of American music, Jazz was invented by African Americans, a form of music to be approached with due caution lest the “negroes” encourage sinful behavior in the shiny-white population. The barriers would fall as the decade progressed, largely because curious young whites with latent hedonistic tendencies began collecting jazz and blues records and patronizing clubs that featured black musicians. From “Why It Matters: The Jazz Age“: “Jazz music represented a symbol of freedom in the form of lyrical prose and musical expression that quickly became popular among middle-class White Americans. Young people in the 1920s, captivated by jazz, were the first generation of teenagers and young adults to rebel against their parents’ traditional culture.”

Though this version of “Wabash Blues” is a foxtrot with limited swing, it represents a big baby step in the evolution of jazz as popular music with a stop-time passage, a hot trumpet solo and a “laughing cornet” played by Louis Panico. Those little bursts of excitement combined with a solid arrangement from Isham Jones turned “Wabash Blues” into a major hit, spending six weeks at the top of the charts and selling over two million records.

“My Man,” Fanny Brice with the Rosario Bourton Orchestra (Pollock-Willemetz-Charles-Yvain): Fanny’s signature song is a somewhat sterilized translation of “Mon Homme,” a French tune popularized by Mistinguett. Both songs are dramatic monologues depicting a woman who completely subjugates herself to a man who beats her, takes her money (French version) and cheats on her (English version). I have to admit that I find the French version far more compelling due to its deeper dive into the psychology of subjugation and Mistinguett’s ability to express contradictory feelings of self-loathing, defiance and how-dare-you-judge-me. Fanny’s take is more demure and despairing:

Two or three girls has he
That he likes as well as me
But I love him!
I don’t know why I should
He isn’t good, he isn’t true
He beats me too
What can I do?

Oh, my man I love him so
He’ll never know
All my life is just despair
But I don’t care
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright, all right

And what’s the difference if I say “I’ll go away,”
When I know I’ll come back on my knees someday?

Oh, for fuck’s sake . . . figuratively and literally.

1922

In a remarkable display of American ingenuity, Christian K. Nelson patents the Eskimo Pie. Construction begins on Yankee Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl opens for business. Rebecca Latimer Felton, a white supremacist feminist (?!#*?) from Georgia, becomes the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate after the incumbent croaks. Her distinguished career in Congress lasts a grand total of one day. King Tut arrives on the scene just in time to celebrate Mussolini’s rise to power. Heads of the British Empire celebrate the news that they now govern one-fifth of the world’s population by throwing Gandhi into the slammer and taking control of Palestine. Feeling ignored by their British masters, the Irish start a civil war.

“Mr. Gallagher And Mr. Shean, ‘Positively, Mr. Gallagher?’ ‘Absolutely Mr. Shean’,”  Ed Gallagher & Al Shean (Gallagher-Shean):

This is a Vaudeville comedy routine. I’m not laughing.

Shean: Oh, Mr Gallagher
Gallagher: Yes, hello?
Shean: Oh, Mr. Gallagher
Gallagher: Well, well, well?
Shean: Do you think it’s wrong for a man to strike his wife?
Gallagher: Strike his wife?
Shean: Suppose she goes out every night and comes home and starts a fight?
Can a man come home to such treatment every night?
Gallagher: Well, no, but Mr Shean, Mr Shean
A man who’d raise his hand to his wife is low and mean
If it’s more than you can stand, remember to never use your hand
Shean: Use diplomacy, Mr Gallagher?
Gallagher: Use a sandbag, Mr Shean

I’ll spare you the verse about the “negro” baby.

According to Wikipedia, “Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean” is one of the most famous songs to come from vaudeville. First performed by the duo of Gallagher and Shean in the early 1920s, it became a huge hit and carried Gallagher & Shean to stardom.

Infuckingcredible.

“Hot Lips (He’s Got Hot Lips When He Plays Jazz),” Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra (Busse-Lang-Davis): I guess it didn’t take much to label certain musical performances as “hot” in the early days of the jazz era, but like I said, the development of jazz proceeded in baby steps, and this number was a huge hit for Whiteman.

From my perspective, trumpeter Henry Busse’s first attempt at “hot” sounds more like someone blowing a kazoo, and his schtick of opening his lines with growls during what I suppose is the climactic passage leaves much to be desired. In the middle of the piece, he does the laughing trumpet bit, leaving me ice cold. The pace of the song is rather stately and does little to inspire heat. Whiteman’s orchestra would swing a bit harder in the coming years, but in my opinion, this “blues foxtrot” comes up short in the mojo department.

“I’m Just Wild About Harry,” Marion Harris with Isham Jones and His Orchestra (Eubie Blake-Noble Sissle): The song that would become Harry Truman’s campaign song in 1948 when he shocked the world by defeating the guy on the top of the wedding cake is one of the most significant songs in popular music history.

The song first appeared in the Broadway musical comedy Shuffle Along in 1921 and became the show’s most popular number. That the show ever made it to Broadway is something of a miracle. The writers had never written a musical. The cast was all-black, and producers were skeptical that any all-black show could be commercially successful. George C. Wolfe, producer of the musical Shuffle Along: Or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, which hit Broadway in 2016, described the situation in an interview with LAist:

. . . along came this weird show that, when it came into town, was $18,000 in debt, which was like $200,000 in debt [today]. They had an all-black cast, a jazz score, and it was introducing syncopation and jazz to Broadway. It was up on a weird little theater on 63rd Street, which was sort of a theater and sort of a lecture hall.

When asked if there were concerns about riots in response to the first love scenes between African American characters (staged to the songs “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “Love Will Find a Way”), Wolfe proved he had done his research:

They weren’t concerned, they were terrified that there would be. There were various incidents that happened mostly in the south where if traditional fragile human behavior was exhibited on the stage by black characters, the audience would go crazy . . . any time any love pairings between two black characters was presented on stage, it was done in a mocking tone or a playful tone or with a sense of ridicule. This was the first time there was a sincere, delicate, emotional relationship embodied.  When they performed the number, one of the stories was that three of the creators were hiding at the stage door ready to run in case something violent happened.

Wolfe’s story has a happy ending:

It integrated Broadway and it changed New York City. 63rd Street was a two-way street, but because of the demand and so much traffic, it became a one-way street. It just kept on altering and changing the fabric of New York City. A lot of scholars believe that because of the curiosity that Shuffle Along provoked in downtown audiences, it started the phenomenon of slumming and signaled the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.

Shuffle Along ran for 504 performances, launched the careers of Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker, and cemented the reputations of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle.

We may never have heard “I’m Just Wild About Harry” if Eubie Blake had stuck to his guns. The original composition was set to a Viennese Waltz until performer and vocalist Lottie Gee asked for an upgrade to something more up-tempo. Eubie reluctantly agreed, but the early reactions from the audience were ho-hum. Eubie was about to cut the song from the show when a replacement dancer came up with a dance routine that energized the song and made the audience . . . just wild about Harry.

The Marion Harris version was the first to top the charts. Marion was quite popular at the time and was the first white singer to sing blues and jazz numbers. After recording several hits with Victor Records in the late 1910s and early 1920s, she abandoned the label when they refused to allow her to record W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” and signed with Columbia (good girl!). Handy paid her the highest compliment when he said, “She sang blues so well that people hearing her records sometimes thought that the singer was colored.” To Marion, blues and Southern dialect songs came naturally to her, given her origins in Vanderburgh County, Indiana (where the North meets the South).

Her performance of “I’m Just Wild About Harry” captures the enthusiasm of finding the perfect mate. Her enunciation is clear and crisp, handling the spell-it-out parts and the rhythmic emphasis on the fourth beat without breaking a sweat. My favorite part comes when she delivers the following lines:

The heavenly blisses
Of his kisses
Fill me with ecstasy.
He’s sweet just like chocolate candy
And just like honey from the bee

You can feel her swooning over Harry’s sweet canoodling.

The Isham Jones arrangement is initially conservative, leaving plenty of room for Marion to do her stuff. When the song hits the 1:56 mark, he starts to loosen things up, strengthening the backbeat and allowing Louis Panico to fly with a genuinely jazzy trumpet solo.

Hooray for the big baby step!

1923

The year opens with the Rosewood Massacre in Florida, where another black community is destroyed in seven days. Oklahoma bans the teaching of evolution because they don’t want anyone to know that the human race originated in Africa. The Supreme Court decides that Bhagat Singh Thind cannot become a naturalized U.S. citizen because, as a Punjabi Sikh, he is not a “white person.” Hmm . . . I believe I’m detecting a pattern here . . . The first US dance marathon kicks off in New York, where Alma Cummings sets the world record by staying on her feet for 27 hours, burning through six male partners who can only be described as wimps. The number of marks needed to purchase a single American dollar reaches 353,000 in Germany, encouraging a low-life ex-corporal to launch a putsch that would spark his literary career. Warren Harding dies in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, leaving Calvin Coolidge to clean up his Teapot Dome mess. The Disney brothers open up shop and the Hollywood Sign now graces the horizon. Wembley Stadium opens for business, but they have to settle for holding the FA Cup Finals because the Gallagher Brothers hadn’t been born yet.

“Yes! We Have No Bananas,” Billy Jones with orchestra (Silver-Cohn): Hold on to your hats, folks, for we are about to explore a song that held the record for the most sheet music sales until Michael Jackson’s Thriller. You are now well-prepared for next week’s Trivia Night at your favorite watering hole!

Frank Silver explained how the song came about to Time Magazine: “I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son. About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel, I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with ‘Yess.’ The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn.” He failed to mention that the song owed its existence to a true-to-life event: an outbreak of Panama Disease created a serious shortage of the yellow fruit. We can also assume that the fruit stand owner said “yes” to everything because he hated to disappoint his customers.

Billy Jones recorded several versions, changing the lyrics to keep from getting bored. Though some of those renderings feature his Happiness Boys partner Ernie Hare, the vocals on the original are 100% certified Billy. According to DJ Professor Dan, Billy assumes the following roles and voices:

• A bad impression of the Greek greengrocer himself.
• The role of a customer, unsuccessfully attempting to order a coconut pie. Turns out they have no coconut pie. They do, however, have coconuts.
• And the role of the greengrocer’s daughter, Mariana. She also doesn’t have a banana. Nor presumedly a coconut pie.

I detect no evidence of racism or immigrant-fueled resentment, so feel free to enjoy the song without lingering guilt.

And, oh, by the way . . . The Happiness Boys became the highest-paid radio singers in America in 1928. Baby, you are going to crush it when Trivia Night rolls around!

“Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye),” Al Jolson with Charles Prince orchestra (Kahn-Erdman-Russo): Jolson gives it all he’s got in this snappy little number from the Broadway musical Bombo. The musical was performed at Jolson’s 59th Street Theatre and was really a thinly disguised showcase for Jolson to sing some of his most popular songs.

How thin? Here’s the plot: Jolson plays a guy conveniently named Guy living in Genoa in 1921. Somehow he time-travels back to Spain in 1942, rechristens himself “Bombo,” and meets Christopher Columbus, who makes him a slave and takes him on his first trip to the New World. A total of twenty-nine songs appeared in rotation over the 219 performances and I have no idea how Jolson managed to slip in “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” (which takes place at a train station) or “California, Here I Come” (unless Guy was also a psychic who had advance knowledge of the discovery of California in 1542 and was plotting to escape slavery to hook up with Juan Cabrillo in San Diego).

Yeah, pretty flimsy—but I am 100% positive that the audience couldn’t have cared less. They wanted to see, hear and thrill to the sight and sound of the great entertainer, period. What makes “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” such a delightful experience is a combination of Jolson’s bottomless energy and his off-lyrics riffing, which increases in frequency in the closing verse (riffs in parentheses):

Toot Toot Tootsie, goodbye (bye bye bye bye bye!)
Toot Toot Tootsie, don’t cry
The little choo-choo, the little train
(That takes), that takes me
Away from you, no, (no) words can tell how sad it makes me
Kiss me, (kiss me) Tootsie and then
(Oh, ha, ha) do it over again
And though I yearn
You need to learn
I’ll keep playing Solitaire until I return
(Tut, tut, tut) Toot Toot Tootsie, don’t cry (don’t cry, don’t cry)!
Toot Toot Tootsie, goodbye!

In 1920s parlance, “tootsie” had several connotations outside of its use as a substitute for “flapper”: “sweetheart,” “a young and attractive girl,” “an effeminate male,” or “prostitute.” Since this tootsie shed tears, we can eliminate “prostitute,” and as Al Jolson was heterosexual, “effeminate male” is out of the question. Since Jolson is clearly reluctant to get on that little choo-choo, I’m putting my money on “a sweetheart who happened to be a young and attractive girl.” I would also venture to guess that she was slim and flat-chested in keeping with the times. Sorry, tit men, but Mae West was an anomaly in the 20s.

“The Charleston,” Arthur Gibbs and His Gang (James P. Johnston): This was the first recording of the dance song that defined the era, and as is often the case in American music, The Charleston is of African American origin.

James P. Johnston, known as “The Father of Stride,” picked up the essential beat from Charleston dockworkers and composed the song for the all-black musical Runnin’ Wild. As luck would have it, Victor Records had just begun to enter the “race records” market and thought “The Charleston” would be a good fit for the recently signed Arthur Gibbs and His Gang. Recorded in late 1923, the song became a hit in early 1924, and The Charleston craze was on. Paul Whiteman’s 1925 version would also become a hit.

There is some debate as to when the dance was invented; Johnston claimed to have seen a variant performed as early as 1913. Once the dance hit Harlem, it evolved into a “kicking up your heels” number, perfectly suited to the knee-high skirts of Roaring 20s flappers. The original version of the dance would fall out of favor when styles shifted to floor-level dresses in the 1930s, but the Lindy Hop borrowed some of the essential features, and variants on the variant blossomed during the Swing Era (Lindy Charleston, Savoy Charleston, ’30s or ’40s Charleston, and Swinging Charleston).

The Arthur Gibbs version of the song is suited for newbies to pick up the steps; later versions are much, much faster. I’ve included two videos to help you appreciate the difference. The first (from warholsoup100) features the Gibbs version and still photographs; the second (from glamourdaze) shows the flappers and their beaus dancing at breakneck speed—and ain’t they got fun, or what?

1924

Membership in the Ku Klux Klan reaches five million as the nation warms to its anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, white supremacist agenda. Silent Cal celebrates his ascension to the throne by signing the anti-immigrant, white supremacist Immigration Act of 1924, banning all Asian immigration and lowering overall quotas by eighty percent. A week later, Cal gives Native Americans the right to vote, earning himself a spot in photographic history. The Klan demonstrates its power by managing to block anti-Klan statements in the platforms of both political parties. The Democrats display their unfitness for office by taking 103 ballots to nominate nobody John W. Davis for president, ensuring that Coolidge will serve a term all his own. Meanwhile, speakeasies and gin joints are packed, earning Al Capone an estimated $60 million a year from bootlegging. In the Mother Country, the Brits swap PMs for the fourth time in two years.

“It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’,” Wendell Hall (Hall): Known as the “Red-haired Music Maker” (boring) and the Pineapple Picador (much better), Wendell Hall began his career in Chicago as a sheet music song plugger. “What’s a song plugger?” you ask. Well, a song plugger would travel around the country visiting department stores and music stores that sold sheet music. The plugger would sit down at the piano and wait for customers who were interested in a certain song but wanted to “try before they buy.” Wendell then went on to Vaudeville, singing and playing a xylophone. When he figured out that the ukulele was a helluva lot easier to travel with, he mastered the instrument in no time and became a popular radio star in Chicago. After moving to New York and signing with Victor, he began his recording career with a composition all his own. Released in late 1923, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo”’ became a monster hit in 1924 and ignited the ukulele craze.

By golly, them 1920s folks sure had a lot of crazes.

Some called it “hillbilly music” and others labeled it a novelty song, but I would describe it as country with a blues accent because Wendell sounds like one of those old blues guys. Though he wrote the song, he had some help with the arrangement courtesy of “The Original Ukulele Lady,” May Singhi Breen.

By golly, them 1920s folks sure had a lot of nicknames.

“It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo”’ sold over two million records for one reason and one reason alone: it’s a hoot! Wendell’s delivery tells us he’s constantly on the verge of laughter, and sometimes he crosses the line with a hearty laugh or two. The lyrical structure repeats a verse-chorus pattern all through the song; the verses present a variety of conundrums while the chorus remains steady. That pattern can get old after a while, but Wendell changes his delivery in each chorus, adding extra syllables and throwing in some scat. Here’s an example:

• Lyrical Chorus: “Oh, it ain’t a-gonna rain no mo’, no mo’/It ain’t a-gonna rain no mo’/But how in the world can the old folks tell?/It ain’t a-gonna rain no mo'”
• Modified Chorus: “Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no mo’, no no mo’/No no, no no no mo’/How in the world can the old folks tell?/It ain’t a-gonna rain no mo’

The verse scenes are humorous in different ways; some involve wordplay, and others depict humorous incidents. Here are my two favorites:

Ah, mosquitee he fly high
Oh, mosquitee he fly low
If ol’ mister skeeter light on me
He ain’t a-gonna fly no mo’

A little black and white animal out in the woods
I says, “Ain’t that little cat pretty, uh-huh!”
I went right over to pick it up
But it wasn’t that kind of a kitty

I’m not much of a nature-lover except in the abstract, so I looked up how long it takes to get rid of skunk smell: “two weeks to several months, depending on the severity of the spray.” You might call me a sick fuck, but I still think that verse is funny.

Wendell would have a long career in music, hosting radio shows, writing songs, and learning to play all kinds of string instruments. He even published an instruction book, Wendell Hall’s Ukulele Method, edited by “The Original Ukulele Lady” and still available today. Sensitive to changing trends, he re-recorded “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo” in 1925 with the new-fangled electric set-up.

Best of all, Wendell’s wedding was the first to be broadcast via radio in 1924. Trivia buff bonus!

“It Had To Be You,” Isham Jones and His Orchestra with Marion Harris (Jones-Kahn): By this time, Marion had racked up thirty-two top ten hits, making her eligible to receive two nicknames: “The Queen of Blues” and “The Little Girl with the Big Voice.” If you’re keeping score, two nicknames put Marion one ahead of Eddie Cantor, tied with Wendell Hall, and two short of Jolson’s four. All those singers were mere pikers when compared to Babe Ruth, who earned twenty-three sobriquets.

Moving on from primitive marketing tactics, “It Had to Be You” was Marion’s 33rd top-ten hit, which would have surprised no one who lived in the first half of the decade. In addition to Marion’s consistent chart performance, composer Isham Jones and lyricist Gus Kahn wrote eight number ones between 1922 and 1925, so this was a match made in heaven or wherever atheists go when they bite the dust. Her grounding in blues made it easier for her to transition to jazz, and as jazz got jazzier, Marion rode the wave and added improvisation to her skill set, expanding melodies beyond the notes on the sheet music. The modus operandi in the 20s and 30s usually granted the vocalist one turn covering the verses and chorus, but Isham Jones gave Marion the opportunity for a second go-round, where she extends the melodic lines with grace and smooth confidence.

The only downside of the song is its thematic familiarity to “My Man,” repurposing the notion that every woman loves a tough guy who will keep her in her place:

Some others I’ve seen
Might never be mean
Might never be cross
Or try to be boss
But they wouldn’t do

For nobody else
Gave me a thrill
With all your faults
I love you still
It had to be you
Wonderful you
It had to be you

Since most of the lyrics in the 20s were penned by men, this trend hardly surprises me, but the idealist in me is sick with disappointment.

“Rhapsody in Blue,” Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra (George Gershwin)

If you have an image of George Gershwin sitting all alone at his piano, working feverishly through the night on what would become his most famous composition, you can file it in your brain’s spam folder. The development of “Rhapsody in Blue” was more like a movie or a novel with a plot full of twists and turns, a slew of characters and plenty of drama.

The story began when Paul Whiteman organized an evening of experimental classical-jazz music that turned out to be quite a success. The event stoked his musical ambitions regarding the mingling of classical music and jazz, so he asked George Gershwin to come up with a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert. Gershwin politely declined due to previous engagements. A few days later, while playing billiards with lyricist Buddy DeSylva, brother Ira interrupted the match to read an excerpt from an article in the New York Tribune that inaccurately claimed that George was in the process of composing a jazz concerto for the upcoming Whiteman extravaganza.

“What the fuck?” said George . . . no, I made that up.

George called Whiteman tout suite. It turned out that one of Whiteman’s rivals was planning to steal his idea, and after hearing the desperation in Whiteman’s voice, George agreed to help. He had five weeks to come up with the pièce de résistance, so he hopped on a train to Boston.

Huh?

George explained his travel itinerary in Isaac Goldberg’s George Gershwin: A Study in American Music:

At this stage of the piece, I was summoned to Boston for the premiere of Sweet Little Devil. I had already done some work on the rhapsody. It was on the train, with its steely rhythms, its rattle-ty-bang that is often so stimulating to a composer . . . I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise. And there I suddenly heard — and even saw on paper — the complete construction of the rhapsody, from beginning to end. No new themes came to me, but I worked on the thematic material already in my mind and tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America — of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston I had a definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.

Goldberg, Isaac, George Gershwin: A Study in American Music, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, New York, 1931. p. 138.

Gershwin finished the composition in a few weeks . . . sort of. Gershwin had plenty of ideas for the arrangement, but his orchestration skills were a bit on the weak side. The Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra consisted of twenty-three musicians, most of whom were capable of playing multiple instruments—perfect for Gershwin’s grand ambitions, but somebody needed to complete the charts. Fortunately, Whiteman had a fabulous arranger on staff by the name of Ferdie Grofé:

In the heat of the occasion, the contribution of Ferdie Grofé, the arranger on the Whiteman staff who had scored the Rhapsody in ten days, was overlooked or ignored. It is true that an appreciable part of the scoring had been indicated by Gershwin; nevertheless, the contribution of Grofé was of prime importance, not only to the composition, but to the jazz scoring of the immediate future.

Goldberg, p. 54

To appreciate Grofé’s contribution, here is a list of the instruments employed in Rhapsody in Blue:

• Reeds: Oboe, heckelphone, clarinet, sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone, soprano clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute
• Brass: Two trumpets, two French horns, two trombones, tuba
• Strings: Double bass, violins, two pianos
• Percussion: Drum set, timpani, glockenspiel
• Miscellaneous: Tenor banjo

Ten days? I might be able to craft a similar arrangement in ten years!

Whiteman’s “An Experiment in Modern Music” premiered to a packed house on Lincoln’s Birthday, 1924, a deliberate choice made by Whiteman. Before presenting the twenty-six musical movements in the program, Whiteman’s manager, Hugh C. Ernst, explained that the purpose of the concert was purely educational and that Whiteman had chosen the varied selections to exemplify the “melodies, harmony and rhythms which agitate the throbbing emotional resources of this young restless age.” As the “experiment” proceeded apace, most of the audience sat on their hands . . . then the ventilation system went on the fritz. By the time Gershwin made his appearance in the 25th movement (!), several patrons had abandoned the concert and made their way to the speakeasies. Those who remained probably felt the same way part-time Catholics feel when they attend the “Three Hours of Agony” service on Good Friday. I WANT THIS TO BE OVER NOW!

What saved the night was a modification to the opening passage made during rehearsals. Instead of playing the trill indicated by the score, clarinetist Ross Gorman went off-script and tried out a rising glissando that morphed into a figure closing with a passage mimicking a laughing cornet or trombone. Gershwin loved that bit of whimsy and gave Gorman the go-ahead to play it in the performance. When Gorman opened the piece with that blessed bit of improvisation, the sleepy audience woke up and soon found themselves mesmerized by the sheer inventiveness and originality of the piece. The second the performance came to a close, the audience “applauded stormily” (ibid., p. 152), which I’m sure was a great relief for Gershwin and Whiteman. The immediate critical response was mixed at best, for it is often the case that music critics are prone to whine and spew vitriol when they encounter music they don’t understand.

Before we explore the composition, I would like to answer a question on many a person’s mind in an age where formal musical training is out of style: “What is a rhapsody, anyway?” For those of you who couldn’t care less about the difference between a cantata and a sonata, I have good news! Rhapsodies have no fixed structure, no required form, and no specific rules regarding content. The only rule is that a rhapsody can have only one movement, but some composers get around that rule by calling their work “rhapsodies.” Rhapsodies are the musical equivalent of free-form poetry. BBC Music Magazine offers a typically economic definition:

We can thank the Greeks for the idea of the Rhapsody, though their Rhapsodies were rather more word-based – poetry to be exact. Poetic Rhapsodies were a kind of recital of all the best bits of poems, brought together in one colourful epic.

And that’s really what a musical Rhapsody is, a piece of music of indeterminate length and with no formal structure, comprised of a number of different musical ideas. A Rhapsody is all about dynamics: light and shade, high and low, loud and soft, happy and sad . . . It’s a story, a journey and usually quite the musical ride.

Though the absence of strict rules may sound like an invitation to create chaos, rhapsodies are rarely chaotic (unless the composer is deliberately trying to create chaos). When Gershwin said he had a definite plot for the piece, he envisioned a structure with many variations in mood, tempo and timbre, all held together with a strong motif repeated at key transitional moments.

Here’s the thing. Whether you’re listening to a rhapsody from Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, or Gershwin, the important thing to remember is that the composer is attempting to express emotions and imagery while hoping to evoke those emotions and imagery in the listener. Unless you’re planning to learn the piece, fuck the technical details, allow the music to connect with your emotions, and let your brain call up the images evoked by the music. All interpretations of rhapsodies are valid because we are all going to experience the music differently, based on our personalities and experiences. I can tell you that “Rhapsody in Blue” employs the keys Bb Major, A Major, C Mixolydian, and E Major; I can point out the deliberate frequency of blue notes; and I can explain that the time signatures vary from 4/4 to 5/4 to 6/4 to 7/4 but none of that information is relevant to the composer’s true intention to activate your senses and trigger an emotional reaction.

When you listen to “Rhapsody in Blue,” do you hear “a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness?” I hear the blues and melting pot as a single entity, and I certainly feel the metropolitan madness, but the pep doesn’t strike me as “national”—Rhapsody in Blue is urban music, not prairie music. The opening clarinet figure calls up images of beautiful women dressed to the nines for a night spent slumming in Harlem, and many of Gershwin’s piano contributions scream “busy and bustling.” Most of the people I know who have heard the rhapsody equate it with New York City, and I can see/hear that in the shifting moods oscillating between the daytime rush and romantic nights. The truth is, I feel different emotions every time I listen to the piece. When I listened to it for this review, I felt depressed, because the America depicted in the song is long gone and never coming back. However you experience it, I hope you experience “Rhapsody in Blue” as one of America’s greatest contributions to music.

Oh, by the way, George wanted to name the piece “American Rhapsody,” but his brother Ira talked him out of it. That proved to be fortunate for Gershwin’s heirs because 95.78% of the world today doesn’t want to buy anything made in America.

Okay! I’ll be back soon to explore the second half of the decade when everything was copacetic . . . until it wasn’t.

*****

Postscript: I know many of my regular readers like to read my reviews on Sunday, but I was unable to do that because I was stupid enough to answer a phone call. A couple of days after we made our way back to Cork, my boss called and asked me to come back to work a couple of days earlier than expected. Long story short, she wanted me to travel to Poland, Romania and Hungary to get feedback from EU staff regarding the deteriorating levels of LGBTQ acceptance in those countries. I was in Eastern Europe all last week and had no time to make the Sunday deadline. I should be able to return to the regular schedule next Sunday with Part 2. Thank you for your patience and understanding.