Russell Patterson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Diversification was the name of the game in the second half of the decade. The Klan may have had the politicians in their pockets but they couldn’t stop the growing interest in music made by African-Americans. Tin Pan Alley still cranked out plenty of popular tunes but faced challenges from composers who followed George Gershwin’s path to more sophisticated compositions. Jimmie Rodgers helped make country music more palatable to the masses while Broadway musicals continued to pump out memorable melodies. People were still doing crazy shit like sitting on flagpoles and participating in dance marathons, and you would be considered gauche if you didn’t bring your raccoon coat to a college football matchup. Crossword puzzles and Mah-jongg quickly became obsessions, and bathtub gin continued to flow like the Niagara. For the most part, people were still having tons of fun . . . until it all came crashing down.
1925
Dance bands hit the airwaves, broadcasting from dance halls, radio stations and hotels. John T. Scopes is arrested in Tennessee for teaching evolution, kicking off a legal battle that will allow Dick York to achieve a measure of fame sufficient enough to land a role as the embattled husband on Bewitched. Significant publications include Mein Kampf and The Great Gatsby. Though the star-studded Yankees yield the American League pennant to the Washington Senators, they can take pride in the fact that they now represent the largest city in the world. The first motel opens in San Luis Obispo, California. Significant births include Yogi Berra and Lenny Bruce, both of whom would become renowned for their memorable contributions to the English language. Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel; when she arrives sopping wet and out of breath at Kingsdown, Kent, her first words are, “You guys really need to build a Chunnel.”
“St. Louis Blues,” Bessie Smith (W.C.Handy): My goodness! I wonder what the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan thought of Bessie Smith!
. . . by all accounts, Smith was a larger-than-life figure in the 1920s and 1930s. Reports suggest she enjoyed having a good time. She drank moonshine, had sex outside of marriage, and was involved in lesbian relationships. Her music embraced behaviors and attitudes that appeared “unseemly.” At a time when African American women in leadership positions were trying to shrug off stereotypes about loose African American women, Smith’s music and behavior brought those “bad” African American women into the public sphere. Yet I submit that Smith was more than a caricature of herself and other working-class African American women. In her lyrics, Smith worked out publicly the private triumphs and sufferings of a blues woman and a blues people.
Coretta Pittman, “Bessie Smith’s Blues as Rhetorical Advocacy,” from Women and Rhetoric Between the Wars, Southern Illinois University Press, 2013.
I think the Wiz might have died of a heart attack when he learned that “Smith became the highest-paid black entertainer of her day and began traveling in her own 72-foot-long railroad car.” (Wikipedia). If so, good riddance.
Bessie Smith might have never purchased such a lavish transportation option if not for an unexpected development in music in the year 1920: “Perry Bradford, a hustling composer, band leader, pianist and singer, with a city-slick line in slang, pestered and badgered executives from the white phonograph recording industry, determined to get a black singer on disc with one of his songs. The man he finally persuaded was Fred Hagar of Okeh Records, a man who had apparently received threatening letters from Northern and Southern pressure groups warning him that to record coloured girls would lead to a boycott of Okeh phonograph machines and records.” (Oakley, Giles. The Devil’s Music: A History of the Blues. 1st Da Capo Press, 1997).
Hagar refused to give in to the racists and recorded Mamie Smith, the first African-American artist to make blues vocal recordings. Her recording of Bradford’s “Crazy Blues” sold 75,000 copies within a month, and lo and behold, other record companies leapt into action lickety-split and began pounding the pavement and searching the sticks for female blues singers.
Bessie had been performing since 1913 and was quite popular in the South and East Coast. She signed with Columbia in 1923, and both sides of her first 78 became hits (“Downhearted Blues” and “Gulf Coast Blues”). As the hits kept on coming, she would become the top attraction on the Theatre Owners Booking Association and earn enough star power to book the best musicians for her recordings.
For “St. Louis Blues,” she teamed with the best of the best: Louis Armstrong. The pair dispenses with Handy’s tango-like introduction and goes straight into classic blues mode, forming a call-and-response pattern between singer and cornetist, while Satchmo expands his part to include in-verse counterpoint. The highlight of the performance comes in the form of a 16-bar bridge, an unusual departure from basic blues form. The bridge is marked by a key change from D major to D minor, where Bessie tells us what triggered her bad case of the blues. The peak comes in her power-packed delivery in the repetition “nowhere, nowhere,” further emphasized by a dramatic move out of the Dm/A7 pattern to E7 and back to D major.
Saint Louis woman with her diamond rings
Pulls that man around by her apron strings
Wasn’t for powder and the store-bought hair
The man I love wouldn’t go nowhere, nowhere
In the end, she concludes that her man “got a heart like a rock cast in the sea/Or else he wouldn’t have gone so far away from me” and wasn’t worth a plug nickel of her time.
Though the white people and African American elites she encountered thought she was too “rough” for her own good, Bessie Smith refused to be anybody but herself. As Angela Davis noted in Blues Legacies, “To unschooled white ears as well as to successful black people who did not particularly relish musical reminders of their own social roots, Ethel Waters may have appeared to be the most accomplished blues singer of the period. But, as universally recognized today, Bessie Smith was the real genius of her craft. She was not only the greater artist, she also more accurately represented the sociohistorical patterns of black people’s lives.”
And she was one hell of a singer.
“The Prisoner’s Song,” Vernon Dalhart (Guy Massey): Though it was marketed with the pejorative label “Hillbilly Music,” Vernon Dalhart’s rendition of “The Prisoner’s Song” would become one of the best-selling records of the decade. Set to an arrangement of strummed acoustic guitar and viola, Vernon plays the role of a guy who is about to be transferred from one jail to another, indicating a switch from a holding cell to a genuine prison. The appeal of the song lies in its non-judgmental approach: it doesn’t matter what the guy did to deserve a trip to the slammer; he’s still a human being separated from his sweetheart and society.
Due to the controversy surrounding who wrote the song, there are multiple versions of the lyrics, all communicating empathy for the convicted. However, in Vernon’s version, there is a verse that makes you wonder if the joker deserved such a compassionate response:
Now I have a grand ship on the ocean
All mounted with silver and gold
And before my poor dar-lin’ would suf-fer
Oh! that ship would be anchored and sold
So he’s a rich guy convicted of some sort of financial misdealing —could be fraud, could be tax evasion, could be bootlegging, could be embezzlement. Whatever the crime, he’s certainly no Robin Hood and probably deserved having the book thrown at him.
I’m such a bitch.
“Sweet Georgia Brown,” Ben Bernie and His Roosevelt Hotel Orchestra (Bernie-Pinkard-Casey): Oh, shucks. My favorite version of “Sweet Georgia Brown” is the Ella Fitzgerald-Duke Ellington live version on Ella and Duke at the Cote D’Azur, but that wouldn’t happen until 1967. In truth, Ella’s is the only vocal version of the song I like, as I think the piece is stronger as an instrumental (in part due to the dumb lyrics).
Well, if I can’t have Ella, Ben Bernie will do just fine. “The Old Maestro” who invented the catchphrase “yowsah, yowsah, yowsah” was the first to record “Sweet Georgia Brown” with his Roosevelt Hotel Orchestra, and their rendition is a flat-out gas—snappy, lively and eminently danceable–even with a “rhythm section” limited to piano, a scarcely audible double bass and a few cymbal crashes. After a brief and well-executed solo, a brassy trumpet (likely played by Bill Moore) enters to establish the memorable melody while turning up the heat. The next round goes to the reed section playing the tune in unison with trumpet counterpoint, then the horns take over for round three. Towards the end of that segment, an unknown clarinetist plays a sinuous, rising and falling figure that knocks my socks off. The final round goes to Jack Pettis and his smooth, sophisticated saxophone stylings (hooray for alliteration!), capping the performance with class.
Ben Bernie became a popular radio figure, headlining variety shows and even a quiz show on multiple networks over two decades, until his death in 1943. Beginning in 1922 and continuing throughout the Golden Age of Radio, entertainment programs were sponsored by companies in nearly every field of endeavor, and the shows often carried the sponsor’s name (i.e., “The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Eddie Cantor”). Just for fun, here’s a list of all of Ben Bernie’s sponsors: Mennen, Blue Ribbon Malt Syrup, Half & Half Tobacco, Pabst Beer (post-prohibition), American Can, Bromo-Seltzer and Wrigley’s Gum. When baseball teams started naming stadiums after sponsors, I thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket, but I find the radio show sponsor schtick kinda cute.
1926
Rudolph Valentino dies at the tender age of 31, setting off weeks of hysterical mourning among women. Satchel Paige makes his first appearance in the Negro Leagues, Gene Tunney defeats Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth becomes the only player in history to end a World Series with a blown attempt at stealing second base. Right-wing governments pop up in Portugal, Lithuania and Poland. PM Stanley Baldwin declares martial law in response to a nationwide coal strike, earning the admiration of one Winston Churchill, who in turn credits Benito Mussolini for showing “a way to combat subversive forces.” Meanwhile, in the City by the Bay, one Earle Nelson, known in the press as “The Gorilla Man,” murders then rapes his ninth victim. The necropheliac would eventually be captured and executed by the Canadians, but left a legacy as “the first known serial sex murderer of the twentieth century.”
“Who?” George Olsen and His Music with vocal refrain performed by Fran Frey, Bob Rice, and Jack Fulton (Harbach, Hammerstein II, Kern): By this time, Jerome Kern was well-established as a composer of musical theatre. It should be noted that he would not have been well-established in any field if he hadn’t participated in an all-night poker game, overslept and missed the boat. That boat was the RMS Lusitania, sunk by a German torpedo in 1915, resulting in the loss of 1,193 lives.
Kern’s modus operandi had been to work with a lyricist once, then move on to the next. That changed when he partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II for the Broadway musical Sunny, and the pair would continue their collaboration, producing several memorable tunes and establishing the “book musical,” where plot and character are fully integrated.
George Olsen and His Music became one of the most popular bands of the 20s, and “Who?” was their first smash hit. Kern was a clever composer who avoided the obvious, and “Who?” features three different keys. D major and the complementary B minor dominate the song, but the song begins in D minor, providing the song with a bit of drama. The melody that follows is smooth and lovely, played by the band in mellow tones, creating the perfect milieu for a love song. The singers enter late in the song at the 1:45 mark, skip the introductory lyrical passage common in songs of the era, and go straight to the chorus and verses. Fran Frey may garner most of the attention with his dominant baritone, but the three-part harmonies are balanced and executed to perfection, assisted by Hammerstein’s emphasis on the “ooh” sound:
Who
Stole my heart away?
Who
Makes me dream all day?
Dreams I know
Can never come true
Seems as though
I’ll ever be blue
Who
Means my happiness?
Who
Would I answer “yes”
To?
Well, you ought to guess who
Who?
No one but you
I’m tempted to add a Boop-Boop-a-Doop, but that would be historically inappropriate, for the Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl would not make her appearance until 1927.
“Fascinating Rhythm,” Fred and Adele Astaire with piano by George Gershwin (Gershwin Brothers): Pushed by a mother who wanted to capitalize on her talented offspring so she could get the hell out of Omaha, Fred Austerlitz and big sister Adele (clearly the more talented dancer at the time) made their debut at a small theatre in New Jersey in November 1905 after changing their name to Astaire. Fred was six, and Adele was nine. The duo soon appeared on the Vaudeville circuit, continuing to perfect their act while learning new songs and dance steps. The Astaires were absent from the stage for two years when Adele had a growth spurt that made her three inches taller than her little brother and the top hat Fred had employed to even the score would no longer do. During the hiatus, the pair mastered tap dancing, a talent that would become quite useful in the future.
At the ripe old age of fourteen, Fred took charge of the music side of the business. A few years later, while searching for new material, he happened to run into a song plugger by the name of George Gershwin. The two hit it off, beginning a friendship that would fully blossom when the Astaires starred in the George and Ira Gershwin Broadway production of Lady, Be Good in 1924, featuring the song-and-dance number “Fascinating Rhythm.”
The Astaire-Gershwin version would not be recorded until 1926, after the show had moved to London’s West End. The key to understanding Gershwin’s intent is the original song title: “Syncopated City.” The sheet music indicates 4/4 time, but many of the notes in both the piano intro and the vocal lines are dotted, indicating plenty of stutter-step syncopation. It must have been one helluva dance number, but alas, there are no films of Fred and Adele hoofing to the song, and Eleanor Powell’s dance number in the film version of Lady, Be Good is set to a boogie-woogie rhythm.
In the post “The Fascinating Story behind ‘Fascinating Rhythm,'” Debi Simons shared the story of the brotherly battle over the lyrics.
George Gershwin had come up with at least the first few bars of the tune before work started in earnest on Lady. When he presented the fragment to his brother Ira, who was also his lyricist, Ira was unimpressed: “What kind of lyric do you write to a rhythm like that?” Gradually Ira got drawn into the song despite himself, always maintaining that the rhythm was “tricky,” as indeed it is. I got very tickled reading about George and Ira’s arguments about two specific lines:
I’m all a-quiver (line 4)
Just like a flivver (line 8)Ira wanted a “single” rhyme, while George wanted a “double” one; that is, covering two words instead of one. It all had to do with complicated rhythm issues, of course—
Ira finally gave in to his little brother and accepted the need for the double rhyme “a-quiver” and “a flivver,” because, [as George insisted] whereas in singing, the notes might be considered even and require only a single rhyme, in conducting the music, the downbeat came on the penultimate note and thus required a double rhyme. And so, that’s what made the cut.
Due to the speed and syncopation of the lyrical lines, the vocal is a bit challenging (on the other hand, if you want to improve your phrasing and enunciation skills, “Fascinating Rhythm” makes for a great practice piece). Fred and Adele keep up with the rhythms and hit all the notes, but while Adele was a fabulous dancer, her high-pitched voice is a bit irritating. Fred would improve his vocal offerings over time, but he still sounds pretty good in this early stage of his career.
The most interesting take I found on the song comes from the Library of Congress, and I thought I’d better copy the passage ASAP before Trump shuts down the place. What struck me is its defense of the 1920s dichotomy I mentioned in Part 1: doomsayers in the arts vs. hedonists in the population:
“Fascinating Rhythm”–originally titled “Syncopated City”–synthesized black rhythms and new noises and translated them to Broadway and West End audiences. It became, effectively, an anthem of the Jazz Age. Moreover, it was the song that defined the singular symbiosis between the Gershwins and the Astaires. In the 1920s, the two pairs of siblings were revolutionary interpreters and foremost ambassadors of one of America’s few indigenous art forms. What was so fascinating about the Astaires in particular was their profound impact and appeal at a time when Eliot’s “WasteLand” and Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Vorticism and Dada, were exploding onto the cultural landscape; their New World defiance of the darker aspects of the interwar psyche; their hopefulness and joie de vivre; their absolute modernity free of modernist angst. As one rapturous London critic wrote: “Nothing like them since the Flood.”
Yeah, but American optimism tends to come back and bite its followers in the butt . . . as it did in 1929.
One final note: the only bit of film that reveals Adele Astaire’s naturally graceful dancing skills appears in a clip from the BBC program “Adele Astaire-The Dancer Who Could Have Been #1”. The twenty-nine-second performance can be viewed between the 2:18 and 2:47 marks.
“Black Bottom,” Howard Lanin and His Orchestra with vocal chorus by Frank Harris (Henderson-DeSylva-Brown): Ready to get down and dirty with the latest dance craze? Well, you’re in luck! The original sheet music included instructions! Everything you need to know can be explained in four simple steps:
Hop down front then doodle back
Mooch to your left then mooch to the right
Hands on your hips and do the mess around,
Break a leg until you’re near the groundNow that’s the old black bottom dance
By golly, them 1920s folks sure used a whole lot of slang.
I can tell you that “doodle” means “slide,” “mooch” means “Shuffle forward, hips first, then feet,” “mess around” means “do whatever the fuck you want to do,” and “break a leg” is a hobbling step executed by getting closer to the floor, but I don’t think the translations help all that much. Seeing is not only believing but necessary in this case, so here’s a 1927 British clip featuring dancer Mildred Melrose performing the dance . . . in silence:
According to the PBS documentary Broadway: The American Musical, it was also permissible to slap your partner’s ass when appropriate, while a variation of the dance allows partners to bump butts. Naughty, naughty!
The Black Bottom dance originated in the rural south near New Orleans early in the century (the documentary describes the hobbling step as “akin to pulling your feet out of the deep muddy waters of the Swanee”). It became the latest craze in 1926 when featured in the Broadway revue George White’s Scandals. It is said that the Black Bottom supplanted the Charleston, but it’s equally true that the Black Bottom borrowed many of the features of the Charleston. Adding to the confusion, Jelly Roll Morton released “Black Bottom Stomp” in 1925, but the piece has only a very faint connection to the dance; Jelly Roll named the song after the Black Bottom neighborhood in Detroit.
Back in the day, any time a song became a sensation, several artists recorded versions in an attempt to capitalize on the latest fad. After listening to a few, I decided to go with the Howard Lanin version because it has a bit more snap, greater audio clarity and a better vocalist. Howard also met the most important criterion of all: he had a nickname.
Here’s “The King of Society Dance Music” performing “Black Bottom.” (Note that the 78 identifies the song as a Fox Trot, the fallback choice when the label didn’t want to be bothered.)
1927
The Sultan of Swat makes up for his blown stealing attempt in last year’s Fall Classic by hitting 60 home runs and leading the Yankees to a sweep of the Pirates in the World Series. Charles Lindbergh flies from New York to Paris, becomes a worldwide superstar, and will eventually have a dance named after him before turning into a fascist nutcake. Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for “corrupting the morals of youth” via 375 performances of her comedy-drama Broadway hit Sex. The Great Mississippi flood leaves hundreds of thousands homeless; Herbert Hoover directs the flood relief effort, burnishing his credentials for a presidential run in 1928. Women prove they can do anything a man can do when the first federal penitentiary for women opens its gates. The Irish Free State becomes a reality, but Ulster chooses to stick with the Brits. The part-talkie musical The Jazz Singer blows minds and heralds the end of silent movies. In a no-brainer, the Supreme Court decides that illegal income is subject to income tax, and Al Capone’s days are numbered. Streetfighting between Commies and Nazis become a thing in Berlin, indicating that the Weimar Republic’s days are also numbered.
“Let’s All Go to Mary’s House,” Savoy Orpheans, vocal by Cyril Ramon Newton (Conrad-Wood): I’d never heard this song from the British dance band the Savoy Orpheans, but I simply had to find out why they wanted to go to Mary’s place. I was hoping for an orgy, but alas, they head over to Mary’s to (what else?) dance the Charleston.
The song itself isn’t much. The band quotes “Hooray, Hooray the Gang’s All Here” early in the festivities, and Cyril Ramon Newton will never find himself on the list of great crooners. Halfway through the song, the band turns into cheerleaders, shouting “LET’S-ALL-GO-TO-MARY’S-HOUSE-TO-MARY’S-HOUSE, which drives me nuts. The band is spirited but rather stiff when compared to American bands, probably because it would have been highly unlikely in that era for a band situated in a posh five-star hotel in London to incorporate “negro influences” into their act.
The Savoy Orpheans were revived in 2022, and I hope that they’ve lost all traces of stiff upper lips.
“Ain’t She Sweet,” Gene Austin (Yellen-Ager): Gene Austin was an early crooner and songwriter who had a string of hits in the 20s and remained popular through WWII. His biggest hit would appear next year (1928) in the form of “My Blue Heaven,” estimated to have sold five million records, a number that would not be topped until Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”. Jimmie Rodgers idolized the guy and many of the later crooners (like Crosby) identified Austin as a major influence.
I hate to be Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, but Gene Austin doesn’t float my boat. His delivery lacks oomph, falling into the category of “soft and sweet,” and those two adjectives don’t mesh with my tastes or personality. I felt I had to include him because of his commercial performance and staying power, but I’ll take John Lennon’s lusty performance over Gene’s play-it-safe approach any time.
In the name of fairness, I will let my readers decide who has the advantage.
“Singin’ the Blues,” Frankie Trumbauer and Orchestra with Bix and Lang (Robinson-Conrad): Gotta love that Library of Congress:
“Singin’ the Blues,” as played by Frankie Trumbauer and his Orchestra, and replete with profound yet understated musicianship, is one of the pivotal recordings that led to the acceptance of jazz as an art form while also directly steering the evolution of the modern jazz ballad. The recording has influenced countless musicians–both at the time of its first issue and ever since. It has created immortal places of esteem for both saxophonist Frank Trumbauer and cornetist Bix Beiderbecke in within the canon of great American music . . .
In an era when recordings of popular music, let alone jazz, were mostly predictable, with a vocal chorus, or at least an up-front statement of the melody, “Singin’ the Blues” stood out as an ear-opening beacon, inspiring musicians to push further the limits of their abilities.
It is also a testament to forward-thinking Okeh’s recording director, Tommy Rockwell, that “Singin’ the Blues” was made in the first place. Conventional belief at the time dictated that recordings of popular music needed to have commercial appeal to justify their existence. Also, a few rules had to be applied: a memorable lyric, a strong melody, and relevance—the tune should be new, and if not, then newly republished and in need of “plugging.” But, suddenly, here comes a recorded performance that breaks all the rules. The song was over a half-decade old and largely forgotten. There was no vocal. And, there was no initial exposition of melody; the actual tune of “Singin’ the Blues” was not heard until the final chorus.
The article also mentions that an unnamed critic dismissed the single as “rather disappointing,” proving once again that music critics often find new approaches to music somewhat disturbing, and only change their minds when the trend in question is validated by record sales.
It’s also possible that the “understated musicianship” threw the critic for a loop, or that he was working through a stack of 78s, looking for something with a “ta-da!” moment. Subtlety has value that often escapes people, a truth that manifests itself in many fields of endeavor. We want the World Series to end with Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter blasting a homer, not a dinky walk-off single off the bat of Luis Gonzalez. Both methods get the job done, but the big bang is more exciting.
Still, I find it hard to believe that anyone can miss the sheer beauty that Frankie Trumbauer coaxes out of his C-melody saxophone in his disarming opening solo, or the more assertive approach employed by Bix Beiderbecke, who demonstates his mastery of cornet in a dazzling, scale-stretching improvisation, adding 11th and 13th notes to the alternative melody. He doesn’t get much credit for his contributions to this piece, but Jimmy Dorsey’s smooth clarinet solo stands up well in comparison to Goodman and Shaw. And though he only lands a few seconds in the spotlight, Eddie Lang’s rhythmic support and nimble counterpoints demonstrate why he was a major influence on Django Reinhardt and earned the sobriquet “The Father of Jazz Guitar.”
“Singin’ the Blues” proved to be massively influential due to its reimagination of the possibilities in the approach to jazz standards. Instead of repeating the notes in the sheet music, jazz musicians like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk would use the composition as a baseline for deeper exploration.
“Rather disappointing” my ass.
1928
Al Smith becomes the first Catholic nominated for president; he will be easily vacuumed up by Hoover. While Mickey Mouse appears in his first talkie, the world’s largest hailstone crashes down to earth in Potter, Nebraska. Silent Cal breaks his silence to announce that he isn’t the least bit worried about the increasing number of people taking out loans to buy stocks. Over the Pope’s objections, women are allowed to compete in the Amsterdam Olympic Games. Sixty-three nations sign the American-initiated Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war, the most useless document in human history. Louis Armstrong makes a 78-rpm recording of “West End Blues.” RCA launches the first television station, but nobody has a TV. Alexander Fleming cooks up some penicillin, but would not find a use for it until 1930. Based on observer feedback claiming that women did not know how to smoke properly, Philip Morris sponsors an early version of TED Talks to teach them how to raise their smoking game.
Note: Both Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington recorded several hits in 1928 and 1929, but I’m saving both gentlemen for deeper dives into their music.
“Wildwood Flower,” The Carter Family (Roud 757, version lyrics by A.P. Carter): Country music continued to make inroads with this song performed by the original Carter Family lineup of Sara as lead vocalist and autoharpist, Maybelle on acoustic guitar and A.P. as bandleader, harmonist and song catcher. The song is a variation of an older American folk song, “I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets,” which was popular enough to earn a spot in the Roud Folk Song Index.
The story is one that appears in many an old folk song: a woman gives her all to a man and one day he disappears with “no warning, no words of farewell.” In many English folk songs, the guy bangs the broad and leaves her pregnant, but a song like that never would have seen the light of day in mid-period America. Both the original lyrics and A.P.’s modification contain no hints of monkey business.
Sara sings the song well in her charming Southern drawl, avoiding the temptation to over-dramatize the storyline. The song’s significance lies in Maybelle Carter’s fingers, as the “Mother of Bluegrass Guitar” introduces her unusual guitar technique known as the “Carter Scratch,” named “because of her way of playing the melody notes on the bass strings while vigorously strumming up and down on the treble strings of the guitar with her index finger. To some, it looked like she was scratching the strings, hence the name.” This is important because her performance was one of the first to give the guitar real prominence in a recorded arrangement, foreshadowing the use of the guitar as a lead instrument.
Allow me to introduce “First Family of Country Music” performing “Wildwood Flower” with “Mother Maybelle” leading the way to a guitar-dominant future:
“‘Ol Man River,” Paul Robeson with Paul Whiteman & His Concert Orchestra and Chorus (Hammerstein II, Kern): If we were living in the United States in the mid-50s, we would not be able to listen to this song because all of Paul Robeson’s recordings and films had been removed from distribution courtesy of J. Edgar Hoover and a gutless media. Eisenhower was too busy golfing to give a shit.
While his blind support of Stalin and the Soviet Union rightfully damaged his credibility, Robeson allegedly had the right of free speech, but the second Red Scare led to many breaches of constitutional rights, just like the new Immigrant-How-Dare-You-Support-Palestine Scare in our time. The list of examples of American constitutional betrayal can be found in every decade of its existence.
In the past, some Americans had the courage to do something about injustice, even when it placed them in danger. The story behind Show Boat, the musical that introduced “‘Ol Man River,” is a full of courageous acts that could have ruined several careers. I present the story in the hope that Americans—especially American artists—will be inspired to get off their asses instead of kissing Trump’s and do something to stop the seemingly inevitable move towards fascism (quotes below from Wikipedia):
- Show Boat is based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name, published in serial form in the magazine Woman’s Home Companion in 1926. “The work was unusual content for a women’s magazine of the period, with its inclusion of taboo subjects like infidelity, desertion, single motherhood, prostitution, gambling, and miscegenation.” During a period when the Klan was at its peak, Edna Ferber had the courage to defy the racists, and the book became a best-seller.
- “Ferber’s Show Boat was an unlikely candidate for a musical adaptation in the 1920s: Its heroine’s unhappy marriage, her independence, and her grit in surviving as a single mother after being abandoned by a morally flawed husband ran counter to the typical portrayal of women in Broadway musicals as helpless victims who need rescuing.” When approached by Kern and Hammerstein about turning her book into a musical, “She felt the work’s 50-year time span, and her treatment of topics like spousal desertion, alcoholism, and miscegenation did not fit the frivolous, light-hearted mold of popular musicals. She also knew that racially integrated casts of Black and white actors and singers had never been attempted before on the Broadway stage.” When the pair explained they wanted to expand the reach of the Broadway musical and showed her some of the work they’d completed, Edna gave her consent.
- Kern and Hammerstein were risking their careers by staging the musical and employing an integrated cast. Of course, they had to make some modifications to fit the novel into a musical, but they remained true to Ferber’s vision. “In the novel, Julie is denounced for both her deception in passing as white and for her miscegenation. Hammerstein replaced this castigation with a sympathetic and affirming speech by Parthy in which the audience is led to see that Julie is unfairly condemned by a racist and immoral society. In this aspect, Hammerstein’s libretto becomes an anti-racist and politically engaged story in a way that was not done in Ferber’s novel.”
“‘Ol Man River” appears early in the play, reprised at key moments throughout. Robeson plays the role of Joe, a stevedore on the floating theatre known as a showboat. It’s a hard job, particularly in the world of Jim Crow, and Joe considers the river a metaphor of the indifference to black suffering:
You an’ me, we sweat an’ strain
Body all achin’ an’ racked wid pain
Tote dat barge!
Lif’ dat bale!
Git a little drunk
An’ you lands in jailAh gits weary
An’ sick of tryin’
Ah’m tired of livin’
An’ scared of dyin’
But ol’ man river
He jes‘ keeps rolling’ along
Over a sensitive yet moving arrangement from the Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra, Paul Robeson’s performance is one for the ages. His deep voice is wracked with weariness and his delivery evokes genuine empathy within the listener. His voice is so compelling that you can’t help but feel a combination of sincere pity and genuine anger for the plight of human beings scorned because of the color of their skin.
Black performers had to be courageous in those times because they never knew when their performances would incite racist anger. Fortunately for posterity, Paul Robeson exemplified courage.
“I Wanna Be Loved By You,” Helen Kane (Kalmar-Strothart-Ruby): While Al Smith would be vilified during the 1928 presidential campaign for his Lower East Side New York accent (and Catholicism), hardly anyone complained about Helen Kane’s Bronx-drenched vocals. When singing the song “That’s My Weakness Now” in her maiden appearance at the Paramount Theater in 1927, Helen threw in a tiny bit of scat in the form of “Boop-Boop-a-Doop,” delighting the flappers in the audience. She employed the phrase in “I Wanna Be Loved By You” in the Oscar Hammerstein musical Good Boy, recorded the song the following year and became quite the sensation, earning her the nickname “The Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl.” Here are a few excerpts from the song in Helen-ized speech:
I wanna be loved by you, just you
And nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you, alone!
Boop-boop-a-doop!Boop-boop, I couldn’t aspire
Than, filled with desire
To make you my own!
Boop-boop-a-doop, boop-boop-a-doop!Aa-ah-um! Boop-boop-a-doop!
Daddle-at-dat-dat-dumb, I couldn’t aspire
To anything higher
Than, filled with desire
To make you my ownBup-bum, butle-doodle-dumb-bum!
I wanna be loved by you, just you
Nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you, a-lup-a-dup-a-dup-a-dup!
Boop-boop-a-doop!
I had a hard time deciding whether the lyrics were pure pap or pure genius, but after listening to the song a few times, Helen’s voice and sincerity started to grow on me and I moved closer to pure genius. If I were to create a list of songs that exemplify the milieu of the 1920s, “I Wanna Be Loved By You” would appear in the top ten.
It’s too bad that Helen’s boffo performance led to an ugly legal battle when Fleischer Studios introduced the very Helen-like character Betty Boop to the nation. Helen sued the bastards in May 1932, “alleging infringement, unfair competition and exploitation of her personality and image.” Fleischer’s lawyers did everything they could to discredit Kane, even though they knew that cartoonist Grim Natwick had designed Betty Boop based on a photo of Helen. The judge dismissed all charges due to “insufficient evidence,” and Helen found herself shit out of luck.
Helen’s career took a dive at the start of the Great Depression, when the flamboyant flapper schtick became yesterday’s news. Nonetheless, she did express the ethos of the era, capturing its essential playfulness and its insatiable hunger for happiness.
1929
Capone shows he still has his chops by launching the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. The first Academy Awards are held, with the pre-code Wings and its snippet of partial nudity winning the Best Picture award. In a highly revealing decision, the Supremes affirm that pacifism is a valid reason for denying immigration to the United States. The battle to normalize female smoking gets a boost from the American Tobacco Company, who offer to pay women to smoke their “torches of freedom” in the New York Easter Sunday Parade. J.C. Penney becomes the first store to appear in all 48 states, Foster Grant begins mass production of sunglasses and widespread economic optimism sends the Dow to a new all-time high on September 3rd. Amos and Andy makes its radio debut with two white guys in the leading roles. The U.S. count of registered motor vehicles reaches 27 million, and pretty much everyone is having a ball except for farmers, coal miners, textile workers, immigrants, unskilled laborers and most non-whites.
The bubble bursts on October 29, freaking out millions of investors who bet their life savings on the stock market. Thankfully, President Hoover is on top of things and in the State of the Union address on December 3, claims that his policies have stanched the bleeding: “I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence. Wages should remain stable. A very large degree of industrial unemployment and suffering which would otherwise have occurred has been prevented. Agricultural prices have reflected the returning confidence.” The nation breathes a sigh of relief, but they have no idea that Hoover had transformed himself into the prototype of Alfred E. Neuman: “What, Me Worry?”
*****
I decided to skip 1929 because I didn’t find much in the way of music that floated my boat outside of Satchmo and the Duke. Ruth Etting made some beautiful recordings, but they sound more 1930s than Roaring 20s. Rudy Vallee had a few best-sellers, but I hit my limit with Rudy after he sings a single line.
I don’t think the Roaring 20s had much in common with the French Revolution, but both fit the description “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The decade’s creative explosions have to be weighed against its racism. The booming economy fueled the desire for fun and more fun, sacrificing responsibility for materialism. As I worked my way through the decade, I oscillated between “I hope this never ends” and “How blind can these people get?” There are parallels between the 1920s and 2020s, namely in the anti-immigrant stance in many countries and the continuing rise of fascism, but little else. Trump may have fooled his dumb ass voters into believing that the USA would embrace isolationism, but his meddling in foreign affairs and brainless tariffs have impacted nearly every country on earth. I think the Roaring 20s were more like the 1990s, when the good times we thought might last forever suddenly ended with a crash and the world became a much darker place. Right now, things seem to be getting even darker and hardly anyone is having fun.
If the human race is the crown of creation, why in the fuck can’t we figure out a way to make the good times last forever?