Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection

Welcome back! It’s New Year’s Eve, 1934 and millions of radio listeners across the U.S. and Canada have tuned in to hear Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians bring in the new year with a sweet if not spirited version of “Auld Lang’s Syne.” The question posed in the song, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” triggers a hardy “Fuck, yeah!” from a populace hoping that their acquaintance with the Great Depression and his pal the Dust Bowl would end soon.

Alas, ’twas not to be.

On a happier note for readers, I’ve reassessed my song selections and reduced the number of songs I’ll cover to twenty-one. All of the songs I cut are songs I love but I had to admit they lacked historical significance.

1935

Backstory: The Dust Bowl continues with a vengeance with the Black Sunday dust storm, darkening New Mexico, Colorado and poor old Oklahoma. The nasty phenomenon sends temperatures rising all over the Midwest, peaking at 109 degrees in Chicago. The Cubs win the pennant despite the heat but wilt away in the World Series. Unemployment falls a teensy weensy bit to 20.1 percent and the GDP rises by about nine percent. Congress passes the Social Security Act thanks to a shortage of Republicans in Congress and FDR happily signs it into law. Loudmouth populist and Roosevelt enemy Huey Long bites the dust but there are plenty of right-wing, anti-semitic assholes on the radio to handle the vital chore of Roosevelt-bashing in his absence. In a major advance in human evolution, the world’s first parking meters are installed in Oklahoma City. Shirley Temple wins the honor of Top Money-Making Star, the beginning of a four-year winning streak. The stork makes a special delivery and squawks “Elvis is in the house!” as he soars into the wide blue yonder. Mood: Tepid optimism.

Songs:

“Cheek to Cheek,” Fred Astaire with Leo Reisman’s Orchestra: Though I am on record as a confirmed atheist who experiences severe allergic reactions when exposed to musicals, I must admit that when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers glide elegantly over the dance floor in their performance of “Cheek To Cheek” in Top Hat, I’m in heaven, too.

I was motivated to watch the scene because I sensed something wasn’t quite right with the version in the Greatest Songs of the 1930s compilation—it clocked in at 5:06, a physical impossibility for a 78rpm recording. “Aha!” I cried in my sleuthiest voice, “These jokers must have lifted it from the movie!” With three interviews coming up in the next two weeks, I knew I didn’t have time to watch the whole film, so I returned to YouTube hoping someone had uploaded a decent clip of the full song-and-dance routine. I was duly rewarded for my efforts when I found the Music Video Vault possessed a competently restored excerpt of Fred and Ginger having a ball.

“Cheek to Cheek” is an amazing composition full of beautiful melodies, clever lyrics and an incredibly emotive arrangement. You may be surprised to learn that the composer-lyricist-arranger responsible for this bit of magic had no formal musical training, arrived in the United States as a child lacking any knowledge of the English language and whose piano skills were rudimentary at best. Despite those obstacles, Irving Berlin would eventually write twenty-five songs that wound up in The Great American Songbook, second only to George Gershwin’s twenty-six.

Berlin came to songwriting through his keen ear for popular song, first a lyricist who could craft an idea or sentiment into something that fit within the 32-bar, verse/chorus pattern of the day.  His musical development was also instinctive; early in his career, he could plunk out “a simple melody” on the piano, within the key of F-sharp.  His playing on the keys mattered less than the melody he heard in his head.  As his career progressed, he used a transposing piano, which mechanically changed the placement of the keys (he called it his “Buick”) and allowed him to hear the melody in other keys. He also employed a series of musical secretaries and arrangers, to whom he would dictate his melodies, so they might work out the technical arrangements.  One of them, composer Harry Ruby, said, “When I’d play back to him what he dictated, he’d listen [and correct me on the harmonic chords]. He’d be right—he couldn’t play the chord, but he could hear it all right!”

—From irvingberlin.com

The unusual vocal cadence of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” intuitively captured the restless excitement of a night in the big city; in “Cheek to Cheek” Berlin employed his instincts to express the range of emotions encapsulated in the word “romance”: tenderness, playfulness, passion and excitement. The extended version beautifully expresses each of those feelings in sequence: the choruses evoke tenderness, the verses a sense of playfulness, the bridge a burst of passion, the full band restatement of the chorus offers excitement at its peak and the gentle coda brings us full circle back to tenderness. Here’s the breakdown:

• Chorus (2): From a technical standpoint, Fred Astaire was not a great singer. Berlin knew that Astaire had a limited range and composed melodies accordingly; in scanning the original 1935 sheet music I saw that most of the notes of the melodies rested comfortably within the staff lines, dropping out only when Astaire closes the chorus (“dancing cheek to cheek”). Well, so what if the guy can’t bore us to tears with an overwrought version of “The Star-Spangled Banner?” I love Fred Astaire’s vocal stylings and I am hardly alone in that opinion. Bing Crosby: “He has a remarkable ear for intonation, a great sense of rhythm and what is most important, he has great style—style in my way of thinking is a matter of delivery, phrasing, pace, emphasis, and most of all presence.” Oscar Levant: “Fred Astaire is the best singer of songs the movie world ever knew. His phrasing has individual sophistication that is utterly charming.” Irving Berlin: “As a dancer he stands alone, and no singer knows his way around a song like Fred Astaire.” In the two choruses that open the song (the “I’m in heaven” segments), Astaire sings tenderly while never coming close to maudlin, his light voice dancing to the pretty melody. The chord progression in the choruses is relatively simple (mostly major and seventh chords) but the chord changes are quite quick, and Berlin’s attention to harmonic detail is apparent in the brilliant placement of one Cdim chord, one minor chord and two ninth chords. The sheet music contains chording for guitar but the voicings are not limited to standard positions.
• Verse (2): The verses are set to basic chords and marked by a lighter, bouncier melody, right up Astaire’s alley. His happy-go-lucky interpretation of both melody and lyrics is spot-on, and though he “would love to climb a mountain” or “go fishing in a week,” he is not afraid of accusations of weakened machismo when he happily admits, “I don’t enjoy it half as much as dancing cheek-to-cheek.” That’s my kind of man!
• Bridge: Berlin flips the script with a dramatic move from C major to C minor, accompanied by a string crescendo and greater volume. Astaire stiffens his voice for the challenge posed by rising passion (“Dance with me/I want my arm about you/the charm about you”) and absolutely nails it. While the segment consists of a mere eight bars, Berlin fills the limited space with a fascinating chord pattern of Cm/Ab9/Abdim followed by a brilliant resolution sequence that brings us back to the chorus (Am, C, D9, F, C), at which point Astaire instantly resumes tenderness without skipping a beat.
• Full Band Restatement of Chorus: I am incapable of supplying a technical analysis of dance routines, but the three minutes I spent watching Astaire and Rogers dance to Leo Reisman’s orchestra were three of the happiest minutes of my life. The gracefulness, the moments when their eyes lock together in a virtual embrace, Astaire’s painstaking choreography—all completely mesmerizing. The routine opens with a brief restatement of the bridge, followed by two tenderly played choruses, two playful verses, a sandwiching of bridge-chorus-bridge followed by a stunning crescendo that leads to a full band rendition of the first half of the chorus—the musical moment where I feel myself choking up and eventually letting the tears flow. The piece ends with a quick shift to the tender coda, where the strings and horns complete the chorus melody and Astaire and Rogers lock eyes once again, basking in the romantic moment.

Confession: I finally gave in and watched the whole damn movie and loved every minute of it. I actually think it helped with my interview preparation by reminding me that the best performances are delivered with sincerity, commitment, confidence and class.

“Lovely to Look At,” Eddy Duchin: Eddy Duchin spent much of the decade leading an orchestra whose music fell into the category of “sweet bands.” From AllMusic: “The sweet bands, often derided and unfairly compared to those swing bands also active during the 1930s and ’40s, came out of a different tradition entirely. Though similarly influenced by jazz maestros from Duke Ellington to Louis Armstrong, the sound of the sweet band was simply an outgrowth from the society orchestra of the 1910s and ’20s. Based mostly in New York, hundreds of society bands fanned out across the metropolis each weekend, playing easily recognizable versions of the hits of the day for light dances and debutante balls.” Sweet bands include the more familiar names of Guy Lombardo, Les Brown and Lawrence Welk.

Eddy’s big break came when Leo Reisman brought him on to serve as his orchestra’s pianist and occasional vocalist during his residence at the Central Park Casino (“The playground for the elite”) and became quite popular in his own right. When Reisman’s contract expired, the owners anointed Eddy as the new bandleader. Thanks to the power of radio, Eddy and the band became quite popular in the 30s.

Like Count Basie, Eddy led the band from the piano stool—about the only thing the two bandleaders had in common. Unlike Basie’s minimalist blues-jazz approach, Eddy’s piano offerings were proto-Liberace with hints of Chopin and other classical-romantic composers who wrote for piano. Though Eddy frequently used other singers to perform his sweet music, he performed the vocal for “Lovely to Look At,” which became his biggest hit.

Go figure. Noted music critic Ted Gioia was unimpressed with the song itself: “Frankly I am not especially entertained by the song as written by Jerome Kern—the melody, with its predictable whole notes and chord tones, moves with an austere, quasi-mathematical precision that leaves me cold—but the piece represents, to my mind, an exciting set of possibilities as a springboard for jazz improvisation. I love this song less for what it is, than for what it can be.” The entire song takes up a grand total of sixteen bars and when asked why it was so short, Kern responded, “I had nothing more to say.” Kern wrote the tune for the original Broadway production of Roberta but the producers rejected it due to its brevity and Kern stashed it away without bothering to write the lyrics. A lyrical version with appropriate length would not see the light of day until the original film version of Roberta, where Irene Dunne gave a performance that can only be described as “fingernails on a chalkboard,” but the song received an Oscar nomination anyway. In the film, Astaire and Rogers dance to the 16-bar version but the arrangers seamlessly appended a few bars from “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” to have enough music for the dance routine.

Eddy opted for the 16-bar version with two verses of four lines apiece, surrounded by two instrumental passages that do little more than restate the melody. On the plus side, Eddy’s baritone has a pleasing timbre; on the downside, he isn’t particularly gifted when it comes to phrasing and has a tendency to oversing that I find rather annoying but likely made the ladies of the era swoon with delight. As for his piano playing, he was something of a show-off, constantly mixing cliché crescendos and decrescendos with irritating predictability and frequently overpowering the melody. Like Irving Berlin, he had no formal musical training, and while Berlin didn’t need it, I think Eddy could have benefitted from a mentor to work with him on his touch and collaborative abilities.

1936

Backstory: FDR heads into election season with unemployment still exceptionally high at 16.9% but still manages to crush it in the largest electoral vote landslide in history. Jesse Owens becomes the All-American hero by crushing the so-called master race at the Berlin Olympics, but once he returns to the land of opportunity he discovers that opportunities to capitalize on fame are white-only and winds up working as a gas station attendant and playground janitor. Another American hero enters the scene in the form of Joe DiMaggio, who manages to pick up some extra cash plugging Chesterfield cigarettes because Italians had been elevated to kinda-sorta white status. Yet another monster heat wave fries the Midwest, resulting in thousands of deaths and listless crops. Life magazine makes its debut, thrilling nobody with a cover picture of Montana’s Fort Peck Dam, which bears an eerie resemblance to a high-security prison. Notable arrivals include Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Mary Tyler Moore. Mood: We’re almost there, aren’t we?

Songs:

“It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie,” Fats Waller: After referring to Eddy Duchin as a show-off, I feel obligated to clarify my stance on that common form of exhibitionism: you’re not a show-off if you’ve got something to show.

Yes, Fats Waller mugged it up for the cameras, but that’s what comedians do. When it came to his piano playing, the guy was a no-doubt-about-it virtuoso. He was equally skilled on the organ (his preferred instrument), wrote hundreds of popular songs (many of which he sold to others without taking credit) and proved to be a natural performer who delighted millions. He was also frustrated by the demands of the music business and wanted to emulate George Gershwin, who was able to strike a balance between popular music and concert music. In his limited spare time he played compositions by Chopin and Debussy and hoped that someday he could write and perform more intricate music. Though he was denied that dream due to his premature death at the age of thirty-nine, I hope he entered the Great Beyond knowing he had made a positive difference in people’s lives during some pretty tough times.

Fats Waller excelled in many ways. He was a jazz piano stylist with a touch that influenced the course of the pop and jazz keyboard, a composer of hit songs and Broadway musicals, and an energetic performer capable of bringing happiness to thousands during the mid Depression and early World War II years as they listened to his hundreds of recordings, heard him on network radio, or had the special pleasure of seeing him live with his band “Rhythm.”

Waller, Maurice; Calabrese, Anthony (2017). Fats Waller. University of Minnesota Press. Kindle Edition. 

“It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” isn’t one of Waller’s compositions. Written by Billy Mayhew, it’s a snappy little number recorded by many notables, including Billie Holiday and the Ink Spots. The lyrics are garden-variety-love-song, but Waller refuses to take them seriously, poking fun at the cliches with vocal manipulation and messing with the lyrics. When he sings the word “lie” it sounds like god thundering from the mountain; when he launches into the “Millions of hearts have been broken” he sounds like an aging politician who loves the sound of his own voice delivering a cliché-loaded speech; and his “I love ya, I love ya, I love ya . . .” Translates to “There, I said I love you. Let’s fuck.” In what I interpret to be an insightful attack on insecure men who treat women as personal possessions, he modifies the original line to reflect the real world:

Original: “If you break my heart I’ll die.”

Fats: “If you break my heart I’ll break your jaw and then I’ll die.

What really knocks me out is his command and expansion of the stride piano technique. A piece appearing on the Jazz History Tree explains what stride (or “Harlem Stride” is all about: “The name ‘stride piano’ came from the look of the striding motion of the pianist’s left hand, with its constant alternation of bass note on beats one and three and mid-range chord on beats two and four. While this motion was also seen in ragtime piano music, the tempos in stride piano were considerably faster, tended to feature more notes, and were harmonically more adventurous; the right hand was also more inventive, improvisatory-sounding, and virtuosic than it was in ragtime.” Though it’s common for listeners to focus on the right hand where the melody and instrumental counterpoints commonly exist, I find myself drawn to Waller’s subtle variations with his left hand, mixing straight root notes with surges of syncopation. How he manages to produce a responsive rhythm while his right hand dances through at least three octaves while singing and cracking jokes at the same time—all while driving at high speed—feels almost miraculous. Yes, Art Tatum would take the style to an even higher level, but we shouldn’t forget that Fats Waller was one of Tatum’s most important influences.

“Pennies from Heaven,” Bing Crosby: I heard this song when I was a kid and thought it was the dumbest song I’d ever heard. Pennies were already completely worthless in the 80s and I certainly didn’t want them to rain down on me, bonk me on the head and mess up my girlish curls. My grandmother told me that the pennies weren’t real pennies but tiny bits of good fortune, but I wasn’t buying it.

When I first went through the track listing I marked “Pennies from Heaven” as a definite no but because the collection is pretty skimpy when it comes to songs from 1936, there were only two other songs worthy of inclusion. I started to explore “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” but compilers opted for the mellow version by the Benny Goodman Quartet with no stomp at all. Though the piece is  a pleasant way to pass the time, I found myself getting pissed off that they skipped over Chick Webb’s hot swing take and limited the Savoy King to one novelty song (“A Tisket, A Tasket with Ella Fitzgerald).  The second choice was Fred Astaire’s “The Way You Look Tonight” but given Bing’s prominence in the decade I felt I needed a sweet Crosby tune to balance “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.” In the end, I let the people decide and went with the #1 song of 1936.

I listened to the 78 version in the compilation and thought, “Geez, this is rather dreary.” It was nothing like the upbeat Sinatra version I’d heard. I checked out what was available on YouTube and found a clip from the original film version and finally, the lights went on. In the scene, Crosby uses “Pennies from Heaven” to sing a young girl to sleep, so of course he would sing slowly and quietly. Bing’s exquisite phrasing and careful attention to the lyrics convinced me that my grandmother was right: the song is really about persevering through tough times (like the Great Depression) and instead of allowing ourselves the luxury of misery, we should appreciate the small bits of fortune that come our way. The storm will pass, as storms always do.

So it is with great pride that I celebrate my awakening and present Bing Crosby singing what is now one of my favorite songs.

1937

Backstory: With the electorate clearly in his corner, FDR changes course and starts doing stupid shit. Pissed off at the conservative majority in the Supreme Court, he proposes what amounts to a court-packing scheme that drains much of his political capital. Determined to rid himself of all political capital, he cuts federal spending, raises taxes and balances the budget, triggering a two-year economic downturn and a spike in the unemployment rate to 19.6%. Attempting to assure the public that he still has the magic touch, FDR presses a button that allegedly opens the newly built Golden Gate Bridge to automobile traffic but it doesn’t play all that well over the radio. The Lincoln Tunnel opens just in time for Jerseyites to head to Macy’s and Bloomingdale for slim Christmas pickings. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan vanish in mid-air and the Hindenburg bursts into flames. Budget-conscious grocery shoppers go wild over the introduction of Spam and spinach farmers in Crystal City, Texas erect the first known statue of Popeye. Dale Carnegie publishes How to Win Friends and Influence People which becomes an instant best-seller. FDR could have used a copy. Mood: Fuck it. Let’s dance!

Songs:

“Marie,” Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra: Tommy Dorsey was in a bit of a fix. A couple of years earlier, his manager ordered Tommy to abandon the “hot jazz” approach and in response, Tommy recorded what would become his signature song, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” a sweet band number that earned him the opprobrium of the jazz crowd. While Tommy wouldn’t fully re-embrace jazz stylings for a few more years, he managed to temporarily keep the jazz wolves at bay by hiring freelance trumpeter Bunny Berigan to provide solos for records and radio. From the Benny Berigan music site Mr. Trumpet: “One of the most remarkable solos of Bunny Berigan’s career was his full chorus improvisation on Tommy Dorsey’s Victor recording of ‘Marie.’ It is a masterpiece. That solo has been admired, studied and played (more often attempted) by hundreds if not thousands of trumpeters since that Victor record was released in early 1937.”

Irving Berlin wrote the song in the late 20s for a no-longer-in-print film titled The Wakening released in 1928. Berlin’s original was a tender waltz, but the exceptionally beautiful melody caught the ear of the jazz crowd, who generally rendered the song in 4/4 time.

There is very little in the opening segments that prepares you for a seriously hot trumpet solo. The song opens with Tommy establishing the melody with his ultra-smooth trombone with the horn section supplying the contra-rhythm. This pleasant intro leads to the vocal, a call-and-response between Jack Leonard and “male chorus.” Music technology of the day was not kind to this segment due to the limitations of monaural recording; at times the chorus drowns out Leonard’s croon, making it difficult to hear call or response. The one word that is crystal clear is provided by the chorus at the end of the segment (“Mama!”) and Bunny immediately steps in and knocks you on your ass. From Mr. Trumpet (italics are a quote from Rex Stewart’s book Boy Meets Horn):

“A more spectacular change is the dramatic entry fashioned by Berigan into his trumpet solo: an F to high F octave jump that was beyond the ability of most trumpeters in 1937. This vaulting start led him “into his top register and instantly changes key, mood, intensity level, depth and rhythm. …Berigan’s solo here, pursued at a remarkably consistent level of inventiveness and execution, is more than just a piece of jazz improvisation. With its daring reaches into the topmost range of the horn, its imaginative, bold figures (like the triplets in bars 13-16 that plunge more than an octave down and straight up again), its heraldic Armstrong-inspired bel canto statements (such as the last eight bars, beginning on high concert E-flat), it is a composition . . .”

The reference to Satchmo is valid; Berigan came damn close to mirroring Armstrong’s unique, joy-filled tone.

Tommy should have cut things right there but he had to reach the three-minute mark. He tries to follow Bunny’s burst of genius with a muted trombone solo that flat-out doesn’t work, and gives the tenor sax player the unpleasant task of sweeping up.

I’d love to tell you that Bunny Berigan continued to add to his canon of exceptional trumpet solos but demon alcohol finally caught up with him and he died at the age of thirty-three of pneumonia compounded by cirrhosis. What a tragic waste of genius.

p.s. CONSUMER WARNING! The compilation Greatest Songs of the 1930s was a Christmas gift from my father a couple of years ago, and though I have used it as a starting point for my exploration of the 1930s, I suggest you stay clear of it and find a more historically accurate collection. In my father’s defense, one would assume that the title Greatest Songs of the 1930s meant that the tracks were performed and recorded in the 1930s. NOT! The compilers ignored the original version of “Marie” and used an excerpt from the film The Fabulous Dorseys, recorded in 1947, long after Bunny Berigan had left the scene. “Marie” without Bunny Berigan is like fucking without having an orgasm. HARRUMPH!

“One O’Clock Jump,” Count Basie: Well, the fuckers did it again. Basie recorded several versions of “One O’Clock Jump” and true to form, the compilers passed on the original and used the 1943 version. Both versions have their virtues (Basie rarely had an off-night) but the 1937 take captures Basie’s minimalist piano style far more effectively.

Speaking of non-orgasmic sex . . . the song was originally titled “Blue Ball” or “Blue Balls” (sources differ). The salient point is that the guy managing the radio broadcast heard “Blue Balls” and asked Basie to change the title because he feared that using the colloquial term for “aching testicles after sexual arousal that does not result in orgasm” over the air would earn him the boot. Basie glanced at the clock, shrugged his shoulders and gave the poor guy a reprieve.

The new title is much more in sync with the music, as “One O’Clock Jump” is guaranteed to get the joint a-jumpin’!

Basie was one of the progenitors of the Kansas City sound, quite simply the melding of blues with the power and range of a big band. “One O’Clock Jump” is a straightforward 12-bar blues number with multiple melodic variations over the baseline I-IV-V pattern and an arrangement that keeps raising the stakes in terms of rhythmic intensity. The specific patterns and the order of soloist and full band segments varied from performance to performance and from recording to recording. In this initial release, the sequence of 12-bar performances goes like this:

1. Intro: Rhythm section and Basie on piano. In a piece on the song feature on All About Jazz, David Rickard revealed that Basie rejected the percussive role often assigned to the piano, limiting the rhythm section to drums, bass and rhythm guitar. “I am sure that the rhythm section is right as it is. It’s the one section that has given us no trouble at any time. And when I speak of the rhythm, I mean bass, drums and guitar. You can count me out.” The threesome of Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass) and Freddie Green (rhythm guitar) were as tight as tight can get, earning the title “The All-American Rhythm Section.”
2. Basie Piano Solo: This is about as far from minimalism as Basie gets, and it’s not really that far—brief melodic stride-based runs spiced with a note or two of dissonance—a light warmup to set the mood.
3. Soloist Pieces with Band Background: The order in the original is: Herschel Evans, tenor sax; Buck Clayton, trumpet; Lester Young, tenor sax; Harry “Sweets” Edison, trumpet. In later performances, Basie liked to encourage some friendly competition between Evans and Young to bring out the best in their divergent styles (Evans was growl-and-grit, Young smoother but capable of sass). All four performances serve to ramp up the intensity.
4. Basie Minimalism: The band support disappears, leaving only the rhythm section to support the boss. Over these 12 bars, Basie strikes the keyboard a total of sixteen times, leaving half the bars empty. In two bars he plays a two-note chord once; in another, he plays the two-note chord twice; then he goes wild with a four-note figure in three bars. Believe it or not, the most exciting parts of his solo are when he hits the keys once and goes silent—I want to scream with delight! It may seem that Basie’s stripped-down approach leaves a helluva lot of room to fill, but his choice of filler is equally minimalist: Walter Page plays a classic bass blues run throughout the solo.
5. Full Band Segments: Now that the Count has tickled libidos with his soft touch on the ivories, it’s time for the big band to raise the proceedings to a fever pitch and let the dancers strut their best stuff. The first segment is a slightly laid-back take on the blues; the second adds a major key melody over the blues structure and the finale was borrowed from Fats Waller’s “Six or Seven Times.”

“One O’Clock Blues” is one hot swing number played by some of the best musicians of the era, including and especially the economic genius who led the band.

“Sing, Sing, Sing,” Benny Goodman and His Orchestra: Goodman referred to this song as the band’s “killer-diller,” a term I thought applied only to sexy broads with nice legs in movies from the ’30s and ’40s, usually accompanied by a wolf whistle. “Boy, that Betty Grable is one sweet patootie—a real killer-diller.”

Allow me to stand corrected. The common definition of killer-diller is “A person or thing that is astonishing, outstanding, or exciting.”

“Sing, Sing, Sing” is all those things and more. I would describe it as a “fierce killer-diller” due to the relentlessly blaring horns squeezing out the blue notes, Gene Krupa’s jungle-like pounding of the tom-toms and the stunning relentlessness of the piece. “Sing, Sing, Sing” often closed a concert, a decision of Goodman’s that in part led to Harry James’ departure from the band—“Sing, Sing, Sing” is a demanding piece that would exhaust any musician after already having played a full set.

Except for Gene Krupa. On occasion, when everyone else thought they had wrapped things up, Krupa kept on playing and soon Benny and the other musicians would follow suit.

Krupa opens the song and earns the majority of the solos. Though recording engineers of the era didn’t know dick about how to record drums, Krupa manages to cut through the sonic blankets and deliver a thrilling performance. After ten or so seconds of pounding beat, the band makes its entrance mixing sweet reeds with blaring horns, and with Krupa driving the beat, the song takes off like a bat out of hell and rarely lets up. The music is set to a basic minor blues progression, the kind of foundation that gives soloists plenty of room to improvise. Now and then I hear the players slip out of the Dorian and Mixolydian modes common in blues and venture into the Phrygian, giving the piece a touch of the exotic. When it’s time for the blowers to catch their breaths, there’s Krupa, pounding away with no signs of fatigue.

I did glance at several published sheet music versions of the song and they all sucked. None of them fully capture the played notes and, of course, none of them capture the intense wildness of the piece. When I listened to the song with Alicia, I noticed she was moving her feet and shaking her hips after about twenty seconds, so I grabbed her by the arm and shouted, “Let’s dance, baby!” I would have loved to hear this song live and mingle with all the jitterbuggers on the dance floor.

The original 78 clocks in at eight minutes and thirty seconds, something I told you was impossible at the time. Well, Benny Goodman made it possible by recording the song on both sides of the shellac. Though I can see how it would have been a real downer to stop dancing long enough to turn the disc over to side B, the break comes at just the right moment and proceeds with gusto. Thanks to The 78Prof, you can watch the disc flip in the video to show you how they pulled it off. How very thoughtful!

1938

Backstory: Programmed to believe that all news is bad news, the American public goes bonkers in response to the Martian invasion staged by Orson Welles. Reaffirming that everything that could go wrong would go wrong, Wrong-Way Corrigan heads for California and winds up in Ireland. The Munich Agreement is signed, screwing the Czechs in the ass without the lube and increasing the likelihood of another European war. FDR reassures an isolationist public that the USA will remain neutral in such a conflict but even dumb people know he is lying. Jazz makes its first appearance at Carnegie Hall with Benny Goodman leading the way. Recognizing that the animal had been pretty much hunted to extinction, the U.S. Mint replaces the buffalo on the nickel with Thomas Jefferson. Superman makes his first appearance in a supporting role and a prototypical Bugs Bunny shows up in a Porky Pig cartoon. Walt Disney dazzles movie-goers with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Those earning the new federal minimum wage of twenty-five cents an hour find they can get into the theatre but have to pass on the popcorn. Mood: Fuck it. Let’s dance all night!

Songs:

“Begin the Beguine,” Artie Shaw and His Orchestra: Artie Shaw was a fabulous clarinetist, an inventive arranger and a total dickhead. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to emotionally abuse Lana Turner to the point where she suffered a nervous breakdown during their brief marriage? Millions of men during the period would have given their right arms for the privilege of hooking up with Lana Turner and would have brought her flowers every night.

On the flip side, Lana wasn’t that great at choosing male paramours. In the end, Artie edged out Lana with a score of eight marriages to seven.

Sorry, but in the spirit of the times I simply had to introduce some Hollywood gossip.

Artie’s band was hardly an overnight success; they struggled for a few years playing pop songs and some of Artie’s more complex compositions but never projected a tangible identity. When he signed with RCA Victor in 1938, Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” was the first song he wanted to record. The suits at RCA weren’t particularly happy with Artie’s choice and relegated it to the B-side of the single, with the hopelessly ridiculous “Indian Love Call” as the A-side. Artie proved them wrong when “Begin the Beguine” became one of the most popular recordings of the era. The arrangement and orchestration by Jerry Gray (born Albert Graziano) are exceptional, reflecting a perfect balance of sweetness and swing, and a marvelous choice for the dance floor. The sound of Artie’s clarinet in the opening passage is smooth and uniquely compelling, imbuing the song with immediate recognition.

I came across an unsourced quote from Artie regarding the song: “‘Begin the Beguine’ is a pretty nice tune. But not when you have to play it 500 nights in a row.” Whether he said it or not, it certainly explains why he walked off the stage during a radio program and quit the band a couple of days later. He eventually formed several bands, broke them up, entered the Navy during WWII and followed the same pattern upon his return to civilian life—form a band, break it up. Essentially, Artie Shaw was a frustrated artist who could never get his shit together long enough to build a consistent oeuvre.

In a 2005 article in the New York Times, one of his sons (Artie referred to his offspring as “nothing but a biological happenstance”), provided a proper epitaph: “My father was a deeply miserable human being,” Jonathan Shaw said in a telephone conversation yesterday. “That’s the side of him that most people who haven’t been closely associated with him don’t get to see. He was a genius, and he was also a very difficult man.”

“Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” Count Basie and His Orchestra: This second classic Basie number is a certifiable hoot and one helluva dance number.

Basie opens the song repeating a run that any child could play with one finger (the first five notes in F major),  Jo Jones picks up the quick tempo on the hi-hat, the full band enters on cue to provide the baseline melody and the guys and gals head for the dance floor. A pattern emerges consisting of 12 bars of the band followed by a string of 12-bar solos, with Earl Warren (no, this was not the guy who ended discrimination in public schools) on alto sax, Basie on piano (minimalist as usual), Buck Clayton on trumpet, Lester Young on tenor sex and surprisingly, Herschel Evans trading the tenor sax for the clarinet. The last two solos are my favorites—I’ve always loved Lester Young, so that’s a gimme, but Herschel makes me laugh with his high-register solo that sounds like a chick in heat. Simple, straightforward, tight and an absolute delight.

1939

Backstory: 20,000 people attend a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, which features a stage festooned with a humongous image of George Washington surrounded by swastikas. The Yankees win their fourth consecutive World Series despite losing the great Lou Gehrig early in the season. Harvard student Lothrop Withington, Jr. wins a ten-dollar bet by swallowing a goldfish, sparking the latest craze to sweep the nation’s colleges and calling into question the effectiveness of higher education. The Dust Bowl drought eases a bit but will still linger until 1941. The Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, where baseball was not invented. Flights from the U.S. to the U.K. conveniently begin in July, allowing PanAm to work out the bugs and cash in on the September flood of one-way-ticket buyers fleeing from World War: The Sequel. Hitler and Stalin become best buds, carving up Poland like a Thanksgiving turkey. Americans do their very best to place foreign relations on the back burner by heading to the local cinema to see The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Mood: Frankly, Europe, we don’t give a damn.

Songs:

“If I Didn’t Care,” The Ink Spots featuring Bill Kenny: I think of the Ink Spots as harbingers of the major change ahead in popular music: the singers will become the stars and the bands will slip into the background. Though much of that change had to do with postwar economics, it also reflected the excellence of the singers—Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Perry Como—and Bill Kenny.

The song was written by Jack Lawrence, who after the war penned several classics for Sinatra (“All or Nothing at All’), Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Shore and several other top-tier singers. “If I Didn’t Care” was one of his early compositions and the first to make a splash.

A BIG splash. The Ink Spots’ version of “If I Didn’t Care” sold over 19 million copies and became the 8th best-selling single of all time.

If you’ve ever wondered where the Platters found their inspiration, look no further than Bill Kenny and the Ink Spots. Kenny possessed an exquisite high-tenor voice designed to melt hearts and turn a slow dance number into a deeply romantic experience. And though Kenny clearly steals the show, I adore the spoken word passage featuring basso Orville Jones while Kenny oohs faintly in the background. The other Ink Spots appear only briefly in the end, but Charlie Fuqua, Deek Watson and Jerry Daniels would have more prominent roles in future hits. I also love the choice to back the song with light guitar and soft piano, further highlighting the marvelous vocals.

And yes, I swooned many times during this song.

“Moonlight Serenade,” Glenn Miller: In response to those who claimed that his band was not a jazz band, Miller responded, “I don’t want a jazz band.” That response deserves a fuller explanation.

As a high school student in the early 1920s, Miller formed a deep attraction to dance music and formed a dance band with his fellow students. The dance music at the time tilted strongly in the direction of sweet with occasional inclusion of jazz components and for Miller, it was dance that mattered, not jazz.

After dropping out of college, Miller headed for New York City and for the next ten or so years found work in various bands as a trombonist. arranger and composer. He finally formed his own band in 1937 but was unable to differentiate his sound from the other big bands at the time and few paid attention. In the piece “Music in the Miller Mood,” Benny Goodman, who had played with Miller in bands and in Broadway orchestra pits, remembered a conversation he had with a distraught Miller: “Glenn was never a great trombonist,” Goodman said, “and for the life of me I never understood why or how he was going to lead his own band. In late 1937, before his band became popular, we were both playing in Dallas. Glenn was pretty dejected and came to see me. He asked, ‘What do you do? How do you make it?’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Glenn. You just stay with it.'” The pep talk did little to raise Glenn’s spirits and he broke up the band.

He was ready to give up his dream of leading a dance band when his wife Helen stepped in and put the kibosh on that nonsense:

He tried to give up his dreams of leading a band, but Helen wouldn’t give up, and at her urging, Helen’s parents took out a second mortgage on their home to provide funding for Glenn to form a new band. By spring 1938, he was recruiting musicians again.

Charles River Editors. Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller: The Lives and Careers of America’s Most Famous Big Band Leaders (pp. 69-70). Charles River Editors. Kindle Edition.

Miller knew that his problem was he sounded like all the other bands and needed to change his approach. He came up with a simple but brilliant idea: hire a saxophonist to play lead clarinet, have the tenor sax hold the same note and assign the harmonies to the rest of the sax section.

Miller decided that his new band wasn’t going to try to swing like the bands Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and the Dorsey brothers were leading so successfully; instead, he continued to build on the distinctive reed section sound he first started developing the year before. The sound was loose and rhythmic enough to reach a reasonable degree of hot, yet smooth and sweet enough to remain unoffensive to commercial interests. Perhaps Bing Crosby described it best when he wrote in 1974, “Glenn employed a harmonization that was new and vastly different. And when you heard the sound, it was recognizable and memorable. It was just Glenn Miller. I don’t suppose there was a single listener in the United States, unless he was tin-eared and tone-deaf, who didn’t love and appreciate the music of the Miller band.”

In his arrangements, Miller sought to achieve a full, broad sound. He split sections of musicians into high and low voices, which maximized each section’s harmonizing. He wrote the arrangements in an “open position,” with notes that spanned a range greater than a single octave. All these details and methods required discipline on the part of the musicians. When played correctly, the band just sounded bigger.

Charles River Editors. Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller: The Lives and Careers of America’s Most Famous Big Band Leaders (p. 70-71). Charles River Editors. Kindle Edition.

Miller perceived jazz bands as undisciplined and his goal was always to play things right or not at all. What mattered was the composition and poor choices during improvisation can weaken the power of a composition. His method was closer to that of the great classical composers than the typical jazz band, and unlike Ellington, who encouraged his players to improvise within written compositions, Miller demanded they stick to the script.

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that if it sounds good, and the Glenn Miller Band consistently nailed that requirement.

“Moonlight Serenade” became a sensation when released in May of 1939 and both sides of the single shot into the top ten (the B-side was “Sunrise Serenade”). Miller had written the song some years earlier under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph Schillinger, who had developed a method of musical composition based on mathematics. George Gershwin, Benny Goodman and others also studied under Schillinger, and though “mathematics” may sound cold and sterile, an awareness of the math in music can be very helpful in developing a composition.

“Moonlight Serenade” is positive proof that math does not interfere with the emotive power of music. Jazz critic Gary Giddins told The New Yorker “Miller exuded little warmth on or off the bandstand, but once the band struck up its theme, audiences were done for: throats clutched, eyes softened. Can any other record match ‘Moonlight Serenade’ for its ability to induce a Pavlovian slobber in so many for so long?” When Miller performed for the troops in Europe during WWII, Smithsonian Magazine noted “The G.I.s looked forward to no tune more than ‘Moonlight Serenade,’ the ever-so-slightly melancholy number evocative of a sultry summer night back home. It served as the orchestra’s theme and would be remembered as an anthem of the Greatest Generation.”

Hell, I can’t help tearing up when listening to “Moonlight Serenade” and its lush melancholy. I’ve always loved Miller’s choice to give the reeds prominence in many of his arrangements because they imbue a song with a sweet, warm feeling. Wilbur Schwartz (the saxophonist turned clarinetist) delivers some of the most beautiful clarinet solos I’ve ever heard, and though Miller may not have wanted a jazz band, the segment where the horns overtake the reeds certainly sounds like jazz to my ears. The melody is gorgeous and the chord progression is enriched through variations on root chords that strengthen the melancholy mood. In creating “Moonlight Serenade,” Glenn Miller created a slow dance number for the ages, one that encourages partners to cherish each other in a deeply romantic moment.

“In the Mood,” Glenn Miller: It was my great misfortune to be born into a generation with no sense of history, people who believe that the Pixies and Nirvana invented “soft-loud.” Whenever I hear a fellow millennial share that belief, I respond: “Glenn Miller has a master class on dynamics if you’re interested.”

“In the Mood” is commonly referred to as “the classic 1940s song,” which is understandable given that it was released twice during the decade and topped the charts both times. However, the original recording was made in 1939, which gave the compilers the license to include the song in the collection—but they blew it again by using the 1943 version.

The song had been floating around for years in different forms and under different titles and if you do any research on “In the Mood,” you’ll find that most of the analyses of the song spend 95% of the time trying to identify its genealogy and 5% on the song itself. Bo-ring!

What makes “In the Mood” one of the greatest dance songs ever recorded is its utter simplicity. When the song finally landed in Glenn Miller’s lap, he wisely kept the basic blues pattern in G major then whittled down the clunky 32-bar structure to 12 bars and played it faster. He chose to open the song with a memorable bit of fanfare designed to lure the dancers out of their seats then immediately supplied them with a memorable set of melodies and an irresistible rhythm that Louis Armstrong described as “not too slow, not too fast, just half-fast.” The killer-diller in this song comes in the form of dynamic manipulation—gradually lowering the volume to a near whisper then suddenly cranking it up to the max to form a thrilling finale.

According to Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories, Glenn Miller scored 16 number-one records and 69 top-10 hits in four years, more than Elvis Presley(40) and the Beatles (35) in their careers. Some sources estimate that in 1942 nearly two-thirds of the songs in jukeboxes came from Glenn Miller. Some jazz critics continue to resent him because of his popularity and consider him overrated, but if Miller was so overrated, why did Louis Armstrong always travel with tapes of Glenn Miller in his suitcase? Why did Frank Sinatra complain about “the inferior quality of music he was recording in the late ’40s, in comparison with ‘those great Glenn Miller things?'” (Wikipedia). I think jazz critics are “too brainy to see that they’re paupers and that’s how they’ll stay” (in the words of Andy Partridge) and their condemnations reflect snobbery more than anything else.

Glenn Miller’s death while serving his country in WWII was a tragedy that robbed the world of a musical genius, but his legacy will live forever.

Epilogue

I have thoroughly enjoyed my brief visit to the 1930s and I would have loved to experience those years despite the enormous difficulties. It would have been seriously cool to have danced at the Savoy and equally cool to live during a time when people didn’t bitch about smoking.

I do have one last complaint regarding the compilation. The compilers failed to include a single song from the person who probably raised spirits more than any other performer, politician or preacher during the Great Depression.

“In almost all of these films, she played the role of emotional healer, mending rifts between erstwhile sweethearts, estranged family members, traditional and modern ways, and warring armies. Characteristically lacking one or both parents, she constituted new families of those most worthy to love and protect her.” (Kasson, American National Biography)

“This was mid-Depression, and schemes proliferated for the care of the needy and the regeneration of the fallen. But they all required endless paperwork and demeaning, hours-long queues, at the end of which an exhausted, nettled social worker dealt with each person as a faceless number. (She) offered a natural solution: to open one’s heart.” (Anne Edwards)

“It is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles.” (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Thanks to VintageMusicFM, I will correct that unfortunate oversight.

Note: Due to the interview schedule mentioned above, it’s unlikely I’ll have time to write reviews for a couple of weeks. See you soon!