The
Birth Of The Blues
Leo Reisman and His Orchestra
1926
(Columbia 701-D mx 142386)
Here
I Am
Leo Reisman and His Orchestra
1926
(Columbia 701-D mx 142387)
Here are two selections by the songwriting
team of Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson.
"The Birth of the Blues" comes from
the musical review George White's Scandals of 1926.
The show opened on June 14, 1926 at the Apollo Theatre on 42nd Street and
ran for 424 performances. The Apollo Theatre was previously known
as the Bryant Theatre when it opened in 1910. It was renamed the
Academy Theatre in 1983 and was demolished in 1996. The first
Scandals
production opened in 1919 and the only years during the 1920s decade that
did not see a new production were 1921 and 1927. There were
also productions in 1931, 1935 and 1939.
The record's label does not indicate
that "Here I Am" was included in the Scandals of 1926 - but I was
able to find a catalog of sheet music on the web that claims that it was.
Leo Reisman's bandleading career
began in the late 1910s and lasted into the 1940s. His band
was mostly a hotel band which catered to a high society crowd. In
the early 1930s, the band had a successful and lengthy engagement at New
York's Waldorf =Astoria Hotel. I think the band's best records
were the ones it made on the Viva-Tonal Columbia label in the mid to late
1920s.
EXTRA
This section will present
78 rpm recordings that do not fall within the range of the vintage pop
and jazz fare that I usually present. Here I will feature
recordings from a wide variety of eras, musical genres and nationalities
as well as occasional spoken word recordings.
Nights
Of Gladness
Mayfair Orchestra
1912
(His Master's Voice C-261
mx 6938f)
Dance
Of The Little Feet - Gavotte
de Groot's Orchestra
1912
(His Master's Voice C-261 mx 6924f)
Here are a couple of rather charming
examples of a genre often referred to as "light music" which was popular
in Great Britain during the first two decades of the 20th century.
Both recordings are from an old British 12 inch His Master's Voice disc.
The first several seconds of each side are not in the best of condition
- but the sound quality improves significantly as the record progresses.
"Nights of Gladness" was composed
in 1912 by Charles Ancliffe, a British bandmaster who was a prolific composer
of marches and waltzes. "Nights of Gladness" was his most famous
work and it later became the theme song of a BBC radio program of the same
name. The song was also used in old Wurlitzer mechanical band
organs which provided music for carousels. It certainly sounds like
something that one would expect to hear on a carousel.
I don't have any information about
the Mayfair Orchestra other than the fact that it had nothing to do with
London's Mayfair Hotel which did not open until 1927.
The Mayfair is famous as being home to England's top dance bands in the
late 1920s and 1930s.
I have not been very successful
in finding much information about "Dance of the Little Feet." The
label credits the composer as someone named De Braville. There
was a French composer, Pierre De Braville, who lived from 1861
- 1949. But I have not been able to find any reference to him having
composed the song. The only listing I could find on the web about
the song was in a sheet music catalog lists that the composer as being
"G. De Braville." It also mentions an alternative French title for
the song, "Petis Pieds." The French title makes me wonder
if perhaps the "G" was a typo error. The sheet music catalog
gives a 1912 copyright date for the song - which may or may not be the
song's original publication date. Multiple sheet music arrangements
of a particular song that were published in different years frequently
reflected different copyright dates. The song is described
as a gavotte which is a style of dance that dates back to the 16th
century and remained popular into the late 18th century.
I also don't have much information
on de Groot's Band. The band did make quite a few recordings for
His Master's Voice in the 1910s and the label on this one indicates that
"Herr de Groot" was conducting. As far as I can tell, however,
the band was based in Britain and not Germany.
Artie Shaw
1910 - 2004
Burns
& Allen Show Intro Music
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
The Three Smoothies, vocal
August 26, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Sweet
Sue
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
August 5, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Temptation
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
July 29,1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Begin
The Beguine
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
Sept 9, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
My
Heart Stood Still
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
Sept 30, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Stardust
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
October 14, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Musical
Ad For Spam
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
Program Cast, vocal
Nov 18, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
Canto
Karabali (Jungle Drums)
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
Jan 20, 1941
Burns & Allen Broadcast
George
Tries To Break Up
Gracie
and Artie
Program Cast
March 17, 1941
Burns & Allen Broadcast
(Sound file is 20 minutes long and includes performance
of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" and a performance of "Let's Get Away From
It All" with vocal by Gracie Allen)
Begin
The Beguine
Program
Close w/ NBC Chime
Artie Shaw and His Orchestra
Sept 9, 1940
Burns & Allen Broadcast
My previous update from three weeks
ago featuring Henry King and His Orchestra presented several excerpts from
episodes of the Burns & Allen radio program. At the time,
I had no way of knowing that I would again be presenting Burns &
Allen excerpts on my very next update. But, of course,
I had no way of knowing that only one week later Artie Shaw, the last surviving
top name bandleader from the swing and big band eras, would pass away at
the age of 94. It is only appropriate that this website, in
some way, commemorates his passing.
The Artie Shaw Orchestra was the
house band for the 1940-1941 season of the Burns & Allen radio
program which, at the time, aired Monday evenings on NBC under the sponsorship
of Spam, a canned meat product made by the Geo. A. Hormel company.
In addition to leading the band, Shaw was a full member of the program's
cast and regularly participated in the program's comedy routines.
The band that appears on these broadcast
excerpts was the one that Shaw formed earlier in 1940 after he emerged
from his brief retirement in Mexico. This particular band had a heavy
emphasis on the strings section and its big hit recording was of a song
that Shaw discovered in Mexico, "Frenesi." It is interesting
to compare these recordings to Shaw's commercially issued records of the
same songs. The version featured here of Cole Porter's "Begin The
Beguine" is quite a bit different from Shaw's 1937 hit recording which
propelled him to fame. You can also compare the version here
of "Canto Karabali", also known as "Jungle Drums" with Shaw's 1938 recording
of the same song which I featured on the November 18, 2004 update.
Happily most, if not all ,of
Artie Shaw's commercially issued records can be easily found on CD reissues.
Therefore, for this tribute I thought that these Burns & Allen
excerpts would provide an opportunity to hear some of Shaw's less well-known
performances as well as to hear him in action during his brief comedy
career. Some of the jokes and gags are a bit dated and stale
by today's standards - but, on balance, the humor on the old Burns &
Allen broadcasts has tended to hold up better than many of the other
radio comedies of the era.
While George Burns and Gracie Allen
were married in real life, it wasn't until 1942 when their radio program
adopted the sitcom format that they appeared on the air in the role of
husband and wife. Prior to that, their radio program was based on
their old vaudeville routine with Gracie routinely flirting and falling
in love with various guest stars and bandleaders. Gracie and
Artie Shaw had such an on-air romance that lasted for several of the season's
later episodes. Featured here is all but the first 10 minutes of
the 1941 St. Patrick's Day broadcast in which George schemes to break up
the romance.
In the early 1940s, it was still
common practice for radio shows to incorporate the sponsor's commercials
into the program's content. The musical commercial for Spam is one
of the more clever and entertaining examples I have come across.
In his personal life, Shaw was one
of those "tortured intellectual" types who was constantly trying to "find"
himself. He married - and divorced - eight times. He retired
in 1954 and spent a lot of time over the subsequent decades writing fiction
and an unpublished semi autobiographical novel. In an 1993 interview
Shaw said: “I'm convinced that the major problem for the artist is
the disparity between what he's trying to do and what the audience perceives.
The very nature of an artist is that you are thinking of value; the very
nature of an audience is that you are thinking of amusement. Entertainment
versus art. But art was never meant to be entertaining.” Personally,
I profoundly disagree and have never bought into such an alleged "art verses
entertainment" dichotomy - and submit as an example Shaw's own highly successful
recordings from the late '30s and early '40s.
