Tuesday, July 30, 2024

NRR Project: 'Ten Cents a Dance' (1930)


NRR Project: ‘Ten Cents a Dance’

Music: Richard Rodgers

Lyrics: Lorenz Hart

Sung by Ruth Etting

March 4, 1930

3:15

Rodgers and Hart were one of the first great songwriting teams of the 20th century. They were introduced as young men in 1919, and soon began cranking out material together. Richard Rodgers was an adept composer, and Lorenz “Larry” Hart was a master of the lyric. By 1930, they had already crafted 17 Broadway shows, and several hits, such as “Manhattan” and You Took Advantage of Me.”

“Ten Cents a Dance” was written for the show Simple Simon, starring Ed Wynn, in 1930. At an opening performance of the musical in Boston, the singer for whom the song was written, Lee Morse, showed up drunk. She was fired, and Ruth Etting was called on to take her place.

Etting was riding high as well. She had started her singing career in clubs in Chicago. In 1922, she met Martin Snyder, a gangster better known as “Moe the Gimp.” Insanely jealous, controlling, and violent, he took over Etting’s career, using threats and intimidation to get her better gigs, recording contracts, and radio appearances. (Their dysfunctional relationship was outlined in the film Love Me or Leave Me in 1955.) She was a popular star, one whose performance could make a hit out of a song. This Etting did.

“Ten Cents a Dance” outlines the melancholy prospects of a “taxi dancer.” A taxi dancer is someone who dances with customers for a fee, a formerly popular vocation in formerly popular places termed “dance halls.” The dancer would charge ten cents a dance – and she and the hall would split the money.

The singer bemoans her fate, as she must dance with whoever chooses her as a partner.

“Ten cents a dance

That's what they pay me

Gosh, how they weigh me down

Ten cents a dance

Pansies and rough guys

Tough guys who tear my gown

Seven to midnight I hear drums

Loudly the saxophone blows

Trumpets are breaking my eardrums

Customers crush my toes

Sometime I think

I've found my hero

But it's a queer romance

All that you need is a ticket

Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance”

The plaintive situation is fully revealed in Etting’s plaintive vocal. She’s sad and complaining, but she also wields a rueful sense of humor. She doesn’t ask to be freed from her work, she just views it as a means to an end. It stinks, but it’s what she’s got.

The song would inspire a movie of the same name in 1931. Rodgers and Hart would continue to craft songs until Hart’s death in 1943. Etting would retire in 1937, after a messy divorce and shooting scandal impacted her career. Soon dance halls would die off, leaving only this unique artifact behind.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next up: the Harvard Vocarium record series.

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