NRR Project: Duke Ellington: 'Never No More Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band' (1940-1942)

 

NRR Project: “Never No More Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band”

Music by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Mercer Ellington and others

Performed by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra

Recorded 1940-1942

225 min.

I have been listening to this Duke Ellington material for a week, and I am a better man for it.

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (1899-1974) was, quite simply America’s greatest jazz composer. He led bands of varying composition throughout his career. He is distinguished for the marvelous complexity of his musical statements, which absolutely burst the bounds of the genre. Nobody could communicate more original ideas than he (and his fellow composer/arrangers and musical contributors Billy Strayhorn and Mercer Ellington).

Ellington could hear the complete range of what a jazz ensemble could convey. The sounds issued from his mind with ease into the scores, the rehearsals, the frequent performances on tour. For Ellington tested the merit of his tunes and arrangements night after night in front of paying crowds. He had a living feedback system that he used to hone his work. He was peddling popular music -- much like Mozart!

As a composer/performer/bandleader (he started as an acclaimed pianist), he could select his musicians carefully and with an ear for their particular strengths to which he could then write. He was like a painter with a box of living brushes. The collaboration is heavenly.

The control and precision of his group is legendary. The time period covered in the selection, recorded between 1940 and 1942, feature bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. (Blanton bowed out due to a terminal case of tuberculosis at age 23, in 1941.) The rest of the ensemble are all-stars: there is Barney Bigard, Cootie Williams, Ray Nance, Juan Tizol. Ellington had these brilliant talents at his disposal, and he used them with verve and distinction.

Each number here is solidly within the jazz tradition. It is devastatingly tasteful. It is classic. It is ostensibly danceable, but I can’t but see a dance floor stilled to listening to it, such are its pleasures. It conveys wild bliss (“Jump for Joy”) and deep sorrow (“Rocks in My Bed”). It contains many of his classic works, such as “Take the A Train,“ “Jack the Bear,” “Concerto for Cootie,” “C Jam Blues,” “Ko Ko,” and “Cotton Tail,” but every cut is extraordinary.

Due to the limitations of 78 rpm records, each composition could be no longer than three minutes long. In that time, Ellington has to state a theme, propose variations, open up passages for improvisation, and reach a conclusion. And he does, every time, in a variety of ways but always of himself. Every song is a little universe of its own, ticking along with perfect timing.

There are gems everywhere, “All Too Soon” and “Harlem Airshaft,” “Five O’Clock Whistle” and "I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I Got.” It pays to plow through these 66 recordings (there are extra takes of some of the numbers here as well) over and over again. Although many of his songs bear lyrics, they are at best pure music – the evocation of humanity’s thoughts and feelings at a time when great music and popular music intersected.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the Budapest Quartet performs the Beethoven String Quartets (1940-1950).

NRR Project: 'Selections from George Gershwin’s Folk Opera Porgy and Bess' (1940, 1942)

 

NRR Project: “Selections from George Gershwin’s Folk Opera Porgy and Bess”

Music by George Gershwin; book, DuBose Heyward; lyricist Ira Gershwin

Performed by Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, et al; Decca Symphony Orchestra

Recorded 1940; 1942

This recording has a lengthy and convoluted evolution.

First of all, nobody really liked the original production in 1935; it didn’t last that long in its run (124 performances). Four days after it opened, George Gershwin supervised a recording of it in Manhattan; however, he booked two white singers – the great tenor Lawrence Tibbett and soprano Helen Jepson, instead of using the show’s original stars, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown! Why, Lord? The social climate must have still dictated that Caucasian singers were the only ones to properly interpret music. This kind of thinking would return in the 1950s, as record labels would take Black hits and re-record them with white groups to make them "acceptable."

A 1938 run of the show on the West Coast finally made the work popular. At that time, a few highlights from the production were put on record by Decca. Then, a 1942 Broadway revival caught fire and Decca decided to record many more passages from the show, and to release the 1940 material (featuring originals Duncan and Brown) and the cast of the subsequent recording session, using the 1942 personnel. Pieced together, it gives us 14 tracks in running order.

So it is not strictly speaking an original cast album, but it got the closest before the 1943 recording of Oklahoma!, which spawned the genre. (Oddly, Duncan sings Sportin’ Life’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” here.)

Porgy and Bess is problematic in that it’s a show written by white people about Black life. DuBose Heyward, a white man, wrote the novel Porgy in 1925, and he worked with the Gershwins on the theatrical adaptation. The setting is “atmospheric;” the poor quarters of Catfish Row, Charlestown, South Carolina serve as a kind of sociological backdrop to the material. The dialogue is in “Black” dialect. It has been derided for simplifying Black behavior, of a kind of anthropological condescension.

Despite this, the opera works because of its intense emotional power. It’s a classic story of thwarted love, a universal experience. It contains some of the most memorable songs in the catalog: not just “Summertime” but “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “I Got Plenty O Nuttin,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” but also with the wrenching “My Man’s Gone Now,” “I Loves You Porgy” and the compelling hurricane scene.

Porgy is a disabled beggar, kind-hearted and noble. Bess is a young woman, the girl of a brute named Crown. Crown murders a man and escapes; Porgy takes Bess in. In the wings, Sportin’ Life, the local dope peddler, emerges and puts the moves on Bess himself.

Eventually, Porgy murders Crown, and is hauled away as a witness to the crime. Sportin’ Life lures Bess to go to New York. Porgy returns from jail to find Bess gone. He vows to follow her and win her back.

Simple. It’s a great story. It goes from one marvelous tune to another; it contains two of the most passionate duets in operatic literature. It makes you curse the gods that Gershwin died so young, at age 38 in 1937. What more might he have done? Ira Gershwin continued as a lyricist with other composers, but this was his crowning achievement.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Duke Ellington’s Blanton-Webster era recordings (1940-1942).

 

NRR Project: Jimmie Davis sings 'You Are My Sunshine' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “You Are My Sunshine”

Music and lyrics by: disputed

Performed by Jimmie Davis with Charles Mitchell’s Orchestra

Recorded 1940

2:40

I must point you to Ronnie Pugh’s essay on this song at theNational Recording Registry. It is excellent!

Jimmie Davis (1899-2000) was an aspiring performer and an aspiring politician as well. Born and raised in Louisiana, he made his name in the early 1930s with songs such as “Nobody’s Darling But Mine” and “It Makes No Difference Now.” He parlayed his singing notoriety into two non-consecutive terms as Louisiana’s governor.

He heard the song “You Are My Sunshine” when its purported creator, Paul Rice, played it for him in 1939. Rice sold the song to Davis and Charles Mitchell for $35 – he needed the money for his wife’s hospital bill. (It was routine at the time for performers to buy songs from songwriters and take over the copyright themselves.)

The song is plaintive, and the lyrics are sad. However, the chorus is, pardon the expression, sunny. The song has been planted in our consciousness so strongly that it is difficult to remember that it is a classic country song. It has been recorded by more than 350 artists and has been translated into 30 languages.

I used to sing this little ditty to my children at bedtime – and so it passes on to the next generation.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the ‘original’ cast album of ‘Porgy and Bess.’

NRR Project: Roland Hayes sings 'Were You There' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)”

Spiritual

Performed by Roland Hayes

Recorded 1940

4:24

First, I must direct you to Randye Jones’ excellent essay on this subject at the National Recording Registry. It is comprehensive, well-researched, and detailed; I can only reprise it.

Roland Hayes (1887-1977) was a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, first of all. This Black collegiate singing ensemble overcame vast amounts of prejudice to become the premier interpreters of American spirituals, delivering them in arrangements that are now canonical. This Nashville, Tennessee university choir, formed in 1871, barnstormed across the country to raise money for their institution. They succeeded, and exist to this day. You can read more about the Fisk Jubilee Singers at my 2010 essay on the subject.

Hayes, a tenor, was therefore well-versed in choral singing and in interpreting traditional melodies. To this he added expertise in the classical repertoire as well.  Due to continuing prejudice, he found his way as an interpretive soloist barred. Like Marian Anderson, he found acceptance and success in Europe. He had experimented with pressing records through Columbia as early as 1918; in 1939, he returned to Columbia with pianist Reginald Boardman to make some more recordings.

His rendition of this spiritual is a capella. By this time in his career, Hayes had married impeccable technical skills with deep feeling, giving a resonant and moving experience to any listener. He delivers the material with extreme seriousness and gravity; his ability to play the lyrics is unmatched. This recording is a stirring human document well worthy of inclusion in the Registry.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Jimmie Davis sings ‘You are My Sunshine.’

NRR Project: Frank Proffitt performs "Tom Dooley" (1940)

 

NRR Project: “Tom Dooley”

Folk tune

Performed by Frank Proffitt, vocal and banjo

Recorded 1940

2:44

First of all, go to this excellent National Recording Registry essay by Ross Hair. I can only reiterate his information and provide a personal perspective.

This timeless murder ballad was created in the wake of a true crime – the murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula in Happy Valley, North Carolina in 1866. Everybody seems to know it; its most famous iteration was by the Kingston Trio in 1958. It sparked the Great Urban Folk Revival of the 1960s, and marked the American transition from the playing of and listening to traditional music to the ups and downs of the singer-songwriter era.

The song has inspired numerous books and examinations of its origin and development. It was first sung by Frank Proffitt to folksong collectors Anne and Frank Warner in 1937; they recorded him the following year. Frank Warner performed it himself; it wound up in John and Alan Lomax’s collection “Folk Song USA” in 1947. Once it became a smash hit, the differing generators of the song and the Trio had litigation over its publishing rights.

It’s a simple, straightforward song, instantly memorable. It recommends that its subject cry, and pities him; ironically, the real Tom Dula was a cold-blooded murderer. The Dooley of the song reckons he is doomed, resignedly. There was something romantic in his resignation. Proffitt intones the words with a flat voice, subdued, the ring of his banjo undergirds him.

There are, of course, more and variant lyrics by the score. There are lyrics in Proffitt’s version that don’t appear in the Kingston Trio’s recording.

“I’ll take down my banjo

And pick it on my knee

By this time tomorrow

It’ll be no use to me.”

It’s one of the first songs I remember. The Kingston Trio were gods in our home, right up there with Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul, and Mary and Joan Baez. We played their records incessantly, sang along in harmonies . . . for this was the era of the hootenanny! When everyone sang along. Everyone was singing together – there were the sing-ins of the civil rights protestors; there was Mitch Miller  and his Gang broadcasting “Sing Along with Mitch” (1961-1964). In fact, on TV "Hootenany" (1963-1964) bred "Shindig!" (1964-1966) and "Hullabaloo" (1965-1966).

Everybody was singing or listening to “Tom Dooley.” There were no Beatles yet. The British had not Invaded. It was all folk, everybody participated. It was very wholesome, strikingly innocent now, as most of the dirtier and more lurid authentic folk songs were cleaned up and made family-friendly for the huge American audience. A more optimistic time it was.

It was so familiar that the Smother Brothers parodied it to a T (referencing the publishing rights lawsuits, but funny even if you don’t know that), producing “Tom Crudely” on their 1961 debut album. Their alternate lyrics -- “Poor boy, you’re hung” – still kill today. It’s a testament as to how deep the song imbedded itself in our consciousness.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Roland Hayes sings ‘Were You There’.

NRR Project: Art Tatum plays "Sweet Lorraine" (1940)

 

NRR Project: “Sweet Lorraine”

Music by Cliff Burwell; lyrics by Mitchell Parrish

Performed by Art Tatum, piano

Recorded 1940

4:20

Art Tatum (1909-1956) was a true prodigy. Nearly blind since birth, he picked up the piano on his own and became one of its greatest masters.

Tatum was known best as a solo pianist. His great strength was his ability to synthesize. He listened to and studied all kinds of music, from classical to pop to jazz; he took those influences and juggled them effortlessly, combining completely differing and seemingly inimical chord progressions, rhythm changes, and note selections, all at a blisteringly fast pace.

He was an interpretive artist. He covered all manner of jazz standards. His playing was compulsive – after an evening’s performance, he would continue to play in after-hours sessions until the dawn. (It is said that his creativity was even more pronounced in these informal performances. They were fueled by his legendary consumption of beer and whisky.)

He would pile chord on chord, making sweeping, eloquent gestures with his keys that nobody could match. His technique was flawless; he mounted on that solid basis to improvise with great range and detail. His work needs to be heard attentively (he often insisted that food or drink not be sold during his performances; he liked the English audiences because they shut up and listened to him). His sound is thick; it’s meaty stuff.

Tatum recorded “Sweet Lorraine” 21 times during his career; each one is distinctive. He was lucky to have found engineers and producers who wanted to get his irreplaceable sound on tape. Tatum was a critics’ darling, never a popular success. He was “classical” in his approach; he did not succumb to the lure of bebop.

It only remains for the interested listener to tune in and harken carefully to his full, rich sound and amazing prowess.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the birth of Tom Dooley.

NRR Project: Stravinsky conducts 'The Rite of Spring' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “The Rite of Spring”

Composed by Igor Stravinsky

Conducted by Igor Stravinsky

New York Philharmonic

Recorded 1940

30:56

Composer Edgard Varese, who was there at its premiere in Paris on May 29, 1913, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, described its “cruel harmonies.” Its composer Stravinsky described the crowd’s reaction to it as a “terrific uproar.” It changed music forever. It was decades ahead of its time. It is called the most significant musical composition of the century, the founding document of modernism.

It is wildly jagged, staggered, and dissonant. It ignores all the rules of classical music; it brashly tears through a seemingly willy-nilly collection of percussive, atonal, compelling music. Wildly irrational, seemingly. It confounded the orchestra; the premiere’s conductor had to tell the players not to stop and point out what they thought were wrong notes. The orchestra laughed at one point; Stravinsky lit into them.

It began its life as the music for the dance of the same name via the famous Ballets Russes, led by the legendary impresario, Serge Diaghilev (1872-1929). He was a pivotal figure in the history of the avant-garde in European art at the time. It is he who elevated dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1888-1950) to prominence; he was known for his commissioning the most forward-thinking of compositions for his ballet troupe.

Stravinsky (1882-1971) was an ambitious composer, having previously penned for Diaghilev the successful scores for Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). Rite of Spring was different, an urgent, lurching explosion of sound. He now put himself in the service of anarchic impulses, taking incredible chances musically and breaking the future of music out and away from its point of origin in, remarkably, Russian folk music. It has inspired more recordings than any other 20^th century piece; it has inspired many books. Its relevance to modern culture is persistent.

The setting is pagan Russia. A woman predicts the future. Young girls dance together. Two groups rival each other on stage. A sage blesses the Earth. There is ecstatic dancing. Next comes a “mystic circle” of girls, after which one of the girls is selected as the sacrificial victim. She dances herself to death.

At the work’s premiere, many booed – it is said, at Nijinksky’s bizarre choreography – and many others fought back. The crowd came, for a time, undone; the performance became legendary.

Stravinsky turned it into a concert piece; he toured it for years, tinkering with it until late in his career. It is siad that this recording, with the New York Philharmonic in 1940, most closely qualifies as the composer’s preferred performance of the work. This was also the year in which the Rite had been used by Disney as a setting for a sequence in that company’s Fantasia. The story of the evolution of the dinosaurs was a natural fit for the music; it made the piece a part of the cultural mainstream.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Art Tatum plays Sweet Lorraine.

NRR Project: 'San Antonio Rose' (1940)

 

NRR Project: “New San Antonio Rose”

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys

Recorded April 16, 1940

2:37

Is there a happier sound to be heard than this? The jaunty, bouncy sound of fiddler and bandleader Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys marks the birth of the unusual musical hybrid known as Western swing.

Wills was born in 1905 in Texas, the son of a champion fiddler. Growing up, he absorbed all kinds of American musical influences – country and Western, but also blues, jazz, and folk. He worked as a barber and played after hours. Gradually he built up his skills as a fiddler, a vocalist, a joke-cracking emcee, and even an enthusiastic on-stage dancer. He developed the habit of calling out during songs and making comments as he played, leading to an instantly identifiable style.

When he put his own band together, it originally consisted of the usual assortment of Western instruments, but he gradually began to add such things as trumpet, saxophone, drums, and slide guitar (the last played by the phenomenal Leon McAuliffe). Arrangements grew more complex. His music moved into tunes that got folks out on the dance floor. It was country, but country with a beat. Country that swung!

“San Antonio Rose” was originally recorded as an instrumental in 1938, and soon became the band’s signature tune. Wills and his compatriots concocted plaintive lyrics to go with the tune, and they re-recorded the tune with them on April 16, 1940. The new version shot to the top of the charts. The words of the song are belied by the warm, upbeat, propulsive music that accompanies it, with a full orchestral sound that’s intoxicating. No wonder Wills is referred to as the king of Western swing.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Stravinsky conducts The Rite of Spring.

NRR Project: Bartok and Szigeti perform live -- April 13, 1940

 

NRR Project: Bela Bartok, piano; Joseph Szigeti, violin

Beethoven: Kreutzer Sonata

Bartok: Rhapsody No. 1 for Violin and Piano; Violin Sonata No. 2

Debussy: Violin Sonata

Recorded April 13, 1940, Library of Congress

1:09

Here is a case where I can only point you to the words of a real expert. Elliott Antokoletz’s magnificent explanatory essay will tell you everything there is to know about this performance. Access it here!

Although I am conversant with the history of classical music, I am unfamiliar with most of Bartok’s music . . . and what I’ve heard I haven’t enjoyed. I was introduced to classical music in a time when atonality was all the rage, and I conditioned myself to listen to it and appreciate it. Since those days, the genre has moved on though minimalism to a new kind of melodiousness, which is much more popular with the public.

This performance is engaging and technically brilliant, although I have not the bandwidth to explicate it for you.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys!

NRR Project: Arch Oboler's Plays: "The Bathysphere" (Nov. 18, 1939)

 

NRR Project: Arch Oboler’s Plays

“The Bathysphere”

Broadcast Nov. 18, 1939

30 min.

Arch Oboler was a very talented S.O.B. (Don’t look at me; his curmudgeonly reputation is attested to in John Dunning’s definitive radio encyclopedia On the Air. Read this book).

This prolific radio writer came to prominence due to his work on the network horror program Lights Out. This series was created by Wyllis Cooper, “the unsung pioneer of radio dramatic techniques,” himself an innovator in making radio compelling. That show started in April 1934. In May 1936, Cooper left the show and Oboler took over, and ran the show until July 1938.

Under his leadership, Lights Out produced such memorable chillers as "Cat Wife," "Revolt of the Worms," and "Chicken Heart." The show helpfully urged easily frightened listeners to turn off the show before it began . . . then told those who remained to “turn out your lights!” Boo!

Oboler had a new idea: wanting control over his product, he proposed writing, producing, and directing a series of half-hour radio plays himself. NBC bought it, and soon he became the head of “the first series of varied radio plays ever given to the works of one radio playwright.”

From March 1939 to March 1940, Arch Oboler’s Plays dealt with two main themes: horror and Oboler’s hatred of Hitler and Naziism, and he split his productions between these two poles. World War II had not begun when the show started, and some derided him for his anti-fascism. But Oboler could see the evil for what it was, and he denounced it steadily during his year on the air.

“The Bathysphere” is a typical Oboler offering; it contains excellent performances, spare but effective sound effects, and a nimbus of dread that hung over the proceedings. Oboler himself chants, to the chiming of a clock, “It . . . is . . . later . . . than . . . you . . . think!” Again, he encourages the timid to tune out.

It’s a two-player script. There is the Leader (George Zucco), a dictator looking for ways to aggrandize his name. With him is Eric (Hans Conreid) a marine scientist who takes the Leader down to the bottom of the sea in a bathysphere (as it sounds, a small round metal submersible which can sink to great ocean depths) to set a new world record.

The craft hits the seabed. Eric informs the Leader that radio communications have been cut, and that he has released the bathysphere from its connecting cable. He hopes to make the Leader go mad with fear. Interestingly, however, the Leader keeps his composure and defies Eric. He even demands a blunt instrument to smash the vessel’s glass in with.

Eric then reveals that, though he intended to kill the Leader and himself, he couldn’t go through with it. “What would have been the good of it? A fool and a figurehead die together. No good of it,” he says. He was bluffing. The Leader tells him he intends to have him shot when they get back to the surface.

It’s bleak and cynical, defeatist really, an odd direction for Oboler to go in, but you can see him resist taking the easy path of having the Leader come unglued on air. Oboler was trying to move through and past horror to real conversations about power, rebellion, and fate. His ambition is admirable.

One more episode of this series deserves to be remembered: the broadcast of March 9, 1940, featured an adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun. This horrifying and deeply moving story of a soldier made into an extreme invalid was distinctly NOT the kind of fare the network wanted. But Oboler got his way – and he got James Cagney, who does a fantastic job, to star in it.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Carousel of American Music.

NRR Project: Premiere network broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry – Oct. 14, 1939

 

First of all, this explanatory essay on the Grand Ole Opry (the name is a backwoods, humorous corruption of “grand opera”) by Paul Kingsbury is a delight to read – clear and comprehensive. You should read it -- right now! Here’s the link. It celebrates a century of the revered program’s life. The “Grand Ole Opry” hit the air from Nashville, Tennessee, a powerhouse source of country and Western talent, on WSM on Nov. 28, 1925, and continues to this day.

Kingsbury’s iteration of the live half-hour opening network transmission is completely on target. I can only testify as to the musical influence the show wielded.

I was very young when I left the Midwest, but I remember people sitting down for it on a Saturday night, women wiping their hands on their aprons, eager to hear the music that ran through the show.

Its approach in this first network broadcast is pragmatic. It presents a slew of country, folk, and blues music in quick-marching order. There’s virtually no changeover time, it’s number after number, rapid-fire demonstrations of showmanship. The performers are remarkable, the best that could be found at that time, celebrating this heretofore little-known music, some destined to hit the big time due to their appearances here.

We heard country, folk, bluegrass, gospel. We knew this was the music real people listened to. We thought we were the real people.

We knew who Roy Acuff was, a voice if not of God then of soulfulness. We sang along to his “Great Speckled Bird,” a song he made good on. A melancholy Christian hymn, plaintive and solemn. (There were still parody lyrics of it banging around the place in my day, a sure sign of cultural currency.) We knew of Uncle Dave Macon. In this recording, we get a multiple dose of the then-elusive Fruit Jar Drinkers, led by Macon.

In many ways, it introduced a remarkable number of shades of country music, that sometimes-despised genre, to the nation. These were sharply distinct talents, the real thing at the speed of sound. There were the Dixie Clodhoppers, the Gully Jumpers, and the Hilltop Harmonizers. There were Bob Wills and Bill Monroe. It taught us the ins and outs of this indigenous music and all its permutations. Many musics sprang from this influential source. Many of the songs they sang were engraved on our memories.

Country music is memorable. It is melancholy. It’s catchy. It’s heartfelt. It is compelling. It’s Hank Williams on a Saturday at 8 p.m.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: one of Arch Oboler’s Plays.

NRR Project: WJSV complete broadcast day -- Sept. 21, 1939

 

NRR Project: WJSV – complete day of programming – Thursday, Sept. 21, 1939

17 hours

It was a typical early fall day in 1939. Not many extensive records exist of that day, save for this. The National Archives in Washington collaborated with station WJSV, a CBS network affiliate in Washington, D.C., to record an entire day of programming, from sign-on at 6 a.m. to sign-off at 1 a.m. the following day. The result is a fascinating document that, if listened to in its completeness, offers a recorded portrait of a day in mainstream radio during its golden age.

The ostensible reason this date was chosen for the recording the fact that it was the date on which there was an address of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a joint session of Congress. However, the recording was much more. It’s a look at a country not yet at war, but edging closer to it. It tells us what was popular, what people listened to as they went about their day. In the days before television, radio was how folks got their news and entertainment, flowing free over the airwaves.

The day opened with several hours of recorded music and news updates. The show was hosted by the avuncular Arthur Godfrey, not yet the famous broadcaster he was to become in 1945. Godfrey had a unique style, folksy, informal, and rambling, much different from the very proper announcers typical of the time. Godfrey’s relaxed approach was perfect for people just waking up and getting ready for work.

The music is the typical big-band content of the day (save for the interpolation of a Black-stereotype passage – casual racism was still the rule of thumb back in the day). At 8:30 a.m., the transcribed quiz show Certified Magic Carpet hit the air, hosted by the venerable broadcaster John Daly, normally heard only as a newsman. It demonstrates that announcers of the day were called upon to do different kinds of hosting.

Then came the soap operas, a profusion of 15-minute serial dramas so named because they were often sponsored by soap manufacturers. These turgid tales inhabited the air for hours, as their heroines faced all sorts of challenges both mundane and extraordinary. The soaps were punctuated with the occasional cooking show and something called the Women’s Home Companion, which advertised things for sale at a local department store.

Such well-known soaps as Myrt and Marge, Our Gal Sunday, Life Can Be Beautiful, and The Road of Life are represented here. They all sound the same, save for the offering at noon – The Goldbergs. This saga of a Jewish family in the big city was much more of a slice-of-life drama, and as such is much more listenable than the surrounding fare.

At 1:45 p.m. came Roosevelt’s speech. Its subject was the world war which was rapidly developing in Europe. America at the time had a strict neutrality policy, but the president wanted to change that. He proposed the repeal of an arms embargo mandated by Neutrality Act. Instead , he wanted the country to sell arms to the allied belligerents on a “cash and carry” basis, by which arms could be purchased up front, and then transported across the Atlantic by the warring nations, not by the United States itself. It is difficult to remember now that Roosevelt was strenuously opposed by a significant number of isolationists – people who didn’t want America to get involved in foreign wars. Roosevelt’s speech is eloquent, clear, and forceful – a remarkable contrast with the speeches of many politicians today. FDR was a great communicator, and this speech was no exception.

Roosevelt’s speech was followed by a partial address in French by Premier Deladier, who accused the Nazis of wanting to dismember France (which of course they did). More soaps and more music followed.

Finally, at 3:45 p.m. came the back end of a baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Senators, which Cleveland won 6-3. The illustrious Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson called the play-by-play of the game. A bit more music and news followed, which led into a 15-minute sports report from Harry McTigue at 5:45 p.m.

At last we arrived at what would be later called “prime time.” First off was Amos ‘n’ Andy, a phenomenally popular daily 15-minute show that began in 1928 and lasted until 1960. Two white actors, Freeman Gosden and Charles Corell, portrayed two African-American friends in business together (they ran the Fresh Air Taxi Company in Chicago). Today’s audiences would of course reject the stereotyping that the show was based on, but at the time, white people imitating Black people was par for the course.

Despite the offensive grounding of the show, Gosden and Corell created two very likable and relatable characters whose misadventures captivated listeners. So popular the show was that movie houses would pause their screenings and play the show over loudspeakers for customers. My father remembers walking down the street as a child and hearing the show come out of every window on the block.

Following this was the 15-minute comedy The Parker Family, a typical situation comedy. Next up was Joe E. Brown with a half-hour variety and comedy program. Brown was a legendary performer. He literally ran away with the circus when he was 10, became an acrobat, entered vaudeville, and developed into a comic performer whose movies in the early 1930s made him one of the most bankable Hollywood stars. His big mouth and eager grin were familiar to almost everybody. (You may remember him best at Jack Lemmon’s foil in Some Like It Hot). The show is notable for including, once again, some casual racism, and the snappy tune “Are You Having Any Fun?”.

Next up was a quiz program, the Ask-It Basket. It’s an interesting listen. It is popularly thought that quiz shows came to the fore in radio after World War II, but here one is. It was followed by Strange As It Seems, a kind of “reality show” that outlined unusual and inspiring stories, and dramatizations of little-known historical incidents. Surprisingly, the show includes a segment on the great African-American agricultural scientist and inventor George Washington Carver – and includes an interview with Carver himself!

After a brief news break with the venerable broadcaster Elmer Davis came the Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour. Bowes was a theater manager with a flair for promotion, and he came up with the idea of creating a radio showcase for amateur talent to come on the air and compete for the votes of the listening audience. Singers, comedians, vocalist, impressionists, and even tap dancers appeared on the show. The most successful performers were contracted by the Major to perform live across the country.

Frank Sinatra appeared on the show as a member of the Hoboken Four Quartet, early in his career. Maria Callas, too, sang as a child on the show. Bowes would spin a “wheel of fortune” on air to determine who would perform next, and this generated his famous catchphrase “Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.” The show was eagerly listened to, and thrived from 1934 until the Major’s death in 1946.

The Columbia Workshop succeeded the Amateur Hour. The Workshop was a unique program – it accommodated dramatic and experimental material that normally would not have made it on the air. The show was "sustained," meaning it carried no commercials and was presented as a public service. Poetry, music, original dramas, literary adaptations (Orson Welles and his Mercury Theater did a two-part adaptation of Hamlet for the show), and straight-up weirdness was all fare for the Workshop, which lasted from 1936 to 1943. Unfortunately, the piece recorded was an unexceptional drama, Now It’s Summer.

After this came Americans at Work, an educational program that interviewed people from all walks of life about their porfessions. The episode presented here involves auctioneers, and is somewhat interesting.

By now it was 10 p.m., and the station moved back into a lineup of music and news briefs. There was a rebroadcast of Roosevelt’s speech, followed by band remotes. In those days, orchestras were booked to perform at various venues, and part of their performances would be piped onto the airwaves live. Notable here is the appearance of Louis Prima’s orchestra. Prima would become famous after World War II for his riotous, comic stage work – here he is more subdued.

Finally, there was a brief summary of news, followed by a rendition of the National Anthem and sign-off. The cumulative effect of the day’s broadcast is to provide a portrait of a nation still undisturbed by war, amused by a network’s concoction of music, drama, news, and performance. Those who listen to isolated broadcasts of old-time radio shows would do well to give this broadcast a listen. There was a lot of mediocre material on the air, punctuated by fascinating bits that proved how engaging good radio could be.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the premiere network broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry.

Notes from a Rockies fan.

 OK, let's look at the facts, Rockies fans. Worst record in team history: 119 losses. the worst run differential in BASEBALL HISTORY (-424), and the highest ERA since 1901 -- 6.64! Tied for most losses by a rotation: 93.

[Note to readers: I have been informed to my chagrin by a smart person that the Rockies don't have the worst run differential of all time, merely since 1899. It was the Cleveland Spiders who dun that, posting a stupendous -723.]

Per Colorado Rockies on SI, "As for the lineup, the Rockies' .237 batting average was the worst in team history, as was their .681 OPS. Their collective fWAR was minus-3.3 as a lineup, and they scored a franchise low 3.72 runs per game. This resulted in them being shutout a franchise record 17 times."

This is undeniably as bad as it can possibly get. It is historically awful. This obverse distinction is resonant; it will live forever in our minds.

To those of us who listened in, and went to games, this year, it was obvious that we had reached the nadir of our expectations. We came to the field not with the hope of victory, but with the weary resignation of the faithful.

I have been a stalwart Rockies fan since the beginning, and the Zephyrs before them, and the Bears before them. I remember the Sky Sox, ferchrissake.

And yet I still love them. In all of their Charlie Browniest, they played earnestly and poorly, stoically marching through sweep after sweep, sacrificing themselves to the vagaries of the game.

What is going on with this team? It has gone on for years now. It has not spurred a dearth of paying fans. We love the game, and we will come out and watch ourselves lose in a friendly and amicable Denver manner. There's not an abandonment there as there is in other cities.

Evolution is possible. You stick with your guys. But there is something seriously wrong, and we all need to address it. I appreciate the effort, and I am sorry you sucked so bad. We'll work on it in spring, I guess.

NRR Project: Dorothy Thompson: Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC Radio (August 23 – Sept. 6, 1939)

 

NRR Project: Dorothy Thompson: Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC Radio

Broadcast August 23 – Sept. 6, 1939

She was hard-working, expert journalist and commentator. She was so good, she was the first American journalist the Nazis kicked out after coming to power.

Dorothy Thompson is hardly remembered today, but her incisive understanding of the complexities of European politics between the world wars was exceptional. Nancy F. Cott's explanatory essay, which you can read here, gives a comprehensive look at the life of this journalist and broadcaster.

Fortunately, NBC decided to avail themselves of her services in the run-up to the beginning of World War II. In a series of broadcasts, she outlined for listeners what was happening in the rapidly developing situation on the other side of the water. These talks, while not celebrated today and difficult to even find, helped people understand the facts amid the pronouncements and posturing of the players involved.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: A complete day of radio broadcasting – Sept. 21, 1939.

NRR Project: Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial (April 9, 1939)

 

NRR Project: ‘Marian Anderson: the Lincoln Memorial Concert’

Recorded April 9, 1939

Marian Anderson (1897-1993) was one of the most gifted contraltos of the 20^th century. Her only problem – she was Black.

Fighting prejudice every step of the way, she trained with various voice teachers and finally made an impact with a recital held with the New York Philharmonic on Aug. 26, 1925. People loved her rich, velvety voice, which expressed itself with precision and grace. However, because of her skin color, many times she could not get access to traditional classical-music venues in America.

So she went to Europe to study and perform. There she became incredibly popular, building a reputation, and notably establishing a friendship with the composer Sibelius. Her increased reputation led to more concert appearances in the U.S., but again she had problems being accommodated in hotels and restaurants due merely to her skin color.

In 1939, she attempted to give a concert at Washington, D.C.’s Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, which had a whites-only policy. She was denied. She then tried to secure the use of the auditorium of D.C.’s Central High School – and was again turned down, this time by the District of Columbia Board of Education. Thousands of her supporters were pissed, and a coalition of Black activists got to work.

Finally, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes was convinced to stage her recital on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This they did on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939. The open-air concert was attended by more than 75,000 people, and was carried on NBC radio. “Genius, like Justice, is blind,” declared Ickes.

Anderson sang her heart out. She sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” the aria “O mio Fernando” from Donizetti’s “La Favorita”, and Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” After a brief intermission, she sang three spirituals, “Gospel Train,” “Travelin’”, and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” She was applauded frenetically. For once, a Black artist stood up to the racists that controlled the American culture, and triumphed over them with a concert heard by millions.

She continued her career. She sang for the troops during World War II and the Korean War. She headlined on live TV on June 15, 1953, broadcast on both NBC and CBS. Finally, on January 7, 1955, she became the first Black singer to appear on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera. She continued to work extensively until her retirement form singing in 1965.

Only excerpts of her concert were released on newsreel film at the time, but the entire performance was recorded on film and archived. Today we can see and hear her thrilling performance, and wonder now what kind of society made it so hard for her to shine her light for everyone.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Dorothy Thompson: Commentary and Analysis of the European Situation for NBC Radio.

NRR Project: 'Strange Fruit' (1939)

 

‘Strange Fruit’

Music and lyrics by Abel Meeropol

Performed by Billie Holiday

Recorded 1939

3:12

 

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

 

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

 

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop”

Strange Fruit was originally a poem, composed in 1937, penned in outrage over the lynching of Black people in the South, which was endemic in America during the early part of the 20^th century. Its author sought people to set the poem to music, but was unsuccessful. Finally, the poet himself (now under the name of Lewis Allan) made a song out of it. A few New York singers, most notably Laura Duncan, performed the song, most notably at Madison Square Garden.

Billie Holiday heard the song and wanted to record it; her label, Columbia, declined. However, it gave her permission to record the song with another label. She did – and the recording sold more a million copies, making it the biggest-selling recording of her career. Holiday feared reprisals over her performance of it, but did it anyway. It was usually performed at the end of her appearances, with no encore.

This powerful denunciation of racial violence was named the Best Song of the Century.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial.

NRR Project: 'Rose Room' (1939)

 

‘Rose Room’

Music by Art Hickman, Lyrics by Harry Williams

Performed by the Benny Goodman Sextet with Charlie Christian

Recorded Oct. 2, 1939

2:45

The guitar was not thought of initially as a natural jazz instrument. The sound was too soft to compete with the brass and drums of the big bands. Therefore, it was used primarily as a rhythm instrument.

It took Charlie Christian and the invention of the electric guitar to change that. Utilizing an amplifier, the electric guitarist could make himself heard above the surrounding musicians. However, it took a musician of Christian’s genius to make the instrument essential.

Christian grew up in Texas, the son of musicians. He developed his skills on the electric guitar and soon gained a reputation for his work. Record producer John Hammond encouraged him to try out with Benny Goodman. Goodman was reluctant to try him. However, he gave him a chance at a date in a Los Angeles restaurant. Goodman had his band play “Rose Room,” which fortunately Christian knew inside and out. The song went on for 45 minutes, with Christian improvising an incredible 20 choruses. He was hired.

Christian became part of Goodman’s fabled sextette and performed extensively until his death in 1942. His supple single-note style of play fit in perfectly with the sound Goodman was trying to produce. Before Christian’s demise, he is said to have coined the phrase “bebop” for the new and challenging type of jazz he was pioneering with a few other musicians in L.A.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Billie Holliday sings ‘Strange Fruit.’

NRR Project: 'Peter and the Wolf' (1939)

 

Peter and the Wolf

Composed by Sergei Prokofiev

Performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Serge Koussevitzsky, conductor

Richard Hale, narrator

Recorded 1939

24:24

Holy cow! I was asked by the Library of Congress to write about this piece, which I did in 2019. My explanatory essay sits at the National Recording Registry website, which you can read here.

The official term for music that educates is pedagogic music, and most of it is as awful as that sounds. Official culture in every society seeks to inculcate its values, moral and aesthetic, in each of its young generations, and many a child has been bored to tears by something earnest and condescending it is thought they “should” like. It’s a rare piece of music that remains as fresh and persuasive as Peter and the Wolf.

In classical music, there are a number of designated “kid-friendly” pieces that serve as gateways to Western art music, the symphonic world. Saint-Saen’s Carnival of the Animals, Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. There are inadvertently famous classical riffs as well, and some children graduate into a love of the classical music they only heard snatches of. The Lone Ranger’s signature music is eventually understood as the overture to Rossini’s opera, Giullaume Tell, and the grand three-note opening theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey becomes Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (especially as taught by kid-friendly composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein at one of his televised Young People’s Concerts).

One of the most successful of these compositions is Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, a “symphonic fairy tale for children” written in the Soviet Union but first recorded in America, by Serge Koussevitzsky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since its premiere, it’s been recorded more than 400 times, in a dozen languages.

The young and enterprising Prokofiev left the fledgling Soviet Union in May, 1918; after many successes, he returned permanently in 1936. There, educator Natalya Sats asked him to write a piece that would teach instruments of the orchestra to children, for her Central Children’s Theatre.

The official culture of the day in the USSR was socialist realism, a style that featured idealistic depictions of the common man, depictions that were mandated, reviewed, critiqued, and censored by the central government. A useful work of art taught a moral lesson and reinforced Soviet values. For a libretto, Prokofiev started with a rhyming narrative by popular Soviet children’s writer Antonina Sakonyskaya, about a Young Pioneer (the Soviet equivalent of a Boy Scout) challenging an adult mired in reactionary, pre-Revolutionary thinking.

Dissatisfied, Prokofiev tossed the original poem aside and wrote his own story in prose. Turning to the music, he completed the piano score in less than a week, and the orchestration in another. Peter and the Wolf debuted on May 2, 1936 at a children’s concert by the Moscow Philharmonic. The American premiere took place in Boston in March, 1938, due to the presence there of Koussevitzsky.

Serge Koussevitzsky was another Russian, but one who chose life in the West after the Russian Revolution. A respected bassist and composer, his financial situation enabled him to advance his career by doing such things as hiring the Berlin Philharmonic for his conducting debut and forming a dominating music-publishing company that printed the work of composers such as Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and . . . Prokofiev. Koussevitzsky led the ensemble during a period of artistic greatness. (The primary performance space at the BSO’s legendary summer concert venue Tanglewood bears the name of the Koussevitzsky Music Shed.)

According to Koussevitzsky biographer Moses Smith, “Prokofiev appeared as a soloist and guest conductor for a program of his own music which included ‘Peter and the Wolf’ in its first American performance. In a pre-concert interview with newspapermen he had pointedly alluded to the bad reception Boston had previously accorded his more ‘serious’ works, which he was accordingly omitting from the forthcoming program.” Prokofiev biographer Simon Morrison adds, “Prokofiev informed a Time magazine reporter that because audiences in Boston could not grasp his ‘serious music,’ he was obliged to pander to them with ‘simple things.’”

Despite the composer’s deprecating comments, the simplicity of the composition is not to be confused with a lack of quality. It’s the story of young Peter, who, defying his Grandfather’s words of warning, defeats and captures a hungry wolf, with the aid of a few animal friends. Each character has a dedicated instrument and a distinct theme — what Wagnerians would call a leitmotif. Peter is voiced by the strings, and there is his grumpy Grandfather (bassoon), a bird (flute), a duck (oboe), a cat (clarinet), and the wolf himself (French horns). With precision and economy, Prokofiev sketches out the characters thematically as he moves the story along.

The role of the Narrator in the performance is key, and the debut recording features Richard Hale as such. The respected baritone was a frequent concert-hall performer; in later years he turned to character acting in films, becoming a familiar face in fare such as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). Hale gives the reading a directness and emotional force absent in many other renditions of the role. In Hale’s performance, the story is thrilling and vital.

After the premiere in Boston, Prokofiev toured America in 1938. He made a point of going to Hollywood and playing Peter and the Wolf for Walt Disney, in the hopes he would craft an animated film based on the score. Disney nearly added a Peter and the Wolf segment to his animated/classical music anthology Fantasia (1940), but eventually produced it as a segment of the anthology Make Mine Music in 1946.

The premiere recording exists as a six-part set of 78-rpm records bound together (these bulky, heavy folders gave us the phrase “record album”). The initial release was wildly popular, and soon recording followed recording, sporting narrators as varied as Boris Karloff, David Bowie, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Alice Cooper. Peter and the Wolf is popular — and sturdy — enough to endure hundreds of renditions.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Charlie Christian plays ‘Rose Room.’

 

SOURCES

 

Koussevitzsky

Moses Smith

Muriwai Books

2017 (1947)

 

Serge Koussevitzsky

Hugo Leichtentritt

Harvard University Press

1946

 

The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years

Simon Morrison

Oxford University Press

2009

 

 

NRR Project: 'Over the Rainbow' (1939)

 

NRR Project: ‘Over the Rainbow’

Music by Harold Arlen; Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

Performed by Judy Garland with Victor Young and his Orchestra

Recorded July 1939

2:47

One of the greatest American songs was crafted for the groundbreaking Technicolor fantasy film The Wizard of Oz in 1939. It was written expressly for Judy Garland to sing as Dorothy in the sepia-toned prologue to the movie, set in Kansas. There, amid her colorless, ramshackle environment, Dorothy sings of wanting to be somewhere else, somewhere “the dreams that you dream really do come true.”

First, read Walter Limler’s excellent explanatory essay here. It breaks down just how difficult it was for composer Harold Arlen to come up with the music for this song. He was adept at crafting comic songs, but this one needed to be heartfelt. (In musicals, this type of song is often referred to as a “wants” song, one in which the lead character expresses longing for change.)

The movie was a hit, and so was the song. It became Judy Garland’s theme song (she was only 16 when she first recorded it), and is one of the most familiar tunes of all time.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time:‘Peter and the Wolf.’

NRR Project: 'O Que e que a Bahiana tem’ (1939)

 

NRR Project: ‘O Que e que a Bahiana tem’

Performed by Carmen Miranda and Bando de Lua

Recorded December 1939

3:17

Carmen Miranda (1909-1955) persists in our collective imagination as “the lady in the tutti-frutti hat,” the exuberant Brazilian songstress whose outrageous outfits were her trademark.

There are two excellent explanatory essays on her at the National Recording Registry – one byKathyrn Bishop-Sanchez, here; and one by Cary O’Dell, here. I can only add a bit myself.

She released her first album in 1930. She was already popular in Brazil when she recorded this song in 1938. It’s from her fifth film, Banana di Terra. The song took off and she recorded it in New York in December of that year.

She was an immediate hit. She dressed in an approximation of the wardrobe of the Bahia women – Brazilian peasant-class ladies who dressed extravagantly. She wears bright colors, enormous jewelry, and fantastic headgear, usually featuring fruit and flowers.

“O Que e que a Bahiana tem” and other numbers she performed in the New York show Streets of Paris in 1939. Soon she was seen on the screen, usually filmed in New York due to her theatrical commitments. She was dubbed the Queen of Samba.

In 1940 she did her first American movie, Down Argentine Way. She is always presented as a cliché Other, a weird amalgam of entertaining traits combined with an excessive visual style. She made 13 films in all.

As derided as she might be for her look, her musicianship was excellent and as distinctive as the later Yma Sumac, another Latin phenomenon. She did help immensely to inject Latin music into the American mainstream.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time:‘Over the Rainbow.’

NRR Project: The John and Ruby Lomax Southern States Recording Trip

 

NRR Project: The John and Ruby Lomax Southern States Recording Trip

Recorded March 31 – June 14, 1939

350 performances

The most epic journey in American roots music began March 31, 1939. Seventy-two-year-old John Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill, 53, set out on an expedition into the heart of the American soul, as expressed through music.

They recorded everything and everyone. They recorded English and Spanish, all faiths, all colors. According to Matthew Barton and the National Recording Registry from which you read here, “the Lomaxes captured a wide range of traditional musical styles in English and Spanish, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs, as well as interviews with the performers.”

In fact, just cut to Barton’s essay here. Just read it. It’s really good!

I can only add that, for the lover of American music, this collection of musical pieces, all fully accessible online, is the mother load of content. In only 10 weeks, the Lomaxes found and captured hundreds of bits of oral culture that could never be accessed today. The wealth of what they collected is still impacting scholars and musicmakers today.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Carmen Miranda sings ‘O Que e que a Bahiana tem’.

NRR Project: 'In the Mood' (1940)

 

NRR Project: ‘In the Mood’

Composed by Joe Garland and Andy Razaf

Performed by the Glenn Miller and his Orchestra

Recorded Aug. 1, 1939

3:09

I must first point to the extremely learned essay on this piece from Dennis M. Spragg, which you can read here. (He is the senior consultant for the Glenn Miller Archives at the University of Colorado Boulder.) Like any great detective, he searches for the origin of the piece and rings all the changes on it down to the date of its incredible success.

Because the first few bars of the song are instantly identifiable, and in fact evoke an entire period in American history – the span of big-band music, which thrived from the mid-1930s to the end of the Second World War in 1945. This iconic song, in both its instrumental and vocal renditions, bring back memories of grandparents and great-grandparents, all those who survived the Depression and WWII – those dubbed the Greatest Generation.

The story of “In the Mood” is one of the long evolution of a riff, that began in 1925. Jazz is uniquely conducive to the re-formation of music that already exists, so it didn’t take long for different artists and ensembles to adapt, transform, and perfect it. Joe Garland copyrighted his version in 1938. Finally, in 1939 Glenn Miller purchased the tune from Garland. Miller rearranged the number with Eddie Durham, and voila – “In the Mood” crystalized into its eternal form.

It's swinging, instantly memorable, a smoothly orchestrated syncopation that invites the listener to dance. It’s one of those perfect songs, one that deserves it place in the collective consciousness.

Just one caveat -- the National Recording Registry notes that the recording is “seamless and precise.” This is one quality of Miller’s style that can be interpreted in a negative way. All of Miller’s work is based on the flawless and modulated performance of the text as written. He was an auteur, he, like Duke Ellington, could shape exactly the sound he wanted to hear. And his taste was excellent.

This is different approach than that taken by the relatively looser bandleaders Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, not to mention the real swingers such as Count Basie and Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy, Is Miller, then more mechanical, more soulless, more vanilla, more . . . wholesome?

It would mark the high point of the general American public’s love of jazz. It would have been fascinating to hear his development after the war years, but his untimely death in 1944 precludes us from knowing other than what became a string of well-machined popular hits for him and his outfit.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: the John and Ruby Lomax Southern States Recording Trip.

NRR Project: 'If I Didn't Care' (1939)

 

NRR Project: ‘If I Didn’t Care’

Composed by Jack Lawrence

Performed by the Ink Spots

Recorded 1939

3:09

First of all, read Andrew Hickey’s excellent explanatory essay here. I can only echo his words.

The Ink Spots were a vocal quartet much in the style of the already popular Mills Brothers, although initially they essayed more comic material. They formed in 1934, and worked steadily at all manner of gigs until they made a huge hit of “If I Didn’t Care,” which sold an amazing 19 million copies.

The song runs on highs and lows – first, the soaring tenor of Bill Kenny, followed by a spoken reprise of the lyrics by bass Hoppy Jones, then another repetition of the opening. This style was immediately co-opted by many other groups, but nothing could compare to the originals. It’s a sweet and yearning tune that still enchants decades later.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: ‘In the Mood.’