BLACK COFFEE - SWING'S HIDDEN GEMS

 

CELEBRITY DEATH CERTIFICATES: BIX BIEDERBECKE

Here is the death certificate of jazz great Bix Biederbecke who tragically died young on August 6, 1931 at the age of  28...

NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS: HAL KEMP

Bandleader Hal Kemp died tragically on December 20, 1940, and here is a newspaper article from a couple weeks after that...

THE EARLY YEARS OF FATS WALLER

Before the world knew him as “Fats,” the jovial jazz virtuoso with a grin as wide as his stride piano style, Thomas Wright Waller was just a boy growing up in the vibrant, music-soaked streets of Harlem, New York. Born on May 21, 1904, to Adeline, a church organist, and Edward Waller, a Baptist lay preacher, young Thomas was surrounded by both discipline and melody—a combination that would shape his life in unexpected ways.

From the age of six, Thomas was drawn to the piano like a moth to flame. He played the reed organ at his father’s open-air sermons, absorbing the rhythms of gospel and the structure of classical music. His mother, a talented musician herself, introduced him to the works of J.S. Bach, while his grandfather, Adolph Waller, a respected violinist from Virginia, added another layer of musical heritage to the boy’s upbringing. 

But Harlem in the early 1900s was more than just church music—it was becoming the beating heart of Black artistic expression. As the Harlem Renaissance began to bloom, so did the young Waller’s curiosity. He was captivated by the sounds spilling out of clubs and rent parties, where jazz was being born in real time. Despite his father’s disapproval—he called jazz “music from the Devil’s workshop”—Thomas couldn’t resist the pull. 

By his early teens, he was working in a grocery store to pay for music lessons, and soon dropped out of DeWitt Clinton High School to pursue music full-time. His first steady gig was as an organist at Harlem’s Lincoln Theatre, and it wasn’t long before he caught the attention of James P. Johnson, the legendary stride pianist who became his mentor. Johnson introduced him to the world of rent parties, where Waller’s infectious energy and dazzling technique quickly made him a favorite. 

The nickname “Fats” came early—an affectionate nod to his size, but also to his larger-than-life personality. He was already composing, performing, and charming audiences with a mix of virtuosity and humor that would become his trademark. By the time he was 20, he had written his first hit, “Squeeze Me”, and was well on his way to becoming one of the most beloved figures in American music. 

In those early years, Waller wasn’t just learning music—he was living it, absorbing the pulse of Harlem, the discipline of classical training, and the improvisational spirit of jazz. His story is one of joy, rebellion, and genius, all wrapped in the rhythm of a piano that never stopped swinging....

FORGOTTEN ONES: HENRY THIES

Forgotten bandleader Henry Thies led a popular dance orchestra throughout the 1920's. Thies (born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893) became known in Detroit, Michigan, as a "boy wonder" on the violin and rapidly rose to lead his own orchestra in one of the city's top hotels. In 1926, the orchestra leader brought his stylish brand of symphonic jazz to Cincinnati where appearances at the Chatterbox Club led to a devoted following on local radio. Well, known on the Ohio hotel circuit, Thies also toured on vaudeville and performed in theatres.Starting in Chicago he came to Cincinnati for a short gig at Castle Farms mid-decade. That gig stretched to where the orchestra found a permanent home at the Hotel Sinton.

Henry and his band recorded for a time at Victor Records and made some nice recordings in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With vocalist Don Dewey and a young Jane Froman, the Thies band had some nice recordings of songs of the day like - "When You're Smiling" and "Rose Of Mandalay". 

Unfortunately, his life ended tragically. While his wife and son and a musician waited for Henry to show up for dinner, Thies ended his life with a bullet at his home. Thies, who was 41 years old left no notes. Alvin Miller, Thies' trumpet player, found the body. According to Miller, the band leader had been in good spirits.

In the past however, Henry Thies had nervous problems. Two years before his death, he had tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills. After that attempt, Thies was a patient in a mental hospital for nearly 15 months.

He had new performances and radio shows scheduled and was a very successful bandleader. If he hadn't ended his life, his band would have continued to hit greater heights of fame and stardom. It's sad that he died from a self inflicted gunshot wound on June 12, 1935. His wife, his son (who was 19), and a mother and a sister survived him...

CAB CALLOWAY: THE HI DE HO MAN

In 1931, Cab Calloway recorded his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher". It is the first single song by an African American to sell a million records. The Old Man of the Mountain", "St. James Infirmary Blues", and "Minnie the Moocher" were performed in three Betty Boop cartoons: "Minnie the Moocher" (1932), "Snow White" (1933), and "The Old Man of the Mountain" (1933). Through rotoscoping, Calloway performed voice over for these cartoons, but his dance steps were the basis of the characters' movements. He scheduled concerts in some communities to coincide with the release of the films to take advantage of the publicity.

When Calloway originally recorded "Minnie The Moocher" in the 1930s, the chorus lyrics were simply "Ho-dee-hody" rather than the lengthened "Hody-hody-hody ho". In an interview, Calloway explained that one time when he was singing the song, he suddenly forgot the words, so he immediately shouted "Hody-Hody-Hody-ho!", and carried on the song that way. That proved to be more popular with fans than the original, so he had been singing it that way ever since.

As a result of the success of "Minnie the Moocher", Calloway became identified with its chorus, gaining the nickname "The Hi De Ho Man". He performed in the 1930s in a series of short films for Paramount. Calloway's and Ellington's groups were featured on film more than any other jazz orchestras of the era. In these films, Calloway can be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move, which some observers have described as the precursor to Michael Jackson's moonwalk. Calloway said 50 years later, "it was called The Buzz back then." The 1933 film "International House" featured Calloway performing his classic song, "Reefer Man", a tune about a man who smokes marijuana.

Calloway remained a household name through the 1960s due to TV appearances and occasional concerts in the US and Europe. In 1961 and 1962, he toured with the Harlem Globetrotters, providing halftime entertainment during games., and was cast as Yeller in the film "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965) with Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, and Edward G. Robinson. In 1967, he co-starred with Pearl Bailey as Horace Vandergelder in an all-black cast of "Hello, Dolly!" on Broadway during its original run.
In 1978, Calloway released a disco version of "Minnie the Moocher" on RCA which reached the Billboard R&B chart. Calloway was introduced to a new generation when he appeared in the 1980 film "The Blues Brothers" performing "Minnie the Moocher". When recording the soundtrack, he was needed to record his hit "Minnie the Moocher" in better quality than his original album. When he came into the studio, he was prepared to do the disco version, which had just been released. The filmmakers asked for the original version, which Calloway reluctantly gave them....

THE RETIREMENT OF ARTIE SHAW

In 1949 bandleader Artie Shaw, the so-called "King of the Clarinet" who had rocketed to fame at the end of the 1930s on the strength of hits like "Begin the Beguine," had been off the jazz scene for a couple of years, for any number of reasons—he was more interested in playing classical music, there was a recording ban on by the musicians' union, and the economic climate for big bands was turning frosty. But, as was the case several times throughout his career, Shaw started a new band- partly out of artistic restlessness, and partly out of financial need.
"Everybody liked it but the people"

Shaw tapped young, bop-influenced writers like Tadd Dameron and Gene Roland, and put together an outstanding saxophone section that included Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. They toured throughout the autumn and early winter, and at the end of the year Shaw took them into the studio for several marathon sessions that constitute the whole of their recorded legacy.

Shortly afterwards, Shaw dissolved the orchestra. "I had a really great band in 1949 — one of the finest bands I've ever led," he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1985. "The musicians, man for man, the arrangements, everything. I had the best arrangers in the world writing for me. And everybody liked it but the people, as the gag goes."
Shaw goes longhair

Ironically enough, Shaw had considered abandoning jazz not long before putting the big band together. "There is more to music than ‘Stardust,'" he told Downbeat, and throughout much of 1949 he devoted himself to playing classical music—tagged by media wags in those days as "longhair"—with several city symphonies and doing some recordings for Columbia as well. In April he brought a large classical orchestra into New York's Bop City, drawing a huge but ultimately bored and indifferent audience.

Shaw's forays into classical music would have a profound effect upon his playing on the jazz records he made between 1949 and 1954. "My entire concept of what a clarinet could sound like changed," he later said. "It got pure, and a little more refined. Instead of a vibrato, I tried to get a ripple."
"George Shearing with a clarinet"

From 1950 to 1953 Shaw waxed a series of commercially successful but artistically indifferent records for the Decca label. In the autumn of 1953 he formed a new version of his 1940s small-group the Gramercy Five, partly to perform for money that would help pay off his tax bill, and partly because he wanted to have a go at serious jazz again. The new Gramercy Five, actually a sextet, had a modern, cool-jazz kind of sound; one critic called it "George Shearing with a clarinet." The group's performances in New York City got great reviews from the critics, and in 1954 Shaw took the band into the studio on several occasions. Over the next 50 years he'd often refer to these Gramercy Five recordings as the best he ever did.

Shaw broke up his Gramercy Five ensemble in 1954 and played a few desultory gigs with as part of an all-star jazz tour before putting down his clarinet and retiring from the music scene. He lived another 50 years, but he never recorded or performed in public again. (Shaw did organize a new big band in the 1980s and occasionally conducted it, but he did not play clarinet; that role was assigned to the orchestra's general front man, Dick Johnson.) His 1949-54 recordings stand as the final, brilliant chapter of a musical legacy that Shaw referred to as "a good-sized chunk of durable Americana."

SOURCE

FRANK ROSOLINO: TROMBONIST AND TROUBLED SOUL

Even though I am a music lover, I also like to dig into the history of the music as well as the stories of the musicans. Sadly, not everything I dig up is happy, feel good facts. The story of Frank Rosolino is especially troubling. Rosolino was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States, He performed with the big bands of Bob Chester, Glen Gray, Tony Pastor, Herbie Fields, Gene Krupa, and Stan Kenton. After a period with Kenton he settled in Los Angeles, where he performed with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars (1954–1960) in Hermosa Beach.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, between nightclub engagements, Rosolino was active in many Los Angeles recording studios where he performed with such notables as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé, Michel Legrand, and Quincy Jones. In the mid-to-late 1960s he and fellow trombonist Mike Barone, billed as "Trombones Unlimited," recorded for Liberty Records several albums of pop-style arrangements of current hits, such as the 1968 album Grazing in the Grass. He can also be seen performing with Shelly Manne's group in the film I Want to Live! (1958) starring Susan Hayward, and also in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. He was a regular on The Steve Allen Show and a guest artist on The Tonight Show and The Merv Griffin Show. Rosolino was a talented vocalist, renowned for his wild form of scat-singing, notably on Gene Krupa's hit record, "Lemon Drop".

During the 1970s, Rosolino performed and toured with Quincy Jones and the Grammy Award winning group Supersax.

That article, headed The Joker: Frank Rosolino appeared in Gene Lees' 1988 collection of essays and reminiscences Meet Me at Jim and Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World.

Lees noted an incident when he and his wife were traveling by bus to Denver after an enjoyable weekend of music in Colorado Springs. Rosolino and the woman he was living with, Diane, were in the seat behind them . . . and Rosolino – whose third wife and mother to their two sons had committed suicide – was talking about “killing himself and taking the two boys with him, since he could not bear the thought of leaving them behind in this world”, writes Lees.

The following day everything was fine however, Rosolino joking around in the airport, and in good spirits they flew back to LA. That was the last time Lees saw Frank Rosolino.

The following morning the joker was on the morning news. On his return, Diane went to a club but Rosolino had gone home to be with his sons aged seven and nine. When she returned home in the early hours she saw a flash of light in the boys' bedroom and as she went into the house heard a gunshot, “the one Frank put into his brain”.

He had shot his two sons as they lay sleeping and then – with no significant amounts of drugs or booze in his body – put the gun to his own head.

One of the boys died instantly, the seven-year old lingered in a coma and when he recovered he was blind.

No one will ever know what switch got flicked in Frank Rosolino's brain during those quiet hours he was at home in Van Nuys with his sleeping sons. But most agree it was as unexpected as it was unthinkable. I have a hard time listening to Frank Rosolino now...

RIP: JAY POPA

 I recently lost a dear friend with the passing of Jay Popa. Anyone who is a big band fan is familiar with the website The Big Band Alliance, which Jay and his brother Chris run. Jay had a big heart, and I count him as a friend. Here is his beautiful obituary...

Everyone should have a devoted son, loving brother, and best pal like James Michael Popa, known to family and friends as “Jay.” After a brave two-year battle with esophageal cancer that metastasized to his liver and bones, Jay passed away August 17, 2024 at age 70.

He was born in and grew up in Alliance, and was a gentle, kind, generous, thoughtful, and humble person to all, with a beautiful soul.

All his life Jay liked to draw and, even while in ill health recently attended art classes at the North Canton Public Library. His favorite color was gold. While he appreciated stylish designs, furniture and decorations, he preferred shopping at Goodwill and other thrift stores. He enjoyed music ranging from the Motown sound of The Supremes and The Temptations to the big bands of Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller, and spent time (especially after he retired) watching dozens of old and new TV shows such as “Dark Shadows,” “NCIS,” and “The Masked Singer.” Comedies like “The Three Stooges,” “The Munsters,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and “Laverne and Shirley” made him laugh. And he loved dogs.

A graduate of Alliance High School and Bowling Green State University, he had a long career as a Computer Programmer with Central Trust (later Bank One) in Canton, then, after moving to Columbus, worked for Riverside Methodist Hospital there.

He was preceded in death by his father, Aurel Howard Popa (1993); his mother, Mildred Carol Crist Popa (2020); and several aunts and uncles including Tillie Stahl (1999) and Sophie Teeters (2014).

Those left to cherish his memory are two brothers, Stephen of Aloha, Oregon, and Christopher (Jose Luis) of Chicago, Illinois; several cousins including Carolyn Frank of Alliance, Cheryl Citino of Salem, Margie (Danny) Engle of Salem, and Diane (David) Kieffer of Delaware, Ohio; and other extended family members.

Thank you to Dr. Amir Iqbal and the ladies of the Oncology and Palliative Care departments at Aultman Alliance Community Hospital, as well as the staff of Aultman Woodlawn in Canton and Christopher J. Graff of Cassaday-Turkle-Christian Funeral home in Alliance...

The Big Band Alliance

MUSIC BREAK: WOODY HERMAN - GOLDEN WEDDING

This recording contains to one of my favorite drum solos of Dave Tough. What a genius!

DRUM MASTER: DAVE TOUGH

If you are a fan of jazz and big band music, please familiarize yourself with the drummer of Dave Tough. He was a brillant and yet troubled soul. He was born  on April 26, 1907 in Oak Park, Illinois and died December 9, 1948 in Newark, New Jersey. From an early age he was passionate about drumming. While in high school, Tough became a member of the Austin High School Gang. The Austin High Gang was an ever evolving group that formulated the Chicago style of jazz which was very popular in the 1920s, initially comprised of Bud Freeman, Jimmy and Dick McPartland, Frank Teschmaker, Jim Lanigan, and Dave North. From early on Tough was an ensemble player, who preferred to solidify a groove rather than transform or change it. In doing so, Tough relied on his great sense of musical quality.

In 1932 he was forced into temporary inactivity through illness, returning to the scene in 1935. Although his work up to the time of his illness had been primarily in small groups, he now slotted into the big band scene as if made for it. He played first with Tommy Dorsey and later with Red Norvo, Bunny Berigan, Benny Goodman and Dorsey again. Tough then joined Jimmy Dorsey, Bud Freeman, Jack Teagarden, Artie Shaw and others. His employers were a who's who of the best of the white big bands of the swing era.

There were a number of reasons for his restlessness, among them his insistence on musical perfection, irritation with the blandness of many of the more commercial arrangements the bands had to play, and his own occasionally unstable personality.

During World War II he was briefly in the US Navy (where he played with Shaw) but was discharged on medical grounds. On his discharge he joined Woody Herman, with whom he had played briefly before the war. The records of Herman's First Herd demonstrated to fans worldwide that the physically frail and tiny Tough was a powerful giant among drummers. Despite his broad-based style, Tough believed himself unsuited to bop and for much of his career he sought to develop a career as a writer.

His disaffection with the changing jazz scene accelerated his physical and mental deterioration. Although helped by many people who knew him, among them writers Leonard Feather and John Hammond, his lifestyle had numbered his days. Walking home one night, he fell, fractured his skull and died from the injury on 9 December 1948. His body lay unrecognized in the morgue for three days. Whether playing in small Chicago-style groups or in any of the big bands of which he was a member, Tough consistently demonstrated his subtle, driving swing. It was with Herman, however, that he excelled, urging along one of the finest of the period's jazz orchestras with sizzling enthusiasm...

FORGOTTEN ONES: TINY HILL

There are so many big band leaders. Some were famous for decades, and some faded away quickly. Tiny Hill had a unique sound, but faded from fame. Born in 1906, Hill was billed as "America's Biggest Bandleader" because of his weight of over 365 lb (166 kg). His signature song was "Angry", which he first recorded in 1939 on Columbia records' Vocalion label. He used sandpaper blocks and a güiro to generate a double shuffle "beat that makes the listener itch to dance" Hill was born in Sullivan Township, Moultrie County, Illinois. His parents were William Fred Hill (1880–1915) and Osa Crowdson Ault (1890–1982). His parents separated when he was seven years old and he went to live with an aunt. He was active in high school sports and was president of his senior class. He graduated from Sullivan High School in 1924. Hill then attended Illinois State Normal School for two years. Financial difficulties forced him to leave college to go to work. He went to Detroit, where he worked in a produce warehouse. After a series of short term jobs, he ended up driving a team of mules for the Midwest Canning Company in Rochelle, Illinois.

In 1931 Hill formed his first big band, which was known as the "Fat Man's Band". Hill played the drums with the trio, which played for several years in and around Decatur, Illinois. In 1934 Hill joined the Byron Dunbar band in Decatur as a drummer and vocalist. After a year with Dunbar, Hill left to form his own band, taking many of Dunbar's band members with him. They had their first appearance at the Ingleterra Ballroom in Peoria, Illinois on October 31, 1935.

Members of Hill's new band were Dick Coffeen and Harold King on trumpets; John Noreuil on trombone, Jim Shielf on piano, and Reightno Corrington on bass. The reed section included Bobby Walters, Bob Kramar and Nook Schreier, who also did arranging. The group's style was Dixieland jazz and hillbilly music. Their theme song was "Dream Girl". By 1937 the band was playing its warm and easy-to-dance-to music three nights a week to packed audiences at the Ingleterra Ballroom.

In September 1939, the band was heard over Remote WGN Radio broadcasts from the Melody Mill Ballroom in the Chicago suburb of North Riverside, Illinois. The band played for several years at the Melody Mill and acquired a large following throughout the Midwest.

Augmented by vocalists such as Allen De Witt, Bob Freeman, Irwin Bendell and Hill himself, the group's popularity soon extended to Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa, growing steadily throughout the 30s and 40s. Soon the band was playing in ballrooms coast to coast. Hill toured the country for a while and landed on the coast to play four months at the Casino Gardens, Ocean Park, California. He returned to Chicago in 1942. Further appearances included Aragon and Trianon in Chicago and The Rainbow Ballroom in Denver.

                                                


In 1943 Hill and his orchestra became the summer replacement band on the Lucky Strike Your Hit Parade radio show. In January 1950, Hill moved to Colorado where he would spend time when not on the road. He purchased a 140-acre (0.57 km2) dairy farm at Fort Lupton named Mountain View. In 1951 the band traveled 46,000 miles (74,000 km) in ten months. In 1952, the band racked up 61,000 miles (98,000 km) in 11 months, in his fleet of Packard automobiles. Fast cars were one of Hill's hobbies. In '51 and again in '52, the band was his guests at the Indianapolis Memorial Day Races. Another of his hobbies was cooking. In 1956, Hill opened Radio Station KHIL in Brighton, Colorado.

He eventually spent less time on the road and more time with his business interests.

Despite the ending of the Big Bands era, Hill continued to play in small combos in the Denver-Brighton area, often returning to the Midwest for guest appearances. Undeterred by the decline in the commercial appeal of the big band sound, Hill resolutely remained at the helm of the combo until his death in 1971. His final public performance was to a capacity audience in Emden, Illinois on July 17, 1971. The inscription on his tombstone reads: "Forgotten quickly by many, remembered forever by a few."

FORGOTTEN ONES: BOB CHESTER

Just like there was a lot of big band singers from the 1930s and 1940s, there were a lot of big band leaders. Sadly some of those big band leaders are forgotten even more of their singers. I think one such band leader was Bob Chester,a great bandleader and tenor saxophonist.

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Chester's stepfather ran General Motors's Fisher Body Works. He began his career as a sideman under Irving Aaronson, Ben Bernie, and Ben Pollack. He formed his own group in Detroit in the mid-1930s,with a Glenn Miller-influenced sound. This band was unsuccessful in local engagements and quickly dissolved. He then put together a new band on the East Coast under the direction of Tommy Dorsey and with arrangements by David Rose. This ensemble fared much better, recording for Bluebird Records.

Chester's group, billed "The New Sensation of the Nation," had its own radio show on CBS briefly in the fall of 1939. The twenty-five-minute program aired from the Hotel Van Cleve in Dayton, Ohio late on Thursday nights (actually 12:30 am Friday morning, Eastern Time); the September 21, 1939 edition can be heard on the One Day In Radio tapes, archived by Washington D.C. station WJSV.

Chester's Bluebird records have proved excellent sellers, both for retail dealers and coin phonograph operators such as "From Maine to California"; "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie"; "Madeliaine"; and two songs from "Banjo Eyes" - "Not a Care in the World" and "A Nickel to My Name". His only national hit was "With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair" (b/w "I Walk With Music"; Bluebird 10614), which featured Dolores O'Neill on vocals and went to No. 18 on the chart in April 1940.

Chester's orchestra included trumpeters Alec Fila, Nick Travis, Lou Mucci, and Conrad Gozzo, saxophonists Herbie Steward and Peanuts Hucko, drummer Irv Kluger, and trombonist Bill Harris. His female singers included Dolores O'Neill, Kathleen Lane, and Betty Bradley; among his male singers were Gene Howard, Peter Marshall, Bob Haymes, and Al Stuart.

The orchestra disbanded in the mid-1940s, due in part to the shrinking market for big band sound. After a stint as a disc jockey at WKMH radio, Chester assembled another band for a short time in the early 1950s, but after it failed he retired from music and returned to Detroit, to work for the rest of his life in auto manufacturing. Bob Chester died in October 1966, at the age of 58. Forgotten in 1966, he is even more forgotten today...

PAST OBITS: LAWRENCE WELK

Here is the obituary for bandleader Lawrence Welk as it appeared in Chicago Tribune on May 19, 1992 - 31 years ago today!


Lawrence Welk, the band leader whose folksy charm and bubbly brand of

''Champagne music'' shaped the longest-running show in television history, died on Sunday evening at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 89.


Mr. Welk had been suffering from pneumonia and dementia in recent days, said Bernice McGeehan, a spokeswoman for the Welk Group.

With diligence, drive and a cheery ''ah-one an` ah-two,'' the self-taught maestro became one of a handful of television entertainers who defined the viewing habits of a generation.

He rose from an immigrant farm family in a German-speaking hamlet in North Dakota to become one of the nation`s favorite entertainers.

The buoyant Mr. Welk presided over ''The Lawrence Welk Show'' on ABC on Saturday evenings from 1955 to 1971, when the show was dropped because sponsors said its audience was too old, too rural and too sedate.

Undaunted, Mr. Welk signed up more than 250 independent television stations in the U.S. and Canada and kept the show on television for 11 more years. Repackaged as ''Memories With Lawrence Welk,'' the show has been appearing on public television on Sunday afternoons since 1987.

Mr. Welk was a strict taskmaster, demanding from his performers hard work, thrift and self-discipline. He kept his musical family-stalwarts like the ''champagne lady,'' Norma Zimmer, and the Lennon Sisters-basically intact, at times even by arbitrating marital disputes. These are some of the professional precepts on which he insisted:

''You have to play what the people understand.''

''Keep it simple so the audience can feel like they can do it too.''

''Champagne music puts the girl back in the boy`s arms-where she belongs.''

''He was really on the pulse of his audience. We did three tours a year to find out what the people wanted to hear,'' said Bobby Burgess, a dancer on the Welk show from 1961 to 1982. ''They had to be able to feel that they could dance along with us.''

Over the decades, Mr. Welk became, after Bob Hope, the second-wealthiest performer in show business, and his band and production company became the second-biggest tourist draw of Southern California, behind Disneyland.

Components of the multimillion-dollar Welk conglomerate include a large music library and ownership of the lucrative royalty rights to 20,000 songs.

Among them are the entire body of Jerome Kern`s work, which Mr. Welk bought for $3.2 million in 1970. The heart of the real estate empire was the Lawrence Welk Village, a 1,000-acre resort-and-retirement complex at Escondido, Calif., near San Diego.

The Welk dance band offered an easy mix of pop, swing, Dixieland, country, Latin, polkas and inspirational music. Detractors called it tinkly Mickey Mouse music dispensed to geriatric audiences.

Fans adored the sentimental show as a constant in a changing world and as a reassuring time capsule of a simpler, happier time.

Mr. Welk was born on March 11, 1903, in a sod farmhouse in the prairie village of Strasburg, N.D., one of eight children of the former Christine Schwab and Ludwig Welk, immigrants from Alsace-Lorraine, a region of France that was once part of Germany.

His father was a blacksmith turned farmer. The boy dropped out of the fourth grade to farm full-time until he was 21.

At night, his father taught him to play an inexpensive accordion, and from the age of 13 he earned money playing at social gatherings. At 17, he played in local bands and formed a group, the three-piece Biggest Little Band in America, to help inaugurate radio station WNAX in Yankton, S.D.

At 21, he announced he was leaving the farm for a life as a musician.

''You`ll be back,'' his father predicted. ''You`ll be back just as soon as you get hungry.''

At 24, he put together a six-piece band called the Hotsy-Totsy Boys. He also bought and operated a series of small businesses, one of which featured an accordion-shaped grill that served a product called squeezeburgers.

These projects failed, but his fortunes improved as he led bigger bands in ballrooms and hotels in bigger towns and on radio, mostly in the Midwest.

He then moved to Los Angeles, where his show was first telecast. In 1955, when he was 52, his coast-to-coast television program began its record run.

Still, he never overcame his shyness and used prompters to make even brief announcements. He rejected cigarette and beer advertising, hired no comedians for fear of off-color jokes and deleted suggestive lyrics from the orchestra`s material. His honors included playing at the 1957 inaugural ball of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Mr. Welk recounted his life and its lessons in several popular books written with McGeehan, including ''Wunnerful, Wunnerful!'' (1971) and ''Ah-One, Ah-Two!'' (1974).

He is survived by his wife, the former Fern Renner; a son, Lawrence Jr.; two daughters, Shirley Fredricks and Donna Mack; and eight grandchildren...

SOURCE

RIP: LOUISE TOBIN

Louise Tobin, the big band singer and ex-wife of Harry James, who helped to discover a young Frank Sinatra died on November 26th at her grand-daughter's home. She was 104. Tobin began singing professionally in her teens in the 1930s, working with notable bandleaders including Bobby Hackett (1915–1976) and Jack Jenney (1910–1945).

In 1939, she joined Benny Goodman’s (1909–1986) band, singing on hits including “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was” and “There’ll Be Some Changes Made.” She married bandleader Harry James (1916–1983) in 1935; the marriage didn’t last long, but it did result in one important musical partnership. Tobin was listening to the radio in 1939 and heard a broadcast from the New Jersey club the Rustic Cabin. Their young emcee, Frank Sinatra, was singing, and she told James he should tune in another night to hear Sinatra’s skill. James was impressed and hired Sinatra as part of his band. The gig with James was the steppingstone to Sinatra’s meteoric rise to fame.

After their divorce, Ms. Tobin spent several years working in Los Angeles with bands led by pianist Emil Coleman and trumpeter Ziggy Elman before returning to Texas. Tobin took time off from her singing career to raise her children with James, but she returned to performing in the 1960s, including at the Newport Jazz Festival. In 1960 Tobin ran into Peanuts Hucko, a clarinetist who had played on her first recording in 1939 with Jack Jenney’s band. When Hucko opened his jazz club in Denver in 1967, he hired Tobin as his vocalist and she became his wife. They sold the restaurant in 1969 and Hucko led the Glenn Miller band in the early ‘70s and was also a favorite performer on the Lawrence Welk show. In the ‘80s the pair performed together in Hucko’s own band.

Although Tobin did not become the star that other singers did with Goodman’s band, she can be heard on several of the early recordings.Survivors include two sons, Harry James Jr. and Jerin Timothyray “Tim” James; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren...

MUSIC BREAK: JIMMIE LUNCEFORD - BLUE PRELUDE

HOLLYWOOD MYSTERIES: THE DEATH OF JIMMIE LUNCFORD

In the 1940s, Seaside was witness to a curious and disturbing incident. Despite an abundance of musical clubs and dance halls — Club Monterey, The Lodge and the Bungalow — race relations were tense. Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Wayne Morse, a champion of civil and labor rights, joined progressive politicians in calling for equal rights for all races with the passage of a national Civil Rights Act.

Many Oregonians — including the editor of the Seaside Signal in a 1948 editorial — feared Morse’s stance would create a backlash and lead to “even more terrible persecution in America.”
In the ‘40s, Sandy Winnett worked as a waitress at the ice cream shop adjacent to the Bungalow. Today she is a volunteer at the Seaside Museum and Historical Society. Winnett remembers an “open-minded attitude” among most Seaside residents, a time when people of all backgrounds “came to dance” in Seaside.

 
“Dancing in those days was a much bigger social event than it is today,” added longtime Seaside resident and author Gloria Stiger Linkey. “We danced every Friday night at the high school. After the basketball and football games, we had a dance. We danced all the time.”
Linkey remembered a time when teens would drive their cars — or their parents’ cars — to Seaside’s Cove, turn their radios on and dance through the night by the beach.

It was into this environment that bandleader and alto saxophonist Jimmie Lunceford arrived in July 1947 to play the Bungalow, the city’s preeminent dance hall. It wasn’t just white bands like Glenn Miller and Tex Beneke that headlined Seaside’s top club, but groups like Lionel Hampton, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller.

“To the local teenagers, the Bungalow was heaven,” Lunceford’s biographer Eddy Determeyer wrote.

Lunceford was considered to be on an equal with Count Basie and Duke Ellington, Linkey said. “He had a master’s degree in music. He was a very educated man.”

But Lunceford’s arrival was said to be anything but civil. Lunceford and his band were an all-black ensemble, although Lunceford had in the past led integrated bands.

Rumors have circulated throughout the years that a racist restaurant owner poisoned Lunceford. According to accounts presented in his biography of Lunceford, 2009’s Music is Our Business, Lunceford’s musicians learned the Bungalow dance was to be played for a segregated crowd — whites only.

 
Management asked Lunceford’s black valet to stand out front and discourage black couples who came to purchase tickets from buying: “They don’t want to sell to people like us.” Lunceford band bass player Truck Parham remembered that band members walked into a restaurant on Downing, not far from the Bungalow.

 
On scanning the group, the waitress is said to have told the musicians: “Can’t serve you. We don’t have no food.”

 
Determeyer writes that Lunceford, normally even-tempered, even restrained, pounded the table with his fists.

 
“What the hell do you mean, you can’t serve us?!” Lunceford demanded. “Call the manager!” The waitress panicked and hurried back to the kitchen.

 
After a minute or two, Determeyer wrote, she came back and said the men could order after all. The guys ordered hamburgers.

 
“No, I’m sorry,” the waitress said. “We don’t have nothing but beef sandwiches, hot beef sandwiches.”
The grumbling musicians ordered the sandwiches, with the exception of bassist Truck Parham. “The rest of the band ate it,” Parham said. “Lunceford had it.” Parham left without eating. According to Determeyer’s account, after the meal, the band members returned to the Bungalow, except for Lunceford, who complained he was tired and wasn’t feeling well. He headed across the street to Callahan’s Radio and Record Shop at 411 Broadway, next to the Broadway Café, to autograph albums for fans.

 
There Lunceford collapsed and died. He was 46 years old.

 According to the news story in the July 1947 Signal, Lunceford was about to autograph Callahan’s record store wall, reserved for musical celebrities who came to Seaside, when owners Edward and Walter Hill noticed the bandleader looking weak and ill. A moment later Lunceford collapsed and was seized by severe convulsions, according to the newspaper’s report. The owners called the police and an ambulance, but Lunceford died before reaching Seaside hospital. The show, despite Lunceford’s death, went on that night, Determeyer wrote, but one musician after the other left the bandstand and headed to the restroom. “I’m the only one that didn’t get sick,” Parham said. “Botulism, you know.”

 
Lunceford, a teetotaler, was “a perfectly healthy man who had boxed, run track and played softball,” according to trumpeter Joe Wilder. “It was one of the saddest days of my life.”

 
At the request of his wife, Crystal, Lunceford’s body was flown to New York City for the funeral service. The leader was buried in Memphis, his hometown. A memorial service with remaining band members took place that week at Rockaway Beach, the last concert before the Lunceford Orchestra permanently disbanded. But before long, Determeyer wrote, “the myth surrounding Lunceford’s death was in full swing.” The Clatsop County Coroner declared Lunceford died of “coronary occlusion, due to thrombosis of anterior coronary artery due to arteriosclerosis” — in other words a heart attack caused by a blockage. Determeyer’s telling casts doubt on the coroner’s report. “Simple, plain racism is really the key word here,” Determeyer said via email last week.

 
Controversy lingers But Seaside residents and even a jazz musicologist, disagree. Seaside’s Linkey thinks it’s not plausible Lunceford and his bandmates were sickened or worse, or even turned away.
“Oh, he was served,” Linkey said. “There was no animosity. No racism at all. At least growing up in Seaside, I didn’t feel it.” As a tourist town, the goal was to sell as many tickets as possible, she said. “Because if you can serve tourists, you can serve an African-American.”

Linkey added the biographer “takes giant leaps” in suggesting a racial incident was a factor in Lunceford’s death. Linkey said while there “weren’t many blacks in the area,” there were no segregated dances.

 
“We did have African-Americans in the summer from Portland. There was an influx during World War II. They worked in the shipyards.”

 
Seaside’s Mary Cornell, who attended dances since she was in eighth grade in the war years, said people of all ages were welcome at the Bungalow. She said she never saw anyone turned away.
African-Americans also came to Gearhart and Seaside as domestics for wealthy families, Cornell said. Sandy Winnett said Determeyer’s account was “extremely unlikely.”

 
Even a jazz musicologist, Lewis Porter, pianist, Rutgers University professor and author of “Jazz: From Its Origins to the Present,” doubts the poisoning rumor.

 
“It was probably not a good idea for Determeyer to throw in at the very last sentence of the chapter that Jimmie may have been poisoned for being black,” Porter said via email.

 
Botulism is not a poison and cannot be “manufactured” or “planted,” Porter said. “It’s simply a severe form of food poisoning that can occur in, for example, rotten meal. But he (Lunceford) died from a heart attack — nothing to do with the food! He’s not the first guy to die suddenly at a relatively young age from unsuspected heart trouble, especially in those days.”

 
Poisoning is not the only rumor to survive surrounding the cause of Lunceford’s death, which range from “Lunceford ate a double portion of chili con carne while on tour and died almost immediately” to a theory he was shot by a gangster while signing records at Callahan’s.

 
Lunceford band member Truck Parham died in 2002. Trumpeter Joe Wilder died in 2014. With them go their eyewitness accounts.

 
Are the still lingering suspicions about the Lunceford death akin to the mistrust so many black Americans still feel about the police and other authorities?

 
Maybe the best way to reflect upon this incident is by stressing the goal of diversity that Lunceford, progressive politicians like Sen. Wayne Morse and Seaside’s young music lovers of the 1940s — in love with the bands, the swing and the dance — were so desperately attempting to foster.

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THE SAGA OF RED INGLE

Red Ingle was a very unique and fun entertainer. He was an American musician, singer and songwriter, arranger, cartoonist and caricaturist. He is best known for his comedy records with Spike Jones and his own Natural Seven sides for Capitol.

Ingle was born in Toledo, Ohio. He was taught basic violin from age five by Fritz Kreisler, a family friend. However at 13, he took up the saxophone, and that instrument later became his main instrument. Ingle received a music scholarship and studied at the Toledo American College of Music, playing classical music on a concert level. Ingle was also influenced by the country fiddlers he had heard; he was able to play their songs in their style as well as the classics in a traditional pose.

At 15 he was playing professionally with Al Amato, and by his late teens, Ingle was touring steadily with the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, along with future jazz legends Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer. A graduate of Toledo's Scott High School, at one time he intended to become a teacher. Ingle left the College of Music in 1926 to become a full-time musician when he married Edwina Alice Smith. He joined Ted Weems' Orchestra in 1931, after briefly being a bandleader himself, and working under Maurice Sherman. His work with Weems was such a success that they worked together into the 1940s. Singer Perry Como later called Ingle 'one of the most talented men I've ever met.

After he failed an eye test for the Air Force, he returned to music with Spike Jones & His City Slickers, where his comedic talents and flair for vocal effects found a welcoming home. Jones started featuring him as a frontman immediately, and Ingle's stage presence helped transform the City Slickers' stage act into something more visual than before. With Ingle's input, the band gradually became a complete stage package that would eventually peak (after his departure in 1946] in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the successful Musical Depreciation Revue. "You Always Hurt the One You Love", "Liebestraum" and "Glow Worm" – this last being featured in the film Breakfast in Hollywood, one of many films featuring the band.

Ingle left Jones and the City Slickers in November 1946 after a salary dispute. He drifted through Radio and Hollywood, even working in light opera until he made "Tim-Tayshun", a spoof recording of the then-popular Perry Como hit "Temptation", with Jo Stafford (under the name "Cinderella G. Stump") for Capitol Records in 1947.

As the single went on to sell three million copies, Ingle formed a new band – Red Ingle and His Natural Seven; the group included several former City Slickers, among them Country Washburn, who had arranged "Tim-Tayshun". The band had several more hits, including "Cigareetes, Whuskey, and Wild, Wild Women", "Them Durn Fool Things," and "'A', You're a Dopey Gal." "Cigareetes" became a hit because it was banned from radio airplay by all major networks.

After "Tim-Tayshun's" success, Ingle had a follow-up in mind: a take-off on the classical works of Paganini, but doing this required a violinist who was trained in classical music. Knowing that any direct requests for a classical performer would be refused, Ingle dreamed up his own "classical" ensemble: "Ernest Ingle's Miniature Symphony". A concert violinist responded and was quickly signed to a recording contract for the intended record. When the musician was shown the arrangement he was to play, he protested and attempted to leave without performing. Ingle and his band quickly reminded the violinist of the legality of the contract he had just signed. A deal was struck to get "Pagan Ninny's Keep 'Er Going Stomp" recorded: the concert performer was allowed to use a pseudonym on the record.

Ingle and his Natural Seven also performed with Grand Ole Opry performers such as Minnie Pearl and other Opry notables. He joined Jo Stafford on her 1949 tour of the Midwest. Despite the comedy emphasis, the quality of the musicianship was often outstanding, including in some cases Les Paul or Western Swing performers Tex Williams and steel guitarist Noel Boggs. The band also recorded short films of their numbers, before disbanding in 1952; by 1956, Ingle had formed the band once again.

After working again with Weems, Ingle eased out of music, tiring of touring. He reunited with Jo Stafford in 1960 for a performance of "Tim-Tayshun" on Startime; by this time he had lost a great deal of weight and was barely recognizable as the former leader of the Natural Seven. He also had a reunion with Perry Como; band leader Ted Weems and former fellow band members Ingle, Elmo Tanner, Parker Gibbs and "Country" Washburn appeared as guests on Como's Kraft Music Hall on 18 October 1961.

Ingle said he had been trying to retire from the music business since 1942; he signed up with Spike Jones a year later, and that his leaving the band in 1946 was another try at retirement. By 1948 he described himself as being resigned to staying in the field. He died from an internal haemorrhage on 6 September 1965, in Santa Barbara, California and was buried in Ovid, Michigan...

MUSIC BREAK: JACK JENNEY - THE NIGHT IS BLUE

FORGOTTEN ONES: JACK JENNEY

In the world of jazz and big band, there are countless gifted artists who have died young like Bunny Berigan, Fats Waller, and Eddie Lang to name a few. Another gifted musician to add to the list is Jack Jenney. Born in Mason City, Iowa on May 12, 1910, he was a celebrated jazz trombonist who was best known for instrumental versions of the song Stardust, was one of the United States' most popular musicians of the 1930s and 1940s. Christopher Popa, in an article for Big Band Library.com, quoted jazz critic and author Leonard Feather as saying Jenney was known "for the quiet beauty of his tone and style on sweet melodic variations, of which 'Stardust' was the most extraordinary example."  George T. Simon, historian and author, commented that Jenney "blew his instrument with great feeling, what for me is the warmest, most personal sound I've ever heard from any horn."

Jack attended Prescott Elementary and Franklin School and played with his father's band from age eleven.  He first played professionally locally at the age of thirteen with "Art Braun and his Novelty Boys," a Dubuque jazz band before transferring from Dubuque High School on a music scholarship for three years at the Culver Military Academy in Culver, Ind.  In 1926 he was a member of the orchestra that entertained Queen Marie of Romania during her visit to Chicago. 

Jenney's first professional job was with Austin Wylie in 1928. By 1935 he was rated at the foremost trombonist in the dancing world enabling him to earn $550 each week as he performed with Victor Young's recording orchestra.  He also had stints with Isham Jones (recording with the latter) and Mal Hallett (1933). Jenney was in great demand for studio work in New York, working with Victor Young, Fred Rich, radio staff orchestras and appearing on recordings with ensembles led by Red Norvo, Glenn Miller (1935), Dick McDonough, the trombonist's wife singer Kay Thompson (1937), and Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. Jenney won the Down Beat Reader's Poll for trombone in 1940 and was voted into the Metronome All Star Band the same year.  He appeared in such movies as "Second Chorus" (1940), "Syncopation"and "Stage Door Canteen" (1943), performing in the latter with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. In correlation with the movie, "Syncopation," RKO joined with the Saturday Evening Post in conducting a poll of 100 radio stations to determine what musicians the nation would prefer in a "dream team." The trombonists selected were Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden and Jenney. 

Jenney was one of two trombonists (the other was Jack Teagarden) who played as part of the Metronome magazine all-star band, which recorded King Porter Stomp for Columbia on February 1, 1940. In 1939-40 Jenney led his own band which included Peanuts Hucko, Paul Fredricks, and Hugo Winterhalter. Although it appeared at the World's Fair and Loew's State Theatre in New York City the following year, the band became only marginally successful.

Jenney briefly worked with Benny Goodman's band around the end of 1942 and the start of 1943. He was drafted and served in the Navy during World War II During 1943-44, he led a Navy band, but was discharged for health reasons. Jenney settled in California to do studio work, but developed kidney trouble. He sadly died suddenly due to a burst appendix on December 23, 1945 in Los Angeles. California. He was only 35 years old. It is hard to find recordings by the band of Jack Jenney, but do yourself a favor and check them out if you can. For Jenney's trombone work alone, they are worth listening to and remembering him...