A Century of Music

[Zeeba Neighba]

The Mills Brothers - The Anthology (1931-1968)

With their trademark singing style often imitating back up instruments, The Mills Brothers (along with the Ink Spots seen earlier) were a tremendous influence on 50s doo wop groups. Again, a group with a long career that I easily could have chosen in the 1930s for their early success, but they had a resurgence in the early 1940s including their biggest hit "Paper Doll" which was #1 for 12 weeks in 1943-44. According to Wiki, the first African-American artists to have a #1 hit on the Billboard chart. Another one of my dad's favorites from the era.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Bill Monroe -The Essential Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys (1945-1949)

"The Father of Bluegrass" had a career that spanned the late 1920s all the way even to the 1990s, but there's no doubt that his 1940s period is essential stuff especially these tracks for Columbia which include his classic lineup with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs who departed in 1948. Sam can add more about Monroe, but definitely wanted to include him in my 1940s listening.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Oklahoma! (Original Broadway Cast Album)

A broad listening of the 1940s has to include the popularity of the Broadway Cast album. Prior to Oklahoma! in 1943, musical recordings typically involved the star perhaps of the musical but not the whole cast. It all changed with Oklahoma! which was the first cast album to feature the original Broadway cast of a musical (released on six 10-inch double-sided discs in 78 RPM . And boy was it a success! The great sales changed the recording of musicals from that point onward.

Today, going to concentrate on the popularity of the musicals of the era with some other cast recordings as well

 

[Ojai Sam]

Oklahoma! (Original Broadway Cast Album)

A broad listening of the 1940s has to include the popularity of the Broadway Cast album. Prior to Oklahoma! in 1943, musical recordings typically involved the star perhaps of the musical but not the whole cast. It all changed with Oklahoma! which was the first cast album to feature the original Broadway cast of a musical (released on six 10-inch double-sided discs in 78 RPM . And boy was it a success! The great sales changed the recording of musicals from that point onward.

Today, going to concentrate on the popularity of the musicals of the era with some other cast recordings as well

SRDC (same record, different cover)

In the 40's, the term "album" was borrowed from photography for booklets such as this one.

Oklahoma was originally released in 1943 as a collection of six 78 RPM shellac discs like so:

The sides were arranged such that you could stack the 78's on a record changer and they would play through in the correct order with just one flip of the stack (in this case, side 1 was backed with side 12, side 2 with side 11 etc.).

This concept made possible the "long playing" 33 1/3 RPM album that would appear by the end of the decade.

 

[Ojai Sam]

Zeeba beat me to Bill Monroe. So I'll go for the only other artist who can legitimately be said to have created an entire genre.

Bob Wills - The Essential (rec. 1935-46, Columbia comp 1992)

Like Bill Monroe, Bob Wills started with American rural music. But where Monroe retained strictly acoustic instrumentation for his Bluegrass Boys, Wills took the fiddle-driven Western Swing idiom, plugged in and hitched a ride on the big band express. By 1942, The Texas Playboys had grown to the size of a full orchestra with clarinets, trumpets and saxes to go with as many as three fiddles. After WWII, Wills downsized along with the other swing bands but added jazz-oriented electric mandolin and guitar to the honky tonk beat.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Zeeba beat me to Bill Monroe. So I'll go for the only other artist who can legitimately be said to have created an entire genre.

Bob Wills - The Essential (rec. 1935-46, Columbia comp 1992)

Like Bill Monroe, Bob Wills started with American rural music. But where Monroe retained strictly acoustic instrumentation for his Bluegrass Boys, Wills took the fiddle-driven Western Swing idiom, plugged in and hitched a ride on the big band express. By 1942, The Texas Playboys had grown to the size of a full orchestra with clarinets, trumpets and saxes to go with as many as three fiddles. After WWII, Wills downsized along with the other swing bands but added jazz-oriented electric mandolin and guitar to the honky tonk beat.

Hey! On my list too - haven't gotten to that one yet

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Some more 1940s musicals listened to today
Carousel (1945)
Kiss Me Kate (1948)
South Pacific (1949)

Kiss Me Kate is one of my favorite musicals - also one of the few of my faves that I haven't seen live thus far (a revival is going on now on Broadway but sadly I'm not up there now )
A few more musicals tomorrow

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Carmen Jones (Original Broadway Soundtrack)

Aside from the Revues and Ice Shows popular on Broadway in the 1940s, here are the musicals with the most performances
1) Oklahoma - 2212 shows
2) South Pacific - 1925
3) Annie Get Your Gun - 1147
4) Kiss Me Kate - 1077
5) Follow the Girls - 882
6) Song of Norway - 860
7) Where's Charley - 792
8) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - 740
9) High Button Shoes - 727
10) Finian's Rainbow - 725

With three musicals in the top 10 Broadway musicals of the 40s, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were the toast of Broadway in this era, but Hammerstein did a little extracurricular lyrics writing with the successful Carmen Jones in 1943 - quite popular itself with 502 performances. Using the music of Bizet's Carmen, Hammerstein changed the setting to WWII and the language to English using African-American actors (many know the Dorothy Dandridge-Harry Belafonte film rendition).

Interestingly Song of Norway above (which I had not heard of) was an English-language operetta adaptation of Grieg's music which was made into a musical film in 1970 (another I had not heard of) with Florence Henderson, Robert Morley and an older Edgar G. Robinson - sounds like a hoot Critics did not agree with Pauline Kael saying "The movie is of an unbelievable badness; it brings back clichés you didn’t know you knew - they’re practically from the unconscious of moviegoers." and Gene Siskel giving it 1/2 star. Ouch!

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Annie Get Your Gun (Original Broadway Cast) - 1946

Finishing my sampling of 40s stage musical with the Divine Miss M - Merman that is, always larger than life with singles like "Anything You Can Do" and "There's No Business Like Show Business" surviving even today.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1

With a shortened week from my Chicago trip, the 1940s extend into week 3 - but that's OK because what a decade! And while I've explored the big bad/swing era of the 1930s/early 1940s, the decade had the important evolution to bop music. Thelonious Monk, though he could bop with the rest of them, was so much more with his angular playing and use of space in much of his music far different from the full, quick progressions of bop and bop pianists, say, like Bud Powell (who I'll get to in a bit). Perhaps that's why Monk not only influenced pianists like Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal but continued on into their era playing until the 1970s.
Tremendous early comp of Monk's singles including classics like "Round Midnight", "Ruby My Dear", "Monk's Mood", "Off Minor", and "Introspection", pieces he would rework time and time again.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Dizzy Gillespie - The Complete RCA Victor Recordings

Add this to the jazz essentials list I mentioned back in the 1930s - these 43 singles laid the groundwork for bop music as well as Afro-Cuban jazz
Like Monk's comp above, filled with seminal works that Dizzy would revisit and many others would cover - "Manteca", "Anthropology", "Night in Tunisia", "Algo Bueno"

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1

What a jazzy day with Monk, Dizzy, and now Bud. What a tremendous jazz pianist! Unfortunately what a troubled soul (affected by racism and recurrent psychiatric illness/hospitalizations). Unlike the long careers of Dizzy and Monk, Powell died by age 41. I have most of his stuff (including his work as a sideman including on one of my faves Dexter Gordon's Our Man in Paris) and all of it is tremendous. Amazing...volume 1 is primarily from 1949 with Sonny Rollins and trumpeter Fats Navarro (with the CD extended version including a 1951 date). We'll see Bud again in the 1950s

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron

Outstanding collection focusing on the wonderful talent of Fats Navarro. Though Dizzy Gillespie is more well known, Navarro was a tremendous bop trumpeter whose short career (he died at age 26 of tuberculosis certainly not helped by his addiction to heroin) had a big influence on the development of hard bop (especially through his influence on Clifford Brown). Here are recordings primarily from 1947-49 with pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron

 

[Unsomnambulist]

The Complete Blue Note and Capitol Recordings of Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron

Outstanding collection focusing on the wonderful talent of Fats Navarro. Though Dizzy Gillespie is more well known, Navarro was a tremendous bop trumpeter whose short career (he died at age 26 of tuberculosis certainly not helped by his addiction to heroine) had a big influence on the development of hard bop (especially through his influence on Clifford Brown). Here are recordings primarily from 1947-49 with pianist and arranger Tadd Dameron

Yes, addiction to heroines can get very expensive...

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Frank Sinatra - Best of Columbia Years (1943-1952)

Best of the Swooning, Crooning Years - not the 12-disc complete Columbia set, but I think 4 discs will do here. Given Ol' Blue Eyes popularity in the 1940s, wanted to touch on both his Dorsey years as well as his early solo period. I don't break out this set often opting more for his swingin' years, so it's good to spin it again. As he would cover many of these standards again in his Capitol and Reprise years, it's interesting to compare his straightforward, crooning delivery with his phrasing, timing decisions as a mature singer with a bit more weathering in his voice.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Yes, addiction to heroines can get very expensive...

Whoopsie

 

[Ojai Sam]

Spike Jones - The Best Of

Last week I attended a seminar at the beautiful Biltmore Hotel.

The Biltmore Los Angeles | Luxury Hotel in Los Angeles

Experience history, luxury and opulence at The Biltmore Los Angeles in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles. Book your room for an unforgettable stay!

www.millenniumhotels.com

The public areas are loaded with historic photos, one of which is a huge blowup of this shot of the 1937 Academy Awards show at the Biltmore Bowl:

Being a charter member of MG, naturally I scrutinized the band. Back on the drums I noticed none other than Lindley A. Jones, nicknamed “Spike” by his dad, who worked for a railroad.

Spike achieved success drumming for society orchestras but became bored. So he started fooling around with song parodies using such definitely nonstandard ”instruments“ as pots, pans, horns, guns, etc. Eventually he signed with RCA Victor and generated a string of novelty hits, the best of which are in this collection.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

^
Glad Sam reminded me about Spike Jones, another of my dad's favorites. Wonderful stuff, much of which provides a nice humorous relief of the day.

Will play my favorite compilation

The Spike Jones Anthology: Musical Depreciation Review

I like this description on Amazon:

If timing is everything, then it was doubly so in the music of Spike Jones. Whoopee-cushion horns, gunshots, belches, malapropisms--each element of Jones's parodies fell just right, which is amazing considering that his peak came before the advent of tape allowed for careful editing. Jones and his City Slickers--a group that included the likes of Doodles Weaver and Sir Frederic Gas--engaged themselves in at least as much rebellion against "good" music as did the rock & rollers who followed.

 

[Ojai Sam]

^
Glad Sam reminded me about Spike Jones, another of my dad's favorites. Wonderful stuff, much of which provides a nice humorous relief of the day.

Will play my favorite compilation

The Spike Jones Anthology: Musical Depreciation Review

I like this description on Amazon:

Better than the one I picked.

 

[Zeeba Neighba]

Bing Crosby - A Centennial Anthology of His Decca Recordings

It wouldn't be fair to do some much Sinatra and not remember Der Bingle. Though Bing was no longer all the rage with the teenyboppers, the 40s were huge for Bing with a film career (including an Oscar for Going My Way), continued recording success (including a number of wonderful pairings with The Andrew Sisters), and the most successful single of all time ("White Christmas"). This 50 song set (which does expand beyond the 1940s from 1934-1955 is a wonderful career summary.