February 27, 2009

Broadway Show Review

Christmas Day, 1968. Waikiki Beach.  

What a kick to go swimming on Christmas Day --- something to taunt our friends with when we got back to chilly New York! Only one small problem, an all-day rain. What were we to do, with two restless youngsters to entertain? The entertainment section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin came to our rescue. We read that Dick Van Dyke's latest movie, suitable for all audiences, was playing at a neighborhood theater. So off we went to spend a delightful two hours indoors, oblivious to the pelting rain. Adults and children alike, we had a fine time watching "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

Fast forward 40 years and a couple of months. "Chitty" is back, this time in the form of a stage musical. Actually it had opened in London back in 2002 and later was introduced on Broadway two years later. Now it it's on a national tour. Our dear friend, Elizabeth Ward Land, has a major role in the show, which prompted us to travel to Houston to dine with her before the show and then treat ourselves to two hours of remarkable entertainment at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

To our amazement, the flying car pictured on the Playbill cover actually did fly, in one of the cleverest bits of stage magic I've ever seen. And that was just one of the visual experiences that kept the audience mesmerized all evening.

Innovative as the scenery and props might be, it takes more to make a successful show. The entire cast possesses more than enough talent to match the grandeur of the set. Elizabeth Ward Land is superb in the role of the wicked yet bewitching baroness. Based on other shows in which she has appeared, we knew she has a lovely voice. She also displays a knack for comedy that comes as a pleasant surprise. She blends her talents well with George Dvorsky, who plays the baron who never managed to grow up. The two lead singers, Steve Wilson and Kelly McCormick, are attractive, personable and possessed of just the right kind of voices to suit their romantic roles.

The large cast includes seven supporting roles, an ensemble of sixteen dancers, two talented youngsters, a half-dozen or so dogs that run on and off the stage and a handful of children recruiting locally in each city to play the role of fugitive orphans. (Seems that the baroness has no use for the younger set and has vowed to imprison them all.)

Anyone who saw the movie will recognize the title tune, which seems to crop up every other scene. Another song from the movie is a very pretty lullaby, Hushabye Mountain. There are perhaps a dozen more tunes that were composed expressly for the stage production, including a Latin number that revealed Elizabeth's acrobatic ability --- more evidence of her manifold talents..

It's a fun show for all ages --- whether it's raining outside or not. After the Houston run it'll criss-cross the country, playing in Pittsburgh, Providence, Columbus, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Orlando, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Louisville, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Tempe, Dallas, Costa Mesa, Denver and Kansas City. It's scheduled to close in K. C. on August 2.

February 23, 2009

Schumacher Revisited

I talked by phone today with Hazen Schumacher, former host of NPR's "Jazz Revisited." He and his wife were vacationing in Sarasota, Florida, where they enjoyed perfect weather, a welcome contrast to Ann Arbor, Michigan at this time of year.

Hazen hosted his program for 31 years, starting in the late 60's. He describes it as an avocation, a labor of love as opposed to a career. He had started out as a political science major at the University of Michigan. Law school was in the back of his mind until he discovered the wonderful world of mass communications. After graduation he joined the staff of WUOM-FM, the local NPR affiliate. He never looked back. His special assignment dealt with television programming, but he indulged his love of jazz by starting a weekly half-hour radio program. He drew on what started out as a 1,000- record collection but later burgeoned into a monstrous collection that, now that he's retired, now resides in the jazz museum in Hamburg, Germany.  Included in the collection are tapes of more than a thousand of his broadcasts.

I explained to Hazen that Program #1384, which reviewed his recent book, included recordings that I seldom play. Then I decided to do a second session that includes the more familiar tracks, like Charlie Barnet's Cherokee and Count Basie's One O'Clock Jump. Program #1392, to be broadcast in April, will include excerpts from our conversation.

Did You Say Doo-Wop?

A friend loaned me a CD of music from the 50's.  It was an eclectic group of tracks. There were some familiar ones like You Belong To Me by Jo Stafford and Because Of You by Tony Bennett. But then I saw the old (1934) Rodgers and Hart song, Blue Moon, sung by Sam Cooke. That set me to thinking: How many examples are there of later artists adopting songs that we associate with the Big Band Era?

Amazon.com provided the answer. Here's a partial list of doo-wop groups who reprised old songs:

• I Only Have Eyes For You by The Flamingos

• That's My Desire by The Channels

• I love you for sentimental reasons by The Cleftones

• Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart by The Coasters

I'm going to string a half dozen of these gems together make an hour program, along with the originals, such as Jimmy Dorsey's version of Time Was. It's safe to say that this will be the only occasion when listeners will encounter doo-wop performances on "Swingin' Down the Lane."

Program #1394 Revivals will be broadcast the first week in May.

February 9, 2009

A Month of Activity

I'm beginning to wonder how people manage to find the time to keep up their weblog. Here a whole month has gone by and only now am I getting around to adding an item --- or rather several items.

• Program #1381 - Remembering Major Miller included the interview with Martin Schwartz, the man who spent two days shepherding the major during an appearance by the band in Plymouth, England. I sent a CD of the broadcast to Marty, who called yesterday to tell me how much he enjoyed reliving those days in 1944. He reminded me of something he had told me during our initial conversation but which didn't get onto the program. Over that two-day period, he said, he and Glenn talked mostly about two subjects: classical music and airplanes. Glenn had a keen interest in both.

• Marty has an autographed photo of Glenn in his uniform. I mentioned this to Alan Cass, curator of the Glenn Miller Archives on the campus of the University of Colorado. Yesterday I relayed to Marty that Alan would be excited to receive a photocopy for the archives. Marty will gladly send it along and include other photos from Plymouth. Since I'll serve as the middle man, I'll post them on my blog so that we can all see them.

• That reminds me of my visit to the home of Howard Davis, who died recently. On his wall there hung a framed typed letter addressed to him. It was signed by Captain Alton G. Miller. Glenn was asking him to join the Army Air Force band as a saxophonist. Howard told me he sent back a reply thanking the captain for the honor but politely turning down the assignment. It was a tempting offer, Howard told me, until he learned that he would have to endure basic training before assuming duties as a musician.

• Program #1382 has been released just in time for Valentine's Day. I've done this in earlier years but came up with a different rationale this time. I had stumbled on a YouTube video featuring Jo Stafford and Ella Fitzgerald doing a duet of love songs. Jo was the starry-eyed romantic, Ella the cynical realist. Jo sang a few bars of Love is the Sweetest Thing and Ella came right back with But Not For Me. Jo sang Love is a simple thing but Ella declared I'm Through with Love. So it went for a medley of about ten songs. Almost enough for a program, I thought, substituting other performers for Jo and Ella. To fill out the hour, I added Love - Love - Love by Guy Lombardo, L-O-V-E by Nat King Cole and an all-inclusive love song, Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Of course I had to add My Funny Valentine while reminding my audience that Valentine was actually the name of a character in "Babes in Arms."

• In the "Better late than never" category, Program #1383 honoring Gene Krupa will be broadcast February 17. Yes, I'm a month late in marking the 100th anniversary of Krupa's birth. I would have missed it altogether if I hadn't received an e-mail from Michael Berkowitz, leader of the NEW Gene Krupa band. On my program I delved back into the 1920's and early 1930's to play recordings by Frank Teschmacher and Red Nichols that included Gene on drums. Later I covered the Goodman days and eventually the several years when Krupa led his own successful band --- aided to no small degree by Irene Daye and Anita O'Day on vocals and Roy Eldridge and Charlie Ventura as sidemen.

• After completing Program #1384, a book report about Hazen Schumacher's volume entitled "A Golden Age of Jazz Revisited," it occurred to me that I had merely scratched the surface of this amazing book. I've written Hazen to inquire whether he will consent to being a guest on a forthcoming program. We can trade experiences about being on the radio for decades, and it will also afford the opportunity to share with my audience more of the gems that Hazen and his co-author, John Stevens, spotlight in their book. By the way, the book can be purchased on-line at www.pkorecords.com.

• Our program line-up is complete through March, with April already beginning to take shape. We'll have two Desert Island segments in March, including one from a German fan of the big bands. Program #1386, A Visit to the Eye Doctor, was inspired by ---- a visit to the eye doctor! They put drops in my eyes, turned the lights down low and left me on my own for 20 minutes until my pupils had fully dilated. What was one to do for those 20 minutes? Obviously the magazines I had brought along were of no use. My thoughts turned to music, and I began to imagine a dialogue between patient and ophthalmologist. There's That Faraway Look in Your Eyes. I Can't See for Lookin'. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. I Can See Clearly Now. And so on. Lots of fun to put this one together.

• It's been a dozen years since I produced a Random Walk show. One is scheduled for mid-March. It's always a revelation. The database includes 125,000 song titles. I sort them alphabetically to insure that the same song doesn't come up twice. I figure on playing 16 records in an hour, which means that the interval between songs is 7,812. Then I use a random number chart to select a number between 1 and 7,812. That determines which recording I'll play first. Then I'll successively add 7,812 until all 16 recordings have been identified. The last time we aired a Random Walk show, we came up with Caravan by Shep Fields, Billy Eckstine's Stormy Weather and Harry James' version of Moonglow. The prize for the most unusual song title went to a Henry Jerome performance: A Cow and a Plow and a Frau. Can't wait to see what comes up this time!

So, what have I been up to over the past month? A lot of hard work or a lot of mischief, depending on how I look at it.

January 7, 2009

Book Review:
A Golden Age of Jazz Revisited, 1939-42 by Hazen Schumacher and John Stevens

I vividly remember the first time I heard the name Hazen Schumacher. I had just taken a job in a new city. It was far smaller than my former home, Houston, and I was having second thoughts about living in a small city. One day at lunchtime I did some errands, stopped off at a fast-food joint and took my hamburger to the local art center. As I munched in the car with the radio on, I heard a marvelous program, "Jazz Revisited," hosted by Hazen Schumacher. By the time the half-hour program wrapped up, I was feeling better, much better. If a city had a neat radio program like that, maybe it was livable after all.

That was 1979. I've lived in Little Rock ever since. I've met Hazen. And I've embarked on my own radio adventure with "Swingin' Down the Lane."

My meeting with Hazen also stands out in my mind. I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan on business, since one of the Japanese car companies had a research lab just outside of town. I contacted Hazen ahead of time and was invited to meet him at the studios of WUOM, the NPR station that he broadcast from. We stopped by his office, where he showed me a project he was working on. He maintained that the years 1939-42 were an exceptional period in American popular music history. He had masking-taped on the wall a list of recordings from 1939 that he thought stood out as big band and jazz classics. I remember telling him, "You've left one out." "What one are you thinking of?" he asked. "Well, one of my absolute favorites is Artie Shaw's One foot in the groove" "I'll consider it," he replied.

Fast-forward to 2008. Hazen's book, written in collaboration with a music professor at the University of Michigan, has hit the bookstore shelves. And it's a beauty! It's a treasure than any big band fan must have on his own shelf. And in his CD player, too, for the book includes two CD's containing 48 of the 55 recordings the authors rave about. "One foot in the groove" isn't included, but I'm OK with that. The authors state that these are their personal candidates for greatness.

There's even more to rave about. Plenty of photos. A history of the big band movement. Lists of other recordings from 1939-42, classified as "quintessential" (example: Ellington's Warm Valley), "very good" (example: Bob Crosby's Boogie Woogie Maxixe), "good" (Example: Harry James's Strictly Instrumental), as well as "worth a listen" (Example: Les Brown's Mexican Hat Dance).

I'll present an on-air book review on February 24, Program #1384. Included will be some of the tracks from the two CD's plus some that were not covered because of lack of space.

Further information about the book is contained in an article by Hazen Schumacher at http://annarborchronicle.com/2008/11/09/a-golden-age-of-jazz-revisited/

December 23, 2008

Remembering Gene Krupa

Maybe a better headline would be "Forgetting Gene Krupa." When I did background study for my annual Centenarians program, I found a dozen or more musicians who would celebrate their 100th birthday in 2009 if still with us.  People like Benny Goodman, Claude Thornhill, Jonah Jones and Lester Young. The program has now been produced and will air the first week in January.

Today I read an e-mail from Michael Berkowitz, leader of the Gene Krupa orchestra, announcing a concert on January 13, which, he informed me, would have been Krupa's 100th birthday. How could I have left him out of my roster of centenarians? My only excuse is that I went by a database assembled by a friend. He had the birth date listed as 1908. Now I remember --- a year ago I looked at that date, double-checked it against other sources and found it was off by a year. I made a mental note to honor Krupa 12 months later. That's the problem --- it was a mental note, not a note on the database.

I'll make up for this serious omission on February 3, the first open date. It'll be #1381, and I know already that there will be plenty of good sounds reminiscent of Krupa's colorful life.

And what about Michael Berkowitz and the Gene Krupa orchestra? To hear this powerhouse 16-piece band, head over to the Iridium, West 51st Street and Broadway on Tuesday, January 13. There'll be two sets, at 8 pm and 10 pm.

December 12, 2008

Major Glenn Miller

I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with Martin Schwartz of Muncie, Indiana. In 1944 he was a Lieutenant j.g. stationed with the U. S. Navy in Plymouth, England. The Glenn Miller Army Air Force band was scheduled to give a series of concerts for servicemen in Plymouth as well as residents of this seaside community. They would arrive on board two C-47 transport planes. Lt. Schwartz had the assignment of meeting their leader at the airfield and escorting him for the day. The orchestra was scheduled to visit another military installation the following day and then return to London. Dense fog, however, interrupted their schedule, and the orchestra was forced to remain in Plymouth an additional day.

Lt. Schwartz and Major Miller had ample opportunity to chat as they waited for the fog to clear. The lieutenant confessed to the major when they first met that he had an opportunity to hire the Glenn Miller orchestra when he was in the market for a band to play for a dance at his house at Harvard. "I must tell you, Major, that I went to hear your band ahead of time and then told Mr. Schreibman [ballroom operator and band booker] that they weren't good enough." As Martin Schwartz tells it today, the Major took it in good spirits, bursting into a hearty laugh. The ice was broken and the two got along famously for the remainder of the visit.

Mr. Schwartz told me one thing that was entirely new to me. "We didn't talk about jazz, " he said, "only the classics. He was very knowledgeable on that subject." From time to time Schwartz's wife, who had attended Juilliard School of Music, sent her husband compositions she had written. He showed the latest one to Major Miller. Glenn looked at it carefully, began to hum a portion of it and then said dismissively, "Oh, she's just copying Brahms."

Program #1381, scheduled for February 3, will include excerpts from our conversation along with a liberal portion of music produced by that great band in 1944.

December 10, 2008

In Memoriam: Howard Davis

Howard Davis (left)

We had no sooner mailed a holiday card to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Davis when I received an e-mail from Howard's son Scott informing me of his death. Howard would have celebrated his 91st birthday on December 16. Instead, there will be a Celebration of his Life that day in his adopted home town, Evergreen, Colorado.

I interviewed Howard Davis in 2004 and featured him on Program #1150. He had a long and fruitful musical career, having played with bands led by Will Hudson, Freddie Slack, Bob Crosby and Harry James. He spent years in the studios, both in Los Angeles and Chicago, where he resided before moving to Evergreen. He was constantly in demand because of his remarkable ability to sight-read charts, an indispensable skill for studio musicians.

In his last years, Howard led a jazz trio at an Evergreen restaurant. As he told me, he played lead alto throughout his career and left jazz solos up to other musicians. In the jazz trio, though, he found his jazz voice. What a shame that this group was never recorded.

November 14, 2008

Two Welcome Visitors

This morning Tish and I welcomed into our home Ron Wolfe and Staton Breidenthal. They were doing a feature story about my 25th anniversary for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Staton must have taken a thousand photos.  Ron took notes as I raved about the marvels of the Big Band Era. We'll have to wait and see what comes of it, in a future edition of our statewide newspaper.

One question from Ron prompted me to pontificate about the music I love. He asked if I intended to continue my program for another 25 years. I answered in the affirmative. Three factors influenced my decision.

First, I have more than enough music to fill a whole century's worth of programs. The data bank at present lists over 125,000 song titles. To be sure, that doesn't mean that many different songs. Stardust alone is in the data bank 440 times. Nevertheless there's no danger that I'll run out of material.

Second, I believe that the best of big band music is timeless, just as the music of Beethoven and Mozart has survived and thrived for centuries. Does that mean the Big Band Era is still with us? Well, not exactly. When Benny, Glenn and Duke were at their peak in 1940, they played mostly for dancing. In 2008, big bands are more likely to be found in a concert hall than a ballroom. But they still have the appeal to pack the house.

Third, I'm heartened by the number of young people who e-mail me to say that they've just discovered big band music and think it's cool. They're in the minority, I realize, but their enthusiasm suggests that folks will always discover and appreciate the big band sounds.

That's why I have every intention to continue "Swingin' Down the Lane" for the next 25 years.

November 6, 2008

Five Minutes of Fame

Andy Warhol said it: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." So far I've been short-changed. I can only point to five minutes of fame ---well, local recognition, at least.  In recognition of the silver anniversary of "Swingin' Down the Lane," the local ABC affiliate did a special feature story on me that was broadcast Sunday evening, November 2. For awhile they'll retain it on their website, at http://www.katv.com/news/stories/1108/566588_video.html?ref=newsstory.