1950s

Although Vivian was born too late to be a Follies star, she aptly demonstrates, in this album, just what theatregoers of Ziegfeld’s day were missing. The solid showmanship and vocal know-how that made her an overnight Broadway star in Guys and Dolls is spotlighted here on twelve memorable standards from past Ziegfeld Follies productions. A legend during his own lifetime, Ziegfeld was better known than any Broadway producer today, including such outstanding legit tycoons as Billy Rose, Mike Todd and Leland Hayward. Tickets to a Follies opening night were harder to get than for the current smash My Fair Lady.

The Follies, first presented in 1907, were literally star-studded with dozens of top names making their first Broadway hit under the Ziegfeld banner, among them Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Bobby Clark, W. C. Fields, Ruth Etting, Marilyn Miller, Ann Pennington, Ed Wynn and Mae Murray. However, Ziegfeld’s most lasting claim to fame was his glorification of the American chorine. His discriminating eye for beauty made the words Follies Girl synonymous with glamour. The producer also appreciated beauty in his private life. His first wife was the vivacious musical comedy star Anna Held who divorced him in 1912. His second wife was the equally lovely and talented stage and motion picture actress Billie Burke. A list of the big name song writers associated with the Follies down through the years reads like an ASCAP Honour Roll of Hits. For instance, The Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 introduced such great Irving Berlin standards as A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody, Mandy, and You’d Be Surprised. Berlin also penned Shaking The Blues Away, rendered by Ruth Etting in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927. The Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 produced three poignant Vernon Duke songs—Suddenly (lyrics by Billy Rose), I Like The Likes Of You, and What Is There To Say—plus Billy Hill’s moving western classic The Last Roundup. Duke also wrote the wonderful Bunny Berrigan hit I Can’t Get Started With You for The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 which starred the late Fanny Brice. Miss Brice of course, scored one of her greatest triumphs in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 with the tender French torch song My Man. The bouncy novelty Row, Row, Row was written by William Jerome and Jimmy Monaco for The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912, while the hit Follies song in 1915 was Gene Buck and Louis Hirsch’s Hello Frisco!

Ziegfeld’s life was full of spectacular ups and downs, and the lavish nature of his successes was only equalled by the king-sized scale of his failures. He lost two fortunes on Broadway, and in 1929, the Wall Street crash cost him more than $2,000,000. He died in 1932 at 63, and the last Follies produced under his personal supervision was presented in 1931. However, in 1934 his widow granted the Schuberts permission to use the name Ziegfeld Follies, and two more editions were subsequently produced on Broadway in ’36 and ’42. The Great Ziegfeld has been dead almost 25 years, but his name still stands for the ultimate in glamorous entertainment, feminine perfection and all-time great musical scores.

Such musical re-creation needs the special talents of a Gordon Jenkins. In his long career as composer, arranger, and conductor, he has always sought the fresh approach to popular music, and displayed it many is through a wide range of material—in hit tunes, in longer original works, in such unusual combinations of song and drama as his very successful “Manhattan Tower”.
Here, Gordon Jenkins has assembled several favorite musical ingredients: a large orchestra, his own distinctive piano style, The Ralph Brewster Singers, and a choice selection of ballads. But it is his arrangements, most of all, that give the album its very refreshing quality. The voices join the ensemble as an instrumental section in cleverly devised harmonies; the melody emerges in delightfully unexpected places; and familiar themes are colorfully wrought into the captivating mood of “Night Dreams.”

The mood is on the nostalgic, quiet side—one for memories or memory-making. Not that Ziggy doesn’t brighten the listening here and there with a warmish solo flight or some beatful bluesy swing. That happens here and there for a bit of welcome contrast. But, mostly “Zig” sticks to the designation of the title and his orchestra follows along as his horn sings sentimentally tunes you know and love in a fresh and endlessly entertaining fashion! Along the way here you’ll encounter many an old favorite tune of yours. There’s Jerome Kern’s unforgettable LOVER COME BACK To ME, setting the note of sentimentality. Then comes Mr. Kern’s wonderful SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES. From the pens of Roy Turk and Fred Ahlert comes MEAN To ME. And, for a trumpet showcase, Zig presents the haunting MOON NOCTURNE. Remember AT SUNDOWN, MORE THAN You KNOW, YOU’RE MINE, You, TEA FOR Two (the last a Vincent Youmans favorite)? They’re here in stellar performances in the inimitable Ziggy Elman manner. And so is Peter DeRose’s immortal STAR DUST. For a change of pacing, there’s BLUES FOR TRUMPET. But, back to standards with CHEEK To CHEEK (Irving Berlin, of course) and the evergreen MY BLUE HEAVEN. That’s the musical line-up for you here. Sit back in your easy chair and relax or get on your dancing pumps —either way you’ll find Ziggy’s “SENTIMENTAL TRUMPET” oh, so inviting and oh, so memorable!

In the world of music, Ziggy Elman occupies a lasting place of prominence which has been attained by few. His golden trumpet has weathered the changes of many a musical style and taste and trend—and, in the latter case, Ziggy has started off on its way many a trend on his own. A musical child, he first attracted attention to his gifts when at the age of six he began, unprompted, identifying notes as they were picked out at the piano. In his youth, he mastered successively the trumpet, trombone, clarinet, sax and practically every other instrument you usually find in a band. Benny Goodman, who gave him his featured start in the band business, got Ziggy to pin himself down to a horn and stick to it. As featured soloist with the B.G. band, Ziggy won himself more fame and acclaim than most band-leaders do. At one time or another, he has placed first in nearly every newspaper and magazine poll held in this country as America’s No. 1 trumpet man. While with Goodman, Ziggy was featured on scores of B.G. records, the most famous of which was probably the one which bore a composition of his own called “And The Angels Sing”. After an ailing Benny Goodman disbanded his great band, Ziggy passed on to another famed side-man post with the Tommy Dorsey aggregation, where he became a valued assistant to the bespectacled maestro with the trombone. A stint in the Air Corps came along during the war and after that Ziggy re-joined the T.D. band, until its temporary disbandment. At that point, Ziggy organized his own band of renown. In recent years, “Zig” has alternated between fronting this group and various musical chores in Hollywood and generally on the coast. He is tall, dark, personable, exceptionally modest, likeable—his friends term him “a regular guy.” He’s married and the father of a boy named Marty Joe. Aside from his trumpet, his second love is a camera—he’s a shutter fiend and pursues his photographing with the utmost seriousness.

It is no surprise that the executives and cast of the W. C. Handy film biography expressed delight at her performance in the role of the “other woman” in Handy’s life; nor will it amaze those who know her well that the lithe little girl from the obscure town of North in South Carolina has successfully picked up the gauntlet of the blues. The unsophisticated childhood in southern poverty, the chaotic adolescence among friends and relatives in the Bronx and upper Manhattan, the limited education and the catapulting into an international glamour world as a Katherine Dunham dancer, somehow produced a mature personality rare in anyone of tender age and unstable background: a girl who chatted with Churchill and Nehru and Einstein, who learns new languages as most women buy new clothes. If genius be the ability to meet each challenge in any field of one’s particular choice and interest, then Eartha Kitt surely is a genius.

The material in this album, though uniformly credited to W. C. Handy, is not all strictly blues; nor is all of it to be heard in the movie, though most of the songs have at least some exposure by Eartha or one of the other artists. The details of their origin have been documented in a book of text and music, A Treasury of the Blues (Charles Boni), edited by Mr. Handy with an historical and critical analysis by Abbe Niles; comments from this book are quoted below.

The Memphis Blues, the song that pointed to Handy’s destiny, was the first blues ever documented and published. In 1909 there were three candidates for mayor of Memphis and three leading Negro bands in town. Handy, hired to play for candidate E. H. Crump, decided to celebrate the event with a new song, based on the blues form that had long been at the back of his mind. The Memphis public sang and danced in the streets to the melody of Mr. Crump; Crump was elected and Handy was lionized. The melody (there were no lyrics at that time except for a since-abandoned 16-bar middle strain) lay dormant until 1912, when a local department store worker took the manuscript, re-titled it The Memphis Blues (“better known as Mr. Crump as played by Handy & His Band,” said the sheet music cover), printed 2000 copies and put half of them in the store window. Handy, told that only 1000 copies were printed, was convinced that the piece was too hard for the public and surrendered his copyright to a selling agent for $50. Not until the statutory 28-year first-copyright period had expired was Handy able to reclaim his first hit song. Eartha’s version is the one now most often used, in which lyrics were added that speak of Handy in the third person and describe the impact of his hand on the Memphis public; George Norton of Melancholy Baby fame wrote these words. Shorty Rogers has the instrumental solo; Eartha’s concluding high note is a delightful shocker.

Careless Love, which Eartha does with Nat Cole in the picture, has a traditional, non-blues 16-bar melody that Handy recalls having heard in Bessemer, Alabama, as far back as 1892. He published it in 1921 as Loveless Love; four years later came the present version, with “additional words by Martha E. Koenig and Spencer Williams,” three stanzas of which Eartha offers.

Atlanta Blues is named for the city where Handy made headlines in 1916. His band drew 7000 to an auditorium better known for its visits from the Metropolitan Opera company. Equally well known as Make Me One Pallet on Your Floor, it was published by Handy in 1924, the composer credit being shared with Dave Elman (“known to Americans through his Hobby Lobby broad-cast,” insists the sheet music). This one, too, has a 16-bar main strain, to which Eartha adheres faithfully, as do trombonist Moe Schneider and trumpeter John Best in their solos.

In Beale Street Blues (1916) Handy recaptured some of the turbulence of the Memphis town that was later to honor him with a W. C. Handy Theatre and a Handy Park. Eartha trades lines joyously with the vocal group; the punch line refers, of course, to Prohibition’s emasculating effect on the sinful street. Gilda Gray, one of the earliest white artists to acknowledge the blues, helped make Beale Street famous.

Yellow Dog Blues (1914), which Eartha sings in the movie, has three 12-bar themes, the last taking the lyrical form of a letter from the “easy rider” to his gal (“Dear Sue .. .”). The key line, “tie’s gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog,” refers to two railroad lines, the Southern and the Yazoo Delta, which intersected at Morehead, Mississippi. “On the hog” means broke, and “vamp it” is a synonym for “walk it.”

Friendless Blues, ironically, was selected for the picture to be sung by Eartha as an illustration of an inadequate song, before her discovery of Handy’s music. Nevertheless, Handy did write it, in 1926, and Eartha found it so far from inadequate that she insisted on including it in the album.
Hesitating Blues, often mislabeled Hesitation, was published by Handy in 1915 and sung soon after by Blossom Seeley. Handy once credited the style of the chorus to the improvisations of a blind pianist at Mulcahy’s saloon in Memphis.

The delightful Long Gone (1920), is the true life story of a jail trusty in Bowling Green, Kentucky, who contrived an ingenious escape. Chris Smith, who wrote Bailin’ the Jack, was Handy’s collaborator. “I was happy to sing this,” says Eartha, “because I remember hearing Willie Bryant do it with his band, when I was a kid.”

Chantez-les bas (Sing ’em Low), according to Abbe Niles, “is in the Arcadian French patois with which a soft-voiced neighbor asked some of Handy’s men to please pipe down while they were serenading a girl in a Louisiana town.” As was usual with Handy, there are three different strains. and as is Eartha’s wont through. out these sides, the melodies are adhered to loyally while the Kitt personality effects a perfect merger with them. One of Handy’s later publications (1931), it is sung by Eartha in the dramatic film sequence that reveals his incipient blindness.

St. Louis Blues (1914) is Handy’s monument, the most famous blues in the world. Nat Cole and Eartha sing it in the film, in a version strikingly different from that heard here. Matty Matlock’s arrangement keeps a suggestion in the opening chorus of the tango rhythm that was a revolutionary novelty when the song was first performed. Eartha, by being herself and allowing the melody to be itself, offers one of the most genuine interpretations of the five hundred recorded in the song’s forty-four years of life.

St. Louis Blues (1914) is Handy’s monument, the most famous blues in the world. Nat Cole and Eartha sing it in the film, in a version strikingly different from that heard here. Matty Matlock’s arrangement keeps a suggestion in the opening chorus of the tango rhythm that was a revolutionary novelty when the song was first performed. Eartha, by being herself and allowing the melody to be itself, offers one of the most genuine interpretations of the five hundred recorded in the song’s forty-four years of life.

Steal Away and Hist the Window, Noah, both Handy spiritual adaptations and both sung in the picture by Mahalia Jackson, offer us a chance to hear a different Eartha. “I sang these purely with chest tones,” she says; “all the other songs are done mainly with head tones. I’ve always wanted to do Negro spirituals and we thought it would be a fine idea for contrast to include a couple of them in the album.”

The arrangements by Julian “Matty” Matlock, 49-year-old clarinet veteran from Paducah, Kentucky, and alumnus of the Ben Pollack, Bob Crosby and Red Nichols bands, are in perfect keeping with the spirit of the album and of Handy’s music. I suspect that this album will spend many hours on Mr. Handy’s own turntable. For once, a set of his works has been performed, arranged and sung with the same loving care and fidelity that would be accorded them by the composer himself.

LEONARD FEATHER © by Radio Corporation of America, 1958
Jester Hairston arranged Steal Away and Hist the Window, Noah, and it is his choir that accompanies Miss Kitt on those selections. The arrangements for all the other numbers were made by Matty Matlock, and Miss Kitt was backed by the following people: SHORTY ROGERS—Leader and Trumpet JOHN BEST—Trumpet MOE SCHNEIDER—Trombone MATTY MATLOCK—Clarinet STAN WRIGHTSMAN—Piano AL HENDRICKSON—Guitar MORTY CORB—Bass NICK FATOOL—Drums MILT HOLLAND—Conga Drums
EARTHA KITT With Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra ® 1958 RCA RECORDS