From Broadway To 52nd Street
Heading into a new era of entertainment as bootleggers came to prominence, more and more New Yorkers patronized the emerging speakeasies due to the ratification of the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. However, strict the government became during the thirteen-year period of Prohibition, patrons continued their outings to the theater. On December 12, 1924 the audience filled the Liberty Theatre for the successful opening night of Lady Be Good and the show ran for 330 performances. The show starred brother and sister team, Fred and Adele Astaire, Walter Catlett and Jayne Auburn performing to the music of George and Ira Gershwin, that produced the tune Fascinatin’ Rhythm.
The Story: In this play we follow Dick Trevor rebuffing his landlady, Josephine Vanderwater. She evicts him and his sister Susie from an apartment she owns. By coincidence, both have the same lawyer, Jack Watty. So Dick sets about righting matters and as Watty is in a jam, his fee to the moneyless Trevors is that Susie poses as a Mexican. In the end, Susie marries Jack and Dick ditches Josephine permanently for his true love, Shirley.
Broadway History: As American ventured further into the early 20th century, in 1910, Flo Ziegfeld took one of the greatest gambles of his career and offered a contract to Bert Williams, who became an instant hit in the Follies that year and continued to delight audiences for seven nearly consecutive editions. Bringing an enormous body of comic material to the Follies, Williams separated himself from the plethora of black comedians by bringing a quiet dignity to his characters and to himself, on and off the stage.
Although considered one of the gang by his fellow entertainers, Bert understood the tenor of the country at that time and stipulated in his contract that he would never appear on stage alone with a white woman and in turn Ziegfeld released him from touring the South. It was W. C. Fields who said, “Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.”
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sil Austin was born Sylvester Austin on September 17, 1929 in Dunnelion, Florida and taught himself to play as a 12 year old. He won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1945, playing “Danny Boy”. His performance brought him a record deal with Mercury Records and he moved to New York and studied at the Juilliard School of Music.
Austin played briefly with Roy Eldridge and with Tiny Bradshaw from 1952-54, before setting up his own successful touring group. He recorded over 30 albums for Mercury with a number of Top 40 hits on the pop charts with tunes like “Danny Boy” (his signature), “Slow Walk” and “My Mother’s Eyes”.
Sil Austin, a saxophonist who considered Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Sonny Stitt as his major influences, passed away of prostate cancer on September 1, 2001.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hamiet Bluiett was born on September 16, 1940 in Brooklyn a.k.a. Lovejoy, Illinois, that was founded as a free black refuge community in the 1830s. As a child, he studied piano, trumpet, and clarinet, but was attracted most strongly to the baritone saxophone from the age of ten. He began his musical career by playing the clarinet for barrelhouse dances in Brooklyn, Illinois, before joining the Navy band in 1961. He attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Following his time in the Navy, he returned to the St. Louis area in the mid-1960s. In the late 1960s Bluiett co-founded the Black Artists’ Group (BAG) in St. Louis, Missouri, comprised of a collective dedicated to fostering creative work in theater, visual arts, dance, poetry, film, and music. He led the BAG big band during 1968 and 1969.
Bluiett moved to New York City in 1969 and joined the Charles Mingus Quintet and the Sam Rivers large ensemble. In 1976 he co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet with two other BAG members, Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake. The group would quickly become jazz music’s most renowned saxophone quartet. He has remained a champion of the somewhat unwieldy baritone saxophone, organizing large groups of baritone saxophones.
In the 1980s, he also founded The Clarinet Family, a group of eight clarinetists playing clarinets of various sizes ranging from E-flat soprano to contrabass. Since the 1990s he has led a virtuosic quartet, the Bluiett Baritone Nation, made up entirely of baritone saxophones, with drum set accompaniment. His return to his hometown in 2002 affords him the opportunity to gig, perform with students from Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, Connecticut under the name of “Hamiet Bluiett and the Improvisational Youth Orchestra”. He has recorded over three-dozen albums and continues to perform, record and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Specs Wright was born Charles Wright on September 8, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He played drums in an Army band until his discharge in 1947. Following this he played in a group with Jimmy Heath and Howard McGhee. By 1949 he had joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band alongside John Coltrane, remaining until it disbanded in mid-1950.
Wright would rejoin Dizzy late in the decade as a member of his sextet with Coltrane, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath and Milt Jackson. He would go on to play with Earl Bostic, Kenny Drew, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Carmen McRae as well as a member of the Hank Mobley sextet with Curtis Fuller, Ray Bryant, Tommy Bryant, Billy Root and Lee Morgan.
Not one to be idle, though never a leader, he was a sought after sideman playing with Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter, Red Garland, Coleman Hawkins and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in the early Sixties. Drummer Specs Wright passed away on February 6, 1963. He was 36 years old.
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Jazz In Film
Wayward: This 1932 Paramount Productions drama about family intrigue brought on by a jealous mother-in-law was directed by Edward Sloman and starred Nancy Carroll, Richard Arlen and Pauline Frederick.
Taken from the novel Wild Beauty by Mateel Howe Farnham it features the song ”What’s the Difference”. Edward Heyman wrote the lyrics and the music composed by Johnny Green. The film also featured music by pianist Claude Hopkins and his Orchestra.
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