From Broadway To 52nd Street
Annie Get Your Gun rose its curtain for the first time at the Imperial Theatre on May 16, 1946. Irving Berlin composed the music for its stars Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton. The show set a record with a run of one thousand, one hundred and forty-seven performances. From the musical came three tunes that entered into the jazz lexicon – Anything You Can Do, There’s No Business Like Show Business and They Say It’s Wonderful.
The Story: Annie Oakley is poor but happy country girl and an infallible shot. This sharpshooting lands her in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She falls in love with rival sharpshooter Frank Butler, who tells her the girl that he marries must be a dainty thing, which Annie is not. It seems the only thing they can agree on is that when folks talk about love it’s wonderful. A shooting match is arranged between the two, Sitting Bull tells her that to win her man she must lose the match. Although Annie boast anything you can do I can do better, she loses the match anyway and the man.
Broadway History: Though Broadway was becoming less of an industry and more of a loose array of individuals, in the next four years this would have positive aspects. America would soon fall prey to increasing intolerance and political persecution but Broadway would continue to express unorthodox opinions without fear of government retaliation. Broadway would lose some of its scope but retain its liveliness and joyfulness in an increasing corporate environment. In a country that now required conformity, Broadway preserved a sense of freedom of speech and action, ideals on which this nation was founded. This was no less rewarded with the establishment of the private club of the “blockbuster musical” has offered entry to only a chosen few that have had more than a thousand performances. The first to join this esteemed club is this weeks feature Annie Get Your Gun.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fred Wesley was born July 4, 1943 in Columbus, Georgia and raised in Mobile, Alabama. The son of a high school teacher and big band leader as a child he took piano and later trumpet lessons. At around the age of twelve his father brought a trombone home, whereupon he switched.
During the 1960s and 1970s Wesley went to R&B as many jazz musicians did to earn a living and became a pivotal member of James Brown’s bands, playing on many hit recordings including “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Mother Popcorn” and co-writing tunes such as “Hot Pants”. His slippery riffs and pungent, precise solos, complementing those of saxophonist Maceo Parker, gave Brown’s R&B, soul, and funk tunes their instrumental punch.
In the 1970s he also served as bandleader and musical director of Brown’s band The J.B.’s and did much of the composing and arranging for the group. His name was credited on ‘Fred Wesley & the J.B.’s’ recording of “Doing It To Death” which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record 1973. Leaving Brown’s band in 1975, Wesley spent several years playing with George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic projects, even recording a couple of albums as the leader of a spin-off group, The Horny Horns.
Wesley became a force in jazz in 1978 when he joined the Count Basie Orchestra. He released his first jazz album as a leader, “To Someone” in 1988, followed by “New Friends”, Comme Ci Comme Ca, and the live album “Swing and Be Funky” and “Amalgamation”.
In the early nineties Fred toured with former JB colleagues Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker, as the JB Horns. When Ellis left, the band became The Maceo Parker Band with Wesley as the featured trombonist until 1996 when he formed his own band, The Fred Wesley Group, now known as Fred Wesley and the New JBs.
Wesley’s 35-year career includes playing with and arranging for a wide variety of other artist such as Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton, Randy Crawford, Vanessa Williams, The SOS Band, Cameo, Van Morrison, Socalled and rappers De La Soul, to name a few, while many other artists have sampled his work.
He has written an autobiography “Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman”. Wesley served as an adjunct professor in the Jazz Studies department of the School of Music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 2004 to 2006, and now works with students as a visiting artist at numerous other schools including Berklee College of Music and Columbia College of Chicago.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Majestic Theatre opened the curtain for Carousel for the first time on April 19, 1945. With music composed by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, the musical ran for eight hundred and ninety performances. John Raitt and Jan Clayton had the title roles in this play adapted from the famous Molnar story of Liliom, from which came two songs that would endear themselves for years as jazz standards – What’s The Use Of Won’drin’ and If I Loved You.
The Story: Billy Bigelow, a shy New England carnival barker falls in love with Julie Jordan. Eventually winning Julie’s heart, he later discovers she is pregnant. Jobless, Billy decides he must provide for his son, or daughter, he agrees to join his criminal friend Jigger Craig in a robbery to earn extra money. The plan misfires and Billy kills himself rather than being caught. Before a heavenly judge he pleads for another chance to return to earth to earn his redemption and see his daughter. When his daughter refuses his gift of a star he has stolen from the sky, he slaps her and returns to purgatory. The widowed Julie and child are left to continue to live starkly. The story is set in Maine where majestic backdrops add emotional emphasis.
Jazz History: It was known simply as The Street and as historian Arnold Shaw stated in his book 52nd Street, “If you flagged a taxi in NYC and asked to be taken to The Street, you would be driven, without giving a number or an avenue, to Fifty-Second Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues” By the late 1940s, as the jazz clubs turned into strip joints, many bemoaned the death of The Street. They considered this era to be the block’s decline.
In 1948, Time magazine decried the change from jazz to bump-n-grind: “where nightclubs in sorry brownstones crowd each other like bums on a breadline”, an era was all but over. Swing was still there, but it was more hips than horns. Barrelhouse had declined and burlesque was back. There was little jazz left on 52nd Street and even the customers had changed. There were fewer crew haircuts, pipes and sports jackets and more bald spots, cigars and paunches.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Chambers was born June 25, 1942 in Stoneacre, Virginia into a musical family. He grew up listening to the rock and roll of Louis Jordan and Slim Gaillard along with classical composers like Vivaldi and Beethoven. At the tender age of four he was playing pots and pans, setting them up like a kit. More taken with Lester Young and Lionel Hampton, nonetheless, he soon joined a band that played the R&B hits and at thirteen hearing the esoteric sounds of Miles Davis, he was hooked.
Chambers earned an undergrad degree from the Philadelphia Conservatory and by the time he was twenty cut his first session on Freddie Hubbard’s Breaking Point. That single date led to road work with Harold Land, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Eric Dolphy and Dizzy Gillespie.
As a member of the ‘60s Blue Note fraternity, Joe stands amongst some of the greatest jazz musicians of the 20th century. His intense drumming and trademark blend of cymbal-driven forward motion, deeply rhythmic continuity and explosive creativity has graced numerous landmark recordings like Hutcherson’s “Components”, Shorter’s “Schizophrenia” and “Etcetera”, and Tyner’s “Tender Moments”.
Joe Chambers is more than a drummer adding vibraphonist, pianist, composer and educator to his resume. He has eight albums as a leader, has scored several Spike Lee films, taught at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC and leads the Outlaw Band at the school; and he is the Thomas S. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Jazz in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Department of Music.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Seven Lively Arts opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on December 7, 1944 and the curtain rose for 183 performances. Billy Rose produced the show, hiring Cole Porter to compose the music that spawned the jazz standard Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.
The Story: The musical featured eleven sketches such as Local Boy Makes Good, Pas de Deux and Heaven On Angel Street. The short-list of actors included Beatrice Lillie, Bert Lahr, Alicia Markova and Doc Rockwell. They are augmented with the talents of jazz notables Teddy Wilson, Red Norvo and Benny Goodman.
Broadway History: By the Mid 40s most theaters on Broadway that had been a good investment and a symbol of vivacity and mirth from the turn of the century were now considered uneconomical. Increasing real estate values was forcing the theaters into obsolescence, turning them into film house to accommodate the takeover by movies. A second threat during this period in the competition for audience was the emergence of television, which was providing free entertainment. The result of these two industries was a shocking 80% unemployment rate for Broadway actors in 1948, and for the first time in its history, Broadway had to call a general emergency meeting for all unions and theater people.
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