From Broadway To 52nd Street
St. Louis Woman opened on March 30, 1946 on the stage of the Martin Beck Theatre and ran for 113 performances. Harold Arlen composed the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for the musical with one tune standing the test of time to become a jazz standard – Come Rain Or Come Shine. The original cast included Robert Pope, Harold Nicholas, Fayard Nicholas, June Hawkins, Pearl Bailey, Ruby Hill, Rex Ingram and Milton J. Williams.
The Story: Set in St. Louis in 1898, Little Augie, a jockey who is on a winning streak, is enamored with Della Green, the belle of St Louis. Della, however, is the girlfriend of abusive Bigelow Brown, the proprietor of the local bar. Decides to leave him, Brown’s previous mistress, Lila, is still around which produces complications.
It’s cakewalking time and Augie attracts the attention and admiration of Della with his virtuoso performance of the cakewalk. Things go so well between them that they agree to set up home together and prepare plans to marry. While Augie is off at the racetrack, Della gets an unwelcome visit from Biglow Brown who beats. Lila enters, begs for a reconciliation, Augie returns, shot is fired, curse is casted on Augie for the shot that in fact was fired by Lila.
At Brown’s funeral suspected Augie is exonerated by Lila’s confession but the curse seems to be working. His horses no longer win and Della blames herself for the troubles. Della leaves feigning no love for Augie but her new friend tells him her true feelings. Believing the curse to be so much mumbo-jumbo, he’ll win his next race and he and Della get back together again.
Jazz History: Charlie Parker began rising in prominence in the early 1940s, and he played frequently with bands led by Jay McShann, Earl Hines, and Billy Eckstine. In 1945, a young Miles Davis Miles Davis moved to New York and became intrigued with Parker and the emerging bebop style. He studied at Juilliard, but had trouble earning respect among jazz musicians because of his unrefined sound. Soon he would work his way into Parker’s quintet. In 1945, the term ‘moldy fig’ was coined to refer to swing musicians who were reluctant to accept that bebop was the new path of jazz development.
In the mid 1940s Charlie Parker began to deteriorate from drug use. He was admitted to Camarillo State Hospital after a breakdown in 1946. His stay there inspired the song “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”.
In 1947, tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon achieved fame for recordings of “duels” with saxophonist Wardell Gray. Gordon’s virtuosity and aggressive tone attracted the attention of young alto saxophonist John Coltrane, who would shortly thereafter switch to tenor saxophone.
In 1948, Miles Davis and drummer Max Roach, fed up with Charlie Parker’s reckless lifestyle, left his band. Davis formed his own nonet. In 1949 recorded the unconventional ensemble. Some of the arrangements were by a young Gil Evans, and the restrained style of the music came to be known as cool jazz. The record, released almost a decade later, in 1957, was called Birth of the Cool.
By the end of the 1940s, bebop was the ideal among young jazz musicians. Unlike swing, bebop was untethered to popular demands. Its primary concern was musical advancement.
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William Clarence Eckstine was born on July 8, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but grew up in Washington, DC of Prussian and African American heritage. He began singing at the age of seven, entering amateur talent shows while dreaming of a football career that was sidelined when he broke his collarbone. Focusing on music he worked his way west to Chicago, joining Earl Hines’ Grand Terrace Orchestra as vocalist and occasionally trumpeter from1939 – 1943. During his tenure he made a name for himself through the Hines band’s radio shows with such jukebox hits as “Stormy Monday Blues” and his own “Jelly Jelly”.
Eckstine formed the first bop big band in 1944 making it a fountainhead for young musicians who would reshape jazz by the end of the decade, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro and Sarah Vaughn, with Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller were among the band’s arrangers. Billy hit the charts often during the mid-’40s, with Top Ten entries including “A Cottage For Sale” and “Prisoner of Love”.
Breaking down barriers throughout the Forties as a leader of the original bop big band and as the first romantic black male in popular music, Mr. B, as he was affectionately known, went solo in 1947. His seamless transition to string-filled balladry saw him recording more than a dozen hits by the end of the decade and winning numerous awards from Esquire, Down Beat and Metronome magazines. His 1950 appearance at New York’s Paramount Theatre greatly surpassed Sinatra’s audience draw at the same venue.
Over the course of the next two decades Billy appeared on every major television variety show from Ed Sullivan to Nat King Cole, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Joey Bishop, Flip Wilson and Playboy After Dark. After a long series of hit tunes and recordings by the 70’s Billy’s recordings came sparingly although he still performed before adoring audiences throughout the world. He made his final Grammy-nominated recording singing with Benny Carter in 1986.
Billy Eckstine, vocalist, bandleader, trumpeter, valve trombonist and guitarist passed away on March 8, 1993, at age 78, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
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Lloyd “Tiny” Grimes was born on July 7, 1916 in Newport News, Virginia and began his career playing drums and one-fingered piano. In 1938 he took up the electric 4-string tenor guitar and two years later joined the Cats and a Fiddle as guitarist and singer. 1943 saw him as part of the Art Tatum Trio making a number of recordings and this early configuration recorded some of the more interesting early examples of Tiny Grimes’ guitar work.
After leaving Tatum, Grimes recorded with his own groups in New York and he recorded with a long list of leading musicians, including Billie Holiday. He made four recordings with Charlie Parker that are considered excellent examples of early bebop jazz: “Tiny’s Tempo”, “Red Cross”, “Romance Without Finance” and “I’ll Always Love You”. He was to become one of the 52nd Street regulars during this period.
Towards the end of the decade Tiny scored a hit on a jazzed up version of “Loch Lomond”. His band was billed as Tiny “Mac” Grimes and the Rocking Highlanders, appearing in kilts and included top tenor sax man Red Prysock and big-voiced baritone singer Screaming Jay Hawkins. Grimes continued to lead his own groups into the later 1970’s recording for Prestige in a series of strong blues-based performances with Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Pepper Adams, Roy Eldridge, Earl Hines and others of note.
With Paul Williams he co-headlined the first “Moondog Coronation Ball”, promoted by Alan Freed in Cleveland, Ohio on March 21, 1952, often claimed as the first rock and roll concert. It is also generally considered he played on the first rock and roll record with a group called The Crows one-hit wonder “Gee”.
Tiny Grimes, a jazz and R&B guitarist most noted for playing a four-string electric tenor guitar, passed away on March 4, 1989.
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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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Della Reese was born Delloreese Patricia Early on July 6, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan to an African-American steelworker and Cherokee cook. At age 6 she began singing in church becoming an avid Gospel singer. Her mother would take her to the movies on weekends to see the portrayals of glamorous life by Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Lena Horne, whereupon afterwards she would act out scenes from each movie. By 1944 she was directing the young people’s choir, nurturing her acting and her obvious musical talent.
She was often chosen on radio, as a regular singer and by age thirteen she was hired to sing with Mahalia Jackson’s Gospel group. Upon entering Cass Technical High School in Detroit, attending with Edna Rae Gillooly, later known as movie star Ellen Burstyn, Reese was a brilliant, no-nonsense student. She continued touring with Mahalia and with higher grades she was the first in her family to graduate from high school in 1947, at only 15.
After graduation Della formed her own gospel group called the Meditation Singers but her mother’s death and father’s illness interrupted her singing and education at Wayne State University. Taking odd jobs as a truck driver, dental receptionist and even elevator operator she continued to perform in clubs but realizing her name was too long for the marquee, shortened it to Della Reese.
Della’s career has spanned more than half a century and during that time she has taken her gospel roots and added jazz, pop and R&B. Her string of singles topped or landed in the top 10 of all the music charts at one time or another. She was voted Most Promising Singer in 1957 by Billboard, Cashbox and other magazines, following with her biggest hit at the time “Don’t You Know?” that would become her early career signature song.
She has received four Grammy nominations, recorded numerous albums, played Vegas for nine years, toured worldwide, ventured into acting on stage, film and television successfully with “Touched By An Angel”, has been a game show panelist, talk show host, spokeswoman for the American Diabetes Association, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is an ordained minister.
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