Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Bourne was born on October 20, 1942 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and music became a part of his life at an early age. He began singing in a church choir and on the street corner with various singing groups.
Greatly inspired by such greats as Nat King Cole and Lou Rawls, his US career grew from lead singer for a Top 40 rhythm and blues/jazz band to international status, recording and releasing albums with hit singles. During this period he made several radio and TV commercials for Delta Airlines, Coca Cola and the American Telephone Company.
A move to Europe saw Bourne performing for the American and Dutch military and supporting acts in concert, such as The Stylistics, Natalie Cole, The Manhattans, The Pointer Sisters, Dionne Warwick and Ray Charles while they were on their European tour. He has performed in Scandinavia, Australia, Aruba, Indonesia, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
Apart from his solo performances and his engagements with 25 to 100 voice choirs, Joe teams up with female colleagues for duet performances complemented by various orchestra backings from combo to Big Band or symphony orchestras.
He has been awarded for his rendition of Gershwin’s Summertime, the Silver Orpheus in Bulgaria and the Jimmy Kennedy Award in Ireland. He was also awarded the Kunsteler des Jahres and the Diamantes des Jahres for top class entertainment in Germany. Vocalist Joe Bourne continues to perform and record.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
On November 8, 1926 The Imperial hosted the opening night of this new musical “Oh Kay!” starring Gertrude Lawrence, Oscar Shaw and the Fairbanks twins. The show ran for 256 performances and with the assistance of George and Ira Gershwin gave the world a Broadway melody destined to become a jazz standard – Someone To Watch Over Me.
The Story: It is 1926, the Jazz Age and the era of Prohibition. Jimmy Winter is very popular among the young ladies, and in the imaginary town of Beachampton, they are cleaning the living room of his Long Island, New York estate, declaring that “The Woman’s Touch” is exactly what his home needs. Jimmy Winter spends so little time on his Long Island estate, Kay Denham, posing as a cook, helps her rum-running brother, a titled English bootlegger, cache his illegal booze there. When Jimmy returns unexpectedly to get married, he falls in love with Kay. As a result, he helps Kay outmaneuver revenue agents and after renouncing his numerous other promises of marriage, agrees to marry Kay.
Jazz History: West 52nd Street is best known as the “Street of Jazz” or “The Street That Never Sleeps”. It ran east to west from 5th to 6th Avenues and was renowned in its heyday during and after Prohibition from 1925 to 1960. 52nd Street hosted such celebrated establishments as the Hickory House, Jimmy Ryan’s, the Famous Door, the Iron Gate, Leon & Eddie, 21, Tony’s, The Onyx, The Three Deuces, Downbeat, The Yacht Club, The Wing Club and Kelly’s Stable.
From 1935 to 1945 this monochrome of five story brownstone buildings in whose drab and cramped street level interiors – once known as English basements – flourished as speakeasies and jazz clubs and by 1936 it became also known as “Swing Street” and served as the launching pad for more singers, more hit songs and more instrumentalists than Chicago, New Orleans, Memphis or Los Angeles.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
The year was 1926 and much to everyone’s surprise Garrick Gaities was so well received that it was brought back for a regular run. Sterling Holloway appeared in all of the sequels and Edith Meiser appeared in all but the final one. Notable performers included Imogene Coca and Rosalind Russell.
The music and lyrics for this second edition of the Gaieties was written by Rodgers and Hart and introduced their famous song “Mountain Greenery”, which would go on to become a jazz standard.
Jazz History: “The Street”, as it would come to be known, couldn’t have come into existence without the assistance of the New York City Board of Estimate, who on December 10, 1926 passed a resolution lifting residential restrictions on the brownstones between 5th and 6th Avenues. With the new or old owners gaining the ability to command higher rents from the illicit speakeasy owners than ordinary apartment dwellers or even the kept women who occupied many a brownstone apartment, the inevitability of 52nd Street was born.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Mathis was born John Royce Mathis in Gilmer, Texas on September 30, 1935. The family moved to San Francisco, California, where he grew up on 32nd Avenue in the Richmond District. His father a vaudevillian, saw his son’s talent, bought a piano and encouraged him by teaching him songs and routines that he performed at home, school and church functions.
At thirteen, Johnny began study with voice teacher Connie Cox, and for six years he learned vocal scales and exercises, voice production, classical and operatic skills. A star athlete in high school he earned four athletic letters, and then enrolled at San Francisco State University on scholarship to become a teacher. However, spotted by Helen Noga, co-owner of The Black Hawk Club at a jam session, she became his manager, got jazz producer George Avakian to hear him and he subsequently sent a telegram to Columbia Records noting: Have found phenomenal 19-year-old boy who could go all the way. Send blank contracts.
The rest, as they say is history. His first album Johnny Mathis: A New Sound In Popular Song was a slow-selling jazz album. Staying in New York to play the clubs, his second album, produced by Mitch Miller, defined his sound – soft, romantic ballads. Miller paired him with arranger/conductor Ray Conniff, then with Ray Ellis, Glenn Osser and Robert Mersey. By 1956 Johnny recorded two of his most popular songs – “Wonderful, Wonderful” and “It’s Not For Me To Say”. He would appear in films by MGM and 20th Century Fox, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom.
After splitting from Noga, Mathis established Jon Mat Records to produce his recordings, Rojon Productions to handle all of his concert, theater, showroom and television appearances, and all promotional and charitable activities, hired a new manager and business partner, signed with Mercury, then Columbia Records, the latter being his permanent label. His recordings have been used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The X-Files and Mad Men; and his discography crosses all genres including jazz, pop, Brazilian, Spanish, Soul, R&B, rock, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley and disco.
He has the distinction of having the longest stay of any recording artist on the Columbia Record label, having been with the label from 1956 to 1963 and from 1968 to the present and makes him the third biggest selling recording artist of the 20th century, only after Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Johnny Mathis has received three Grammy awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award, has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, nominated for an Oscar, has taped twelve of his own television specials, made over 300 television guest appearances with 33 of them being on The Tonight Show and his songs have been heard in 100 plus television shows and films around the globe. He continues to perform but from 2000 onwards has limited his concert engagements to fifty to sixty appearances per year.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
In the same year, on Sunday, May 15, 1925 the Theatre Guild Revue presented the first of three editions of Garrick Gaities that was mounted for only two performances in an effort to raise funds for new tapestries. The song that stood out to become a jazz favorite was Manhattan, composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
Comprised of a series of sketches, the opening number, “Soliciting Subscriptions” was a spoof of the Theatre Guild’s “serious pretensions”, Ryskind wrote skits including a satire of President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, and a parody of the Scopes Trial, which was dropped from the show after William Jennings Bryant died. Sterling Holloway and June Cochrane introduced the song “Manhattan”, as its easygoing strolling melody and ingeniously rhymed lyric related all of the everyday pleasures to be found in New York.
Jazz History: The first two decades of the twentieth century saw 52nd Street as a quiet, expensive residential thoroughfare with its five-story brown stones that served as town houses for the city’s well-to-do families and social elite. Prohibition was slow to affect this area and by 1925, six years after it’s passage, the Street had its first speakeasy established by Jean Billia in a converted millionaire brownstone to a multiple dwelling.
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