From Broadway To 52nd Street

Ridin’ High is a 1936 popular song, composed and written by Cole Porter, for the stage in his musical Red, Hot and Blue, with book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It premiered on Broadway in 1936 and the song was introduced by Ethel Merman.

The musical also introduced the popular song It’s De-Lovely as a romance duet sung by Ethel Merman and Bob Hope, in which they trace their romance from first kiss to marriage to a baby.

Nails O’Reilly Duquesne is a newly wealthy young widow. Loud and brassy, Nails is a former manicurist. She organizes a benefit for her favorite cause, the rehabilitation of ex-convicts. Together with her sidekick (an “ex-con” himself), Policy Pinkle, and her “square” boyfriend, lawyer Bob Hale, she embarks on a nationwide search for Bob’s old girlfriend, which is really the reason for the enterprise. The girlfriend, 18 years earlier, had sat upon a hot waffle iron and so had a unique “imprint”. However, the national lottery that Nails starts gets the attention of the Finance Committee, and they wind up in Washington DC in an even more complicated situation. The Supreme Court declares the lottery unconstitutional, because it would benefit the people.

History

During the out-of-town tryouts, the book was too long and did not blend with the music. The producer Vinton Freedley made numerous suggestions for overhauling the show, which were accepted by all except Porter, until he finally relented. Additional conflicts arose when Freedley assembled the cast and creative team behind the musical Anything Goes, hoping to repeat that show’s success. William Gaxton was part of that cast, however, he withdrew because Ethel Merman’s part was so large, so Bob Hope was cast. The next conflict came over billing for Jimmy Durante and Merman, which was resolved by having their names crisscrossed above the title.

The musical was first titled But Millions!, then Wait for Baby!, before settling on Red, Hot And Blue. The Broadway musical has no connection to the 1949 film musical of the same name with songs by Frank Loesser.

Benny Goodman, Chris Connor, Ella Fitzgerald, Michel Legrand, Kate Smith, Mark Murphy, Jeri Southern, Peggy Lee, Teresa Brewer, Carol Lawrence, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, Cleo Laine, Sue Raney, Hod O’Brien, Robert Palmer, Rebecca Martin, Fay Claassen, and Stevie Holland.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Baby Laurence was born Laurence Donald Jackson on Feb 24, 1921 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a boy soprano at age twelve, singing with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. When the bandleader Don Redman came to town and heard Jackson, he asked his mother if he could take the boy on the road. She agreed, providing her son traveled with a tutor. Touring on the Loewe’s circuit, his first time in New York City was marked by a visit to the Hoofers Club in Harlem, where he saw the tap dancing of Honi Coles, Raymond Winfield, Roland Holder, and Harold Mablin.

>Returning home sometime later he discovered both his parents had died in a fire. He and his brother formed a vocal group called The Four Buds and tried to establish themselves in New York. He worked in the Harlem nightclub owned by the retired dancer Dickie Wells, who nicknamed him “Baby” and encouraged his dancing. He frequented the Hoofers Club, absorbing ideas and picking up steps from Eddie Rector, Pete Nugent, Toots Davis, Jack Wiggins, and Teddy Hale, who became his chief dancing rival. Baby worked after-hour sessions, danced around Harlem, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, and began playing theaters such as Harlem’s Apollo in the late 1930s. He performed with a group called The Six Merry Scotchmen or the Harlem Highlanders, who dressed in kilts, danced, and sang Jimmie Lunceford arrangements in five-part harmony.

By 1940 Baby was focused on tap dancing and became a soloist. Through the decade, he danced with the big bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman, and in the Fifties danced in small Harlem jazz clubs. Under the influence of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker and other bebop musicians, Laurence expanded tap technique into jazz dancing. He performed with Art Tatum, duplicating in his feet what Tatum played with his fingers. Through listening hard to Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell as well as drummers like Max Roach, he developed a way of improvising solo lines and variations as much as a horn man as a percussionist.

Beset by drugs, alcohol, and financial troubles, Laurence stopped performing in the late fifties. After a long illness, he returned to Harlem in the early sixties to work again in small jazz clubs. Baby began a long time engagement with Charlie Mingus, danced with Max Roach, and would go on to tap dance sessions at the Jazz Museum, dance with Josephine Baker, did some television and gave one of his triumphant performances at the Newport-New York Jazz Festival.

Regarded as an authentic jazz dancer, he further developed the art of tap dancing by treating the body as a percussive instrument. Baby Laurence, an extraordinary jazz tap dancer who had a profound influence on rhythm dancers in the second half of the twentieth century, passed away on Apr 2, 1974.

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Hollywood On 52nd Street

A Summer Place was adapted from the Sloan Wilson novel into a 1959 film of the same name, at a time when divorce, adultery and teenage sexuality were taboo subjects and very controversial. The theme song which became a jazz standard was composed by Mack Discant and Max Steiner.

The Story: Focuses on the adult lives of two one-time teenage lovers, Ken and Sylvia, who were from different social strata. Ken was self-supporting, working as a lifeguard at a Maine island resort, while Sylvia’s family stayed as guests of the owners, one summer between years at college. After their summer love affair, they married other people, but rediscovered each other later in life. At that time, Sylvia has a son, Johnny, and Ken a daughter, Molly. While Ken and Sylvia renew their love affair, their children begin a romance.

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Hollywood On 52nd Street

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is a pop song that became a jazz standard with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The song was publicized first as the theme in the 1955 movie of the same name, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The music was commissioned for the movie and initially featured as background music. Lyrics were subsequently added to make it eligible for the Best Original Song category of the Academy Awards. From 1967 to 1973, it was used as the theme song to the television soap opera, Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, based on the movie.

The Story: Set in 1949–50 Hong Kong it tells the story of a married, but separated, American correspondent Mark Elliot (played by William Holden), who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor Han Suyin originally from China (played by Jennifer Jones). Though they find temporary happiness, she encounters prejudice from her family and ostracized from Hong Kong society. After losing her position at the hospital, Suyin and her adopted daughter go to live with a friend while Mark is on an assignment during the Korean War. They write to each other constantly.

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Hollywood On 52nd Street

A Lovely Way To Spend An Evening enters into jazz history from the creative minds that scored the music and lyrics, Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson, respectively. Taken from the 1944 musical film Higher and Higher starring Michele Morgan, Jack Haley and Frank Sinatra. Written It is loosely based on the 1940 Broadway musical written by Gladys Hurlbut and Joshua Logan.  The film version diverges significantly from its source.

The Story: The household staff of millionaire Cyrus Drake hasn’t been paid for months when his bankruptcy is announced. With the wife and daughter of Cyrus on a long trip abroad, a scheme is formed to pass off the attractive young maid Millie as the socialite daughter, Pamela Drake, and marry her off to a rich man so there’ll be money for all.

The valet, Mike O’Brien, helps with the transformation, unaware that Millie is secretly in love with him. Asked if she’d ever been courted, Millie mentions that she likes the way a young man next door sometimes sings to her. His name is Frank.

The social secretary Sandy begins to teach Millie the proper etiquette and how to walk and talk like a debutante. At a coming-out ball, where Georgia Keating, a high-society friend of the Drakes, wants her daughter Katherine to be considered the most desirable deb, Millie is nudged toward Sir Victor Fitzroy, a nobleman she should marry.

No one there knows Victor can’t even pay his hotel bill. He’s hoping to catch a rich girl to pay off his own debts. Millie isn’t in love, but agrees to marry him for everyone’s sake. Mike mistakenly thinks she’s in love with Frank, so he helps Millie get out of the wedding at the last minute. To his surprise, Frank ends up paired up with Katherine, which frees Mike and Millie to finally begin their romance.

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