From Broadway To 52nd Street
The music composed for Guys & Dolls by Frank Loesser was first heard on the stage at the 46th Street Theatre on January 24, 1950. It became a part of the blockbuster club with a total of 1200 performances. The show starred Robert Alda, Sam Levene and Vivian Blaine, the latter who would go on to star in the 1955 movie version with Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Stubby Kaye. Coming out of the play into jazz prominence were the songs If I Were A Bell, I’ll Know, I’ve Never Been In Love Before and Luck Be A Lady Tonight.
The Story: New York gambler, Nathan Detroit, tries to set up a floating crap game since the highest of the high rollers, Sky Masterson, is in town. All the while the police are putting on the heat to prevent the game from happening. Nathan bets Sky that he cannot woo any girl he chooses. He picks Salvation Army’s Sister Sarah and off to Cuba she and Sky go. Ultimately the game takes place in the empty Salvation Army headquarters. Nathan has promised his girl Adelaide that he has quit gambling and will marry her. Romance ensues for all and both Nathan and Sky marry in the end.
Although Guys and Dolls was selected as the winner of the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the prize was not awarded because writer Abe Burrows was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Do to these troubles with HUAC, the Trustees of Columbia University vetoed the selection, and no Pulitzer for Drama was awarded that year.
Jazz History: In 1950, Charlie Parker, despite a severe drug problem, was at the height of his career. It was during that same year that he became the first jazz musician to record with a string ensemble, which produced the album Charlie Parker With Strings. The year also saw the beginning point were a series of singles on Capitol Records of a nonet led by trumpeter Miles Davis, collected and released first on a ten-inch and later a twelve-inch as the Birth of the Cool. Cool jazz recordings by Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Stan Getz and the Modern Jazz Quartet usually have a “lighter” sound that avoided the aggressive tempos and harmonic abstraction of bebop. Cool jazz later became strongly identified with the West Coast jazz scene, but also had a particular resonance in Europe, especially Scandinavia, with emergence of such major figures as baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg. However, blind Chicago pianist Lennie Tristano set out the theoretical underpinnings of cool jazz. Its influence stretches into such later developments as bossa nova, modal jazz, and even free jazz.
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The Jazz Voyager
Moody Jazz Cafe: Via Nedo Nadi 5., Foggia, Italy / Telephone: 0881/71.14.32 Fax: 0881/71.14.32 / Contact: Nino Antonacci. During the morning this location is a normal cafè but at night it undegoes a magical transformation and becomes a real jazz club.
From Broadway To 52nd Street
South Pacific hit the stage of the Majestic Theatre on April 7, 1949 in the first of a 1,925 performance run. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein composed the music from the compositions “Happy Talk”, “Some Enchanted Evening” and “A Wonderful Guy” became jazz standards. The musical starred Enzio Pinza, Mary Martin, Juanita Hall, William Tabbert, Betta St. John and Myron Mccormick.
The Story: An American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II falls in love with a middle-aged French expatriate plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”. Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girl’s mother, help to tie the stories together. However, Hammerstein’s lack of military knowledge hampered his writing that part of the script, so the director of the original production, Logan, assisted him, receiving credit as co-writer of the book.
Broadway History: The production won an unprecedented 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Libretto. It is the only musical production to win Tony Awards in all four acting categories. Its original cast album was the bestselling record of the 1940s. Due to it’s 1,925 it was ushered into the blockbuster hall of fame surpassing it’s predecessors by more than 800 performance.
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Hot Club Rosario: 1268 Urquiza Street, Rosario, Argentina / Telephone: (341) 4250775 & 4480656
The Hot Club Rosario is a non-profit organization founded in Rosario, Argentina in 1956 with the goal of cultivating and disseminating jazz music in all its styles, from “traditional jazz”, “dixieland”, through “swing” and “be-bop” up to all expressions of contemporary jazz, such as “free jazz” and others.
Weekly jam sessions every Friday from 9:30 pm till midnight. Call ahead for dates or check their website at http://hot-club.com.ar/. The seat of the Hot Club Rosario is located in cafe, bar and restaurant next door to Hotel Imperio. Reservations: (341) 4250775 Contact: Gregorio Tisera, President Phone: (341) 448-0656
From Broadway To 52nd Street
Miss Liberty brought to the stage its star Eddie Albert at the Imperial Theatre on July 15, 1949. The show ran for three hundred and eight performances with music composed by Irving Berlin. The song “You Can Have Him” became a jazz standard.
The Story: In 1885, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett assigns novice reporter Horace Miller to find the woman who served as Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s model for the Statue of Liberty. In the artist’s Paris studio, Miller sees a photograph of Monique DuPont and mistakenly believes she was the one. Bennett arranges for her and her grandmother to accompany Horace back to New York City, where she becomes a media darling. When rival publisher Joseph Pulitzer discovers it was Bartholdi’s mother who actually posed for him, he exposes Monique as a fraud in his New York World. She faces deportation until a sympathetic Pulitzer comes to her rescue, paving the way for her to plan a future with Horace, who jilts his American girlfriend Maisie Doll in favor of the French beauty.
Jazz History: As the widely performed bebop or hot jazz began to wane in some sectors of the country, cool jazz began to emerge by the early 1950s. “Cool” was used to describe a kind of toned-down jazz. Later the term became associated with a number of white musicians who relocated to California where they could get day gigs at movie studios, unlike black musicians, while playing jazz at night. In this form it was called West Coast jazz. For white players to represent a kind of cool jazz is ironic since the idea of coolness has its roots in Black culture. Cool jazz contrasts with hot jazz in that it has limited vibrato, restrained timbre, stable dynamics, melodic calm, sophisticated harmonies that tempered the blues idiom.
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