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…

Known professionally as Acker Bilk, Bernard Stanley Bilk MBE was born in Pensford, Somerset on January 28, 1929. He earned the nickname “Acker” from the Somerset slang for friend or mate. His parents tried to teach him the piano but, as a boy, he found it restricted his love of outdoor activities, including football. He lost two front teeth in a school fight and half a finger in a sledding accident, both of which he said affected his eventual clarinet style.

Leaving school Bilk worked at a cigarette factory in Bristol, then three years with the Royal Engineers in the Suez Canal Zone. While there he learned to play the clarinet after his sapper friend, John A. Britten, gave him one bought at a bazaar. He later borrowed a better instrument from the army and kept it after demobilization and played with friends on the Bristol jazz circuit and in 1951 moved to London to play with Ken Colyer’s band. Disliking London he returned west and formed his own band in Pensford called the Chew Valley Jazzmen, which was renamed the Bristol Paramount Jazz Band when they moved to London in 1951. Booked for a six-week gig in Düsseldorf, Germany, the band developed their distinctive style complete with striped-waistcoats and bowler hats.

His return from Germany, Acker based himself in Plaistow, London, and his band played the London jazz clubs. It was here he became part of the late 1950s trad jazz boom in the United Kingdom. They had an eleven chart hit singles in the Sixties, played the Royal Variety Performance, and became an internationally known musician in 1962 when he added a string ensemble on one of his albums that won him an audience outside the UK. His composition Stranger on the Shore was used in a British television series of the same name. He went on to record it as the title track of a new album and the single stayed on the charts for 55 weeks.

He appeared in two theatrical motion pictures, recorded a series of albums in Britain that were also released successfully in the United States on the Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco, however, his success tapered off when British rock and roll made its big international impact beginning in 1964. In the cabaret circuit, he had a couple of more hits, continued to tour, appointed MBE in 2001 and was awarded the BBC Jazz Awards’ Gold Award.

Clarinetist and vocalist Acker Bilk, known for his breathy, vibrato-rich, lower-register style, passed away in Bath, Somerset, on November 2, 2014, at the age of 85.

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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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