Month: February 2010

Cole Porter in Hollywood: What A Swell Party It Was

Cole Porter, the musical toast of Peru Indiana, Paris and New York City, also had a profound effect on Hollywood and the movies.

Like his peers Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, his songs brought Broadway and Hollywood together in diverse and wonderful ways. Mary Martin, for instance, became an overnight star on Broadway in the Porter vehicle “Leave It To Me!” The woman who would eventually fly thru the air on wire cables as “Peter Pan” stopped the show with a mock strip tease performed on top of a cabin trunk while singing “My Heart Belongs To Daddy”. She would later appear as herself in the 1946 Porter biographical musical epic “Night and Day,” auditioning for Cary Grant, who played Cole Porter in the film.

“DuBarry Was a Lady,” which starred Bert Lahr and Ethel Merman on Broadway in 1940, was made into a 1943 movie with Lucille Ball and Red Skelton in the leading roles, but used very little of the original Porter score.

But Hollywood would soon be further Porter attenuated. His “I Concentrate On You” was one of the big hits from the movie “Broadway Melody of 1940,” while the 1943 film “Something to Shout About” contained the lovely “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”.

Another Porter tune, “Don’t Fence Me In” provided enjoyable moments in the 1944 film “Hollywood Canteen.” That same year, Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” was heard on Broadway in the 1944 show, “Seven Lively Arts.” It would become Ella Fitzgerald’s favorite song of all time.

The amazing “Kiss Me Kate” opened on Broadway on December 30, 1948, starring Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison. The fabulous score included “Why Can’t You Behave”, “Wunderbar”, “So In Love”, “We Open In Venice”, “Too Darn Hot”, and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”.

Hollywood, not to be outdone, followed with the movie version in 1953, starring Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel and Ann Miller — with a cameo appearance by one Alfred Viola, dressed in a strange costume and playing the guitar. When I asked Al why he had never told me about his bit part in the movie when I had heard all of his other stories many times over, he replied: “How could you tell it was me?” and Howard Keel. “Kiss Me Kate” is and was one of my favorite movies ever, followed closely by the 1956 film “High Society,” which would be one of Porter’s last projects.

The film stars Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm and Louis Armstrong as himself. Musicians appearing as part of Armstrong’s band included Edmond Hall (clarinet), Trummy Young (trombone), Billy Kyle (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass), and Barrett Deems (drums).

Notable not only for Grace Kelly’s last acting role before she became Princess of Monaco, and for being the first on-screen pairing of Sinatra and Crosby, it was also Porter’s first new film score in more than ten years. Nobody who has seen the film will ever forget the scenes and scoring of the classic “True Love,” “Well Did You Evah?” and “Now You Has Jazz,” a bonafide improvisational take on the interaction between singer and instrumentalists that has not been topped yet in a movie. Orchestrators Conrad Salinger and Nelson Riddle and bandleader Johnny Green must have had a lot of fun recording the soundtrack. Armstrong looked like he was having a deliciously time throughout, especially when he and the band launched a glib “High Society Calypso” in the movieland version of a band bus road trip to the Newport Jazz Festival, then in it’s debut infancy stage and the catalyst for this extraordinary romp.

Now you has jazz…jazz…jazzz.

Corporate Event Entertainment: Live Vintage Music

I love the old adage, “say it with music!”

It’s the title of a song, and a lovely thought.

How many times have we wanted to express an emotion or feeling but were at a loss for words?

Music reaches the deepest places in our hearts.

Vintage music, especially, can evoke a childhood memories and a simpler and better time.

Corporate event entertainment is sometimes all about glitzy tribute bands and noisy floor shows that make you wish you’d brought your ear plugs.

It can also be about really entertaining people…giving people themselves as a gift.

It’s a lovely formula for throwing a party that’s really a party!

Live Music for Parties: Facebook, YouTube…Yikes!

Frank Sinatra, the ultimate entertainer who turned large amphitheaters into intimate settings, would not be amused by today’s trend toward viral media. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, eek! Handy for looking things up, but a royal pain in the ass when it comes to handcrafted live music.

“I’m not sure if I want you to play the Michael Buble version or the Sinatra version,” a client will say — and off we go on an internet surfing safari to find “just the right version.”

So now YouTube is our music director.

Nelson Riddle wouldn’t have liked this either.

The whole beauty of what Dean Martin, Frank Snatra and the rest of the Rat pack did was based on pure spontaneity. One merely has to watch a few of Dean Martin Show re-runs to figure that out.

Dean liked spontaneity so much that he refused to rehearse, preferring to show up in time for the taping and be surprised himself at the antics of his guest stars.

That was back in the days when people who entertained other people actually had some talent.

What a concept.

Swinging Jazz; Live Music for Events

A group of composers were sitting around planning a tribute to one of their peers.

“Call Judy Chamberlain,” someone said. “She’s the only one who sings the songs right.”

Words…and music, the way the composers wrote them. Swinging jazz.

These things do not often go hand in hand.

But they should.

Miles Davis could not have recorded his groundbraking albums in the 1960’s if he hadn’t known where the music came from and who wrote it and why.

Louis Armstrong was a master of authenticity. So were Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerals, Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Fred Astaire.

Many were dancers, and could sing tricky phrases filled with emotion while never missing even the hair of the a click of a beat within the meter. They were vitrual “time” machines.

It’s called “swinging.”

Real bands play music you can dance to. That doesn’t mean cardboard-rigid phrasing, which is what we hear with a lot of today’s big bands. Oh, the bands are playing nicely enough. But they are READING from a book on a music stand in front of them! Count Basie and Duke Ellington they ain’t. Most of them just don’t swing.

Authenticity. Staying true to the words and melody that the composers wrote. Swinging like mad, making everything danceable. Meter, time “feel,” correctness.

It cannot be faked.

Swinging is an art.

Singing while the band is swinging is an art.

Sinatra did it. Ella Fitzgerald did it. Billie Holiday, even when stoned out of her mind, did it. Ellington, Basie, Bing Crosby — these people all swung like mad.

It’s what you hire a live band for, especially a live band playing music for people who are dancing…or really listening to the music. To have anything less is inconceivable. But that is what you might very well get with some of the ridiculously overpriced “live bands” that are out there in the marketplace. Why? Because they don’t know the history of the music, or of the composer – or even the right words to the song. Maybe they’ve never played — or even heard — that song before and are reading it from a book.

No wonder so many people throw in the towel and hire a DJ. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

I suspect some of the latest crop of “event bands” are overpriced because they have to work so hard learning music they are not accustomed to playing. Sort of like if one of our great jazz or swing bands suddenly announced that it had become a Top Forty band.

Louis Armstrong would roll over in his grave!

Around here, we don’t need no stinking rehearsals! We’ve been playing this music all of our lives, and we play it right! We respect and revere what the composer wrote. We pay homage to the words, to the melody. We don’t take liberties with something that’s already perfect. It’s not cool to “re-harmonize” Cole Porter.

We do fool around with tempos — because we CAN. We turn hip hop songs into standards, and add lots of funk, soul and groove to standards to keep things fresh and interesting. Other than that, you’re going to hear music they way you think you should be hearing it. Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby — they were dancers, veritable “time” machines.

That’s what we do.

Don’t try it at home, and don’t expect to get it with a group of “jazzers” you pull out of a bar.

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

It helps when musicians know where the music came from, who wrote it and why.

We do.