Author: Judy

Old Hollywood Vintage Theme Parties with Live Music

Elegant Style on Any Budget…Weddings With Flair…

Here in California, many folks are looking to the past in planning low-keyed events with warmth, as simple as an afternoon in a garden.

The popularity of vintage music for these events may mean that everything old really is new again!

And less is more.

The important aspects of a great celebration, the same ones that were in favor “back in the day,” are popular again.

Back then, people rented a hall, hired a band and served finger food, fruit or champagne punch and iced petit fours to their close friends and family.

Simple flowers, family scrapbooks, drawings and pictures set out on display and live music are all lovely old-fashioned elements of style.

Take plenty of black and white pictures!

California Beach Weddings, Vintage Music

Many California brides opt for a specacular outdoor setting for their ceremony, then move indoors for the reception — or not!

In a Malibu garden overlooking the clouds above the Pacific Ocean, on a beach in Santa Barbara or La Jolla, at a winery in Temecula or on the grounds of a vintage Pasadena or Palm Springs estate, lovely outdoor weddings often utilize the elegant element of live music.

It’s music from the movies, jazz, swing, big band, Sinatra and the irresistable standards of the Great American Song Book.

This is happy, romantic music that transcends generations and cultures, puts everyone in a wonderful mood and sets the scene for great wedding pictures!

Years later, those pictures will conjure up memories of emotions, and so will hearing a snippet of the music that was played that day or night.

(But probably not what the food tasted like.)

Food is nice. We like food.

Wine and martinis are nice, too.

But the best memories of all come from music. And the Great American Songbook’s timeless appeal will still be around when your grandchildren are looking at your wedding pictures.

That’s why we call this music “standards.”

Live Swing, Jazz & Big Band Sound with a Small Combo

How many musicians does it take to play great jazz, swing and big band music?

As Jimmy Durante used to say, “everybody wants to get into the act.”

But that doesn’t make them good.

Experience, skill …and musical taste… mean a lot.

Our trios, quartets and bands play “the good stuff,” the vintage music of the jazz age, WWII big band, glorious Old Hollywood retro and deco, ballroom, standards and elegant jazz along with hard-driving R&B, Motown, vintage “doo-wop” oldies, grooving rock, funk and soul and classic R&B. There’s plenty of music from old Fred Astaire movies and the musical extravaganzas of the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s along with Broadway show tunes, hip blues and country classics.

And we get rave reviews in the press for all of the above!

The score of “South Pacific” and The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” in the same set? It’s child’s play for us.

Nobody is reading from a “fake book” or imitating Michael Buble imitating Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin.

Just a few good people, an enormous repertoire…and a lot of talent.

We know what to play, and when to play it.

If you want “big,” we can give you big with the best of them.

It’s just not always necessary.

We enjoy the challenge of playing music not everyone else plays, and are unusually adept at performing the big band repertoire with a small group. It’s a trick I learned from Frank Sinatra.

Because he could hear every bad note a musician played from across the room or around the corner and had very high standards, Sinatra used only the very best musicans in Los Angeles, which really means the best musicians in the world. And the smaller the performance group was, the better the musicians had to be.

That’s what we do.

I’ve been collecting handknitted sweaters, velvet evening coats and unique musicians for years. I don’t need a lot of them, and the best will always do.

We’re lean, mean and mobile, and you can dance to everything we play.

Or not.

It’s fun to simply sit and listen to our repertoire, which is seemingly endless.

We take requests directly from the dance floor. We do it all the time, because we can.

At a recent upscale elegant anniversary party in Palm Springs, someone asked us to play “So Rare,” an obscure old chestnut from the swing era.

We knew it, and played it immediately. It’s a good thing we didn’t need to rely on a “fake book,” because that’s not a song that would be found in a book anywhere anymore.

And then we swung into Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” followed by “I Will Survive.”

We don’t like to stop for more than a second or two between songs, if that.

At another recent wedding in Temecula, we worked primarily from a list of both family’s favorite songs. They were great music lovers and knew exactly what they wanted: lots of partying and dancing.

As soon as we finished the first dance, father/daughter dance and mother/son dance – and the bride’s parents top request, “Get Here,” songs like “Shout” and James Brown’s “I Feel Good” launched a dance floor rush long before dinner service had ended.

Sometimes I feel like we’re putting on a rock concert!

Our members have played on vintage soul, funk, rock and disco albums with Gloria Gaynor, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, The Temptations, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Beck, Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney and so many more.

We play, we sing.

And none of us are imitating Michael Buble imitating Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin.

The esteemed jazz critic Don Heckman calls the stuff we play “irresistable music.”

It’s intelligent, sophisticated, charming and exciting music, familiar and well-loved and also from a very deep place in a time when live music was generally better than it is today. We enjoy keeping the tradition alive.

Most of all, it’s not about us. It’s tailored to fit the mood and the moment, then take the audience, guests, bride and groom, family and friends on a fabulous journey.

We call it “the good stuff.”

Our small combo virtuoso ensembles are living proof that having a bunch of superfluous musicians onstage doesn’t sound as good as a tight handful of the world’s best.

Sometimes, less really is more.

Notes from an American Jazz Swing & Wedding Band

…and the food on the road’s not bad….

From Palm Springs and San Diego to Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, Dallas and Palm Beach, we enjoy entertaining people who appreciate good music.

We’re constantly expanding our horizons …and our song list!

Recent additions include:

Beyond The Blue Horizon
Dancing Queen
Fernando
I Walk The Line
Maybe I’m Amazed
One Fine Day
Only The Lonely
Pretty Woman
Shangri La
Take A Chance On Me
Thank You For The Music
Time In A Bottle
Why Don’t You Do Right
You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

From ABBA to Jim Croce, Carol King, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, The Beatles and….Peggy Lee!

OK, so we’re not exactly normal. But we never promised to be.

The ABBA tunes were suggested by my husband, which is proof that as much as I think I can read minds, I probably can’t.

Esteemed jazz critic Don Heckman had this to say yesterday in The International Review Of Music:

Live: Judy Chamberlain and Bill Cunliffe
January 11, 2009
By Don Heckman
The International Review of Music

Judy Chamberlain is a singer who’s always a pleasure to hear. In part, because her astonishing repertoire makes every performance a fascinating journey through a century of song. But even more so because she brings such care, authenticity and musicality to everything she touches.

Her appearance at Spazio in Sherman Oaks Saturday night was further enhanced by the presence of a sterling back up ensemble – pianist Bill Cunliffe, bassist Tony Dumas and drummer Devin Kelly. Despite the fact that Chamberlain was, as always, utterly spontaneous about her choice of songs, the trio – guided by Cunliffe’s deep understanding of the subtleties of vocal accompaniment – found the right framework for every tune.

Which was a considerable accomplishment, since the program ranged in all directions: classics such as “Summertime,” “Lover” and “September Song” (done with its scene-setting verse); the very different jazz-oriented grooves of “Why Don’t You Do Right?” and “Night in Tunisia”; off-beat items such as Don McLean’s “And I Love You So” and Quincy Jones’ “Who Needs Forever?” Chamberlain’s interpretations combined an empathic respect for lyrics and story telling reminiscent of Mabel Mercer and Peggy Lee with her own conversational approach to phrasing and occasional twists of melodic paraphrase. She also made it clear, from the first number, that the evening’s framework – with Cunliffe present as a guest artist – would be a jazz setting. Solo spots were open for the instrumentalists in virtually every tune……

Sitting through two sets overflowing with irresistible songs…..it’s rooms such as these – with the vital presence of performers such as Chamberlain and Cunliffe – that are the in-the-trenches areas where jazz lives and thrives, even in today’s uncertain economy.

Thank you all, for the ideas and the inspiration.

Thank you for the music.

Live Party Music from the Fabulous 1950’s

The Fabulous Fifties…from MGM to “American Bandstand.”

Now that’s entertainment!

Along with the great sounds of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s, the diverse and highly danceable music of the 1950’s offers a rich treasure trove for the musical score of a very hip Cinema Noir or Old Hollywood wedding.

By the time Elvis Presley took America and the rest of the world by storm with his 1956 cover of Big Mama Thornton’s 1953 hit, “Hound Dog,” swing, blues, jive, C&W and rockabilly had already converged into a musical explosion known as “rock and roll.”

Jazz, romance and Broadway went to Hollywood during those years, as well. Some of the best songs ever written, recorded or featured on a Broadway stage or in a musical production number came out of — or passed through — the 1950’s, truly the golden age of American music.

The 1950’s featured re-creations of romantic and swinging standards from the 1920’s and 1930’s, augmented by a colorful explosion of highly danceable music that crossed over from C&W (that’s country and western, folks), blues and rockabilly in the late 1940’s and turned into rock and roll (in about 1954, with the use of the rockabilly crossover “Rock Around The Clock” in the movie Blackboard Jungle.)

Add to this prolific and highly danceable body of work the music from the movies and Broadway shows of the era, and America’s airwaves were fairly bursting with a conglomeration of heady new sounds.

Soul, blues and big band shared playlist space with “crooners” like Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and their rocking and rolling counterparts, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Fats Domino and Elvis.

Nat King Cole, King Pleasure, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Harry Belafonte and Louis Armstrong were heard on the same radio stations — usually one to a town, not 50 or 60 like we have today — as Hank Williams, The Drifters, The Platters, The Spaniels, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Cash, James Brown, The Coasters, Richie Valens and B.B. King? You’d better believe it!

Huey Piano Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers along with Bobby Darin, Patti Page, Theresa Brewer, Doris Day, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis ..and the music from Hollywood musicals and the best of the Broadway stage.

Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Rogers & Hammerstein and Julie Styne …Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen…it just doesn’t get any better than the panoply of musical creativity America heard on the radio and played on home phonographs during the 1950’s.

The 1950s offered a combination of sounds for everyone. Rock ‘n roll, rhythm and blues, love songs, jazz, calypso and musicals were all popular. Record sales, more than air play, determined the song’s popularity. Home stereo systems and the corner soda fountain with its jukeboxes became focal points. Everybody danced!

Broadway hits included Guys and Dolls, The King and I, Pajama Game, Singin’ in the Rain, Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady, Wonderful Town, Gigi and The Sound of Music.

Hollywood made movies of 1940’s Broadway gems like Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific and Kiss Me, Kate.

More Hollywood: An American In Paris, That’s Entertainment, The Bandwagon and Funny Face brought standards of an earlier era to life on the silver screen with the singing and dancing of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant and MGM’s talented vocal coach — who almost single-handedly brought American jazz into play in the 1950’s movie musical.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite 1950’s musical memories:

Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in “Kiss Me Kate”

Oscar Levant in “An American In Paris”

Johnny Mercer singing “Accentuate The Positive”

Polly Bergen, with the Jackie Gleason orchestra, singing “Bill” as a medley with “Why Was I Born?”

Fred Astaire “Dancing In The Dark” in Central Park with Cyd Charisse in “The Bandwagon”

Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” Bobby Darin reinventing “Mack The Knife,” The Skyliners recording of the soaring “Since I Don’t Have You” and The Flamingos re-make of the Harry Warren & Al Dubin 1934 classic, ” I Only Have Eyes For You” and Peggy Lee’s “Fever”…all hits of 1959…

The 1950’s truly were an amazing decade.

Jazz & Swing Band Holiday Entertainment

Holiday parties! Our trios, quartets, jazz bands and swing combos play the best holiday music:

The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Blue Christmas
Santa Baby
Baby It’s Cold Outside
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
All I Want For Christmas Is You
Jingle Bell Rock
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Oh Holy Night
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Silver Bells
Silent Night
Christmas Waltz

All done in rousing jazz and swing style, of course!

Palm Springs Wedding Entertainment: Mid-Century Moderne Jazz & Swing!

Live entertainment for Palm Springs weddings and events!

Our live trios, quartets and bands play the best music in the world, that of the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s and the mid-century moderne 1950’s! It’s perfect entertainment for Old Hollywood style vintage, retro weddings, which we do all over California.

Glamorous Old Hollywood style is a great theme for weddings and events in Palm Springs, a special place that’s long been associated with Hollywood at play.

Turn off the 10 Freeway onto Highway 111 in Palm Springs, and the desert air envelops you like a sultry siren.

First popularized in the 1920’s by the movie crowd, Palm Springs is one of those magical places where times seems to have stood still.

Drive thru town, and on to Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells and Palm Desert.

The sense of history is rich and textured. You can almost reach out and touch it.

Especially in old Palm Spring.

Palm Springs means 1920’s, 1930’s and 1950’s swing and 1960’s Rat Pack, movie music and the best of Broadway.

It’s all right up our musical alley, of course.

From Cole Porter and the Gershwins to Jules Styne, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Comden and Green — and the entire Great American Songbook — hooray for Hollywood!

Old Hollywood Weddings: Dancing Like The Stars

Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland…singing in the rain, dancing in the dark and being captured on film at the height of their beauty and talent.

A glamorous Old Hollywood wedding means live music, with a live band.

And a stunning, eloquent and elegant first dance.

For the cameras, of course.

I tend to encourage people to take real dance lessons from a real dance instructor rather than one who concentrates on perfecting a complicated dance routine taught for the purpose of that one dance on that one night.

Especially when the students have never danced before!

Step two three, turn two three….learn to really dance and you’ll be dancing together for the rest of your lives.

A simple, elegant and romantic first dance is a perfect time for some of the best photo opportunities that happen at a wedding.

Guests gathered around the dance floor, cameras flashing — it’s your moment to shine!

I like to work with brides and grooms to choose a song for the first dance that they will actually be able to dance to. We discuss their level of dance experience and try out dance patterns that fit into the style of their wedding and can be done to various songs that they like. I’m an experienced ballroom dancer myself, which helps.

Dance lessons instill confidence, especially if you are able to find a real dance teacher who teaches you to actually dance rather than just going through the motions of a choreographed song with intricate steps you’ll forget as soon as the wedding is over.

Basic steps are easy to learn, and when someone learns how to lead and the other learns how to follow, dancing becomes as easy as walking.

A great place to start is with the box step, a basic 1-2-3-hesitate pattern that will take you a long way in a variety of rhythms. Foxtrots, waltzes and rhumbas begin with the box step.

Once you’ve mastered the box step, your instructor will teach you simple turns. You walk…you glide…two hearts beating as one.

Dancing is a form of communication. It’s a conversation, with non-verbal communication between two people, one of whom is leading while the other follows. It’s the ultimate love scene. Fred Astaire didn’t need to kiss Ginger Rogers onscreen. He merely took her in his arms… and danced with her.

Simple swing steps are also easily mastered when the art of leading, following and working together as a team is perfected.

This can be a lot of fun!

Because our bands are completely live, we can slow the song down, lengthen it, change the tempo, create a dramatic musical introduction and the ultimate big ending.

Or play the whole song over again, if neccessary!

Example: A “junior groomsman” ran across the dance floor between the photographer and the couple just as their dance was ending and the groom was dramatically dipping the bride. I knew how inmportant that moment was to them for the sake of their pictures; they’d practiced the dance and the big ending with me several times before the wedding.

I was pretty sure from the disappointed look on the photographer’s look that the shot had been ruined, and he nodded to me to confirm that he had not gotten it.

“OK,” I announced from the stage. “We’re going to take that scene over!”

And we did.

By then, the bride and groom were so comfortable dancing together that their second “big ending” was even better than the first.

Perfection is so cool.

Los Angeles Wedding Bands: The Art of Wedding Entertainment

Live music, played by the best musicians in the world, is a thing of great beauty.

What we do doesn’t really exist anymore.

The best musicians in the world play in our bands.

However — and this is important for anyone considering hiring a live band to play music for their wedding — we are not just there to play some music!

We’re there to provide a pink cloud for the bride and groom, their family and friends to float on.

It’s magical, live music. And very real. Charming, dramatic, exciting, passionate, stirring, romantic and joyful. But most of all, engaging. Brides and grooms are getting hip to that word: engaging. They’re calling and telling us that’s what they want.

You bet they do!

When I started singing for events years ago on the East Coast, there were no synthesizers. The piano players played piano!

There were also no wedding coordinators. The upper classes had social secretaries; everyone else got help from their family, the caterer, or the banquet department at the hotel.

Centerpiece games, who’s been married longest and is left standing on the dance floor games, insult the groom and then kneecap him with a paddle games — these had yet to be discovered.

The bridal industry was a gracious tour de force made up of fine florists, caterers, photographers, hotel staffers and bandleaders who knew what it takes to put on a thoroughly enjoyable wedding. On nearly any budget, I might add.

DJ’s had yet to appear on the scene.

Can you imagine, no DJ’s?

The bandleader was the M/C, musical director, family confidante and sometimes wedding director.

And we learned the art of doing weddings.

We learned that it’s as important it is to know what we can’t do as well as what we can do.

Helping our clients set up a pace that works, rather than getting caught up in the crammed-to-the-brim timeline of of extraneous activities today’s bridal websites and magazines are suggesting — they of the meaningless song lists — in an effort to capitalize on advertising dollars.

Along the way, we have watched simplicity, elegance and the love and support of family and friends take a back seat to one-upsmanship.

Hopefully, that is changing for the better.

More and more, brides and grooms are looking for the engaging simplicity vintage music, for tradition and glamour.

And that’s a good thing.

They want to acknowledge friends and relatives who will be with them on their special day, and also those who cannot be.

They want to have fun, and they want glamour and elegance — and to hire a band that will engage and entertain their guests.

Yes!

No amount of recorded music — or a template of unimaginative tunes pulled off a list on some wedding website — can take the place of a fabulous, experienced, intuitive and versatile live band.

We love flowers. Cake is great. Event designers, wow — another very cool trend. A Hollywood set for our Old Hollywood music. Weddings are supposed to be glamorous!

The evolution of the wedding industry has made so much of the “good stuff” rise to the top. Glamour is in, cheese is out.

What a concept!

A Memorable First Dance at a California Wedding

Heather and Bill, you had one heck of a wedding!

Heather’s backless gown was divine, Bill looked so handsome… and the soul food, as promised, was beyond delicious.

The vintage private estate was a perfect setting for a fantastic group of family and friends.

Everyone loves “The Rainbow Connection,” but we never would have thought of it for a first dance if you hadn’t come up with the idea.

They cheered when you danced to it. They screamed with glee. And they told us: That was so Bill and Heather!

Of course that’s exactly what we’re there for.

I can’t wait to see the pictures.

Rainbow Connection, yup.

It’s a keeper.