Fresh off the success of Dinah in , Harry Akst teamed with Benny Davis to turn out what would be the biggest hit of his career. Although Eddie Cantor was the first to run with Baby Face , some 20 years later Al Jolson would try to have the last word when he recorded it for his second biopic, Jolson Sings Again.
It has a wonderful jaunty feel right from the start of the interestingly constructed verse, and a beautiful legato melody that was picked up on very quickly by composer Carl Stalling. He used it in several Warner Brothers cartoon shorts in the s and s.
The suave stinker even wore a straw hat and danced with a cane. While this performance evokes more of the s in America than it does of Gay Paree, it certainly doesn't stink up the joint!
Doctor Jazz. Although white publisher Melrose had his name on the cover, it does not mean that he contributed much more than support for King Oliver and his famous jazz band, all black.
Melrose had done the same with Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton as well, having little or nothing to do with either music or lyrics, but working more as a promoter, and publishing numbers in print form that might have otherwise remain on record for years, thus providing a valuable service. Having lost his second trumpet and pianist, Louis Armstrong and Lil Hardin , after achieving a measure of respect and fame in the early and mids, Oliver regrouped with new musicians and new tunes, of which Doctor Jazz was one of his most memorable.
Even at that, Morton and his Red Hot Peppers managed to record it in before Oliver laid down the track in April of Some have analyzed the lyrics as containing veiled references to either sex or drugs, but it is most likely that they should be taken at face value, and that the song is about hot music and nothing more. The tune is still frequently performed today by a variety of jazz artists and traditional jazz bands. A great optimistic tome that appeared just two years before our country's financial system came crashing down around us, this is a simple, by the numbers song that was easily memorized.
Four Leaf Clover was also a major hit song almost as soon as it appeared on the scene, thanks to both radios and records, and a couple of piano rolls. A common later edition trimmed most of the first verse out and eliminated the second one. This song was liberally used by arranger and composer Carl Stalling in several Warner Brothers cartoons from the s to the s, keeping it in the public's ear into the 21st century.
Crazy Rhythm. The official definition of crazy suggests a virtual thesaurus of terms such as mad, insane, erratic, unsound, askew and obsessed, reflective of the era from which it sprang.
The mid to late s were indeed somewhat crazy and even excessive as the U. It is included here partially due to its reference to National Prohibition which was still a hot-button topic at the time. While this piece, originally interpreted into the Broadway show Here's Howe in where it became a hit, came late in the jazz age, it still has stylistic tendencies that tie it to song conventions of the decade before.
A response of sorts to the earlier and more sophisticated Fascinatin' Rhythm by George Gershwin , this song had a hook that was easier for the general public to hum, important for sales of music and records.
Still, I could not help but to infuse not only some crazy rhythms of my own, but a little bit of Gershwin as well. Crazy Rhythm is simple and to the point, so just have fun with it and forget your cares and responsibilities.
Worked for our ancestors, right? James Infirmary Blues. This tragically-themed piece was hanging out in New Orleans and the American South in general many years before Primrose transcribed his published version in the late s. However, the original St. James Infirmary referred to in the song actually existed in London centuries ago, not in Storyville where some had thought. The song also was a derivation of an old English folk song called The Unfortunate Rake.
The verses included for this performance of the somber piece are among the most common, although some have also found their way into others blues pieces of the s to s and vice-versa. Note that in the funereal verses that the early traditions of jazz players as part of the procession are quite apparent, including being buried in a manner that suggests a solid standing, and having the second line, usually made up of the extended family and the hired band, first mourning, then celebrating the life just ended.
James Infirmary is rarely played in a funeral line, as most bands to this day tend to favor the more appropriate Just a Closer Walk with Thee or Didn't He Ramble. In the mids the Gabriel Trumpet horn appeared on cars as an extra. There were many configurations from two to seven or more tones in an array, the most common at that time being the three tone four note bugle. Before the sleek lines of the mids took hold, it was common to mount these beasts clearly in view as well, a blatant display of decibel dominance.
While it wasn't Dixie or La Cucaracha , tunes more commonly found on car horns in later decades, it was enough to both irritate and fascinate people, the latter being the topic of this clever hit song. That it makes fun of certain car brands is more about popularity and rhyming than anything else. The reference to vehicular deaths of pedestrians is a little disturbing, but it underscores just how far hopefully we have advanced in traffic awareness, and safety.
And perhaps even in horn sounds, except for, perhaps, Yellow Rose of Texas just sayin'. The s were roaring and dance tunes were always in demand. Even tunes about dancing that you could also dance to. This one, put together by two experienced and very talented writers, took the craze to a new somewhat indecent extreme.
But consider that the lyricist also contributed to the double entendre laced He'd Have to Get Under composed more than a decade and a half prior. There is plenty of that here, with blatant references to flapper girls and their undergarments or lack thereof , as well as other titillating scenarios.
This is a fine jazz song melodically, and very much in the genre of a traditional jazz band piece, which is how it is presented here in addition to the vocal. The clever dancing skeleton cover by artist Pud Lane is also one of the better examples of comic art at a time when sheet music covers were becoming definitively more generic, and it evokes the apex of a time that would soon be over due to the Great Depression.
Puttin' on the Ritz. Talk about a popular song, this one has had at least four lives in the 20th century alone, and has never really been out of vogue. Referring to the posh hotel chain built up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Cesar Ritz , a man who had earlier been dismissed by some of his employers in the hotel business as unmanageable and inept, it clearly embraces the new use of "Ritz" as a descriptive noun referring to the upper echelon of society.
In this case, the subjects are society wannabes trying to appear better off than they actually are. By some accounts written as early as , this piece showed up in in a film by the same name that featured some other lesser Berlin compositions. Clark Gable in one of his rare singing performances revived it in in a scene later included in as part of the film That's Entertainment. It was given new life and new lyrics in the s by way of a couple of musicals and films, and in the s once more by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder in the unforgettable Young Frankenstein.
A pop version was charted by Indonesian Dutch singer Taco Ockerse in and became a top 40 single worldwide. As previously noted, one thing that has changed since the song's inception are Berlin's lyrics, the most prominent and lasting rewrite to them is in a performance by Fred Astaire in in the film Blue Skies. Why Berlin altered the song is unclear, but it may have been to update a piece mired in s lingo, and full of what may be considered racially insensitive references.
What has not changed is that great forward motion of the chorus, which is essentially a syncopated arpeggio over a steady bass. Simplicity does sell. Why is it here amidst all this ragtime? It retains the snappy feel and construction of a ragtime melody, making its ancestry very clear. But it also has that late s attitude, which was concurrently reflected in stride and blues compositions of the time. This interpretation reflects a combination of the jazz feel of with some stride piano stylings, Gershwinesque chord progressions, and just plain old fun, the primary reason that you found it here to begin with!
Am I Blue? From the time that both Ethel Waters and Annette Hanshaw recorded it in , it has been covered by artists of both sexes and many races, ranging from Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday with a truncated verse to Cher and Sue Keller.
Clarke managed to capture a sense of pain and despair, bordering on suicide, in the sung narration of a relationship gone wrong, further bolstered by Akst's poignant and well-paced melody.
In fact, the suicidal aspect was a bit strong for audiences at the beginning of the Great Depression, so the second verse, when sung at all, was soon supplanted with something more benign, even for the earliest recordings. Originally written from the standpoint of a woman, it has been modified for either gender over the years. As for the talented lyricist, Grant Clarke died at age 40 less than two years after this song was introduced.
Akst continued in a mildly successful career writing for movies and radio. This more recent entry into the Am I Blue universe, featuring a rather blue and somewhat exasperated Kelsey Pederson before she found true love and happiness in marriage , includes the original dark and angry second verse, rarely heard among all of the renditions captured through the years. Memories of You. Memories of You was composed for inclusion in Lew Leslie's revue Blackbirds of , and it was not long before it became a hit.
According to Blake, "I wrote that song in an octave and a fifth, to show off a girl's voice, [actress] Minto Cato. You never heard anyone sing it the way she did, because it takes someone with real range to do it. Eubie made his own frequently-referenced recording of it in for the Golden Reunion in Ragtime project championed by ragtime performer and entrepreneur Bob Darch.
It even became a persistent theme in The Benny Goodman Story Universal - , although its inclusion in Goodman's landmark jazz concert at Carnegie Hall was a falsehood. This song has become intensely personal to me, and sharing it with the world is both therapy and conversely a personal breach of my own privacy. However, it does open up a two way window that allows me to communicate things with you through music that I cannot through mere speech or writing. My beautiful daughter Amber was taken in January of by oral cancer, with no predisposition or family history.
She was less than a month from her 32nd birthday. I had to play a concert the next weekend, but needed to work through my grief by tribute. It is a beautiful Irish tribute tune and dirge intended for a memorial Jim asked Glenn to write it so he could hear it while still alive which is commonly used by musicians in my field now for such events and in concert. However, that same week, Glenn also died quite unexpectedly. So now being one of the first ragtime artist to perform just three days following his death, his own piece became a fitting tribute.
I needed something for Amber, so I called on one I had not done for a while, the breathtakingly poignant and more difficult to interpret properly Memories of You by Eubie Blake. By the first time I worked through it after having not played it for a couple of years, it was instantly "her" piece from that moment on, and even now more than a year later I have trouble getting through it without welling up or just gushing tears, so the attachment is palpable.
I had prepared it for the World Championship of Old Time Piano Playing five months later, but did not get a chance to perform it in the finals, which in hindsight may have been a blessing.
However, a week later at the 35th Annual Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri, I did bring the piece to a full house at the final concert that Saturday night.
What I did not know just increased the emotional factor that evening. At the end of intermission, the Scott Joplin Foundation presented, as they do each year, an award for lifetime achievement in the field of ragtime and related music. When no less than long time ragtime pianist and proponent Max Morath started describing the achievements of this individual, I was stunned to realize it was me. I was a total mess when I walked out to accept this highly valued honor, joining a truly elite group of recipients, and gave a halting speech to the audience, having already been in a heightened state of emotion even before this transpired.
Then they got mean. I got no respot, and it was instantly my turn to play. After THAT! I don't remember much except that I felt so strongly about that piece and the memory of my daughter. Our relationship had never been what it should have been, and was starting to become, so my regret came through as well as my love. I am still informed it was the performance of the evening, to which I am honored, but also mystified, because I was feeling it, not listening to it so much.
For the 43rd edition of the World Championship of Old Time Piano Playing, I did have the chance to perform the piece once again, having only played it once for an audience in the year prior. This time I clearly had more control over the performance, but not my emotions. The process of sharing my grief, regret, joy, loss, gains, etc. This was the performance I remember, and even though I don't know when I will revisit this piece because it takes so much out of me, I will stand by this as a fitting tribute to my lost daughter who was cheated out of a full life by cancer, leaving many of us cheated in the process by not growing older with her.
Amber Louise Quiring Bowden, while I have regrets about not having had as much a role in your life as I should have or wanted, I knew we were on the right track, and those are the Memories of You that I shall long cherish. Presented here is the audio from that May 28, live performance, which can also be found on YouTube at the contest's own page.
Egyptian Ella. Quite the opposite of the exotic middle eastern themes of previous years featuring the likes of seductive dancers such as Aphrodite and Little Egypt , this piece goes to the opposite extreme introducing a comically weight-challenged belly dancer. Mildly offensive to some, although unintentionally given the era it was born in, Egyptian Ella appeared at a time when laughs were in short supply the Great Depression and National Prohibition , and were therefore a profitable business.
In a toned-down version of the piece was included in a Paramount film called Bring On The Girls. Otherwise, it has been rarely recorded. In the elaborately under- orchestrated recorded version presented here, which is also available on Volume 3 of Perfessor Bill Edwards Sings , I included a "bump bump bump" before the heroine's? I derived this from the artist who introduced me to Ella, Colorado's finest ragtimer, Dick Kroeckel.
So put on your best snake charmer face and enjoy this very "sheik" song! At the Codfish Ball. I don't know why I recorded this! I just like this tune. They are 3. The preferred versions suggested by an audio engineer at George Blood, L. Compilations - Other albums which feature this performance of the song.
Covers - Performances of a song with the same name by different artists. The recording on the other side of this disc: Have you Forgotten? Uploaded by Jeff Kaplan on August 27, Internet Archive's 25th Anniversary Logo. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.
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