Amph SuperWatto Thrashes Through A Century In Popular Music

Excellent stuff.
But as I said... fragmented.

 

I never commented on I Ain't Got Nobody. Classic song. The Louis Prima version is the one to beat.



I mean, that just kills. About the 1:20 mark, it just really starts kicking. And that brass riff at 2:25. I actually like the David Lee Roth version too, but nothing tops Louis Prima. He's just a real ball of fire. And this recording is really interesting in the way it kind of brings in the Italian element to the song, particularly in that call and response section, which is, in and of itself, of musical interest.

Also, I just listened to all fifteen minutes of that 8-bit Dixie. I'm not sure why.

As to The Yanks Started Yankin', well, it's catchy. Interesting, I guess. But that title.

 

Are the lyrics on that Yanks Started Yankin song a little off. I swear it sounds like he's saying "the British were watchin the sea" and "Italy's hootin."

Good song though. I reminds me of a song I was never able to find in the movie Iron Will. They sing it before the race and I think it was called "Ode to Kaiser Bill."



Combining Just a Jiggalo with I Ain't Got Nobody is probably one of the best representations of mashing songs. If you could call it that. I prefer the Roth version though. Probably because he sounds more credible when he sings it. lol

 

I agree. Great combination of songs, and I prefer Diamond Dave as well, Probably just because I grew up with it.
Not YouTubing it though... it's very likely the video has aged horribly.

 

lol... I'll youtube it.

 

Still a classic.

 

Any video that has a cameo from Professor Toru Tanaka, wins my approval.

 

Yeah, the first two minutes of that video . . . yikes. But, great song for sure.

 

I think the video is funny.

 

We done already?

 

He listened to the rest of music and found it to be a bunch of repurposed Chuck Berry riffs.

 

I'll resume tonight

 

1919

Alright, so I got set back.
I knew I had to watch the David Lee Roth video before I could resume, and I just didn't feel like it. I was really afraid that that song I used to love so much, and the video I had such fond memories of would now look as if coming straight out of the misogyny thread. So I stalled. I just watched it...

Fantastic! What a video! Give me back the Eighties! The time when someone who helped define the hard rock genre could unabashedly get away with something like this, and then happily continue to make hard rock classics, introducing new guitarists, who in turn make hard rock history.

In the video, at the 1:41 mark - when the song stars playing - Dave makes an ass out of himself by dressing up as a stage singer. An old time stage singer. It fits with the song, because the song is old, so it conjures up old times. But what times? Not those of Marion Harris. She's too gaslight. Vaudeville. Maybe even Wild West. Not Louis Prima, either, even though the arrangement is very similar and the diction nearly copied verbatim. But Louis does a meagre version of the old show band. He's not putting up a show. He's not the guy who inspired Dave to fly over his audience on a surfboard. He's just clicking his fingers, as they would do in the fifties. No, Dave hints at a time even longer ago. The time of



Arguably the first great Western pop star Al Jolson scoring the first hit for arguably the last great Western classical composer, George Gershwin.
The song is a riff on the older (minstrel) song "Old Folks At Home" which incidentally is Florida's official state song. It's from a revue that Gershwin made when they were 20 years old, not very succesful, but when he played it at a party one night, Al Jolson heard it and subsequently put it in his show. It held the No. 1 position for 18 weeks. It was Gershwin's biggest ever hit, and the money allowed to do more theatre work and less pop songs.

EDIT: the David Lee Roth video I fear is probably California Girls.

 

That whistling solo is rockin.

 

Wait, is that the same Al Jolson that would make awkward blackfaced motion picture history just a few years later?

 

Awkward now - gap bridging then.

As black dancer Jeni LeGon said, “In those times, it was a ‘black-and-white world.’ You didn’t associate too much socially with any of the stars. You saw them at the studio, you know, nice—but they didn’t invite. The only ones that ever invited us home for a visit was Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler.”

In another instance, Jolson read that songwriters Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, neither of whom he knew at the time, had been thrown out of a restaurant because of their race. When he heard this, he tracked the pair down and took them out to dinner and reportedly told them, “He’d punch anyone in the nose who tried to kick us out!”

As for his “blackface” persona which seems to (almost literally) fly in the face of his apparent true feelings on race, this persona was often used as a means to introduce white audiences to black culture, and also to make fun of the general idea of “white supremacy.” As such, when black audiences saw “The Jazz Singer,” rather than boycott it, a Harlem newspaper, Amsterdam News (today “the oldest Black newspaper in the country,” according to their website), stated that The Jazz Singer was “one of the greatest pictures ever produced,” and that, “Every colored performer is proud of him (Jolson).”

Jolson also insisted on the hiring and fair treatment of black people at a time when this was an outlandish concept to many in America. (For example, at the time members of the KKK are estimated to have accounted for about 15% of the U.S.’s voting-age population.) He also crusaded for equal rights for African-American as early as 1911, when he was 25. Through his very controversial portrayals, and advocating for black performers, Jolson helped pave the way for the success of such legends as Louis Armstrong, Ethyl Waters, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. As the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture stated, “Almost single-handedly, Jolson helped to introduce African-American musical innovations like jazz, ragtime, and the blues to white audiences.”

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/10/al-jolson-hero-villian/

 

I mean, it's of another time blah blah etc. etc. But I think Jolson holds up surprisingly well. I actually just love his voice and his delivery. It's obviously distinctive (which is what I'm really looking for in a vocalist, as opposed to being necessarily aesthetically pleasing), but I just genuinely find him really fun to listen to.

And this recording in particular, it's got some really great energy to it. And, yeah, that whistling bit. Pure gold. This is a fantastic song. I'd venture to say this is the best recording posted in the thread so far. I mean, in the official SuperWatto year posts. I don't think I'd put it above Louis Armstrong and Leonard Bernstein doing St. Louis Blues. Diamond Dave? Debatable.

Great choice, dude. Lots of fun.

 

There used to be a family owned department store where I grew up called "Swanees" and this was their TV commercial themed jingle. I know, what a contribution.

 

Honorable mention for 1919

Spoiler

 

Sounds good HookLine!
The football choir actually sounds cooler than the recording.
Can't wait til we get to "Camptown Races"

Alright, a teaser for tonight's post:

 

1920



Paul Whiteman's Orchestra from San Francisco was the most popular band of the 1920s. They are also the most controversial to jazz historians because Whiteman billed himself as "The King Of Jazz". He even made a film of himself by that name. The Paul Whiteman Orchestra rarely played what is considered real Jazz today, despite having some of the great white jazz soloists of the 1920s in his band. For the most part Whiteman played commercial dance music and semi-classical works.

Jazz critics almost universally dislike his music, but in my opinion he made some really good - if uptight - recordings. Pretty but prissy.
He also introduced some jazz giants to the world. Tommy Dorsey, Mildred Bailey, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden and Bing Crosby all got a start in his band. And last but not least, he was the guy that commissioned Gershwin to write "Rhapsody In Blue".

In 1920, Whiteman moved from San Francisco to New York and made his first record, "Whispering / The Japanese Sandman", which sold over two million copies, hit number 1 (the first of 28), and made him a star. He quickly styled himself to be the first pop star with the flamboyant rock star attitude: he would travel the country in a huge silver bus, sponsored by Lucky Strike.

His popularity only started waning when the big bands came on the scene.

I think "Whispering" sounds a lot better than what we have heard thus far. Sonically. Like a 1920s "Brothers In Arms". Now the music needs to get better. And that's going to happen soon. The 20s sure were roaring. With each new year in this decade, the songs will get better. And in my opinion it doesn't stop until the 1950s.


The good music - the real jazz, the punk of the era - was already being played. But not yet recorded. It could be heard in the dumps and in the dives and in the whorehouses in the Southern U.S. Soon it would be picked up, by people like Paul Whiteman. We have 2-3 more years of schmalz to go, but then it's on!

 

Well, there was this


But Sweatman was a major exception and was still pretty ragtime. I'll still take it over Whiteman, he said, unfortunately damning with faint praise.

 

Yeah, I think "pretty but prissy" is an accurate description. I can see why some controversy surrounded him referring to himself as the "king of jazz," because his totally was not.

 

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

No. Just no.

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles At Wembley

You know the original isn't very good when a stadium full of rambunctious non-singers actually sound better. Though whoever is laying down that beat needs to reconsider their life choices.

Whispering

You're right that the sound quality has taken a big step up. The sound has real layers. You can visualize the room in your head with the singer right up front and the musicians arrayed behind him. There's a great moment when the brass section comes in and you can tell that they're coming from quite a ways behind the singer. Depth, I mean.

And the microphone technology has allowed for a wonderful innovation here, which is the crooning sound that would come to define a lot of singers to come on the scene shortly. Prior to this, you've had the sort of vocal shout-singing style where the singer was kind of literally shouting over the noise of the band. Crooning has come to have some negative connotations, but a lot of the great singers have done it from time to time. It also allows for a more distinctive sound to the voice; the vocalist is able to put in more nuance and more personal flourishes. Picture Billie Holiday or Sinatra without this innovation. Or, coming up even sooner probably, Crosby, another singer that's actually loads better than most people today think. (I hope for a song from him to show up shortly and probably not the one you think I'm thinking of). Anyway, this recording really does show off some of the innovations happening at this time that allowed recorded music to take its next step into the stratosphere. The song itself? Not great.

Kansas City Blues

Pleasant enough without being remarkable. But, yes, will take over a lot of other stuff from the period.

 

1921

Anyone remember 1921?
I guess all our acquaintences that would remember 1921 are dead by now.
But we have some pictures, some words.
Some movies. "The Kid" by Charlie Chaplin. "The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse", with Rudolph Valentino. Five Buster Keaton shorts. A British film called "The Bigamist".



The Chinese Communist Party.
Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The garage door.
And some music!

Mamie Smith was the first to record blues songs with her versions of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues", and "It' s Right Here for You" on Okeh Records. The record was a wild success, selling over two million copies. After this it dawned on record companies that there was a lot of money to be made selling what was then called "race records" to various minority groups in big cities. It opened the doors of the recording industry to African-Americans, whether they were blues, jazz or popular singers, or musicians. Smith herself really wasn't that much of a blues singer. She was more of a vaudeville performer, although she included blues and jazz numbers in her act. She got her start as a dancer at age ten in the vaudeville act the Four Dancing Mitchells and later toured with them as part of the Salem Tutt Whitney and Homer Tutt's show, "The Smart Set". Mamie moved to New York in 1913 and started performing as a singer in Harlem. Her first recordings were made in early 1920m and sold well enough to convince Okeh Records that there was a market for earthier Blues records aimed at the large number of African-Americans who had migrated to the big cities of the north.



Can you hear the confluence? It's got the developed ballroom arrangements we heard last year from Paul Whiteman, but it's got the blue notes, lament, and authenticity only black artists could bring at the time. This combination is something that would be heavily developed this decade, culminating in bigger and bigger bands, until we get to the Big Band. In a way you can already hear a little big band playing here. While you can also still hear a remnant of the old work songs.

Mamie Smith is said to have put on quite a show, including trapeze acts, dancing, comedy, lavish costumes and jewelry. While on tour in 1921 she heard a young Coleman Hawkins playing saxophone in a theatre pit orchestra. Smith asked Hawkins to joined the band, but his family refused to allow him to, because he was just sixteen years old at the time. To be continued!