THE SPELL OF GIRLS

Four months ago today, a 12 year old girl by the name of Ananya Vinay won the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. Happening that her first name begins with “A” leads to a question which leads to where this post is headed:

For some time now, I’ve been kicking around in my head the idea of a series of posts featuring old songs, each title of which is (or includes) a girl’s first name, beginning with “A” and continuing through the alphabet. I’ve hesitated to put this idea to the test for several reasons, the main one being that I question whether there is much of an audience today for one of my passions, namely old songs (loosely defined as 50+ years old). But then I thought: THE SPELL WITH IT! It’s my party….

So let’s get started. Fitting as it would be to get on the A Train with a song titled “Ananya,” I regret to say I know no such song. So I’m going to go with a gal who’s even older than I am, MISS ANNABELLE LEE. Hey, if she was good enough for Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote a famous poem titled ANNABELLE LEE, she’s good enough for me:

HAPPY IN-BETWEEN DAY, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

One of the first great female jazz singers,  Annette Hanshaw (Oct. 18, 1910 – Mar. 13, 1985) ranked near the top of her field, along with Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, the Boswell Sisters and Mildred Bailey. She gave proper feeling to the lyrics, improvised, and always swung. [She] began her recording career when she was just 15 (discovered by her future husband, Herman Rose, who was the A&R man for the Pathe label), sounding quite mature from the start. Her trademark became saying “That’s all!” (which she had spontaneously ad-libbed on one of her first recording dates) at the end of her records. But the singer hated to perform in public, and at the age of 25 she retired from singing.
–Scott Yanow, CLASSIC JAZZ – THE MUSICIANS AND RECORDINGS THAT SHAPED JAZZ, 1895-1933

• * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At the behest of my good friend/mutual blog follower Don Frankel, I am deviating from my every-five-days publishing routine to post my first and (for a while, at least) last “in-betweener.” The occasion: the October 18, 1910 birthday of singer Annette Hanshaw and the slightly more recent (but decidedly less noteworthy) birthday of mistermuse. To celebrate the former’s birthday, I’d like to pay her tribute as one of my favorite vocalists of the late 1920s – early 30s. Regarding the latter’s birthday, the less said, the better.

On Oct. 15, Don did a satirical political post (on SWI) that ended with a clip of Hanshaw singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” about which I made a comment.  Turns out he didn’t know anything about her (but then who does, unless you’re really into early jazz?). But rather than go into detail that most readers probably aren’t interested in, I’ll let her singing do most of the talking. Here she is at age 16 in August 1927:

Next, the lady sighs “We just couldn’t say goodbye” in a rare filmed performance:

Finally, what could be more appropriate than to end with her last recording, Cole Porter’s “Let’s Fall In Love.”

And now, because we just couldn’t say goodbye, we are left with That’s all.

ATTENTION! (Or, as the French say, ATTENTION!)*

*There is a pronounced difference.

 

It is said that youth must be served, but the extent of what this generation knows of music is such that 1920s-1940s popular music/classic jazz, and hence this post, might as well be in a foreign language. However, for those past being served by the myopic world of current culture, listen up! August 15 is one of those days of a convergence which doesn’t come along every day: it’s the birthday of no less than four Golden Age American songwriters, the titles of whose songs afford me a theme-opportunity beyond the happenstance of their birthdays-in-common.

All four (born on this date from 1892 to 1901) were prolific tunesmiths, but what caught my attention is that each wrote one song with a girl’s name in the title which, in two cases, became standards, and in all four cases, were big hits in their day. The writers: Harry Akst, Sidney Clare, Charles Tobias, and Ned Washington; the songs: DINAH, MISS ANNABELLE LEE, ROSE O’DAY and STELLA BY STARLIGHT.

Although none of these men’s fame survived their era, a number of their compositions did (or, as an Irving Berlin song title put it, The Song Is Ended, But The Melody Lingers On). One such ditty is DINAH, by Harry Akst,  a favorite of jazz musicians which has been recorded countless times since the 1920s. I like so many versions of this song that I couldn’t further narrow down this list if you Akst me to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhVdLd43bDI
(Louis Armstrong)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0XQuOd5HI
(New Orleans Jazz Vipers)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlPLXNsz4GA
(Bing Crosby/Mills Bros.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdkvJQuj2co
(Fats Waller)

The next tune, by Sidney Clare, is a particular favorite of mine.Written in 1927, it was recorded by numerous jazz and dance bands and became a toe-tapping best seller in America and Europe. What’s not to like about her? She’s wonderful, she’s marvelous….MISS ANNABELLE LEE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqavTUwm7sM
(George Fisher Kit Cat Band)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj-nTjL_aTY
(Savoy Havana Band)

Next we have Charles Tobias’s ROSE O’DAY, the most lightweight of the four — due, not to diet, but to being a silly novelty song which nevertheless was one of 1941’s top hits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkH-hmRFA_Y
(Dick Todd)

Last but not lightweight, there’s STELLA BY STARLIGHT, composed by Victor Young as the theme for the 1944 film “The Uninvited,” with lyrics added by Ned Washington in 1946. This beautiful standard has been recorded by dozens of artists, including the following:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwSaY1oSCw4
(Billy Eckstein)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZ0xqdP2rw
(Anita O’Day)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94vB3mLRzc
(Frank Sinatra)

That’s all. AS YOU WERE (if you’ve ever been in the military, you know what that means).