Reaching for Someone and Not Finding Anyone There

First of all, a thousand apologies for the two months of radio silence as I rather let things go here at Eclectic Ephemera.  Rest assured I am alive and well, but unfortunately finding many distractions that conspire to keep me away from blogging as often as I would like.  I've always felt it to be an awful cop-out to blame a full-time job for stopping me from writing a blog, since I know so many of my favourite fellow vintage bloggers also have regular paid employment and that doesn't stop them from posting once a week!  But alas I do find myself with less time to spare at the weekends now my weekdays are once again taken up by honest toil - having had every day to myself for so long (albeit enforced through ill-health) it's come as a bit of shock to have to condense all that I would do in a week into the two days of the weekend!  Still, I must have done it before so I'm sure it'll become normal to me again soon.

In the meantime my new plan is to do one post as-and-when (note the deliberate vagueness!), covering two or three vintage-related news articles and/or anything of similar interest that may have happened in my life recently (highly unlikely, that!). Now, let's see if I can remember how to do this...



I picked this tune for a few reasons, not least because it's so toe-tappingly good!  The title somewhat reflects this place for the last couple of months too (!), but it's mainly because I've recently been on something of an early Bing Crosby kick.  For, yes, it is perhaps somewhat little known (and sadly so too) that on a lot of the classic 1920s jazz numbers featuring the noted (and tragic) cornetist Bix Beiderbecke recorded with Paul Whiteman (among others) the vocal accompaniment is performed by none other than a young Bing Crosby.  Often appearing as part of a trio known as "The Rhythm Boys" the twenty-something Bing was soon spotted as an emerging talent and by the beginning of the 1930s was singing solo more often than not, as he started down the path towards greatness.

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Bing Crosby with Al Rinker and Harry Barris
as "The Rhythm Boys"

I now have three CDs chronicling these early years of Bing's career - Bix 'n' Bing with The Paul Whiteman Orchestra and The Earliest Bing Crosby Volumes 1 & 2 - and all of them absolute crackers (but not always easy to get hold of - Amazon Marketplace is your friend!).  It's fascinating to hear the genesis of Bing's inimitable voice, particularly in its early stages, in the somewhat unusual setting of 1920s jazz.  It's hard to pick a favourite song, but this is one of the stand-outs in my opinion.  If you're a fan of the 1990s Jeeves & Wooster TV series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (and let's be honest, if you're reading this you probably are) you'll recognise more than a couple of tunes.  To complete the Bing-fest I also ended up getting a box set of his films as well!

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Oh, and in other news I'm off to Eastbourne in Sussex the week after next (17th) for one week as a birthday treat - my first real holiday in ten years (which is why I'm playing it safe with the south coast)!  I understand the area in and around Eastbourne is something of a vintage hotspot, so I'm hoping for some retro fun, frivolity and maybe a vintage find or two!  Any tips on places to visit, hidden gems etc., please let me know (the De La Warr Pavillion is on the list, I need hardly say)!

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Well, I was going to go on to summarise two or three interesting vintage news stories from the last couple of months but looking back at this post I think I've said enough about me (oh, the vanity!) to be going on with for now, so as with all good things (oh, the vanity again!) I'll leave you wanting more (I hope!).

Speaking of good things, let me just end by asking how many of my UK-based readers have been watching and enjoying the B.B.C.'s new adaptation of Agatha Christie's Partner's In Crime stories, starring David Walliams and Jessica Raine as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford?  I was highly sceptical when the series was first announced, since I can't stand Walliams in anything else he's had a hand in and I wasn't too sure about the updated suburban 1950s setting.  I must admit now to having not yet read any of the original books (set at first in the 1920s but unusually for Christie actually progressing in real time, ending in the 1970s with the protagonists in their seventies) so had based my whole outlook on the early 1980s ITV series.  However I will admit I was pleasantly surprised - this is a rip-roaring little series; David Walliams can actually act, Jessica Raine is as lovely as ever and the plot and setting work well (not to mention the outfits - I bet you girls are having a field day!).  I'm looking forward to tomorrow's episode as I type.

Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin is celebrated

Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin is celebrated

A bit later than planned thanks to the two previous exciting news items, this event had in any case already taken place by the time it came to my attention but I still think it deserves mention here as another splendid example of 1920s jazz performed for a new generation.

Pre-eminent modern bandleader and jazz music revivalist (what a great term!) Vince Giordano - who has previously featured a couple of times on this blog - and his Nighthawks band recently took the opportunity to mark the 90th anniversary of the first performance of George Gershwin's composition Rhapsody in Blue.  Originally debuted by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, with Gershwin himself at the piano, on the 12th February 1924 the piece was performed once again by Mr Giordano and the Nighthawks (doubled from the band's usual 11 musicians to 22 - just as Paul Whiteman did - plus a special guest conductor) at the Manhattan Town Hall - 90 years later to the day.  



Brooklyn 'Jazz Age’ revivalist Giordano to recreate 'Rhapsody in Blue’ concert

As well as this recreated version of Rhapsody in Blue Giordano and his band also played some of their standard set pieces and the whole event sounds like it was an absolute hoot - the perfect way to mark such a musical milestone.  It is always splendid to see that this early jazz music is still appreciated and enjoyed - hopefully sparking the enthusiasm of a new generation.  With this performance and others in films like The Great Gatsby and Manhattan, plus a possible biopic in the works, the Jazz Age as epitomised by George Gershwin seems to show no signs of being forgotten - and a jolly good thing too!

All aboard the song train

The starting of a new job seems to have coincided with a bit of a downturn in vintage news (not to mention my third cold in as many months!) - hence I have been absent from the blogging circuit for nearly two weeks, for which I must continue to crave forgiveness!  I still haven't forgotten about you all though (I read all your posts of an evening, or at the weekend, as something very much to look forward to) nor this blog of mine.

Sitting on the train during the commute into work I often find myself thinking of potential subjects for this site and, while listening to my portable i-gramophone last week, it occurred to me that the very mode of transportation I was using - and the music I had playing - would make an excellent topic.



The railway train has always had an instantly recognisable rhythm and one that naturally lends itself to a musical beat.  There have been countless songs over the years featuring trains and rail travel to some extent or another but it is the half-a-dozen or so favourites in my music collection that I intend to focus on here.

The first song, Choo-Choo, neatly sums up the steam train in typical Thirties onomatopoeic style and is wonderfully redolent of period rail travel.  Written and recorded by American bandleader Frankie Trumbauer in 1930, it was almost immediately cut by a multitude of other bands on both sides of the Atlantic.  While the original Trumbauer recording is excellent, my favourite from the U.S. is Paul Whiteman's version, above, made in the same year.



In the U.K. the two Jacks - Jack Payne and Jack Hylton - both recorded versions of Choo-Choo a year later in 1931 and again, while Jack Payne's version is wonderful, Hylton's arrangement just shades it for me.



Arguably a more famous "Choo-Choo" is Glenn Miller's brilliant 1941 record - Chattanooga Choo-Choo, a song that instantly conjures up images of transcontinental railway journeys in the 1940s and '50s.



A year or two earlier Glenn Miller had had similar success, reaching number 1 on the U.S. Billboard chart with another train-themed number - Tuxedo Junction.  The song had actually been written in 1939 by American bandleader Erskine Hawkins and while his original version made it to number 7 in the charts it remains less well-known today than the classic Miller arrangement.



Another railway tune that has become inextricably linked to its [co-]composer - so much so that it is invariably called his "signature song" and found in every compilation of his music - is Duke Ellington's Take The 'A' Train.  It is a reputation that it thoroughly deserves, being one of the defining examples of 1940s big band music never mind rail-based songs.



One of my very favourite "songs of the track", though, is this one - Honky-Tonk Train Blues.  Although written and first recorded as long ago as 1927 by the noted early boogie-woogie pianist Meade Lux Lewis, this 1938 arrangement by Bob Crosby (Bing's brother) with Bob Zurke on the piano really rolls along splendidly.

For me all of these help rekindle some of the fun and romance that seems to have been lost from modern train travel, as I commute to and from work in a characterless and brightly-coloured plastic tube.  Sometimes I can even imagine seeing something steaming past the station platform, or pulling the far more luxurious carriage I picture myself travelling in... porter! My case please!

It's beginning to sound a lot like Christmas

We're well in to December now, the tree's up and decorated and if the weather forecast is to be believed the snow is just around the corner - so what better time for another selection of Christmas tunes?! I'd like to think this could become a festive blog tradition, but I'll hold off making it that yet in case I run out of songs next year! For now, though, here are some that I didn't cover in previous years. We start with some blues - not perhaps a genre usually linked to Christmas, but in this case I think an exception can be made especially when the singer is the delightful Bessie Smith. There's something quite upbeat and celebratory about her rendition of At The Christmas Ball, recorded in New York on the 18th November 1925 with Fletcher Henderson at the piano, despite its obvious blues tempo. Back in my first Christmas selection of 2010 I mentioned a 30th June(!) 1930 recording of the Savoy Christmas Medley, which I have on CD. I couldn't find the actual Ray Noble and the New Mayfair Orchestra version so used the original 1929 Debroy Sommers one instead but now someone has obliged and put up the Ray Noble/New Mayfair version, so here it is! Jumping forward almost four years - 17th April 1934 to be precise (what is it with so many festive songs being recorded in the middle of Spring/Summer?) - we get to spend Christmas Night in Harlem with Jack Teagarden, Johnny Mercer and Paul Whiteman's' Orchestra. The inimitable Artie Shaw doesn't disappoint with this cracking wintry arrangement from 1936. While searching for these music videos I stumbled across a bandleader new to me - Eddy Duchin. Quite popular in the 1930s and '40s, I've a feeling we would have heard more of him if his life hadn't been tragically cut short in 1951. As it is he and his band recorded two seasonal tunes (which unfortunately I can't date, although When Winter Comes might be from as late as 1947). Woody Herman and his Orchestra produced two cracking versions of classic Yuletide songs - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town from 1942 and Let It Snow another 3 years later. That's it for this year - I have to keep some in reserve for 2013, pre-1950s Christmas music is rare enough as it is!  Once again I couldn't have found half of these without the aid of YouTube and it's been a pleasant surprise to stumble across some more Christmas ditties that are new to me (and, I hope, to you). Here's wishing you all a jazzy Christmas!