Hollywood Hotel (Warner Bros.) (1937)

Benny Goodman Defines Swing Jargon Benny Goodman, prophet of swing music, has compiled a glossary of its jargon. It resulted from numerous re quests for interviews during his recent engagement with his band in Warner Bros.’ filmusical “Hollywood Hotel,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. The myriad correspondents for American and foreign news services, newspapers and periodicals located in Hollywood, finding the idol of the dancing youth of America conveniently at hand, descended on him. To them all, the shy maestro of swing talked willingly. But finding himself involved in endless explanations of swing terms, he decided on the glossary, mimeographed it, and took to handing out copies to help interviewers. Excerpts are: Sender, hot star or rideman:— the musician who sets the pace or style for the rest of the band, In the groove:—musician’s con dition when he is feeling right as he plays. Cats:—swing musicians. Ichy:—music that is too sweet. Spots:—the musical scoring. Schmaltz:—the music of sweet bands. Paperman:—musicians who can not improvise, as swing music demands, but can only read the spots. Jive or swing :—the music of hot bands. Hot:—true jazz music as dif ferentiated from the sweet music stylized by Paul Whiteman. Whacky :—hottest music. Piston:—a trumpet. Agony pipe:—a clarinet. Suitcase:—the drums. Gobble pipe:—the saxophone. Push pipe:—the trombone. Dog house:—the bass viol. Grunt iron:—the tuba. Jam or jam session:—A private gathering of swing musicians to play for their own amusement. Goodman and his hot band will be seen and heard in plenty of important scenes in “Hollywood Hotel,” which stars Dick Powell. Busby Berkeley directed. Mat 103—15c SWEET AND HOT Frances Langford, songbird of the air, is currently crooniug with Benny Goodman’s Swing Band in the most tuneful musical show of the year— “Hollywood Hotel,” at the Strand. Mat 207—30c IT’S A SISTER ACT—Left to right they’re Lola and Rosemary Lane, or at least that’s what they told the cameraman. The sisters are among the many stars in “Hollywood Hotel,” now at the Strand Theatre. Unknown Workers Contribute To Success of Musicals The music goes round and round and comes out on the screen in a smash-hit musical that enchants both eye and ear. But during the time when it’s going round and round in production, the important people are not alone the actors and the musicians later seen upon the screen. For in the making of a filmusical there are great unknowns seldom heard of and never seen by the public. Behind that smooth production which weaves its taut magic in a couple of hours, lie days and nights and weeks and months of arduous preparing by composers, song SWING COMES TO CARNEGIE HALL The baby of the music family has grown up. Official recognition of the fact came with the announcement that Benny Goodman and his orchestra, America’s foremost exponents of swing music who are currently swinging in “Hollywood Hotel” at the Strand Theatre, would give a concert at Carnegie Hall, New York City, on Jan. 16. The program will be restricted to pure jazz — with no dressing up for the official coming-of-age. Straight swing will be the order of the evening, if anything so individual and spontaneous can be called straight. And musicians and laymen as well as the dyed in the wool swing devotees will gather round to lend an ear to the first jam session ever heard within the stately confines of Carnegie Hall. writers, scorers, arrangers, rehearsal accompanists for singers, and trained technicians for recording music. Chief is the scorer and arranger —a post filled at Warner Bros. studio, where production of musicals is a major industry—by Ray Heindorf. His latest task, occupying him for months, has been concerned with “Hollywood Hotel,” the immense and elaborate musi 31 comedy which comes next week to the Strand Theatre. How Heindorf operates is simplicity itself in the telling, but a complicated business in fact. For instance, Johnny Mercer conceives the lyrics for a song that Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane are to sing in the picture. Then Dick Whiting plucks a basic tune for it out of the ether. After that comes Heindorf’s task. He scores and arranges the music for that song for orchestral rendition. He scores and arranges all the incidental music for the play. And when Director Busby Berkeley writes “Finis” to his work of shooting the scenes, when the cutting room has edited the film and put it together, Heindorf has another week or ten days of arranging to bring all the elements into a musical whole. Another unknown who is vitally necessary is the rehearsal pianist. In this case he is Malcolm Beelby, formerly with some of the leading orchestras and bands of the country. With his pint-size piano mounted on a tiny truck which can be wheeled around the sets, he rehearses Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane, Frances Langford and Johnny Davis, Ted Healy and Mabel Todd, in their numbers. He gets no screen credit at all. But Leo Forbstein and his Vitaphone orchestra of 35 pieces does better. It gets a line of type to announce “Incidental Music by—.” And though Forbstein and his orchestra do not appear before the camera—leaving that to Benny Goodman and his swing band, to Raymond Paige and his orchestra —yet an end-to-end statistician readily might compute that they play more bars of music than the others put together. And presently when the picture is released and the customers go away from a hundred thousand theatres, whistling hit tunes in the night, the great unknowns will have done their part along with the stars and the orchestras of glittering name and fame. It’ll be all the same to them. They’ll be hard at work on another musical—propping it up behind the scenes. “Hollywood Hotel” stars Dick Powell and features Rosemary and Lola Lane. It was directed by Busby Berkeley. Dixie Jazz Bands Grandpas of Modern Swing People, everywhere, want swing. What is it? Noted swingologists have been, to date, notoriously unsuccessful at defining “swing.” Benny Goodman, who is currently starring in “Hollywood Hotel” at the Strand Theatre, mumbles unconvincingly that it is “probably rhythmic integration.” Certainly, its attributes cannot be summed up in one glib sentence and a brief glance at its background takes on added value. Going back some thirty years to the lower Mississippi region with New Orleans as a focal point, small groups of the natural, untrained musicians found in the colored race were making their own the picturesque songs of the Negro river laborers, of the inhabitants of the river shanties and saloons, of the boating folk. Adding trombones, clarinets and drums to the usual piano banjovoice combinations, there started an evolution of ragtime or “jass,” a type of music thoroughly unrelated to anything that had gone before it and entirely singular in conception and presentation. “Jass” bands sprang up. The Dixieland Jazz Band spread the cult of the new music. By the end of the World War, ragtime had reached the peak of its popularity. Ragtime developed into jazz. Jazz became hot music and hot music became swing. Which brings us up to date. What distinguishes swing music? Not color, for the symphonic orchestrations of so-called “smooth” music conductors are much richer. Not melody, for swing has little of that and its words are largely unsingable. The answer is improvisation. Today, the cult of swing is widespread. “Jam sessions” are “The Thing.” Recordings of recognized swing kings — Bennie Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Red Nichols, Fletcher Henderson and others— are in demand. America is stomping its feet, shaking its shoulders and goin’ to town. After twenty or more years, “Jass” has come of age. Its first legacy is swing and American dance music is on its way towards founding a tradition. Mat 115——156 SWING KING Benny Goodman and his clarinet leads his famous Swing Band in the season’s newest and most lavish of musical pictures, “Hollywood Hotel’? coming soon.