We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
RUDY VALLEE
always closes his eyes when he sings
THE world knows most of the story of Rudy Vallee, prince of crooners, who was swept aloft by the rising tide of radio fan letters years ago. It is a remarkable story in that it employs none of the stock props of the publicity business. He hit the top without benefit of press agent, advertising 'campaign or pull. He just hap¬ pened.
His youth was spent as an average small-town boy living in Westbrook, Maine. After school hours, he worked in his father’s drug store.
Music was his chief interest. He wanted a saxophone — and he got it (despite parental opposition) by getting a job as usher in the local motion picture theatre and earn¬ ing the money. And then, when the mailman delivered his grand mail order sax, he discovered that there were
no saxophone teachers in little Westbrook. He bought all the available records of saxophone numbers. Hour after hour, he would listen . . . and then try to play what he had heard. It was in that hard school, making mistakes and correct¬ ing them, that he learned.
In high school, he organized musical clubs. If there was a dramatic presentation re¬ quiring the services of a tall, handsome youth, Rudy stepped into the role. To the Uni¬ versity of Maine was a nat¬ ural step. He stayed there one year and then chose Yale.
Dance orchestras were need¬ ful of young men who could play a sax and Rudy got plenty of work. That sum¬ mer, he went on a vaudeville tour with some other college boys. Somehow, the tour ended in London, England. Over there, Rudy visited night club after night club, listening to other sax players. When he went back to Yale he was the best musician on the campus.
All this time, he didn’t know he could sing. Sometimes he whispered a chorus of a song through a megaphone but it was a standing gag that the one way to ruin a dance was to let Rudy sing. Those were the years of fast, jerky rhythms.
After graduation he came to New York and sought a job in anybody’s orchestra. No one wanted him. Those were weary months when the dollars were far apart. Finally, he got a chance to organize an orchestra of his own for a night club. He did it — and introduced the “slow time” that made him famous.
When he sings, he closes his eyes, always. He got the habit from singing in a night club under glaring white lights. Anyhow, it’s easier to remember the words that way, he explains. Once, in a broadcast, he forgot the words and had to la-de-dah for several bars.
10