Radio Digest (June 1932-Mar 1933)

28 Tuneful Topics By Rudy Vallee J~\ROTHER CAN YOU SPARE LS A DIME. It has not been my J^M good fortune yet to be able to see "Americana." This is Mr. McEvoy's, (in conjunction with the Shubert Brothers) third and most successful attempt at producing a musical revue. His first two "Americanas", even after the pulmotor of other money and complete rivision were applied, did not seem to survive, but this one has a good chance of surviving, at least for a short run, and let us hope, longer ! This is due in no small measure to the staging in the second half of the show, with a masterful scene around a more masterful song, BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME, by Messrs. E. Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney. It is a composition which at first would seem to be out of place in these times, and I would have doubted that anyone would dare sing it. However, this is only another case that proves the time-worn statement that one cannot predict absolutely what Mr. and Miss Public will "go for". In these days of millions of unemployed actually "standing in line begging for bread," it would seem almost a sacrilege to write a song about it, and then to sing it in a revue where people sit in comfortable seats, in most cases after having enjoyed a delicious repast, warm, snug, and completely relaxed, when out on the streets, not so many blocks from the theatre, there is actually a bread line, with none of its individuals singing a song about their condition. I understand that Rex Weber, who sings it in the show, is a ventriloquist in other parts of the performance, and an excellent one. This is his first real break in a revue, having been in vaudeville all his life. It reads like the usual burlesque type of story, where the vaudevillian family realizes his life's dream. They say that Mr. Weber makes the most of it. He steps out of the breadline and sings a song which tells of the glorious things he did in the past, building a railroad and a tower, and his services in France, and now he is like the poor maniac in the insane asylum, who imagines he is Rockefeller, more than content with a paltry ten cent piece. The melody fits the thought as though it were tailored to it, as I imagine it was. Yours truly has had the audacity to record the song; I listened to our Columbia record of it last night, and although I felt I was stepping a bit out of character, the recording company feels that I have done justice to the recording; let us hope so. The number is published by Harms, and should be played majestically and yet brightly. 7| yt AORI. Here is a tune that is a J V J. keen delight to play and discuss. Another one of those tunes that has lasted down the years, proving it must have something. It was written by Harold Creamer and William Tyers, both colored, who wrote it as a tango back in 1915-1916. The tune is about a dusky maiden named Maori, from the tropical isles, and it has all the atmosphere of its name and locale. Why they wrote it as a tango I do not know, because as a tango it is a most uninteresting and colorless composition; and by the same token just why Edward Wittstein, an orchestra leader in New Haven, Connecticut, who has supplied the Yale proms with his own thirty-piece orchestra for the last twenty-odd years, as well as furnishing fine dance music for most of the country clubs and exclusive girls' and boys' schools of New England for that same period of time, should have felt the urge to change MAORI so completely, yet keeping its original idea, is a mystery. Nevertheless he did rewrite the composition, stretched it out and made it almost twice as long, and a composition which, to my way of thinking, is grand dance music. While Mrs. Vallee and I were enjoying Buddy Rogers' music at the Pennsylvania Grill, Buddy played a tune which, according to Fay, was one that Gus Arnheim, of the Cocoanut Grove in California, always played when holding dance contests, as he so often used to do at tea dances for the young folks of Hollywood. Fay was in ecstasies about this piece, written by Joe Gold, formerly of Lopez' band, a tune called "Egyptian Shimmy." It is very much on the same order of MAORI, building like a maelstrom, chromatic, up, up, up in tempo and volume, repeating, repeating, using the same idea as the "Bolero." Remembering MAORI as it used to be played in New Haven by bands that had learned it from Wittstein, I immediately told Fay that on our next broadcast I would program a tune which would put "Egyptian Shimmy" to shame. Cliff Burwell and I immediately got busy and arranged Wittstein's tune in a way to bring it out in all its value. We seem to have succeeded, judging from the many complimentary letters received after its first two presentations. Perhaps the greatest compliment of all is Mrs. Vallee's honest criticism that it is the best thing she has heard of its type, although my enemies will be sure to say that she is "stooging" me. Tune in and judge for yourself some time if you catch us playing it. Mills Music, Inc., has the old tango copy as originally written, and of late it has been recorded by several bands in Marimba style and tango style. I predict that eventually our idea, based on that of Wittstein's revision, will make it a dance tune that dance lovers will come to know and like. T TOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN. JL J. I'm reminded of those smart alecks along Tin Pan Alley and Broadway; the type that Mr. Winchell referred to, when he said "He pats you on the back while feeling for a spot to plant the knife," that type of person that seems so anxious for everything to come to an end, the type of person who seems to be unhappy that anything unusually successful should continue, but thinks it is a foreordained conclusion that what goes up must come down quickly. I often wonder how that person feels about the continued success of Mr. Kreisler, Mr. Paderewski, Mr. Toscanini, Miss Sophie Tucker, Al Jolson, John McCormack, Eddie Cantor, Harry Richman, and many others who have gone on through the last eight or ten years, still in the big money and doing excellently. Such a person had Mr. Irving Berlin already in the class of has-beens because Mr. Berlin has either not really so desired, or, possibly due to lack of concentration, has not had any terrific outstanding hits in the past year or so. His "Face The Music" score was excellent, though nothing in it could have been called a real popular hit. Here he comes along with not only one smash hit, but two! SAY IT ISN'T SO we discussed in last month's column. It has exceeded their fondest expectations, and I must admit that it even surprised me, as I predicted at the time of being asked for my opinion by the publishers, that owing to its unhappy strain and what seemed unusual range at the time, that it might be played and sung a great deal, but that few sheet copies would be pur