Variety (April 1953)

obchksthas-music P3Sr mfr 'Wednesday, April 8, 1953 Diamonds As Cleffers Best Friend Continued from page 1 1 c onnpc included in 4 Cobb, Hal Chase, 4 ‘foxy Mr. (Franlc) is one of the songs inciuaea m^ , , Fielder struck out on three straight pitch- es'. Neither did Ned Nye and Charles G. Richel get to first base with “I. Want to Go to the Ball Game”—another plaint of the doll who preferred baseball to dancing or other diversions. into wax. She is Irresistible as the femme chatterbox who admon- ishes a hesitating runner to quit “praying on second—you’re not go- ing to Heaven this year!” and to “run home, you rummy, run home!” Even in 1909 there were the album, ‘Take Me Oat to the Ball Game,” put out by Decca about 12 years ago. Other titles which will be considered in their chronological order, are the name song, “Gee, But Its Great at the Baseball Game,” “Home Run Bill, “Take Your Girl to the Ball fame ” “Let’s Get the Umpire’s Goat ” “I Can’t Miss That Ball Game,” “Oh, Didn’t It Rain,’’ “That Baseball Glide,” ‘‘He’s a Fan, Fan, Fan,” and^ I Want to Go to the Ball Game. These are sung by Frank Luther, Zora Lay- man and the Century Quartet. As an extra, Taylor Holmes recites “Casey at the Bat” and Joe Laurie, Jr., “Casey’s Revenge.” . ; Although Ernest L. Thayers classic “Casey at the Bat” was pub- lished in 1883, the first record of it seems to be the one by De Wolf Hopper which Victor Issued in September, 1906. Hopper de- claimed the saga of Casey so many thousands of times- on the stage he at length became able to do it mechanically without realizing what he was saying but always finishing on the split second. A few years later the comic re- recorded “Casey” in what was de- scribed as a “greatly improved version, and in 1926, after elec- tripal recording was introduced, he * did it all over again, coupled with a football recitation, “O’Toole’s Touchdown/’ And only a few weeks ago Hopper’s “Casey” was again resurrected as part of a set called “The Old Curiosity Shop. First Casey Record Victor’s first Casey record was single-faced, but it. was . after- wards'combined with the well-re- membered Digby Bell’s “reply,’’ “The Man Who Fanned Casey. Bell, who died in 1917, was a torrid New York Giant rooter. He also recorded “The Tough Kid on the Right Field Fence” for a 1909 Edison cylinder. Probably most 1953 listeners would consider that Hopper hams up “Casey at the Bat,” but it was one of the biggest sellers of Victor’s pioneer period. Who today remembers a 1906 George M. Cohan song, “Mr. Bing- ham”? Just who Bingham was isn’t clear to this agent, but the context Chance,” Cy Young and Fielder Jones. The second verse told of “the Giants from Manhattan, the Cubs as smooth as satin, the Pi- rates, Boston Doves (!) or Cincin- nati Reds, Brooklyn bunch, of Wil- lies, the Tigers or the Phillies,” and summed up: “American or Na- tional, both Leagues N are all the same; it’s not the Leagues we root for—it’s the boys who play the game.” Jack Norworth, partnered by Nora Bayes, tried again with “Let’s Get the. Umpire’s Goat,” and Billy Jerome, Jean Schwartz and George M. Cohan had a time* at bat with “Take Your Girl to the Ball Game.” A1 VonOTilzer set music to Harry Breen’s words of “Back to the Bleachers for Mine” by no meantf another “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Ed* Madden and Gus Ed- wards were responsible for “Come On, Play 'Ball With Me, Dearie,” and an American League player (later art umpire), George Moriari- ty, wrote the lyrics of “I Can’t Miss* That Ball Game,” to a tune by Joe Cooper. Harry Von Tllzer, the undisputed king of Tin' Pan Alley in the pre- Berlin days, was a little slow tak- ing his cut at the plate, but in 1910 he did the music and Edward Clark the words of a flop, “My Old .Man Is Baseball Mad”—the complaint of a wife whose husband spent his time watching the ball tossers in- stead of supporting the family. In 1911 he and the still active Andrew B. Sterling did “The Baseball Glide”—again not a hit. Meanwhile, Billy Jerome and Jean Schwartz came through in 1911 with a clever comic song,4, “They’re All Good American Names.” It followed the idea of “Stars of the National Game” by naming outstanding players in the chorus, such as “Hanlon,. Scanlon, Kirk and Donlin, Devlin, Keeler, Walsh and Conlin” — all with a touch of Irish. The .third .stapza praised the' Americanism of Jew- ish citizens-—an idea Jerome and Schwartz worked . out. still, piore successfully a little later in “If It Wasn’t for the Irish and the Jews.” Also in 1911, Elsie Janis record- • other diversions. women, it seems, who knew some- A rather amusing effort was the about the game. 1912 number, The Marquard ^ Stewart naturally got into Glide,” Produced by ^ the act with “Uncle Josh Playing four A collaborators—Rube Mar Baseball » An Irish dialect comic, quarfi and his then ^ fe ’ ®i os ?? av Steve Porter, did “Flanagan and Seeley, Thomas Gray and Ray - - - Walker. Marquard was known as “the $11,000 lemon” when he proved ineffective on his first ap pearances with the Giants, but he makes it appear he was a reformer ed for Victor her own composition, of the Dr. Parkhurst variety. .“The Fascinating Baseball Slide,” Songs about baseball'.really got telling of a. femme fan’s love affair their big pushoff and started near- with “Spitball Mike.” A Seymour ly all the leading Alley tunesmiths Brown and Nat D, Ay.er, who .were, of the period on a “national pag- to score a little later with “Oh, time” binge when Jack Norworth You Beautiful Doll,” popped, out and A1 Von Tilzer—-both living to the catcher with “Make a Noise nowadays in California — came Like a Fan.” It made no noise through in 1908 with “Take Me whatever. Out to the Ball Game,” which is Now we come to. perhaps Irving today virtually the national anthem Berlin’s only baseball song—one of baseball. (The eminent bandmas- which he probably would just as ter> John Philip Sousa, years later soon forget. In 1913 he wrote, the wrote “The National Game March,” tune of “Jake, Jake, the Yiddishe Ball Player” to words by Blanche Merrill. Both Merrill and Berlin but it didn’t click.) Hard to say just what has made “Ball Game” stand out* above ‘ all competition. The words are typical pop stuff, about a girl who was baseball crazy, but the swinging waltz tune is one that sticks in the memory. Anyway, “Take Me Out to* the Ball Game” is the baseball song. A Tin Pan Alley legend, which may be true, is that neither Norworth nor Von Tilzer .had even seen a baseball game before writ- ing the song, and Norworth is quot- ed as saying he didn’t .get around to attending one until 1940. Figuring he had struck on a good thing, Von Tilzer introduced . a baseball theme into an unusually clever comic song, “Did He Run?,” with words by the late Junie Mc- Cree. The third verse refers to the most famous play inrbaseball his- tory, when Fred Merkle of the Giants neglected to touch second in a game between the Giants and Cubs that would have decided the National League’s 1908 pennant race. A playoff resulted and the Cubs took the flag. The song de- scribes the game, and* delicately says “Mr. Giant’s brain was blur- red” as an explanation of the over- sight that unjustly won Merkle the designation of “Bonehead Merkle. * Femme Cleffers In Act From 1908 to 1943 there was a procession o^ baseball songs. Flo- rence Holbrood became one of the few women to write a baseball number when she did the music to Cecil Lane’s words of “He’s a Fan, Fan, Fan.” Anne Caldwell wrote •the* music and James O’Dea the words of -“Stars of the National Game,” which mentioned such he- roes of the time as Mike Donlin, Hafts Wagner, L&rry Lajoie, * Ty the O’Reilleys at a Ball Game” (featuring the dumb woman fan who couldn’t understand what was going on), and the Chicago rag- pearances with «ie uiams out specialis t, Axel Chris- later became a a bi tensen, showed change of pace in song mDdestly descrLbes him s 192g by making a Broadway record, the King of Pitchers. But it S 4<Axel a j. ^ Baseball Game.” kind enough to mention other . . . thiMr Swedish ac- Giants-“Matty, Meyers and Me- f p ® t aW h ng t e“ls 0 £ playtag baseball Graw, Murray, Snodgrass and-De- tim e .Wh?n he hit a “The SuIrdGMe-lo^Sm- home ^' e fhom^'^^Se ised the Giants would “hang it on Jo?®* hafshould I run those Red Sox” (presumably in the ^ e d Why imhal should 1 run 1912 World’s Series), but it was the 1 got m0 y t0 pay ±or tfte S °^h^ h m^litaMe h “Baseball Rag” * & Virginia-born comedian; the Th ioi? a Victor late Ralph Bingham, who special- record a }ists the wr^rs'as %S and Jones.” It is sung by Arthur Wded Home Run Bills Defense Collins, with realistic crowd effects, fo J Victor—the stopr 0 °„ including the high tenor voice of a gambler^from Collins’ recording partner, Byron ^ 11 s ^ r c i ° I / d J; 0 Tri k ^Pip t Hn^a Dassed G. Harlan, accusing a man on bases {Ji R?nghlm flso P did a of “running like an ice wagon* bj 11 ^et by. a ^ After 1913, baseball songs are tough relatively rare, although in fairly recent years thpre have been Bl . lls f C nncr Bill” “Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio,” “Did You with the song. Home Run Bill, See Jackie Robinson Hit . That by Jerome Shay f Bryan * Ball?” and “Leave Us Go Root for Unusual Record the Dodgers, Rodgers.” In 1926, One of the the Happiness Boys (Billy Jones with 3U !f ^f^Tnlv and Ernie Hare) made records of ^.-baseball * i5 ‘ jf° U p n u pr f “That’s My Hap-Hap-Happiness,” 1920, arranged in which Jones asserted his idea Bowers and played on a Columbia of happiness was to be at a ball record by- Charles A. Pen game. The Victor record mentioned Band. The other i^° w .fooA “When Babe Ruth walks to the the Fourth was °^ er ved m 1880 plate,” but Edison toned it down speechmaking in the groove,onS do to “The Home Run King walks—.” *ng fireworks, etc. On the 1920 side “The Babe himself made a couple f u airplane is heard dromng^over- of* records. • In 1920 he clowned head, and then th® voice of Henry amateurishly through a Pathe Ac- Burr announces; Batteries f°r to- tuelle disk of “Babe Ruth’s Home day s Run Story,” purporting to tell how and McCarthy; for Chicago, Alex- he had hit 47 round-trippers that ander and Killefer. ... season. In 1928, for the same com- Hs well known of course,^that pany he and Lou Gehrig did a two- show biz and baseball feel c J?sely part skit, “Babe and Lou.” The related—as witness Tallulah Bank- Babe seems self-possessed, but Lou head s crusading zeal for the Giants sounds scared to • death, Another and Helen Traubel s interest in mention of Ruth occurs in Eddie St. Louis Browns. Farther back, Leonard’s 1924 ditty, “Oh, Didn’t Billy Murray, who recorded many It Rain?,” in which 0 he achieves of the songs ihentloned here, was a monstrosity of a rhyme, even for such a devout fan tqf the New York Tin Pan Alley, with: “We went to Highlanders (forerunner of the the • Yankee Stadium * to see Babe Ruth hitt-i-um . t . Oh, didn’t it rain!” . •• Old Comedy Numbers Platter' makers through the years have turned out a. number of comic skits and specialties deal- ing with baseball—nearly all in the remote past because humorous rec- ords no longer sell. One of the best was a 1909 Edison cylinder, “The Baseball Girl,” by a vaude luminary, Ray Cox. This- was the only record the comedienne ever made, but her specialty was one of the" funniest things ever cut Yankees), he often slipped away with them on spring trailing trips and occasionally placed right field in exhibition games. Murray also played for “years on the Lights, a team composed of members of -the Long Island Good Hearted Thes- pian Society. Georgie Cohan was a baseball nut, and Gus Van & Joe Schenck were so wild about the game they not only had their own ball club but billed themselves in vaude as - “the Pennant. Winning Battery of Song Land.” A billing, however, which Jack Lait in a Variety review wished on them. To‘Mine Again’ Latching ’onto an indie label tune click which is getting wide coverage by the majors, Buddy Morris, E. H. Morris Music topper, has bought the rights to “Say You’re Mine Again” from the Coast publisher, Harry Bluestone. Morris reportedly paid $5,000 for the tuqe in a deal by which Blue- stone will also participate in the tune’s .revenues. Number, written by Charles Nathan and David Heisler, was kicked off on the Allied label with a version by the Three Dons and Ginny Greer a couple of weeks ago. Since then, RCA Victor climbed aboard With a Perry Como slice, Decca with one by Dolores Gray and Capitol with June Hut- ton & Axel Stordahl’s orch. Morris came up with the recent Como click on “Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes” in a similar deal. On the latter tune, Morris tried to buy the number from the Four-Star publishing-disk firm but couldn’t come to terms. Morris, however, acted as selling agent for “Star.” On the Como backing to “Mine Again,” the singer, inci- dentally, debuts with the multiple- voicetrack gimmick on “My One and Only Heart,” written by A1 Stillman and Robert Allen and published by Como’s own publish- ing firm, Roncom Music. Victor shipped 350,000 copies of this disk to its distribs last week following exec hunches that the company had a* big hit on its hands. Bluestone is a Coast violinist who entered the publishing busi- ness about four yeatfs ago' with his Blue River Songs firm. He still is an active AFMer and plays many studio dates in Hollywood. “Say You’re Mine Again” is his first pop hit. MAX LIEBMAN SETS UP OWN FIRM, SAVOY MUSIC Max Liebman, producer-director of NBC-TV’s “Your Show of Shows,” set up his own music pub- lishing firm, Savoy Music, this week. Piibbery will be an ASCAP affiliate. Liebman expects to place special material written for the tele series as well as pop tunes into the Savoy catalog. The firm is kicking off its ac- tivities with the theme song of “Shows,” which is tagged “Stars Over Broadway.” Tune was writ- ten by Mel Tolkln, Liebman and Clay Warnick. Also teeing off the catalog are “Shivaree,” by Warnick and Mel Pahl, and “Show Me the Way to Love You,” by Liebman and Dick Rogers. BETA1L SHEET BEST SELLEBS Even Dutch Red Flips For U.S. Jazz Troupe Amsterdam, March 31. “Jazz at the Philharmonic,” play- ing at Amsterdam’s staid Concert- gebouw, was a click fpr 2,000 wild- eyed enthusiasts and couple of normally misanthropic critics. Con- certgebouw is used to rich .diet of classics from the-wotld-famed clas- sic orch of same name. If any of Concertgebouw’s, regulars chanced by they must have rubbed their eyes when they saw the wild scejie. During drum duel between,Gene Krupa and J. C. Heard, one fel- low in audience did a solo unre- hearsed dance turn in front of po- dium. Ella Fitzgerald' proved to be-favorite of critics, though audi- ence fell harder for the flashier items on program. ’ Even the music critic from the Communist daily, De Waarheid (The Truth), fell for the Ameri- cans. Worst he could say wate that applause was almost automatic and that warmth wasn’t spontaneous. But he felt compelled to admit that what he called the “noise” of the Krupa-Heard duel was “technical- ly perfect.” “ RCA Signs Sonny Howard Vaude-nitery singer. Sonny How- ard -has been inkea t<r a term pact by RCA Victor. . .. Although, “his in-person torn i* comprised mostly of takeoffs 0I ) other singers, Howard'* will cut tunes for Victor in his own style. Milt Gabler, Coral Records art- ists Ac repertoire chief, heading to Hollywood this week for waxing I.*.- _ V *■ **" ”