Andre Rieu's tribute to Frank Sinatra

Andre Rieu, renowned Dutch violinist, conductor and composer, and his orchestra did this tribute to Frank Sinatra with My Way on his Stradivarius violin at Radio City Music Hall – New York.

Glenn Miller on Broadway

Q. In a recent article about the great big band leader Glenn Miller it mentioned that he had worked in a show orchestra on Broadway. Do you know what show? When was it? Any big named stars?

A. In 1930, the hit musical of the Broadway season was George and Ira Gershwin's “Girl Crazy,” The production starrred Ethel Merman (her debut) and Ginger Rogers.

Ethel Merman became an overnight sensation when she stopped the show with "I Got Rhythm." George Gershwin, supposedly visited her the day after the opening to congratulate her and to advise her to "never take another singing lesson...don't let anyone change you... just keep doing what you are doing!"

To fans of the big bands, the orchestra for the 1930 show is of great interest. The band in the pit for the original Broadway production was known for its richness of talents an included: Red Nichols, Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa and Glenn Miller!  All future big band leaders!

Glenn Miller, working as a music contractor, put the group together, including his roommate from the Ben Pollack band days in California....Benny Goodman.

A petition for Mildred Bailey's selection in the Jazz Hall of Fame

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE NESHUI ERTEGUN JAZZ HALL OF FAME

March 19, 2012
 

Mr. Wynton Marsalis
c/o Selection Committee
Jazz Hall of Fame at Lincoln Center
33 West 60th Street, 11th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10023
 

Dear Mr. Marsalis and fellow Selection Committee Members:
 

My name is Julia Keefe, and I am a student at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL, studying vocal jazz performance. I am also a member of the Nez Perce Indian Tribe. Shortly after I first became interested in jazz over ten years ago, I began researching the life of Bing Crosby, who also attended my high school, Gonzaga Prep, in Spokane, WA. I was surprised and happy to learn that Bing Crosby gave credit for his early success to a Native American woman from the Coeur d'Alene Tribe named Mildred Rinker Bailey who had, like me, lived her formative childhood years on her Idaho tribal reservation before moving to Spokane and discovering jazz. I am writing to urge that Mildred Bailey be considered for induction into the Neshui Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame in recognition of her groundbreaking role in jazz history.
 

To say that Mildred Bailey inspired me in my chosen vocation as a jazz singer would be a great understatement. But I am not alone. Bing Crosby once said, "I was lucky in knowing the great jazz and blues singer Mildred Bailey so early in life. I learned a lot from her. She made records which are still vocal classics, and she taught me much about singing and interpreting popular songs." And a sideman from her husband Red Norvo's band, trumpeter Lyle "Rusty" Dedrick once wrote, "She had a magic. So many people down the line, so many singers, benefited from her, owe debts to her - and they don't even know it. Mildred Bailey probably never made a bad record; she made many that were excellent, and quite a few considerably better, even, than that."
 

As the very first female big band singer in America, Mildred was a role model and inspiration for contemporaries including Billie Holiday, Helen Ward and Ella Fitzgerald. She opened the door of opportunity for every female lead singer who followed the trail she blazed. Her singing style and phrasing caught the ear of aspiring young singers of that era including Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, and still, much later, Linda Ronstadt. She was respected and admired by performers including Frank Sinatra, the Dorsey brothers, Coleman Hawkins and Artie Shaw. A 1944 Time Magazine review of her show at the Café Society in New York called Mildred, "just about the greatest songbird in the U.S."
 

Recognition of Mildred Bailey in the Jazz Hall of Fame would, I believe, open a door to a largely neglected and ignored chapter in the history of this All-American art form known as jazz: the involvement of First Americans. When I was living on my own reservation in Kamiah, ID, I came across old photographs of tribal members in small ensembles and quartets, playing jazz. One group, the Lollipop Six, was made up of young Nez Perce men who had learned to play their instruments while attending Indian boarding schools in the early 20th century. I can still recall how proud Lionel Hampton was when he visited our reservation to be honored while attending the international jazz festival at the University of Idaho that still bears his name.
 

On too many reservations in modern America there are not enough inspirational stories of successful native women who rose above the challenges they faced and helped to change history. But Mildred Rinker Bailey, did just that. Though widely thought to have been a white singer, Mildred was, in fact, a member of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. Mildred once called traditional Indian singing, "a remarkable training and background" for a singer. "It takes a squeaky soprano and straightens out the clinkers that make it squeak; it removes the bass boom from the contralto's voice," she said. "This Indian singing does this because you have to sing a lot of notes to get by, and you've got to cover a lot of range." Every Native American who has ever attended a tribal ceremony, whether a feast, a memorial, or a modern pow-wow, knows exactly what Mildred Bailey was talking about here. I believe that Mildred Bailey's success as a jazz vocalist is grounded in her early vocal training and development from singing traditional tribal songs as a young girl on the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation.
 

I would deeply appreciate the chance to provide you and the other selection committee members, and your entire international voting panel, with a complete packet of information that I have collected while researching the remarkable career of the first female vocalist in America to sing with a big band. Recognizing Mildred Bailey's pioneering, ground breaking accomplishment, would do honor to the Neshui Ertegun Hall of Fame, and provide Indian tribes from across this country a symbol of their own contribution to the rich cultural heritage of a uniquely American art form that I have come to love, thanks in large part to Mildred Bailey.

Respectfully,

Julia Keefe
Nez Perce Tribal member #4152
Frost School of Music, Class of 2012
www.whereismildred.com
www.juliakeefe.com

Artie Shaw's many wives!

Band leader Artie Shaw was married eight times!

They included actresses Lana Turner (wife No. 3, 1940), Ava Gardner (No. 5, 1945), Evelyn Keyes (No. 8, 1957) and novelist Kathleen Winsor, author of the 1944 best-seller “Forever Amber” (No. 6, 1946).

ARTIE SHAW (getty)

Here's the complete list (from Wiki); A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw was married eight times: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37; divorced); actress Lana Turner (1940; annulled); Betty Kern (1942–43; divorced), the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern; actress Ava Gardner (1945–46; divorced); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56; divorced); and actress Evelyn Keyes(1957–85; divorced).

The marriage to Keyes, best known for playing the middle of the three O’Hara sisters in “Gone With the Wind,” lasted the longest, until 1985, but they led separate lives for much of that time. “I like her very much and she likes me, but we’ve found it about impossible to live together,” he said in a 1973 interview.

 Note: With that many ex-wives, collecting alimony in most cases, it is not surprising that his theme song was "Nightmare!"  When asked why he married so many times....his answer..."Because they asked me!"He had one son, Steven Kern, with Betty Kern, and another son, Jonathan Shaw (a well-known tattoo artist who founded Fun City Tattoo), with Doris Dowling. Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse in fact drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him.

Frank Sinatra's appeal for religious and racial tolerance honored in Washington

To many Frank Sinatra's contribution to our culture and society goes far beyond his music....he was a fighter against racial, religious and ethnic discrimination throughout his lifetime...a position that could have cost him his career.  Crosby, Wayne, Hope and others had the same opportunity but chose to remain silent....not the kid from Hoboken. 

Today we note that the 2012 edition of The Smithsonian’s Jazz Appreciation Month in honoring the  role of jazz artists with the theme of “Jazz Crossing Borders and Cultures”  illustrates how musicians often took a stand on civil rights issues by featuring Frank Sinatra's film and recording from 1945 “The House I Live in.”


The song, along with a 10-minute short, was an appeal for religious tolerance, unity and freedom after World War II, a time when many African-American veterans were angry that they were returning home to Jim Crow conditions and second-class treatment after their war service. The film received an Honorary Academy Award in 1946 and was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2007.

Frank put his feelings to paper in 1991 when he wrote this op-ed piece for the L.A. Times on July 4th; 
  
We are created equal! No one of us is better than any of us! That's the headline proclaimed in 1776 and inscribed across centuries in the truth of the ages. Those inspired words from the Declaration of Independence mock bigotry and anti-Semitism. Then why do I still hear race and color-haters spewing their poisons? Why do I still flinch at innuendoes of venom and inequality? Why do innocent children still grow up to be despised? Why do haters' jokes still get big laughs when passed in whispers from scum to scum? You know the ones I mean—the "Some of my best friends are Jewish..." crowd.

As for the others, those cross-burning bigots to whom mental slavery is alive and well, I don't envy their trials in the next world, where their thoughts and words and actions will be judged by a jury of One. Why do so many among us continue in words and deeds to ignore, insult and challenge the unforgettable words of Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence's promise to every man, woman and child—the self-evident truth that all men are created equal?

That's what the Fourth of July is all about. Not firecrackers. Not getting smashed on the patio sipping toasts to our forefathers. Not picnics and parades or freeways empty because America has the day off. Equality is what our Independence Day is about. Not the flag-wavers who wave it one day a year, but all who carry its message with them wherever they go, who believe in it, who live it enough to die for it—as so many have.

OK, I'm a saloon singer, by self-definition. Even my mirror would never accuse me of inventing wisdom. But I do claim enough street smarts to know that hatred is a disease—a disease of the body of freedom, eating its way from the inside out, infecting all who come in contact with it, killing dreams and hopes millions of innocents with words, as surely as if they were bullets.

Who in the name of God are these people anyway, the ones who elevate themselves above others? America is an immigrant country. Maybe not you or me, but those whose love made our lives possible, or their parents or grandparents. America was founded by these people, who were fed up with other countries. Those weren't tourists on the Mayflower—they were your families and mine, following dreams that turned out to be possible dreams. Leaving all they owned, they sailed to America to start over and to forge a new nation of freedom and liberty—a new nation where they would no longer be second-class citizens but first-class Americans.

Even now, with all our problems, America is still a dream of oppressed people the world over. Take a minute. Consider what we are doing to each other as we rob friends and strangers of dignity as well as equality. Give a few minutes of fairness to the house we live in, and to all who share it with us from sea to shining sea. For if we don't come to grips with this killer disease of hatred, of bigotry and racism and anti-Semitism, pretty soon we will destroy from within this blessed country.

And what better time than today to examine the conscience of America? As we celebrate our own beginnings, let us offer our thanksgiving to the God who arranged for each of us to live here among His purple mountain majesties, His amber waves of grain. Don't just lip-sync the words to the song. Think them, live them. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty." And when the music fades, think of the guts of Rosa Parks, who by a single act in a single moment changed America as much as anyone who ever lived.

I'm no angel. I've had my moments. I've done a few things in my life of which I'm not too proud, but I have never unloved a human being because of race, creed, or color. And if you think this is a case of he who doth protest too much, you're wrong. I would not live any other way; the Man Upstairs has been much too good to me.

Happy Fourth of July. May today be a day of love for all Americans. May this year's celebration be the day that changes the world forever. May Independence Day, 1991, truly be a glorious holiday as every American lives the self-evident truth that all people are created equal. God shed His grace on thee—on each of thee—in His self-evident love for all of us.

Frank Sinatra
July 4, 1991