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Snapshot in Prose: the popular song

This week’s Snapshot in Prose doesn’t capture a particular performer at certain time in his or her career, as is usual. Instead, it captures a perennial keystone of popular culture—the hit song—and examines, via the insights and opinions of performers and other entertainment professionals of the day, what set one song apart from another—in short, what makes a song popular. We thought it’d be interesting to see what the likes of Ethel Merman and Bing Crosby had to say on the topic back in 1935, and how salient their insights might be today. Read on, and see what you think.

HAVE you ever tried to write a song? Are you one of the millions of amateur tunesmiths who haven’t been able to get anywhere in Tin Pan Alley? If you are (and who isn’t?) here are some hot tips from the boys and girls who write ‘em, sing ‘em, play ‘em publish ‘em.

I think the answer to ‘What Makes a Popular Song Popular?’ can be found in my own astonishment and pleasure over the success of one of my first tunes, Body and Soul,” said Johnny Green, youthful pianist-composer-maestro of the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Johnny told us: “Nobody was ever as surprised as myself when it caught on fire in Tin-Pan Alley. Now, I had written that tune because I wanted to write it. It had been haunting me, it was as near an inspiration as any tune could be, but I had secretly thought the melody was much too complicated and involved to find favor with the general public.

“After that song was put over in a big way I fought for my style of composing tooth and nail, insisting that not even a measure should be changed but it took the enthusiasm of the public to convince me that I was on the right track. The moral, boys and girls, is this: The real hit tunes are probably the ones that the composers couldn’t help writing.”

On the other hand, Kate Smith, who has popularized many ditties (including When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, remember?) believes that trying to figure out the exact ingredients of a successful song is like trying to answer the question, “how high is up?”

“The moods and tendencies of the public changes like a chameleon,” Kate believes. “Sometimes they feel ironic about romance; sometimes sentimental; sometimes wistful. Incidentally, the tune which catches the prevalent sentiment is likely to start a new trend in popular songs. There will be lots of others like it, once it has caught fire but probably none of them will find favor with the public like the first one. Remember how The Last Round-Up started an avalanche of hill-billy tunes?”

Conrad Thibault, baritone singing star of the Showboat and many other big air programs feels that the thing that makes a song popular is a good message, both in lyrics and music, played and delivered in such a manner that even a person who has no musical training at all can understand it.

As master of ceremonies of one of the biggest Amateur Night broadcasts in all radio, we were sure that Ray Perkins would have reached some interesting conclusions. Ray, you know, is one of those old gong ringers who goes into action whenever the amateur talent and their renditions get too painful.

“A hit tune,” Ray informs us, “is a song that no one can murder . . . not even an amateur! It has nine lives . . . like a cat!” And with this astute observation Ray went off in search of bigger and louder gongs.

Jack Mills, head of Mills Music, has published hundreds of big song hits during the past fifteen years. Among the songs which he rightly predicted would become popular, are Dinah, Star Dust, Moonglow, Haunting Me and I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby.

From the publisher’s point of view there are four requisites for songs hoping to find a welcome at Mills Music. Jack enumerates them, as follows:

01 Sep 10 | Tags: Bing Crosby, Conrad Thibault, Ethel Merman, Gertrude Niesen, Hoagy Carmichael, J. Russell Robinson, Jack Mills, Johnny Green, Kate Smith, Mills Music, Mitchell Parrish, Ralph S. Peer, Ray Perkins
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In Your Hat, pt. 11

In Chapter 11 of In Your Hat, the 1933 tell-all memoir by Hat Check Girl to the Stars Renee Carroll, she shares tales of various characters she knew, including Jack Oakie, The Four Marx Brothers, Wilson Mizner, George Jessel, Harry Richman, Clara Bow, and Lilyan Tashman.

SARDI’S may be the place where the celebrities gather, but I get more slugs and buttons in my tip box than I can use in a year’s mending. Figure it out for yourself—the most highly paid performers and theatrical executives slip me slugs I wouldn’t even try on my molars to find out if they’re real or not.

And speaking of tipping and the things I find in my box at the end of the day, one of the most common phenomena are the little slips of paper upon which telephone numbers have been scribbled. I’ve got, or rather, I could have collected a private phone list than the Manhattan police department, not to mention the Broolynites and Bronxites who have been date-hungry.

Maybe I’m wrong, and that’s only one way of kidding me. Another way is the method Jack Oakie used, to make me feel like the butt of a bad joke.

Jack came into the restaurant one day and asked me in his really-not-obnoxious breezy manner how things were going. Just for the fun of it, I told him that I was going to get married the next day. I had no more idea of getting married, then, than the girl in the swing on the big Pepsodent sign. As some wit once said, marriage is an institution, and hwo wants to live in an institution?

But that clown of clowns, that zanie Oakie, set to work and circulated among Sardi’s guests, telling all his friends that I was an expectant mother. When people started to leave the place, I noticed that no one was looking me directly in the eyes, but instead were looking down at me and at the same time talking in a sort of reverentially hushed tone—the kind I gather that people assume when they accost young mothers-to-be.

I didn’t suspect then what was happening, but the next morning when packages began to arrive by every means of transportation except the pony express, I began to smell a good-sized rodent in Mr. Oakie’s direction. For people were sending me baby clothes—dresses, bibs, caps, towels, and all the other accessories necessary to have babies. The pay-off came when Oakie’s package arrived. It contained a dozen towels, stolen from a Pullman, three napkins from three different hotels and a couple of table cloths from a club. All of the Oakie presents were cut into reminiscent triangular shapes—with the names of the places from which they were filched neatly embroidered in the corner of each pseudo-diaper.

But the height of pure nuttiness was achieved by the Four Marx Brothers when they were making Animal Crackers and The Cocoanuts at the Astoria studio for Paramount.

Pitch perfect: hosiery

As the Pitch Perfect series continues, we today feature a collection of 1949 advertising slogans that were used to market ladies’ hosiery and stockings (and even a few mens’ socks).

All that its name implies (True Shape Hosiery Co.).
As you like it (hosiery), J. R. Baston Co., Inc.

Background of beauty (Virginia Maid Hosiery), Pulaski, Va.
Because you love nice things (silk stockings), Van Raalte Co., New York.
Be sporty in ’40 (hosiery), C. H. Roth Co., New York.
Be sporty and fine in ’49 (Rose Specialty Shoppe), Brooklyn.
Be wiser, buy Kayser (hosiery, gloves, lingerie).

Chosen for lasting loveliness (Orient hosiery).

Dependable hosiery, The (Mojud).

Eye line of smartness, The (St. Johns Silk Co.).

For good and FITTING reasons (Kayser gloves and hosiery).
For sheer loveliness wear Chatelaine Silk Hosiery (St. John’s Silk Co.).
For the loveliest legs in the world (Berkshire Knitting Mills).
Free from “rings” and “shadows” (No-Sha-Do hosiery).
From mill to millions (Real Silk Hosiery), Indianapolis.
Full fashioned for flawless fashion (Belle-Sharmeer hose).

Hosiery of distinction, The (Chatelaine).

In the California manner (Gude’s, Inc.), Los Angeles.

Jewel of hosiery, The (Bijon), New York.

Knit to fit with the comfort foot (hosiery), Burson Knitting Co.

Leg-size stocking for leg-wise women (Belle-Sharmeer).
Longer wear in every pair (Blue Moon Silk Hosiery Co.), Philadelphia.
Long Milage Hosiery (Phoenix Hosiery Co.).
Long stocking that fits every leg, The (Gotham Gold Stripe).

Made the strongest where the wear is hardest (Durham Hosiery Mills, Inc.).
Mile of silk, inspected inch by inch, A (Berkshire stockings).

Not just nylons, but Cannon nylons.

On a pedestal (Gold Stripe stockings).

Rollins answers the gift question (Rollins Hosiery Mills), Des Moines.

Sheath the leg in loveliness (Cameron nylons), Burlington, N. C.
Sheer enduring beauty (stockings), Aberle, Inc.
Sheer, sheer, Berkshire (Berkshire Knitting Mills).
Silk stockings that wear (Gotham Silk Hosiery).
Sings its own praise (hosiery), Rosenberg & Brand.
Smartest thing on two feet, The (Esquire Sock), New York.
Sock America wears to work, The (Nelson Knitting Co.).
Sporty Forty (hosiery), C. H. Roth Co.
Stocking beautiful, The (La France Hosiery), Fieldcrest Mills.
Stockings of matchless beauty (Hoover Sales Corp.), Concord, N. C.
Style and wear in every pair (Hosiers, Ltd.).

Take to water like a duck (Adler socks).
That’s all you need to know about stockings (Mojud).
There’s longer wear in every pair (hosiery), Largman Gray Co., New York.
They do things for your legs (Rollins Hosiery Mills), Des Moines.
They’re wear-conditioned (Monmouth Hosiery Mills), Trenton.
This is, indeed, hosiery “as you like it” (Berkshire Knitting Mills).
Try them on for sighs (Strutwear nylons), Minneapolis.

Warm toes in Fox River Hose.
Wash them any way you like, we guarantee the size (Adler socks).
Wear-conditioned stockings (Monmouth Hosiery Mills).
Wear Kayser, you owe it to your friends (gloves, hosiery).
Wear longer (Davenport Hosiery Mills).
Will not kink (Milo Hose), Boston Woven Hose Co., Cambridge, Mass.
World’s most beautiful stockings (Canadian Silk Products, Ltd.).

You just know she wears them (McCallum Hosiery Co.).
You’ll love the look of your leg in Larkwood (hosiery).
You’re asking for a good sock (Westminster sock).
You’re sure of yourself in Phoenix (Phoenix Vita Bloom Hosiery), Milwaukee.

30 Aug 10 | Tags: Belle-Sharmeer, Berkshire Knitting Mills, C. H. Roth, Chatelaine hosiery, Gotham Gold Stripe, Kayser, Mojud, Monmouth Hosiery Mills, Phoenix hosiery, True Shape Hosiery, Val Raalte, Virginia Maid Hosiery
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The slow rise of color

We sometimes scratch our heads over how long it takes new technology to come into wide use.

For instance, did you know that a working fax machine was introduced to the general public at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City, and that the earliest efforts in transmitting images date back to the 19th century? We can see why it took so long to perfect, but one can’t but wonder what took so long for it to be widely adopted, once it had been.

Similarly, the vast majority of pre-1950 movies were in black and white, so who would have guessed that experiments in using color dated all the way back to the early twentieth century?

Here’s a reel of tests of Kodachrome color motion picture film from 1922. from 1922, featuring actresses Mae Murray, Hope Hampton, and Mary Eaton, among others. Color film tehnology was two-color, then—reds and greens—so it’s not the full, vivid color that would come later, but it’s got charms of its own.

Oh, and that inexplicable delay I mentioned above? It occurred in this case, too: It would be 13 years after this footage was shot before the first full-length color feature, Becky Sharp, was released.

27 Aug 10 | Tags: Becky Sharp, Hope Hampton, Mae Murray, Mary Eaton
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Snapshot in Prose: Annette Hanshaw

This week’s Snapshot in Prose captures Cladrite Radio sweetheart Annette Hanshaw at the height of her fame. The year is 1935, and she’s already sold more than 4,000,000 records, has declined stage and screen offers, and claims to be mulling over the marketing of her personal method for reading music without any training. Alas, just two or three years later, she’ll give up recording and performing altogether, opting instead for a sedate married life with her husband, Pathé Records executive Herman “Wally” Rose.

And just FYI, Hanshaw’s nephew, one Frank W. Hanshaw III, says that her birth certificate says she was entered the world not in 1910, as the story below claims, but in 1901. Oh Annette, you deceitful minx!

DO YOU KNOW that the best known and highest paid artists on the air never studied music in their lives and wouldn’t know a cadenza from a condenser? ‘S a fact! If you studied the lives of Bing Crosby, Kate Smith and Annette Hanshaw with a microscope, you’d find that their music educations have been sadly neglected.

Do you think they worry over the fact that their technical knowledge of music is so limited? No, and you wouldn’t either if you had their incomes. Their stories only go to prove that you don’t have to have special privileges to get places in radio, singing, music. And the same thing is probably true in every other field of endeavor.

Let’s take the career of Annette Hanshaw, for instance. She was born in New York City in 1910. Her father instilled in her a natural love of music and she believes she could sing before she could speak. Anyhow, she was able to sing the choruses of 16 popular ditties of the day before she was 16 months old, and she’s added at least a song a month to her repertoire ever since.

Annette liked to sing always. Most of us are the same way. She surely had a natural flair for singing but since it was so effortless for her she never dreamed that some day it would pay substantial dividends.

She thought a career necessarily meant hard work, so she ploughed through school and took various courses, specializing in portrait painting. She aspired to be a commercial artist. She entered the National Academy of Design in New York and showed remarkable promise.

She went to parties often during the days when she was a popular young debutante and it was at one of these gatherings that an executive for a record company herad her warbling in her own, carefree way. He listened while she sang song after song to rounds of applause and many encores. At the end of the evening he handed her his card and suggested that she call at his office.

More as a lark than anything else she made a voice test at the recording executive’s request. She was having loads of fun and enjoyed it immensely when they put her in front of an orchestra while the wax disc whirled. She had had such a good time that she was almost ashamed to accept the check they handed her.

All of this took place less than seven years ago and since then her photograph recordings have sold more than 4,000,000 copies, and she was managed to lose all hesitancy about accepting checks.

Throughout this entire procedure—and even today—she never read a note of music. She couldn’t. What she could and did do, though, was thoroghly memorize and cue every song she sang.

Although she has had many stage and screen offers, Annette has consistently refused to accept any of them because she wants to concentrate on her radio broadcasting and phonograph recording. She one even refused an offer from the great Florenz Ziegfeld, himself.

She rehearses in the evening, drinks lots of water before and during broadcasts, dictates all replies to her fan mail herself and scrupulously autographs all pictures herself.

Someday she may patent her method of reading music. Annette says it is really very simple and anyone ought to be able to learn the system in ten easy lessons.

* * * * *

Here’s a bonus treat for our fellow Hansaw fans, one of our very favorites of her recordings:

Annette Hanshaw — Fit as a Fiddle

26 Aug 10 | Tags: Annette Hanshaw, Bing Crosby, Kate Smith
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'Tis Autumn
Old Father Time checked, so there'd be no doubt.
Called on the North wind to come on out,
Then cupped his hands so proudly to shout,
"La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn!"

Trees say they're tired, they've born too much fruit.
Charmed on the wayside, there's no dispute.
Now shedding leaves, they don't give a hoot.
La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn!

Then the birds got together
To chirp about the weather.
La-dah-di la-dah-di la-dah-dum
After makin' their decision,
In birdie-like precision,
Turned about, and
Made a beeline to the south.

My holding you close really is no crime.
Ask the birds and the trees and old Father Time.
It's just to help the mercury climb.
La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, 'tis autumn.

---Henry Nemo, words and music

Snapshot in Prose: the popular song

In Your Hat, pt. 11

Pitch perfect: hosiery

The slow rise of color

Snapshot in Prose: Annette Hanshaw

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