“Sleepy Lagoon” by Harry James

At #1: June 20, 1942-July 11, 1942 (four weeks)
Still alive? No. Harry James died of lymphatic cancer on July 5, 1983

“Sleepy Lagoon” is supposed to be the version of “By the Sleepy Lagoon” with lyrics. According to Wikipedia, the song wasn’t initially written with lyrics. Jack Lawrence would end up adding words to “By the Sleepy Lagoon” but needed to get permission from Sir Eric Coates, the composer of the song.

In 1940, Lawrence wrote Coates for the permission to add lyrics to the tune. Coates didn’t mind; he thought Lawrence’s lyrics perfectly fit the song. According to Jack Lawrence, the song was a big hit during the period of the war when the Germans were blitzing London. Lawrence would finally meet Coates in 1946 and Coates would offer more music for Lawrence to add lyrics to – but according to Lawrence, none of them had the charms of “Sleepy Lagoon”.

It’s odd that Harry James would make a hit with “Sleepy Lagoon”. If he recorded a version with Lawrence’s lyrics, I can’t find it. Donald Clarke writes the following about Harry James:

his tone was clear and pretty and his technique absolutely secure; in Texas trumpet players were said to quake at the mention of his name, but more to the point he was a good leader, and although he could always swing he saw nothing wrong with sentimentality as long as it was honestly felt. As with many bands, the biggest hits were vocal numbers, and James used vocalists properly rather than as mascots, having arrangements written for them.

…and elsewhere from Clarke….

Harry James was a superb trumpet player, who began playing at the age of nine in his father's circus band, and was evidently one of the best-liked men in the business. His post-Goodman success was slow in coming, but he finally did well and continued to draw large audiences in places like Las Vegas until he died. His dance band music was not particularly jazz-oriented, though his first hit was a cover of 'One O'Clock Jump' (reissued in 1943 during a recording ban as 'Two O'Clock Jump'), and 'Strictly Instrumental' (written by Edgar Battle, among others) was an attractive chart from the Lunceford book. James's band was good enough in 1950 to be raided by Duke Ellington, and he later employed Buddy Rich on drums. His theme was 'Ciribiribin', in 3/4 time (published in Italy in 1898), and another hit was the trumpet virtuoso's 'Flight of the Bumble Bee'; his 'Sleepy Lagoon' was adapted from the 'valse serenade' of English composer Eric Coates.

Most of James's big hits were vocals. He hired the very young Frank Sinatra, who was soon stolen by Tommy Dorsey, and then Dick Haymes, a good singer in the same mould; Helen Ward and Helen Forrest recorded with James, and Kitty Kallen joined him around 1944. Forrest's hits were 'I Don't Want to Walk Without You' and 'I've Heard That Song Before'; James was listed as a co-writer on Duke Ellington's 'I'm Beginning to See the Light', which, sung by Kallen, was a number one hit in the white chart in 1945.

A ‘valse serenade’ is an orchestral waltz. When Clarke wrote that James drew large audiences until he died, he wasn’t kidding. He played his final professional performance in Los Angeles on June 26, 1983 and died of cancer just nine days later in Las Vegas.

“Tangerine” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: May 9, 1942-June 13, 1942 (six weeks)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died of cancer on June 12, 1957

“Tangerine” is another song from a movie soundtrack. This time, the movie was The Fleet’s In, which better known as the film where Betty Hutton made her screen debut than in being Jimmy Dorsey’s best appearance on screen.

(Note: I’ve finished watching The Fabulous Dorseys and there will be a review in the future.)

The movie version is slightly different than the album version. In the movie Bob Eberly sings the line "And I've seen times when Tangerine/Had the bourgeoisie believing she was queen” but on the record he sings "And I've seen toasts to Tangerine/Raised in every bar across the Argentine”.

While trying to find out as much as I can about the Big Band Era, I lucked onto the Donald Clarke Music Box website. Clarke wrote a biography of Frank Sinatra and his website includes an encyclopedia of music, essays and a blog. Clarke writes about Dorsey:

Jimmy Dorsey led a band similar to that of Harry James in that it was a good mainstream dance band. He had been a superb alto player on many fine jazz records; when Tommy walked out in 1935, most of the members of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra stayed with Jimmy, who became one of Jack Kapp's greatest successes on Decca. The band's very good and extremely popular vocalists were Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell; Kitty Kallen sang with it in the early 1940s before she joined Harry James. Sidemen included Ray McKinley on drums, 'Tootie' Camarata on trumpet, Freddie Slack on piano and Herbie Haymer on tenor saxophone. But, as with James, his biggest hits almost all featured the singers: 'The Breeze and I' (from the Spanish song 'Andalucia' by Ernesto Lecuona), 'Maria Elena' (a Mexican song), 'Blue Champagne', 'High on a Windy Hill', 'I Hear a Rhapsody' and many others were sung by Eberly; 'Green Eyes' (from Cuba), 'Amapola' (a Spanish song) and 'Tangerine' (from the film The Fleet's In) were all duets by Eberly and O'Connell. The band's last big hit was 'Besame Mucho' (from Mexico), a duet by Eberly and Kallen. Like most leaders on Decca, Dorsey also recorded with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters. He is rated as the seventeenth best-selling recording artist up to 1954, but brother Tommy was number four.

Regarding Bob Eberle and Helen O’Connell, the vocalists for “Tangerine”:

Eberly was extremely popular, beaten in '39 poll only by Crosby, while O'Connell was one of the most highly rated white female vocalists of the era. Jimmy's band was sweeter than Tommy's, but could swing.

We might not remember “Tangerine” in the 21st century, but the tune is popular enough for people to keep coming back to it. It’s been used in two different commercials – oddly enough, both diet commercials. One was for “Sego”, a diet drink and the other one was for Pillsbury Figurines, a diet bar. (I’ve been unable to find the Pillsbury Figurines commercial, but my wife remembers it. “Figurines, da da da da da da da, da da da da da, da da da diet bar….) It was also reworked as a disco hit by Salsoul Orchestra and made the Billboard Top 20 in 1976.

Extra #1: The Sego commercial, which you can find at 3:58 in the clip below:

Extra #2: The Salsoul Orchestra pop version.

“Blues in the Night (My Mama Done Tol’ Me)” by Woody Herman

At #1: February 14, 1942 (one week)
Still alive? No. Woodrow Charles Herman died on October 29, 1987

By the time Woody Herman was 15 he was a professional musician and by the time Woody Herman was 23, he already had his own band, called “The Band that Plays the Blues”. This was an era where a guy with the name of Paul Whiteman (!) could be called “The King of Jazz” so it makes you wonder just how bluesy Herman’s sound was.

It appears that Herman’s sound went through a lot of changes; 1950s Herman isn’t the same as 1940s Herman. Herman’s band would begin to shift away from the blues and toward jazz but by 1942 this hadn’t happened yet. (Give it another year.) He was at least a couple of years from the peak of his popularity in 1945.

Things, however, wouldn’t come up roses for Herman. He’d make an aborted attempt at retirement in 1946, disbanding his band but by 1947 he started up again with a new band informally called the “Second Herd”. He was definitely one of the icons of jazz in the 1950s. Unfortunately, his finances had been horribly mismanaged by one of his employees and he went on the a decades long tour which should be called “the IRS tour”. (Herman did call keeping a big band “a costly hobby.”)

He owed the United States Government over $1.6 million in payroll taxes. That must have been a lot of money back because he stopped touring only when he became so sick that he couldn’t tour anymore. At the end, he weighed less than 100 pounds due to a host of physical ailments and was nearly evicted from his home for not being able to pay rent. Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett stepped in to pay some of Herman’s bills, but Herman would soon be playing jazz at heaven’s gate.

Charles Champlin said this about Herman:

From the beginning, Woody made uncommon demands on his sidemen: The don’t-stop-for-nothin’ tempos, the high, precise, wailing brass sections, the reeds galloping as one were central to the Herd signature. I thought that night that if you could measure it somehow you could prove that the young musicians were breaking the B-flat equivalents of the four-minute mile.

As for “Blues in the Night”, it was a song written for the 1941 movie of the same name. Harold Arlen wrote the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics. More information about the story of “Blues in the Night” can be found at the Wikipedia link.

Both “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and “Blues in the Night” would be nominated for Best Original Song of 1942, but both would lose to Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s “The Last Time I Saw Paris”. According to this thread, someone at MGM had heard “The Last Time I Saw Paris” on the radio and purchased it for the movie “Lady Be Good” - unlike “Blues in the Night”, which was written for the movie. Kern and Hammerstein II petitioned the Academy to change the rules for Best Original Song. From that point on, the song had be heard for the first time ever in the movie to win the Oscar.

The rules changed again in 1949 after “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” won. The first time that song had been heard in a film was for Neptune’s Daughter but it had been performed informally at parties. The winner got the rules changed again so that the song had to be written explicitly for the film. In general, to win Best Original Song a song must be played either during the movie or as the “start-up song” during the closing credits.

Extra: Trumpeter Neil Hefti once worked for Herman. He was the man who composed the title theme for the 1966-68 TV series Batman, which he said was the hardest piece of music he ever wrote.

“A String of Pearls” by Glenn Miller

At #1: February 7, 1942; February 21, 1942 (two non-consecutive weeks)
Still alive? Missing in action on December 15, 1944

“A String of Pearls” picked up right where Glenn Miller left off with “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”. The song was composed by Jerry Gray and Eddie DeLang wrote lyrics for it, but I can’t determine whether or not “A String of Pearls” was released with lyrics. The versions that I’ve found on YouTube are instrumental versions and my goal is to link to the YouTube clip of the original version. It appears to be common practice in the swing band era to compose or perform an instrumental version and to add lyrics for later performances – so you never know when listening to a song which version was the one initially released.

If you read the Glenn Miller site maintained by the University of Colorado – Miller was a student there, briefly – you can almost play a game of “Seven Degrees of Glenn Miller” with every other major swing band leader or performer. The era appeared to be dominated by a handful of big band composer; it shouldn’t be surprising to conclude that they had connections with each other.

Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey: Miller was a performer and a music director in the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.

Bing Crosby: Bing released some music with the Dorsey Brothers and had the opportunity to meet Miller there – they were apparently good friends.

Bix Beiderbecke: Miller was in the same band with Bix early on, when Miller was playing with the Ben Pollack band. Miller wasn’t far away from his high school graduation.

Benny Goodman: Miller and Goodman were both in the Pollack band and were roommates.

The Ink Spots: Miller’s band and The Ink Spots shared a bill at New York’s Paramount Theatre. Miller was given a diamond-studded wristwatch by The Ink Spots at the end of the engagement.

Artie Shaw: While Shaw had fled to Mexico to recuperate after “Begin the Beguine”, this left Shaw’s musical arranger Jerry Gray without a job. Miller snapped him up. Shaw undoubtedly had hard feelings about it. After Miller was presumed dead, Shaw said to the effect that Miller should have survived and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” should have died.

The Andrews Sisters: Miller and The Andrews Sisters performed on the same radio show; soon, it was just Miller.

Harry James: As Miller was headed off to the Army, he turned the stewardship of his radio program over to James, for which James was quite grateful.

Frank Sinatra: From the website link, which explains how Glenn Miller was able to get great musicians for his Army band:

The procedure was simple. A draftee would send a letter to Glenn, giving him all the details about his induction, whereupon Glenn would request, through channels, his assignment to his command. These men would eventually report to Atlantic City for their basic training. Frank Sinatra, who would be classified 4-F, was among the musicians and singers who were in contact with Glenn. If Francis Albert had been drafted, he would have been assigned to Miller.

Ten years after Miller disappeared/died, Jimmy Stewart would star in The Glenn Miller Story. The movie was a big hit at the box office, and was nominated for three Oscars, winning for Best Musical Score. It looks like I’m going to have to add another movie to my list of must-see films for the Number One Hits Blog.

“Elmer’s Tune” by Glenn Miller

At #1: December 20, 1941 (one week)
Still alive? : Major Glenn Miller went missing in action on December 15, 1944.

In order to find out anything about “Elmer’s Tune”, Wikipedia will be no help. You have to go to Rick Busciglio at the Examiner.com for the whole story:

Glenn Miller's number one hit ''Elmer's Tune'' in 1941 was written by a mortician. Young Elmer Albrecht worked next door to Chicago's Aragon Ballroom and received permission to use one of their pianos on his lunch hours. Bandleader Dick Jurgens liked one of the melodies he heard Albrecht play and arranged it for his orchestra. Lyricist Sammy Gallop added words. The rest is history.

Gallop most likely added lyrics after Dick Jurgens’s instrumental version, which sounds very different from Miller’s final version above:

Busciglio also identifies the vocalists for the Glenn Miller version: Ray Eberle and the Modernaires. If you’ve been following the blog, you could probably have guess that the Modernaires were the chorus.

Oddly enough, I’m going to take a slight diversion to Glenn Miller’s death in December 1944. This is from the University of Colorado College of Music:

The weather was miserable the day Glenn was supposed to fly (on authorized, scheduled transport) and the day after. The third day, Friday, December 15, 1944, Glenn accepted a ride with Lt. Col. Norman Baessell. The plane was a single-engine C-64 Norseman. The pilot was Flight Officer John R. S. Morgan. The weather was wet, foggy and cold. The lightly equipped plane could not fly above the weather nor could it fly in the weather. Therefore, it would be forced to fly below the weather, close to the English Channel’s choppy surface. As the aircraft was about to depart, Miller yelled to Baessell (over the noise of the idling engine) “where the hell are the parachutes?” “What’s the matter, Miller,” retorted the gung-ho, extroverted colonel to the obviously apprehensive major, “do you want to live forever?”

There are three accounts of Miller’s death you can believe:

1. Something happened to Baessell’s plane and they never made it across the Channel. There’s a further theory that some English pilots on their way back from a bombing mission dumped their remaining bombs over the Channel and the plane was hit, downed by friendly fire.
2. The Germans claimed that Miller died in a Paris brothel.
3. Some conspirators claim that Miller was working for US intelligence on a secret mission that went belly-up and Miller was killed. The plane disappearance was a cover-up of the truth.

In my opinion, the theories are ranked from greatest to lowest credibility. The last is barely plausible – why would you choose one of the most recognizable people in the world to go on a critical war-time spy mission? The only reason the second theory is there at all is because Goebbels believed that wartime propaganda couldn’t be based entirely on lies – there had to be some elements of truth in order to better sell the lie to the public. But even if Miller died in a brothel and there had to be a cover-up to avoid embarrassment, it would have been very easy to come up with a good story for Miller’s death. (And the truth would have come out by now with so many potential witnesses.)

If I had to bet, I’d put my money on the first theory. Pilot error gets even good pilots killed. Either Miller’s pilot hit a snafu or they were really hit by the bombing raid.

There is a Miller-Germany connection though. In October of 1944, Miller and his orchestra showed up at Abbey Road Studios – yes, that Abbey Road – to perform some of his songs with German lyrics and messages which were going to be used for propaganda purposes – clearly, Miller’s music must have been popular in Germany. (Some people claim that Miller was fluent in German, which was not the case.)

On the internet – I won’t link where, because the source is some sort of kooky neo-Nazi – I found an alternate set of lyrics to “Elmer’s Tune” which might have been sung by William Joyce. Joyce was the infamous “Lord Haw-Haw” on English-language Nazi propaganda broadcast. Listen to the Miller clip above – I heard the propaganda broadcast with instrumental backing from someone other than Miller’s orchestra – and substitute the lyrics below:

Lord Haw-Haw version:

Why are the ships always sinking and blinking at sea?
What makes the British start thinking of their cup of tea?
It's now the season, the reason, it's plain what it means
German submarines!

What makes the sailors go crazy wherever they cruise?
What makes the market go down but frightens the Jews?
What takes the kick out the chicken, the pork from the beans?
Germans submarines!

Listen, listen,
Can't you hear the sound, they're never missin'!
Torpedoes! Torpedoes!
Hitting at day, and hitting at night!

Who sinks the trawler, the tanker, the ship pull of meat?
Who sinks destroyers, and cruisers, the pride of the fleet?
It's now the season, the reason, it's plain what it means
German submarines!

Miller disappeared in December 1944. Joyce was hanged for treason slightly more than a year later, in January 1946. If the Nazis chuckled at Miller’s death, they wouldn’t have long to chuckle.

Extra: I didn't know that Ray Eberle was the brother of Bob Eberly from the Jimmy Dorsey band. It appears that they took different approaches to spelling their last name - Ray kept the family spelling and Bob altered it.