“Blue Champagne” by Jimmy Dorsey

At #1: September 27, 1941 (one week)
Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

There’s not a lot to say about “Blue Champagne”. It’s much more instrumental than the more popular Jimmy Dorsey tunes, which were a) Bob Eberly starts singing low-tempo, b) instrumental section, and then c) Helen O’Connell in swing tempo. Only Bob Eberly sings and he’s late coming in.

Enotes.com has an interesting assessment of the swing era:

Although illusory in nature, the world created by the music and the shared identity of the listeners "is perhaps the happiest and most significant aspect of the Swing Era," Schuller declared. That facet of swing faded, however, when the American consciousness was permanently changed by World War II. Stereo Review's Peter Reilly consequently dismissed the Dorsey brothers' music for modern listeners: "It doesn't have enough vitality or true style to bridge the years."

Indeed, what is amazing is how thoroughly this era of music has been eradicated. Not only that, the eradication came fairly quickly, within the living memory of the biggest fans of the genre. Oh, there were still hangers-on : Lawrence Welk was very popular on TV and the show wasn’t much more than all of those old big band hits played over and over. Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians could always expect a solid paycheck on New Year’s Eve. But the popular attitude toward the last of these big band dinosaurs was always one of derision.

Here’s a thought exercise: think about a musical style from a given decade from the 1940s to the 2000s – how likely is it that a song written under the musical tropes common to that era could make it to the 2012 Billboard Hot 100? Songs written in the style of the 1970s still have enough motive power to influence modern songwriters with their melodies and lyrical arrangements. (It seems that “classic radio” – what some called “oldies” – has been rolled up to 1970 – 1990, with only the biggest hits from the 1960s hanging on and virtually nothing from the 1950s.) If Jimmy Dorsey could be resurrected and arrange something new with Bob Eberly and Helen O’Connell, even at the height of his power he’d never make the 2012 Hot 100. The landscape has changed too much.

You could hunt through a barrel of hypotheses as to why this is so. My pet hypothesis is the individualization of American culture, “every man a king and every woman a queen”. The thought of being one performer in a seventeen-piece big band is just hard to stomach. Better to be a bass player in a four-piece rock band. Or in 2012, better to be the lead vocalist with studio backup. (If you can barely carry a note, there’s always autotune.)

The above paragraph says that “the American consciousness was permanently changed by World War II” but that doesn’t seem like enough of a reason for the disappearance of big band. Big bands were still popular during wartime; it’s not like American GIs were exposed to hot rock ‘n’ roll acts on some Pacific island and flipped over to an undiscovered musical style.

More likely, big band music hit a demographic wall. The purchasing power of younger people was starting to make itself felt very slowly. The first wave that hit big band music was the economic post-war financial boom, when teenagers had purchasing power and decided that they didn’t want to spend their cash on big band music. (Either that, or they started watching television, which didn’t have the sonic fidelity afforded to a radio listener.) The second wave – the demographic wave that hit in the 1960s when the war babies became teens – smashed the 1940s era to smithereens.

Presently: Have made it to the 30 minute mark of “The Fabulous Dorseys”. Wow, Janet Blair is easy on the eyes, ain’t she?

“Green Eyes (Aquellos Ojos Verdes)” by Jimmy Dorsey

Time at #1: August 30, 1941 – September 20, 1941 (4 weeks) Still alive? No. Jimmy Dorsey died on June 12, 1957

If young dancers got bored with “Maria Elena”, there was the flip side to the old 78 rpm with a song called “Green Eyes”. Everyone must have liked what they heard, because “Green Eyes” would move to the #1 position on the charts in the fall of 1941. Dorsey would dominate music in 1941, with 17 non-consecutive weeks at #1.

It’s the typical Jimmy Dorsey composition. Bob Eberly croons the opening part of the song, the band picks up the temp mid way and Helen O’Connell finishes with a (slightly) more swing-oriented version. The formula proved to be very successful, at least in 1941.

Once again, Dorsey goes back to the well with a Latin song. The song goes back to at least the 1920s, written by Adolfo Utrera and Nilo Menéndez with Eddie Rivera and Eddie Woods adding English lyrics in 1929.

Since there’s not a lot to say about “Green Eyes” except that it spent some time at #1, we’ll take a diversion and look at the composition of these big bands. This is from the Wikipedia article on Big Bands:

A standard 17-piece instrumentation evolved in the big-bands, for which many commercial arrangements are available. This instrumentation consists of five saxophones (most often two altos, two tenors, and one baritone), four trumpets, four trombones (often including one bass trombone) and a four-piece rhythm section (composed of drums, acoustic bass or electric bass, piano and guitar).

It would be interesting to learn how this arrangement mutated into the modern rock band. They did call rock and roll “rhythm and blues” and it looks like the rock band is just a big band stripped of its brass and woodwind sections.

Jazz History by Joe Moebrook gives some insight into the instrumentation of the early Dorsey Brothers band:

They broke with the pattern of most white bands of the period, which performed mostly straight dance arrangements. The Dorsey brothers, borrowing from their experience with small jazz groups and some of the swinging black big bands, combined elements of small group jazz and big band dance music. They did it with only eleven players, and unusual instrumentation: three reeds (Jimmy Dorsey, Skeets Herfurt and Jack Stacey), three trombones (Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Don Matteson), piano (Bobby Van Epps), drums (Ray McKinley), bass (Delmar Kaplan), guitar (Roc Hilman) and only one trumpet!

So who listened to big band music? From the same article:

White teenagers and young adults were the principal fans of the Big Bands in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They danced to recordings and the radio, and attended live concerts whenever they could. They were knowledgeable and often biased toward their favorite bands and songs, and sometimes worshipful of the famous soloists and vocalists. Many bands toured the country in grueling one-night stands to reach out to their fans. Traveling conditions and lodging were often difficult, in part due to segregation in most parts of the United States, and the personnel often had to perform on little sleep and food. Apart from the star soloists, many personnel received low wages and would abandon the tour and go home if bookings fell through. Personal problems and intra-band discord could affect the playing of the group. Drinking and addictions were common. Turnover was frequent in many bands, and top soloists were often lured away to better contracts. Sometimes bandstands were too small, public address systems inadequate, pianos out of tune. Successful bandleaders dealt with all these hazards of touring to hold their bands together—some with rigid discipline (Glenn Miller), some with canny psychology (Duke Ellington).

This could give another key to the shift from big band to rock and roll music – big band might have represented white musical tastes; rock and roll – at least initially – was more inclusive.

(A side note: My goal is to get through “The Fabulous Dorseys” and dedicate a post to it. It’s been a real struggle just to get through the first twenty minutes – it’s not exactly a compelling movie. What have I learned? Tommy is the one with the trombone; Jimmy is the one with the alto saxophone.)