BING GOES TO PRISON

It was the night before the ‘Song of the Dawn’ was to be filmed that things went ‘a little awry’. Bing had developed a reputation within the Whiteman clan as a fun-loving boozer and womanizer – and this night he was arrested for drunken driving. Bing was jailed for 30 days and singer-actor John Boles – a Warner Brothers leading man – was brought-in to sing the part. However – for several of the other numbers in King of Jazz featuring the Rhythm Boys Whiteman arranged to have Crosby brought to the studio under police guard and returned to jail after each day’s shooting ended! When the film was completed Whiteman left Hollywood and went on a national tour.

The police experience had a sobering effect on the young Crosby and he began to take his career more seriously – particularly with regard to the potential of musical movies. The group went to work in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub with Gus Arnheim’s orchestra. There was also another reason for Bing to stay where they were – Miss Wilma Wyatt, a singer known as Dixie Lee! In September 1930 they married and their unity initiated some ‘interesting’ responses! News stories had comments such as ‘Rising young Fox star weds obscure crooner’ or, as Bing put it ‘Miss Big marries Mr Little’.

Dixie had played half-a-dozen movies for Fox but soon gave up that career and supported Bing in his. As a result he worked on improving his breath control and started singing fewer rhythmic numbers and more romantic ballads. Things now moved on at speed. He left the Rhythm Boys after he missed a show and the group were briefly put on the blacklist by the musicians union and CBS Radio heard him and offered Bing a network contract. Wife, brother and Bing moved to New York and, in September 1931 began a nightly 15 minute broadcast over the CBS Radio Network. As singer-pianist, author and record producer Larry Carr once so aptly put it:

“After six long years of learning and honing his craft, he was an overnight success!”

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King of Jazz: A 2018 Review

BY MIKE CLARK

Criterion;Musical;$29.95 DVD, $39.95 Blu-ray;Not rated.Stars Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Laura La Plante, The Rhythm Boys (with Bing Crosby). 

Even if all of them currently existed, at all or in ideal form, you likely wouldn’t have to sit through many of the early-talkie screen musical revues to realize that King of Jazz is the standout specimen from a discredited litter. And such faint praise, gotta say, prodigiously underrates the most bug-eyed time with a movie I’ve had in a while, thanks to what Criterion has done with this color/design landmark’s costly, long-gestating and almost full-length 4K restoration, which had already dazzled friends of mine in public showings. There was already enough interest in the film’s unearthing to inspire a 2016 coffee table book by James Layton and David Pierce (King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman’s Technicolor Revue), who also offer a history of this tangled Universal production in another of Criterion’s ultra-classy bonus sections (did someone also say Garry Giddins and Michael Feinstein just for starters? — Lordy).

I remember Whiteman well from my days as an inveterate boomer-kid TV watcher, but the truth is that he was semi-forgotten even then and his status as a jazz figure (much less jazz royalty) was very much in decline to anyone who was embracing all things Miles or Thelonious. He was still, however, a formidable physical presence, what with an offbeat mustache that would have disfigured even Clark Gable and physical heft directly out of the Oliver Hardy laboratory that had at one time (per Giddins) engendered major news stories whenever he attempted a diet. This made him as unlikely a bet for movie stardom as Kate Smith and Liberace later turned to be, and all the frittering around to find a format that could adequately present him on screen (there was a kind of revolving door of directorial possibilities for the movie as well) forced delays on production that indirectly resulted in the picture’s severe underperformance at the box office.

So rather than make him a romantic lead or a Cupid to younger lovers, this peer-respected orchestra leader — who had helped spur the first performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and included the young Bing Crosby with the Rhythm Boys as part of his lineup — ring-mastered a performance revue whose delights genuine and demented included a “Rhapsody” reprise; Bing’s very first screen appearance; the Russell Markett Dancers (who soon evolved into the Rockettes); and the first cartoon in Technicolor (by Walter Lantz) in a manner that might later have reminded people of a far more elaborate “Ed Sullivan Show” had the picture remained in circulation. To this was added the much celebrated stage director John Murray Anderson to film it (this should not have been his only movie); art/costume direction by Herman Rosse, who soon figured in some of Universal’s biggest horror staples of the early ’30s; and even a huge crane that had been previously purchased by the studio and must have made Busby Berkeley’s mouth water.

None of this is to suggest that every number here is a winner, but even Jazz’s not infrequent wincers (or would-be wincers were it not for the harmonious components that combine for the presentation) are more riveting than not to watch because I’ve never seen any two-color Technicolor movie look this great. Even an otherwise leaden bridal number early on washes pleasantly over the viewer thanks to its cornucopia of visual cosmetics. And then, for a capper, we see this veil — which looks long enough to cover half the width of a small U.S. state and expensive enough by itself to have covered the cost of Lash La Rue’s total screen oeuvre.

Seeing Crosby with semi-rouged cheeks is an unusual sight, though when he and the “Boys” break into snippets of “Mississippi Mud” and “Happy Beat,” it’s so enthralling that these pink-ish cheeks recede to another part of the brain. Jazz was Crosby’s only color movie until Paramount’s Dixie in 1943 and one of the very few Bings from his home studio that controlling Universal hasn’t released in this country (there is an official Region 2 DVD). This is almost surely due to that biopic’s minstrel-show angle — and even despite its inclusion of “Sunday, Monday and Always,” one of his biggest hits the era. So seeing Jazz with Crosby in color here is a real gift that whets my appetite (not that any whetting could ever be needed) for the long awaited Vol. 2 of Giddins’ definitive Crosby biography, due in November.

When one of Bing’s many 20s benders (he later brought personal experience to The Country Girl) led to a car crash and a dress-down the judge in court, the singer probably dodged a career bullet when his intended big “gaucho” number went to John Boles — whose appearances for me are always complicated by Anita O’Day’s assertion in her autobiography that Boles raped her in her dressing room (she later backtracks or softens this a little, but still …). This splashy set piece is inevitably risible but is (again) put over by the color schemes, lighting and, well, total design. So the payoff is that when we really do have something to write home about content-wise — as with otherwise non-existent footage of violinist Joe Venuti and guitarist Eddie Lang playing up a storm together, or the finale that sends everyone home with a bang — this is a not inapt movie to be seeing just as 2001 celebrates its 50th anniversary because these scenes, at least, have a comparably hypnotic effect.

Unfortunately, there weren’t nearly enough patrons to go home with a bang or otherwise, because the delayed production landed Jazz at the end of an early-talkie-musical cycle that had already snapped viewer tolerance. This is a tragedy because, for all of its sporadic creakiness, this one’s incomparably better than MGM’s Hollywood Revue of 1929 (which is nowhere near as entertaining as its oft-excerpted two-color “Singin’ in the Rain” number might suggest) or Warner’s Show of Shows, which is instructional only as a primer in understanding just what it was that Show emcee and Bob Hope influence Frank Fay “had” (apparently, not much, said his onetime abused wife Barbara Stanwyck).

Jazz started to exist for modern-day audiences as something more than a rumor a few decades back, and Universal even released an official VHS in 1992 — a pre-restoration eyesore with inferior sound (I should have mentioned that the new Blu-ray is also easy on the ear) and a slightly shorter running time than the restoration print, which itself is missing relatively minor footage. And now for a story: A chuckling colleague of mine roaming the files during our AFI Theater days stumbled into a solid gold letter from MCA chief exec/CEO Lew Wasserman himself, whose chew-outs were legendary. Our then AFIT boss, possessed of certain genius but one for whom “right clearances” was not a middle name, had apparently run Jazz(this was before our time) when MCA-owned Universal had told him he couldn’t (God knows where he got the print). So here’s the Lew Wasserman letterhead across the top of a letter from possibly the most powerful person in Hollywood that begins: “Dear Mr. XXXX, I fail to understand … .” That’s an opening scarier than anything in a Universal horror movie from a guy that the late twinkle-eyed producer David Brown once speculated (in the 2005 documentary The Last Mogul) had had only one orgasm of his life reading the grosses on Jaws.

As for bonus goodies, we have Feinstein interviewed for a musical backgrounder; a couple germane Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons; a Whiteman performance short subject; deleted scenes; a jam-packed essay by the knowledgeable and verbally magnetic Farran Smith Nehme, who’s one of my favorite film writers of the impressive many who are 125 years younger than I; and a voiceover commentary by Giddins, critic Gene Seymour and (hold on) musician/bandleader Vince Giordano — each of whom can fill in the others’ infrequent blanks. This trio is full of all kinds of nuggets, including anecdotes about how blisteringly hot the Technicolor lights were when the entire Whiteman band had to play inside a way oversized piano — one out of the last reel of two from The Incredible Shrinking Man — in tuxes. And how big were the piano keys? About a foot long.

King of Jazz isn’t anywhere near perfect, but it is perfectly amazing, and so, again, is one of those discs that justify the invention of Blu-rays (don’t even think of talking to me of streaming, OK?). Along the way, Whiteman gets a little renewed overdue due. He didn’t really play jazz as we know it, but it wasn’t like what had come before amid a period of real pop-cultural flux. Next to the bridal number here, he really was out of a new century.

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COMING SOON: KING OF JAZZ TO DVD

Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day. 

Starring the bandleader Paul Whiteman, then widely celebrated as the King of Jazz, the film drew from Broadway variety shows of the time to present a spectacular array of sketches, performances by such acts as the Rhythm Boys (featuring a young Bing Crosby), and orchestral numbers overseen by Whiteman himself (including a larger-than-life rendition of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”)—all lavishly staged by veteran theater director John Murray Anderson and beautifully shot in early Technicolor.

Long available only in incomplete form, King of Jazz appears here newly restored to its original glory, offering a fascinating snapshot of the way mainstream American popular culture viewed itself at the dawn of the 1930s.

Disc Features:

-New 4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
-New audio commentary featuring jazz and film critic Gary Giddins, music and cultural critic Gene Seymour, and musician and bandleader Vince Giordano
-New introduction by Giddins
-New interview with musician and pianist Michael Feinstein
-Four new video essays by authors and archivists James Layton and David Pierce on the development and making of King of Jazz
-Deleted scenes and alternate opening-title sequence
-All Americans, a 1929 short film featuring a version of the “Melting Pot” number that was restaged for the finale of King of Jazz
-I Know Everybody and Everybody’s Racket, a 1933 short film featuring Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra
-Two Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons from 1930, featuring music and animation from King of Jazz

MORE DETAILS HERE

THE MOVIE THAT ALMOST ENDED BING'S CAREER

Legendary crooner Bing Crosby was offered a big solo number in his film debut. Instead, he ended up in jail for driving under the influence and getting into a car wreck during Prohibition.

“King of Jazz’’ (1930), which will be restored, is a super-lavish color musical revue presided over by the film’s namesake, Crosby’s then-employer, famed bandleader Paul Whiteman.

Crosby appears in four numbers with early partners Harry Barris and Al Rinker — they were jointly billed as the Rhythm Boys — and sings alone over the opening credits. The crooner was also assigned a solo production number, “Song of the Dawn.’’

That didn’t happen, partly because Whiteman arranged for his performers to all purchase discounted Fords — each including a spare tire on the rear emblazoned with a caricature of Whiteman — to drive around Los Angeles.

On Nov. 16, 1929, Crosby took time out from rehearsing his solo to attend a college football game.

“There was quite a shindig after the game in our studio bungalow, involving tippling, but not to excess,’’ Crosby recalled in an article he wrote for the Hollywood Reporter in 1955.

The accident occurred while Crosby was dropping a female guest off at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with his convertible.

“Bing made a left turn into an oncoming car with such force that he and his passenger were knocked over the windshield and onto the pavement,’’ writes Crosby biographer Gary Giddins. “He was fine, but the woman was bloody and unconscious.’’Modal Trigger

Police arrested Crosby and the other driver, “who in Bing’s account was ‘more drunk than he was,’ ” Giddins told the Los Angeles Times in 2007. Crosby “felt it was an injustice,’’ Giddins said.

A week later, Crosby showed up for his court appearance in golf attire, infuriating the judge, who sentenced the crooner to 60 days in the slammer. But the accident was never reported in the newspapers at the time and, after he became a star, Crosby’s arrest and court records vanished, the LA Times says.

Despite an incident that film historian David Stenn says “could have well ended Bing’s career,’’ Crosby went on to lasting fame and fortune as a singer and actor, recording the all-time classic “White Christmas’’ and winning a Best Actor Oscar for “Going My Way’’ in 1945.

Two decades before his death in 1977, the beloved performer came clean about the accident and was philosophical about losing his big number in “King of Jazz,’’ which went to singer John Boles.

“[Boles] had a bigger voice and a better delivery for that kind of song than I had, and I often wondered what might have happened to me if I had sung it,’’ Crosby wrote. “I might have flopped with the song. I might have been cut out of the picture. I might never have been given another crack at a song in any picture.”

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AUDIO ASPIRIN: MUDDY WATER

BING AND HIS 1929 DUI

Decades before Paris Hilton and voracious media hordes anxiously awaited her release from a county jail, aspiring crooner Bing Crosby was quietly jailed with nary a mention in the newspapers. And after he became a star, his arrest and court records just as quietly vanished. Crosby, then 27, crashed his car in front of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in November 1929 after a night of drinking. This was during Prohibition, when liquor was illegal in the U.S. The incident is also documented in a 2001 biography by Gary Giddins and in a 1955 Hollywood Reporter article written by Crosby.

In 1929, Crosby and his trio, the Rhythm Boys, came west to film the Whiteman musical, a vaudeville-type production. To make the band feel at home, Universal Studios, the film's producer, built a recreational lodge for the 24 musicians on the back lot. Whiteman arranged for each of them to buy a Ford to drive around L.A. "We all bought autos -- or at least we made the down payments with money which Pops [Whiteman] advanced to us, then deducted from our salaries," Crosby wrote in the Nov. 15, 1955, article in the Hollywood Reporter. Bing chose a convertible. "Pops had promised me a song, 'Song of the Dawn,'" Crosby wrote in the article. "I rehearsed and rehearsed, then took time out to see the SC-UCLA game." Crosby was a fan of St. Mary's College, or SMC, and the Galloping Gaels beat UCLA at the Coliseum on Nov. 16, 1929.

"There was quite a shindig after the game in our studio bungalow, involving some tippling, but not to excess," his brother recalled. Bing evidently drove an unknown party guest to her hotel, the Hollywood Roosevelt. There, Bing told his brother, "a car bumped mine after the party," and he was taken to the slammer. The other driver, also allegedly drunk, was arrested, though his name is not known. "Bing made a left turn into an oncoming car with such force that he and his passenger were knocked over the windshield and onto the pavement. He was fine, but the woman was bloody and unconscious,"

Giddins wrote in "Bing Crosby, A Pocketful of Dreams: The Early Years 1903-1940." "He practically drove through the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel," Bobbe Brox Van Heusen, a singer in Whiteman's film, told Giddins. From the Lincoln Heights jail, Crosby called a friend and he was bailed out a day later. Golfing attire in court At his court hearing, he came "directly from the golf course, wearing green plus-fours, an orange sweater and check socks," Giddins wrote. The judge didn't take kindly to his attire, or to his drinking. He asked the singer if he was familiar with the 18th Amendment, the constitutional measure enacting Prohibition. "Yes, but no one pays much attention to it," Crosby reportedly replied. Crosby maintained his innocence, claiming he was a victim of a bad driver and a zealous cop. "But it was his brazen court performance," Giddins wrote, that got him a sentence of 60 days. Crosby fumed in his cell over the severity of his sentence. He was later transferred to a jail with a liberal visitation policy.

His new jailers apparently allowed two police officers to escort Crosby to the studio during the day and back to jail at night. But during the two weeks or so it took to arrange the deal, Whiteman gave Crosby's solo to John Boles, arguing it was too costly to hold up filming. It's not clear how Crosby's arrest records were erased, how his sentence was calculated or whether the judge specified he serve it all -- but he got out early. Once Crosby became secure in his career, he became philosophical about the 1929 arrest and his loss of the solo. "[Boles] had a bigger voice and a better delivery for that kind of song than I had, and I often wondered what might have happened to me if I had sung it. I might have flopped with the song. I might have been cut out of the picture. I might never have been given another crack at a song in any picture."

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BING AND THE RINKER SIBLINGS

The music careers of a couple of the twentieth century’s most significant singing stars -- Bing “The King of the Crooners” Crosby and Mildred “That Princess of Rhythm” Bailey -- are so intertwined that their stories are perhaps best told as one. Those two innovative Jazz Age vocalists both went on to conquer the music world in big ways, but their shared beginnings on the fringes of the Spokane, Washington, Prohibition Era speakeasy jazz scene were quite humble.

From playing drums for the high school’s jazz band, Crosby went on to Gonzaga University where he fell in with a local dance combo called the Dizzy Seven. That combo played high-school dances and illicit bathtub-gin-fueled parties for a few months before Crosby was lured away by the Musicaladers, another local band with a pianist/bandleader, Al Rinker, whose older sister, Mildred Rinker, happened to be a sales-clerk at Bailey’s Music Shop. And it was there that the guys were exposed to all the hot records by such jazz favorites as the original Dixieland Band, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, the Memphis Five, and even Vic Meyer’s dance band from Seattle.

For the next couple years the Musicaladers performed at the Manito Park Social Club, the Casino Theater, the Pekin Café, Lareida’s Dance Pavilion, and then at Spokane’s Clemmer Theater where a new manager soon dropped the band in favor of just a “novelty” duo: Rinker on piano and Crosby singing, dancing, and jiving.

That “Vo-do-de-o Stuff”

Meanwhile, Rinker’s sister -- who’d adopted the stage name of “Mildred Bailey” -- had become a minor sensation in Los Angeles where she “was singing the blues nightly in the city’s most popular speakeasy, the Silver Grill.” Like Crosby, she too had shown an early aptitude for music, playing the family piano throughout her childhood. But then, after their mother passed away, she was sent to live with an aunt in Seattle. There as a teenager she earned an income playing in silent-movie houses and demonstrating sheet music for customers at Woolworth’s Department Store. Upon returning to Spokane (and while working at Baileys) she got her first gig playing at the town’s hippest speakeasy, Charlie Dale’s, and soon headed off to pursue a quest for fame and fortune in Hollywood.

Inspired by Bailey’s easy success, Crosby and Rinker left Spokane on October 15, 1925, in an old 1916 Model-T Ford and with high hopes of following her path to success. But their path to Hollywood included a brief visit to the coast. According to Crosby: “Our first stop was Seattle. We wanted to hear Jackie Souders’ band at the Butler Hotel. We’d heard him on the radio and we’d met him when he played in Spokane.” Upon arrival in Seattle the boys were introduced to both Souder and, apparently, another top band-leader Vic Meyers (who was often based at the town’s swankiest speakeasy, the Rose Room of the Butler Hotel). Various conflicting accounts suggest that both witnessed the duo’s audition.

Crosby himself once recalled that it Souders who “gave us an audition and then put us on at the Butler over a week end when the place was filled with University of Washington kids. The songs and arrangements we did were mostly fast-rhythm songs and I sang a couple of solos. ... We got a good reception, and we could have stayed there a while, working a night or two a week, but we had heading south on our minds.”

Interestingly, both Souders' and Meyers' recollections of that day differed from that seemingly rosy account by the young singer whose mumbly vocal approach would later be hailed as the “crooner” style. A reporter with The Seattle Times later interviewed the band-leaders and wrote that Meyers witnessed the fateful audition when the unknown “jug-eared young baritone auditioned for a soloist’s job. He had a nice bouncy style and Meyers was impressed. But John Savage, hotel proprietor, took Meyers aside and said: "Can the kid sing a ballad?" Meyers asked "the kid" to sing a ballad. It came out with the same bouncy boo-boo-boo sound. Savage shook his head in a "no-dice" motion.” Souders concurred saying “We all thought they were pretty good, but the hotel owner, the late John E. Savage, said he didn’t like all that "vo-do-de-o stuff" and wouldn’t hire them.”

Either way -- hired or fired -- the duo gassed up their jalopy and continued southbound. Legend holds that they also played for a week at a Tacoma theater and “in several speakeasies at Portland and San Francisco en route” -- finally making it nearly to Hollywood before their engine blew up and Mildred had to drive out towards Bakersfield, California, to rescue them. Wanting to introduce them to the bright lights and big city action of Hollywood, Bailey first took her brother and his musical partner to the Silver Grill where they watched her perform, and then she worked to get them an audition with the Fanchon and Marco theatrical company who booked a circuit of nearly 40 West Coast theaters. Hired, the duo worked that circuit a few times and then were signed to appear in the Morrisey Music Hall Revue, a show created and financed by a highly successful former-Seattle-based song-writer, Arthur Freed.

It was on October 18, 1926 -- just a year after leaving Spokane -- that the guys recorded their debut disc (“I’ve Got The Girl”) with Don Clarke and his Biltmore Hotel Orchestra for a big-time label, Columbia Records. Soon after, they were discovered by a New York band-leader, Paul “The King of Jazz” Whiteman -- and with Harry Barris joining the act as a second pianist, the trio became Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys. The following year Whiteman and the boys cut a record (“Wistful and Blue” / “Pretty Lips”) that became a smash hit, which led to Crosby cutting a solo disc, 1927’s “Muddy Water.”

In 1929, Rinker was able to return all the favors by helping out his sister when she threw a house party. He invited his boss, and when Whiteman heard Bailey sing a song he hired her on the spot. And with that hiring, Whiteman became the first national-level orchestra leader to feature a female vocalist -- a historic moment that soon caused “other dance bands in the copycat fashion of show business” to add “female singers too.” That same year -- and now billed as “That Princess of Rhythm” -- Bailey cut her debut recording, “What Kind O’ Man Is You,” for Columbia.

It was in 1930 -- and just after concluding a string of concerts at Seattle’s Civic Auditorium, the Olympic Hotel’s Spanish Ballroom, and in Portland at Cole McElroy’s Spanish Ballroom and the KOIN radio studios in the New Heathman Hotel -- that Whiteman cut the Rhythm Boys loose. He’d begun to feel disenchanted with his new stars -- especially Crosby, who he thought goofed-off too much. Whiteman criticized the duo for always chasing girls and wanting to play golf. That the guys had recently started hanging out in Harlem with black stars like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington -- and reports that Crosby had taken up reefer smoking with Louis Armstrong -- probably didn’t help matters.

Then, right in the middle of filming The King of Jazz movie, Crosby got sentenced to 30 days in jail on a drunk-driving charge, missed his shot at making a solo appearance in the film, and angered his boss. When Whiteman headed back to New York, the Rhythm Boys were left behind.

Meanwhile, in 1932 Bailey debuted “Ol’ Rockin’ Chair’s Got Me” on a Chicago-based live broadcast of Whiteman’s weekly Old Gold radio show, and the tune sparked a public response that was immediate and overwhelming. A studio recording of the tune became such a huge hit that Bailey was ever after known as the “Rockin’ Chair Lady.” The record also made significant jazz history as “the first recording by a 'girl singer' with a big band, an innovation that would set the pattern for the swing era.” Bailey also gained attention by recording tunes with the same top players who backed Billie Holiday’s classic sessions -- and plenty of people took notice of her trail-blazing ways when she began fronting an all-black combo, Mildred Bailey and Her Oxford Browns. Bailey also married jazzman, Red Norvo, they became known as “Mr. and Mrs. Swing,” and his combo backed her on a series of fine hits prior to Bailey’s death in 1951.

Since then, Bailey has been acknowledged by music historians variously as: “one of the most dynamic musicians of the swing era,” “a fine singer ... with perfect intonation and pitch. Her interpretation of lyrics on ballads was spellbinding, and she was superb at up-tempo tunes, where her knowledge of harmonics was utilized to sing variations on the melodic theme that were years ahead of her time,” a stylistic innovator who had “directly influenced the vocal style of legendary singers such as Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday,” “the first non-black female singer to be accepted in jazz and the first female big-band vocalist,” and with “the possible exception of Billie Holiday (who could even be considered Bailey's own discovery), Bailey was the most consistent and prolific female jazz singer of the ‘30s. ... No understanding of pop and jazz singing can be considered complete without factoring in Mildred Bailey. She is one of the essential missing links of American music.”

And the saga of Crosby and the Rinker siblings is one of the great musical “missing links” in Pacific Northwest jazz history...

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SPOTLIGHT ON HARRY BARRIS

The Rhythm Boys was a vocal trio that was far ahead of its time. For the few years the group was in existance, the Rhythm Boys were a very popular feature of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. There were three members of the trio - with the most famous member being Bing Crosby, of course. However there were two other talented members. One was Al Rinker, who was the brother of blues singer Mildred Bailey, and Harry Barris. Barris was a gifted and talented song writer, who unfortunately faded into obsecurity with the passages of time.

Harry Barris was born in New York City on November 24, 1905. Barris was a professional pianist at 14 and touring with his own group by 17. In 1926 Paul Whiteman, at the suggestion of his violinist Matty Malneck, hired Barris to join the vocal duo of Bing Crosby and Al Rinker, and the Rhythm Boys were born. For the next three years they were featured with Whiteman’s band, which included legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Bix was prominently featured along with the Rhythm Boys on Whiteman’s successful 1928 recording of Barris’ “Mississippi Mud”. A 1930 feature film on Whiteman and his band, the King of Jazz, was the first film appearance for Crosby and the Rhythm Boys.

In May 1930 the trio joined Gus Arnheim’s popular orchestra, appearing with the group at the prestigious Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. It was with Arnheim’s band that Crosby had his first big hit as a soloist, in 1931, with the Barris/Gordon Clifford composition “I Surrender Dear.”

When Bing left to pursue a solo career, Barris married Arnheim vocalist Loyce Whiteman (Paul Whiteman's daughter), and the two toured as a duo. Barris continued to work with a number of bands, but he had developed a drinking problem which caused him to curtail his composing in 1935. Partly due to Crosby’s help, he appeared in small roles in dozens of films, often without credit, as a musician or bandleader, and he entertained troops during WWII along with comedian Joe E. Brown.

Barris wrote a number of early hits for Crosby, including “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” with lyrics by Ted Koehler and Billy Moll and recorded by Bing in 1931.

In 1943, after a hiatus of 13 years, The Rhythm Boys were reunited for the last time on the radio program Paul Whiteman Presents.

Barris appeared in 57 films between 1931 and 1950, usually as a band member, pianist and/or singer. In The Lost Weekend (1945), he is the nightclub pianist who humiliates Ray Milland by singing "Somebody Stole My Purse". An unusual change of pace for Barris was his comedy role in The Fleet's In (1942), as a runty sailor named Pee Wee who perpetrates malapropisms in a surprisingly deep voice. Many of the roles Barris had were in Bing movies such as "Birth Of The Blues" (1941),"Holiday Inn" (1942), and "Here Comes The Waves" (1945).

Offscreen, Barris successfully composed songs including "Mississippi Mud", "I Surrender, Dear", and "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams". However, alcohol took over Barris' life in the 1950s. After three failed marriages and even more failed business ventures, Harry died virtually a pauper on December 13, 1962 at the age of 57.

Barris was the uncle of game show host and producer Chuck Barris who, among other things, not only co-created and hosted The Gong Show in the second half of the 1970's but was also the subject of the George Clooney film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

THE HISTORY OF THE RHYTHM BOYS

Bing Crosby and Al Rinker had been together in a Jazz band in Spokane, Washington while in college. The band was so popular that the two dropped out of college and drove Rinker's Model T to Los Angeles where Rinker's sister, Mildred Bailey, who was a Jazz singer was working. Shortly after their arrival in Los Angeles they landed a gig on the vaudeville circuit, as a vocal act. Some members of Paul Whiteman's Orchestra, caught their act and recommended them to Whiteman who hired them in October of 1926.

While waiting to join Whiteman's Orchestra they made their first record "I've Got the Girl" with Don Clark's Orchestra ( (a former member of Whiteman's Orchestra) at The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles (506 South Grand Ave.). Bing and Al then joined the Whiteman Orchestra in Chicago, where they made their first records with Whiteman. At first, things didn't go well for Crosby and Rinker. Whiteman's audience didn't like them and the theatre manager where they were playing at the time asked that they be dropped from the act, but rather than drop them, Whiteman added a young singer and song writer, Harry Barris to the act. The act was billed as the Rhythm Boys. The trio sang in three part harmony with both Rinker and Barris playing piano. Barris wrote a song called "Mississippi Mud" which became a hit with the Whiteman Orchesta and featured Bix Beiderbecke on cornet.

After awhile, Whiteman and Crosby were not getting along. Bing drank a lot had landed in jail a couple of times. He missed some of the filming of Whiteman's movie "King Of Jazz," after being involved in an auto accident while driving drunk. Whiteman pulled some strings and got Bing released from the jail. Crosby was escorted in handcuffs to the studio by a police officer whenever he was scheduled to appear in the film. After the movie was completed in 1930, Whiteman fired them. The Rhythm Boys then joined the Gus Arnheim Orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. Bing was featured more and more as a soloist, and in 1931, Bing recorded his first solo hit, I Surrender, Dear with Gus Arnheim and his Cocoanut Grove Orchestra.

Radio broadcasts from the Cocoanut Grove made Bing a star, but his wild ways caused him to start missing performances, and Crosby's pay was docked. The Rhythm Boys quit playing at the club, but the local musicians' union banned them from playing, which caused the Rhythm Boys to call it quits. Bing's solo career soared after the Rhythm Boys broke up. Crosby went on to become one of the biggest stars of Twentieth century. The Rhythm Boys performed only one more time, in 1943, on a radio broadcast called Paul Whiteman Presents...

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SPOTLIGHT ON PAUL WHITEMAN

Paul Whiteman not only had one of the greatest bands of the 1920s, but he also was responsible for introducing the world to such future icons as Bing Crosby, the Dorsey Brothers, Eddie Lang, and countless others. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he also had a teen show which was the forerunner of American Bandstand and gave a young Dick Clark his first job. Today many people do not remember Whiteman much, but he was the pioneer in many facets of entertainment. Whiteman was born in Denver, Colorado in 1890. After a start as a classical violinist and violist, he led a jazz-influenced dance band, which became popular locally in San Francisco, California in 1918. In 1920 he moved with his band to New York City where they started making recordings for Victor Records which made the Paul Whiteman Orchestra famous nationally. Whiteman became the most popular band director of the decade. In a time when most dance bands consisted of six to 10 men, Whiteman directed a much larger and more imposing group of up to 35 musicians. By 1922, Whiteman already controlled some 28 ensembles on the east coast and was earning over a $1,000,000 a year. In May 1928 Whiteman signed with Columbia Records, and stayed with that label until September 1931, when he returned to Victor. He would remain signed with Victor until March 1937. In the 1920s the media referred to Whiteman as "The King of Jazz". Whiteman emphasized the way he had approached the already well-established style of music, while also organizing its composition and style in his own fashion. While most jazz musicians and fans consider improvisation to be essential to the musical style, Whiteman thought the genre could be improved by orchestrating the best of it, with formal written arrangements. Whiteman's recordings were popular critically and successful commercially, and his style of jazz music was often the first jazz of any form that many Americans heard during the era. For more than 30 years Whiteman, referred to as "Pops", sought and encouraged musicians, vocalists, composers, arrangers, and entertainers who looked promising. In 1924 Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, which was premiered by Whiteman's orchestra with George Gershwin at the piano. Another familiar piece in Whiteman's repertoire was Grand Canyon Suite, by Ferde Grofé. Whiteman hired many of the best jazz musicians for his band, including Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Steve Brown, Mike Pingitore, Gussie Mueller, Wilbur Hall (billed by Whiteman as "Willie Hall"), Jack Teagarden, and Bunny Berigan. He also encouraged upcoming African American musical talents, and initially planned on hiring black musicians, but Whiteman's management eventually persuaded him that doing would be career suicide due to racial tension and America's segregation of that time. However, Whiteman crossed racial lines behind-the-scenes, hiring black arrangers like Fletcher Henderson and engaging in mutually-beneficial efforts with recording sessions and scheduling of tours.In late 1926 Whiteman signed three candidates for his orchestra: Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, and Harry Barris. Whiteman billed the singing trio as The Rhythm Boys. Crosby's prominence in the Rhythm Boys helped launch his career as one of the most successful singers of the 20th century. Paul Robeson (1928) and Billie Holiday (1942) also recorded with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Whiteman had 28 number one records during the 1920s and 32 during his career. At the height of his popularity, eight out of the top ten sheet music sales slots were by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. During the 1930s Whiteman had several radio shows, including Kraft Music Hall and Paul Whiteman's Musical Varieties, which featured the talents of Bing Crosby, Mildred Bailey, Jack Teagarden, Johnny Mercer, Ramona, Durelle Alexander and others. In the 1940s and 1950s, after he had disbanded his orchestra, Whiteman worked as a music director for the ABC Radio Network. He also hosted Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club from Philadelphia on ABC-TV from 1949–1954 (with announcer Dick Clark), and continued to appear as guest conductor for many concerts. His manner on stage was disarming; he signed off each program with something casual like, "Well, that just about slaps the cap on the old milk bottle for tonight. Whiteman was married four times; to Nellie Stack in 1908; to Miss Jimmy Smith; to Mildred Vanderhoff in 1922. In 1931 Whiteman married motion picture actress Margaret Livingston following his divorce from Vanderhoff that same year. The marriage to Livingston lasted until his death. Whiteman resided at Walking Horse Farm near the village of Rosemont in Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey from 1938 to 1959. After selling the farm to agriculturalist Lloyd Wescott, Whiteman moved to New Hope, Pennsylvania for his remaining years. The King Of Jazz died at the age of 77 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on December 29, 1967...