Can we talk about WWII era music?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by SITKOL'76, Apr 27, 2017.

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  1. wildroot indigo

    wildroot indigo Forum Resident

    Yes, with '40s Duke, I generally prefer the works before 'Black Brown and Beige' (which is also great, imo)...

    1940-42 favorites, most of them with Blanton:

    Morning Glory
    Cotton Tail
    Blue Goose
    Dusk
    All Too Soon
    Warm Valley
    Until Tonight
    Jumpin' Punkins
    Blue Serge
    After All
    Bakiff
    Chelsea Bridge
    Moon Mist
    What Am I Here For?
    Someone

    Also, a lot of great Ellington small-group sides are from this era (Lament For Javanette by Barney Bigard and His Orchestra was mentioned already).
     
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  2. marmil

    marmil It's such a long story...

    All great stuff. Ben Webster is my favorite Jazz tenor player. I think he's the most emotional. They used to call him "The Brute" because he had a nasty temper, but he also used to easily be brought to tears. His playing just kills me...
     
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  3. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    WTF?!?!
     
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  4. Egg Crisis

    Egg Crisis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Yorkshire, England
    Worth checking out for curiosity & historical value is Charlie And His Orchestra.
    During WWII the Nazis banned jazz. They considered it decadent and the fact that many of the jazz greats were black didn't go down too well with them either.
    So under the orders of Joseph Goebbels (as minister of propaganda) a jazz band was enlisted. The Lutz Templin band with singer Charlie (Karl Schwedler) were a fairly competent swing band. Charlie would sing the first verse straight, then subsequent verses would be rewritten. These would then be broadcast on the radio so British listeners who were tuning around the dial might inadvertantly tune into the broadcast and start listening. The propaganda and satire is pretty basic by todays standards and it's debatable whether as propaganda it had any effect apart from slightly annoying anyone who happened to tune in. Listening to the songs now I find them mildly amusing because of the absurdity of the whole thing.

    Stormy Weather


    Daisy
    Charlie and his Orchestra - Daisy (propaganda swing)
     
  5. JoeF.

    JoeF. Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    Interesting thread.
     
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  6. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident

    This stuff is so hot, it's crazy. Gibson, a white New Yorker, grew up near Harlem. He was a student at Juilliard in classical for years, at the same time honing his jazz and blues chops.
     
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  7. Coppertop Tester

    Coppertop Tester Forum Resident

    I recently picked up her entry in the Capitol Collectors Series and it kicks off with this track. I was surprised to hear the lyric, "And he trucked 'em on down that old fairway" which was later borrowed for "Train Kept A-Rollin'". Great CD!
     
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  8. Gasman1003

    Gasman1003 Forum Diplomat.

    Location:
    Liverpool, England
    So pleased you mentioned Dame Vera and posted the song you did :righton:

    The lyrics can seem trite now, but think back to the dark days of 1940 and 1941, when Britain and her empire stood alone, albeit with much unofficial help from the USA.
    It could really have gone so wrong and songs like this meant so much to the British people, they still do.

    My mother is now 88 and was a therefore a young girl during those dark days. Hearing these songs can still bring a tear to her eye.

    Here's another:

     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2017
  9. SITKOL'76

    SITKOL'76 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Colombia, SC
    Don't you just love the simplicity of songs like this



    Babyface - Art Mooney
     
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  10. tim_neely

    tim_neely Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Central VA
    "Pistol Packin' Mama," which hit #1 on the pop charts for a week in October 1943, had been recorded before the Musicians Union strike in 1942 and was held back for more than a year. Because of the recording ban, no one could cover it, so for the first three months the 78 was out, Dexter and Okeh (at that time Columbia's C&W label) had the charts to themselves.

    Decca, as one of the first majors to settle with the union, quickly got as many of its big-name artists back into the studios as it could. One of the first "new" singles to emerge from Decca was a "Pistol Packin' Mama" cover by Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters, which raced to #2 on the pop charts.

    The success of "Pistol Packin' Mama" led directly to the creation of a separate "folk" chart in the January 8, 1944 issue of Billboard. ("Folk" had a much broader definition in the 1940s than it does today.) This chart, over time, eventually became known as Hot Country Songs. Perhaps appropriately, the first two #1 songs on this chart were the Crosby/Andrews and the Dexter versions of "Pistol Packin' Mama."
     
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  11. marmil

    marmil It's such a long story...

    Think about it: We got into the war at the end of '41. You had to be 18 to enlist or be drafted but many 16 year-olds enlisted as well. If they were 16 in 1941 they were born in 1925 which would make them 92 now. 690m people served in the war, 72m died. So that's 618m on both sides. In the US, there are ~1.7m vets still alive and ~275,000 Germans. ~850 US WW2 vets die every day. I can't figure the rest of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan etc. The last WWI vet lived to be 110. He died in 2011.

    Enough of that:

     
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  12. JoeD

    JoeD Forum Resident

    I'm not British but I love Vera Lynn
     
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  13. William Smart

    William Smart 21st Century Schizoid Man

    Location:
    North Haven, CT
    Lol I still love this post, probably will in another 6 months. Excellent!
     
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  14. Wally Swift

    Wally Swift Yo-Yoing where I will...

    Location:
    Brooklyn New York
    Big fan of German parade marches. Shellac's are too expensive but there's plenty of vinyl comps. See what too much Heino can do to you!
     
  15. Malina

    Malina Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    I love Johnny Mercer. His vocal style is so cool.

     
  16. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
    When I moved to Sun City AZ I discovered a thrift store ("Our hands, God's work) that had a lot of inexpensive (i.e. "cheap") CDs. Since the Sun City population is elderly, and in fact constantly dying, a lot of WWll era music showed up and I nabbed a lot of it. Here is the One I would recommend, but there are lots more. This one is British, but does have some American content. The advantage with British is that they were in the war longer, so produced more of this music. This disc also has a few short clips from some of the more famous speeches from the ra, which I have found does not annoy me the way such things often do. This flow of music seems to have dried up, possibly we are running out of that age group.


    [​IMG]
     
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  17. Malina

    Malina Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    ASV did some good PD stuff, but they were bought out and then shut down.

    "Sanctuary's UK recorded music business was shut down shortly after Universal Music Group bought the firm in 2007.[3] This also included the ASV and ASV/Living Era imprints."

    ASV Records - Wikipedia
     
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  18. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
    No understanding of the music of WWll is complete without understanding the song "Lili Marlene. " While at my thrift store I discovered a collection of maybe 7 or 8 CDs, each filled with different versions of the song. The collection had been compiled by, judging from the packaging, a soldier who had been in WWll, and got a thing for the song and so scraped up as many versions as he could I have since discovered that Bear Family has done something similar. Anyway, his CDs are packaged with pictures of him in the service and pictures of the girl he left behind. The story of how the song eventually became beloved of German, British and American troops is a fascinating one and to better comprehend it I got his book. Which I wholeheartedly recumbent to the interested.[​IMG]
     
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  19. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    They were listening to so much Roy Acuff that Japanese soldiers insulted his name just to bother the GIs . . . and Babe Ruth, too.
     
  20. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
     
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  21. Gersh

    Gersh Forum Resident


    I now see where Thunderclap Newman's Something In The Air got the title from...

    In the comments to this clip of the Squadronaires' performance of There's Something In The Air, the group's last drummer, Laurie Brown, posts a fond reminiscence of Cliff Townshend. This must be one of the few modern references to Cliff Townshend which don't mention his famous son!

     
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  22. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Byrds do a great version.
     
  23. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
    Yes, as do the folks who made "Dr. Strangelove."
     
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  24. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
    Here is another of the CDs I picked up in Sun City. We can only imagine, or maybe we can't even do that, guess with "There's Something in the Air" meant to a bunch of RAF guys who were getting shot down just about as quickly as they were getting airborne. Have you ever looked at casualty rates for the RAF during WWll? Anyway it appears (liner notes) that the Squadronaires on the radio were very popular with the German troops, who much preferred them to what Goebbles & Co. was delivering on German
    radio.
    [​IMG]
     
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  25. Einar Einarsson Kvaran

    Einar Einarsson Kvaran King of his castle

    Location:
    Sun City AZ, USA
    Artie Shaw also lived life to the fullest, being, among thing, married 8 times including to Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, two of the most high profile Hollywood beauties of the day as well as being investigated by HUAC for, un-American Activities. And made great music.
     
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