Vintage Music News

No. 5 - Autumn 2008

Vintage Concerts Evoke the Sweetest Memories

You won't believe the stories people in my audiences tell me. They hear me play a song and  shower me with stories. Though most tales are love stories, they often regale me with stories of celebrities, proms and sock hops, youthful escapades, sibling jealousies, long-lost friends and family get-togethers. I also hear tales of stage-door johnnies, soda jerks and drugstore cowboys. Finally, they talk about missed opportunities, chance encounters and romantic regrets.
     Along with great music, these poignant memories and associated emotions are palpable elements of every Vintage Music Concert. In the past decade I've woven the stories I've accumulated into the fabric of my concerts so all can enjoy the social art of sharing music — whether I play a cherished tune or half-forgotten lyric, praise a vintage guitar as cherished relic, make a wry point about romantic love or retrace the cobbled paths of Tin Pan Alley.
     For years people have asked me to share these tales so they will not be lost. Here, then, are some examples for all to enjoy.                               Ken Lelen

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Rockette's Mickey Tryst

After a concert in Red Bank NJ in November 2001, I got a lesson in the power of memory and how some oldsters communicate: abrupt but clear as daylight.

     A slim, white-haired woman came up and announced she was 95 years old and a former Rockette who'd danced at Radio City Music Hall in N.Y. City during the 1930s. I'd just sung Over The Rainbow, Judy Garland's signature song from the 1939 movie, "The Wizard of Oz." Hearing it, she said, reminded her that she knew "all the swells" in the 1930s and 1940s.

Mickey Rooney
Photo: Ted Allan

     Then, with a devilish grin and not-too-subtle wink, she told me: "Back in the day I dated Mickey Rooney," Garland's movie co-star and friend. Short in stature, but never short in confidence, he was a top box-office actor from 1939 to 1941.

     "Oh," I said. "You dated Mickey Rooney."

     "No," she said, "I dated Mickey Rooney," and winked again. Her wink, I realized, was key to the reminiscence, but I was unsure what it indicated about this long-ago assignation. Curious, I asked, "What do you want to tell me about this date?"

     "Did you know Mickey had eight wives?" she asked. "Well, our date lasted all night," she said with another wink, "but I never married the guy."

     So there it was. My nonagenarian friend was the proverbial One Who Got Away. One of many, I suspect, for Mr. Rooney.

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Second Subaltern Lizzie

At a November 2002 concert in Edison NJ, a woman with a British accent told me the Swing tunes I'd been singing revived memories of her work with an all-female ambulance crew in London during WW II.

     "After the Nazi air-bomber attacks, we'd search the rubble for people," she said. "I worked with Lizzie, an ambulance driver with more nerve than all us girls."

Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor 

      She'd drive in the worse areas without hesitation, the woman recalled. "You would not know she was somebody important," she said, referring to Princess Elizabeth, crowned Queen in 1952.

     During the war a teen-aged Elizabeth convinced her father, George VI (who remained at Buckingham Palace despite the Nazi bombings), that she could contribute to the war effort by joining the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service. Trained to repair and drive a truck, she was known as No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor.

     Her training was her first with non-royals, according to Wikipedia. She liked the work, which led her to send her own children to school rather than educate them at home. She also was the first female in the royal family to serve in the armed forces. At war's end, at V.E. Day festivities in London, Elizabeth and her sister, Princess Margaret, celebrated with the crowd until after midnight.

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Musical Crew Mates

After a November 2003 concert in Pompano Beach FL a gentleman asked about my Galiano, a small guitar made in New York City's Little Italy in 1920. Back then, it cost $8 wholesale, or about $15 retail. He said it reminded him of a small guitar he'd owned in the 1930s and 1940s.

     "I played a cheap, $12 Sears, Roebuck guitar," he said. "I played it for friends, family and dates, and when I went to war, I took it with me."

B-17F Flying Fortress

     During WW II he was lead pilot on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. He'd trained in south Florida and in mid-1942 he was assigned to a wartime airbase in England, taking his crew and his guitar with him. "I played it on our first long flight — a three-legged trip from the U.S. to England," he said. "In 15-hour flights we flew first from Florida south to Brazil, then east to Africa, and then north to England."

     On these and other long flights he'd put the plane on autopilot, pull out his guitar and sing over the airplane's intercom system to the rest of the crew.

     "By our 25th mission, when the war ended for all of us, my crew knew every song I knew," he recalled proudly.

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Kate Smith's Dream

People in my audiences often tell me have to go where memory takes you. You smell an aroma, see a picture, hear a melody, and you're transported to another time and place. You never know where a memory takes you go until you arrive.
     I was reminded of this in November 2001 when a woman in my audience in Red Bank NJ told me she enjoyed hearing me sing Dream A Little Dream Of Me. Hearing it revived a memory of seeing Kate Smith (1907 - 1986) introduce the song in Boston in April 1931.

Kate Smith

     Intrigued by this morsel of memory, I asked her what else she recalled of the Kate Smith and the day's events. "I don't remember much. I'm an old lady," she said. "But I was there with my sister and I was wearing  a blue dress."

     So I began introducing the song with a story about a woman in a blue dress and her sister at a Kate Smith concert in Boston.  Then, six months later a man at a concert in Bethlehem PA heard me sing the song and said, "I built the theater the woman talked about. It was the Metropolitan Theatre on Tremont Street in Boston."

     Opened in 1925, The Met was designed by Clarence Blackall, a leading theater architect. Considered an important Boston landmark in the Roaring Twenties, its crystal chandeliers and marble doorways made an elegant setting for people entertained by motion pictures, big bands and vaudeville.

     The theater still stands. In 1962 it was home to the Boston Ballet and many opera productions, but fell into disuse during the 1970s. However, in the early 1980s it was renovated for $9.8 million and renamed the Wang Theatre in honor of An Wang, founder of Wang Laboratories. Since its restoration, the Wang Theatre has hosted an array of world-class theater, music, dance and film.

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Backseat Memories

At a concert at Wayne NJ Public Library in June 2006, Jim Sandford, a spry 70-year-old, told me how pleased he was to hear the song Blue Moon. Written for the 1934 movie, "Manhattan Melodrama," with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, the song exclaims:

             Blue moon,

             you saw me standing alone

             without a dream in my heart

             without a love of my own.

     He recalled the song as it was sung by Connee Boswell, one of the three Boswell Sisters known for their jazz vocals during the 1930s. Later I learned that the lyrics heard today are actually the fourth version penned by Hart, and that Connee's 1935 version for Columbia Records was the first commercial recording of Blue Moon.

1938 Plymouth

     Still, he said, hearing me sing the song at the library on a balmy spring afternoon reminded him of a memorable summer's night when he was a teenager in the 1950s.

     "I got my first kiss from a girl as we sat in the back seat of a 1938 Plymouth and that song was playing on the radio," he recalled.

     "Enough information," I told him.

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Long, Long Time

It happens every time I sing It's Been A Long, Long Time, a 1945 hit song with music by Julie Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Popularized by several singers just as World War II ended, war-weary Americans were enchanted by its sentiment:

           Just kiss me once,

           then kiss me twice,

           then kiss me once again,

           it's been a long, long time.

     Back in the day it was common for record labels to release competing versions of hit songs. Thus, one rendition, by Harry James with vocal by Kitty Kallen, hit #1 on Billboard's charts on Nov. 24, 1945. Meanwhile, another version, by the Les Paul Trio with vocal by Bing Crosby (1903 - 1977), climbed the charts until it replaced the James-Kallen version at #1 on Dec. 8, 1945. Other copies of the song also charted that year, including one by Charlie Spivak and orchestra, with vocal by Irene Daye, and one by Stan Kenton and orchestra, with vocal by June Christy.

Bing Crosby

     Home-bound soldiers and stateside households heard several versions of the same tune from the fall of 1945 and to the winter of 1946. Today, when I sing it people say they associate the song with that narrow post-war time period as well as many bittersweet homecomings.

     Some former GIs, however, have less-than-fond feelings for the song. One man, stationed in the Pacific during WW II, told me he recalled hearing the song played over and over on the PA system of his stateside-bound ship at the end of the war.

     "I heard that song all the way from the Philippines to San Francisco," he said after a concert in Lancaster PA. "I was sick of that song by the time I got home."

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© 2008  Ken Lelen  -  All Rights Reserved