[78-L] A Gathering of Giants

[Cary Ginell]

September 24 marked the 70th anniversary of probably the most remarkable concert in American popular music history, ASCAP's "Cavalcade of American Music." Six years ago, I wrote this article on this show for Music Reports, Inc.'s "Smart Licensing" newsletter - I missed commemorating the anniversary two months ago, so forgive the belated notice. Thought everyone might be interested in this retrospective.


A Gathering of Giants: The 1940 ASCAP 25th Anniversary Concert

				Cary Ginell

		OK, here's a short quiz question. On what day did the most 
concentrated collection of musical talent assemble for one of the most 
electrifying, unforgettable concerts of the 20th century? Was it 
Woodstock, 1969? The famed Benny Goodman jazz concert at Carnegie Hall 
in 1938? One of the Rock ?n' Roll Hall of Fame jam sessions? Well, 
whatever your choice, a vote surely should be cast for September 24, 
1940, when a "Who's Who" of Tin Pan Alley songwriters gathered for a 
concert held on an island in San Francisco Bay.

The 
occasion was the 25th anniversary of the founding of ASCAP, the agency 
founded in 1915 to collect royalties for its membership by licensing 
their works for public performances. In 1939, America was fretting about
 the inevitable war in Europe, and trying to decide between jumping in 
to help Great Britain from being overwhelmed by the Nazi machine or 
retaining its neutrality and riding out the war. In New York City, the 
World's Fair was being adversely affected by the turmoil in Europe, as 
many nations began dismantling their pavilions. New York mayor Fiorello 
LaGuardia ran into Gene Buck, then ASCAP's president, and the two of 
them began thinking of a way to take New Yorkers' minds off the war 
news. It was LaGuardia who suggested a series of concerts be staged to 
honor ASCAP's upcoming 25th anniversary. ASCAP's membership included 
many of the greatest names in popular and classical music; most of whom 
were still alive in 1939. Buck promised a grand show, with one concert 
held in September 1940 in San Francisco, the site of the Golden Gate 
International Exposition. The second concert would be held in New York 
the next month during the final week of the World's Fair. 

Up
 until 1940, ASCAP had contracted with the major radio networks to 
broadcast music published by ASCAP songwriters. But now, ASCAP wanted to
 change this practice, and negotiate a separate license with each 
station. The NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) balked at this, 
since it would obviously result in greater revenues for ASCAP and 
unfairly raise fees for each radio station. The deadlock resulted in the
 threat of a boycott by radio stations of all published material ASCAP 
represented, and the establishment by NAB of a rival organization to be 
called BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), which would then provide music for 
the networks.

The war in Europe was subsequently 
paralleled by a less violent, yet still rancorous war between the radio 
networks and ASCAP. The networks claimed that they could make any song a
 hit merely by broadcasting it on their radio stations. ASCAP responded 
by saying it took more than that to make a hit; it took talent. To prove
 this, ASCAP went ahead with the anniversary concerts, with Gene Buck 
assembling the greatest array of songwriting talent ever to appear in 
one place. 

The site of the first concert was the 
Golden Gate International Exposition Federal Plaza on Treasure Island, a
 small mound of land halfway between San Francisco and Oakland. The San 
Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge had been completed in late 1936, making the
 island accessible to traffic from both sides of San Francisco Bay, and 
on September 24, 1940, 25,000 people gathered for the first of two 
performances that day, one in the afternoon and the other that evening. 
The master of ceremonies for the afternoon concert was composer Deems 
Taylor, who was then in the process of providing the narration for Walt 
Disney's upcoming animation classic, Fantasia. Taylor introduced the 
afternoon's festivities, which would consist of a symphonic concert by 
American classical composers. It began with a performance of an overture
 based on the Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, arranged 
by Roy Harris and conducted by Howard Hanson, then director of the 
Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Hanson followed this 
with a performance of his own Third Symphony, which had been completed 
in 1938. Film composer Richard Hageman, who had just won an Academy 
Award for his work on the score for John Ford's Stagecoach, followed by 
conducting an excerpt from his ballet based on Robert Browning's The 
Ring and the Book.  Other American masters featured that afternoon 
included Charles Wakefield Cadman, William Grant Still, and Deems Taylor
 himself. 

The evening performance was held indoors at 
the California Coliseum at the behest of opera star John Charles Thomas,
 who didn't want to expose his voice to the San Francisco Bay fog. The 
Coliseum, which was designed to seat 9,476 people, was virtually bulging
 at its seams as an estimated 15,000 people jammed into the hall, 
cramming the aisles and even climbing the walls for space. An additional
 10,000 frustrated wannabes were redirected to Festival Hall, where they
 listened in on loud speakers. 

Gene Buck was the emcee
 for the evening concert, which was entitled "A Cavalcade of American 
Music by Those Who Make America's Music." At 8:45 pm (45 minutes late, 
due to the seating problems), the concert commenced with Howard Hanson 
conducting John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.  What followed
 was a jaw-dropping parade of the most prominent, legendary, and 
successful songwriters in American history up to that time, each 
performing his or her own compositions. 

Since few Tin 
Pan Alley songwriters were also performers, their renditions of their 
classics could hardly be compared with their respective commercial 
recordings by America's top performing artists. But the charm and 
magnitude of talent radiated from these writers, many of them wizened 
and long past their prime, and the audience became more excited with the
 introduction of each personality. Buck gave each one a glowing intro: 
the greatest of the great, shakily but enthusiastically singing or 
playing the most legendary songs of the first half of the twentieth 
century. Leo Robin sang Jack Benny's theme song, Love in Bloom, with 
co-writer Ralph Rainger accompanying on the piano. Albert Von Tilzer 
sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame, complete with the now forgotten verse 
concerning a girl named Katie, who didn't want her boyfriend to take her
 to a concert, preferring a baseball game instead (baseball fans might 
be shocked to discover that the venerable baseball anthem is actually 
about a girl's desire to attend a game that only men attended in 1908). 

The
 parade continued, with each performer upstaged by the next. Billy Hill 
sang The Last Round-Up. Shelton Brooks played Some of These Days on 
piano. Harold Arlen, who had been a jazz singer with bands led by 
Fletcher Henderson and Red Nichols, played piano while Judy Garland, 
just coming off the filming of The Wizard of Oz, sang Over the Rainbow. 
Others who performed and the songs they sang included L. Wolfe Gilbert 
(Waiting for the Robert E. Lee), the team of Burt Kalmar and Harry Ruby 
(Three Little Words), Walter Donaldson (My Blue Heaven), Ann Ronell 
(Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf), Arthur Freed (Singing in the Rain), 
James Monaco (You Made Me Love You), Jerome Kern (Smoke Gets in Your 
Eyes), Harry Armstrong (Sweet Adeline), Sigmund Romberg (Lover, Come 
Back to Me), Harry Warren (Jeepers Creepers), Jimmy McHugh (I Can't Give
 You Anything But Love), Hoagy Carmichael (Stardust), Peter DeRose (Deep
 Purple), and even W. C. Handy, who played a cornet solo on St. Louis 
Blues.

As the concert wound down to its inevitable 
conclusion, the audience, exhausted from applauding and from the 
emotional overload of seeing all of these legends in one place, held on 
for the grand finale. Jerome Kern returned to play Ol' Man River on the 
piano. And then came the venerable George M. Cohan, now an old man 
beyond his 62 years who would die less than two years later. Although 
Cohan had written many of the country's most famous and beloved 
patriotic tunes, he had only made commercial records on one occasion in 
1911. None of the songs he cut that day were any of his big hits, so 
this was a treat that few Americans had witnessed. Cohan bellowed out a 
medley consisting of his four greatest songs: Give My Regards to 
Broadway, Yankee Doodle Dandy, You're a Grand Old Flag, and finally, 
Over There, the last two songs having earned him a Congressional Medal 
of Honor for their inspiration of U.S. troops during World War I.  The 
audience's response to Cohan was electrifying. They wouldn't stop 
applauding and screaming their affection for the Grand Old Man of 
American song. 

But the show was not over yet. The 
reclusive Irving Berlin was the closing act, and as Berlin launched into
 a creaky version of God Bless America, the audience stood up and joined
 him in singing it. Berlin hadn't thought much of the song when he wrote
 it toward the end of World War I. "A little too jingoistic," he 
thought, and stuffed the music in a trunk. In 1939, when singer Kate 
Smith asked him for a patriotic song, he remembered God Bless America, 
which now seemed to fit the times, and Smith's radio rendition of it 
became the high point of her career. Now, as the shy and diminutive 
Berlin concluded the song, the applause rose like a tidal wave, and the 
concert ended. 

In his autobiography, W.C. Handy would 
describe the show as "a program that was never before nor can ever again
 be duplicated this side of Kingdom Come." A little over a year later, 
America was at war and the musical landscape would never be the same.

Although
 the 1940 Cavalcade of American Music was transcribed for posterity, it 
was never broadcast on radio nor was it heard by anyone for over a half 
century. Fortunately, ASCAP pressed a few sets of 16" transcription 
discs in preparation for their fight with NAB, but nothing became of 
them. No recordings of the October concert in New York have ever been 
found. In 1996, the San Francisco concert was finally released on four 
compact discs by the Music & Arts Programs of America record label 
(www.musicandarts.com). Listening to it, even 64 years later, is an 
emotional, incredible experience. If not for the dispute between ASCAP 
and NAB, we most likely would not have been able to hear this most 
remarkable program.		
			



It doesn't appear that Music and Arts still carries this set, but you can purchase it from the following:

For a postpaid copy of the 4-CD set Carousel Of American Music (Music and Arts 
Programs of America CD-971), send $53.50 to Norbeck & Peters, P.O. Box 4, 
Woodstock NY 12498.  Phone is 800-654-5302.