[78-L] War Of The Wolrds

[Elizabeth McLeod]

One thing worth considering is that dance band remotes were used by song
pluggers pushing "the latest tunes," and would often slip the bandleader a
little something to ensure their selections got played.

When you listen to a lot of remotes -- and I've probably listened to a
couple of hundred of them, mostly from 1938-40 - one thing you notice is how
top-heavy they are with current tunes. Sure, there's a few classics --
Stardust is a chestnut often heard, and swing bands often enjoyed exhuming
forgotten tunes from the twenties or even earlier and giving them a kick
with a fresh arrangement, but the emphasis in these broadcasts was usually
on current tunes, and the more current the better. A lot of the stuff on
these broadcasts was never commercially recorded, so ephemeral were the
songs.

I think it's telling that in "War Of The Worlds" they have "Bobby Millette"
playing from the non-existent "Hotel Martinet in Brooklyn." The audience in
1938 would have taken that as a cue that the band lacked sophistation -- the
image of Brooklyn in the popular culture of the time was that it was a
provincial backwater, where you might expect a hotel dance band to groan out
a bad arrangement of a four-year-old song nobody was whistling anymore. (In
fact, there's a couple of existing broadcasts from 19386 by a profoundly
mediocre dance band based in Williamsburg, "Anthony Witkowski and his
Brooklyn Knights," which with its screechy strings and out of tune saxes
sounds a lot like "Bobby Millette's" perfromance.

Elizabeth


On 9/15/20 2:27 PM, "Kristjan Saag" <saag at telia.com.invalid> wrote:

> 
Certainly there were newer songs in 1938 than those recorded in 1931.
But I'm
> not sure Xavier Cugat in New York, Ted Fiorito in Los Angeles, 
Lecuona Cuban
> Boys in Paris, Rosita Serrano in Berlin and Harry Roy & 
Mantovani in London
> and would have agreed that they recorded dated songs 
when they recorded "La
> Paloma" or "La Cumparsita" in 1937-1939. These 
were songs that had become
> classics. And that's a different matter.
As for "Stardust": both Benny Goodman
> and Bing Crosby re-recorded it in 
1939, Mills Brothers recorded it the same
> year...was that thanks to "War 
Of The Worlds"?

What we have to ask is if the
> time frames for popularity really were the 
same in those days as they are
> today? And if they were the same among 
the public in a hotel ballroom as
> among a&r men in record companies?
Kristjan




On 2020-09-15 19:12, David
> Weiner wrote:
> Actually, but 1938, all the songs played on the show by the
> dance band 
> were thoroughly dated - they would have been appropriate in
> 1931, but 
> by 1938 there were many newer Latin tunes that had far greater 
>
> currency. Dave Weiner On 9/15/20, 9:07 AM, "Peter Muhr" 
>
> <78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com on behalf of 
> pemuhr at gmail.com.invalid>
> wrote: Everything, including the Tchaikovsky 
> opening, was played live by a
> studio orchestra. Peter On Tue, Sep 15, 
> 2020 at 4:23 AM Kristjan Saag
> <saag at telia.com.invalid> wrote: > > Was 
> the music used in the Orson Wells
> radio drama taken from commercial > 
> recordings or played by a studio
> orchestra? I've searched for possible 
> > commercial sources, but haven't
> found any. "La Paloma", for 
> instance, > had a revival as dance band number
> in the 1930's, thanks 
> to a few > movies, probably, and notable recordings
> were made in 1937 
> by Lecuona > Cuban Boys and in 1938 by Xavier Cugat as
> well as Rosita 
> Serrano. > But none of these were used in the radio drama. >
> Any 
> suggestions? > Kristjan > > > > > --- > This email has been checked 
>
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