[78-L] War Of The Wolrds

[Kristjan Saag]

Thanks again, Elizabeth. I think this answers most of my questions. And 
looking through the titles Cugat and Aspiazu recorded in New York 
1937-1938 (the leading Latin bands), it follows the pattern you 
describe: most titles seem to be new songs.
Still: a play list for a dance music orchestra would have to combine new 
stuff with songs the audience already knows. And, in deed, this is what 
I've noticed in the radio recordings that are available today on disc or 
download, both of jazz bands and dance orchestras from this era. So, if 
you by "current tunes" mean tunes from the last few years, I share your 
conclusions.
And, of course, also the characterization that you and others have made 
of the bands playing in Welles' drama. They play comfortable music, in 
order to enhance a sense of security that soon will be broken.
Kristjan



On 2020-09-16 01:04, Elizabeth McLeod wrote:
> 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 > > > > > --- > 
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