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Posted: |
Apr 9, 2013 - 4:52 PM
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By: |
markbagby
(Member)
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Headline -- Music: Phuff?
Monday, Oct. 31, 1949 - The beat and blare of the fervid little quintet seemed familiar and so did most of the names: Ingle, Estes, Williams, Bodtkin. But behind the trumpet, instead of the famous "Red" Ingle, Hollywood jazz fans saw a curly-haired youngster of 18—Ingle's son Don. At the traps, in place of "Ace" Estes, was Estes' skinny, long-nosed boy Gene, 18. They counted off the same way right around the stand. Last week, devoutly following in their fathers' solid-beat footsteps, the famous sons' five were the hottest band in Hollywood.
They were playing only three nights a week; schoolwork kept them from doing more. Since July they had been packing fans into Van Nuys' elaborate, teenagers' Ciro's, the Dri-Nite Club, and making more than pocket money doing it (about $45 a week). By last week, they had spread out to playing one-nighters here & there, for fraternity dances and Hollywood high-lifers such as Columnist Jimmy Fidler. But the surest sign that they were really arriving was the hushed way the fans listened when the boys sat in with jazzbos like Drummer Zutty Singleton out at the Club 47, a Ventura Boulevard bistro where the best of Hollywood's radio and movie musicians go after work to jam.
The five first got together in a North Hollywood High School dance band. When it began to look more like a rut than a groove, 17-year-old Piano Player Johnny ("Curley") Williams (named after his drummer father) broke away and formed his own quintet. He took with him Mel Sidney, a bullfiddle slapper like his dad, Al Pollen. Other recruits were 16-year-old Perry ("Bunny") Bodtkin, the trombone-playing son of Bing Crosby's guitar accompanist, and Gene Estes and Don Ingle. "Boy," says Curley, "we yanked the nucleus right out of that Hollywood High band."
As Curley, the boss of the juvenile jazzbos, puts it, "We were pretty rough at first—everybody fighting for their own salad." Now, when they play together, they like to "get casual." Don Ingle does some of the arranging. Sample: their Show Me the Way to Go Home consists of 17 bars of written music, followed by the words "sing chorus" scrawled across the middle of the score sheet; at the end it demands a "jam out." They don't worry about programing. Says Ingle: "We play half what the audience wants, which is Dixieland, and the other half what we want, which, it happens, is also Dixieland." But they are already thinking about a new kind of music.
"Dixie is a happy music," says Bunny. "Swing makes you want to bounce, and guys that listen to bop drool at the mouth, get red-faced and excited. If we can get a combination of all three . . . we'll have something we'll call phuff."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801018,00.html#ixzz2Q0dqupTg
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"We were pretty rough at first—everybody fighting for their own salad."
I'm reminded of "A Song Is Born," the 1948 Danny Kaye remake of "Ball of Fire," in which a group of elderly music professors attempt to understand jazz and its many confusing slang terms.
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Can you imagine finding this in the magazine from 1949, ebay or what not then if you get a chance to meet Williams have him sign it? I bet you would blow his mind 
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Also worth noting in that article is that the trombonist "Perry Bodtkin" listed is, in fact, Perry Botkin, Jr., who'd go on to a career of composing for television and film (and arranging for many great pop acts) himself. What a neat collection of players!
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His father, Perry Botkin the elder, can be glimpsed onscreen -- along with choreographer Hermes Pan -- as one of the band members accompanying Fred Astaire in SECOND CHORUS. (And backing Bing in RHYTHM ON THE RIVER.)
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Posted: |
Apr 10, 2013 - 2:27 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Headline -- Music: Phuff?
Monday, Oct. 31, 1949 - The beat and blare of the fervid little quintet seemed familiar and so did most of the names: Ingle, Estes, Williams, Bodtkin. But behind the trumpet, instead of the famous "Red" Ingle, Hollywood jazz fans saw a curly-haired youngster of 18—Ingle's son Don. At the traps, in place of "Ace" Estes, was Estes' skinny, long-nosed boy Gene, 18. They counted off the same way right around the stand. Last week, devoutly following in their fathers' solid-beat footsteps, the famous sons' five were the hottest band in Hollywood.
They were playing only three nights a week; schoolwork kept them from doing more. Since July they had been packing fans into Van Nuys' elaborate, teenagers' Ciro's, the Dri-Nite Club, and making more than pocket money doing it (about $45 a week). By last week, they had spread out to playing one-nighters here & there, for fraternity dances and Hollywood high-lifers such as Columnist Jimmy Fidler. But the surest sign that they were really arriving was the hushed way the fans listened when the boys sat in with jazzbos like Drummer Zutty Singleton out at the Club 47, a Ventura Boulevard bistro where the best of Hollywood's radio and movie musicians go after work to jam.
The five first got together in a North Hollywood High School dance band. When it began to look more like a rut than a groove, 17-year-old Piano Player Johnny ("Curley") Williams (named after his drummer father) broke away and formed his own quintet. He took with him Mel Sidney, a bullfiddle slapper like his dad, Al Pollen. Other recruits were 16-year-old Perry ("Bunny") Bodtkin, the trombone-playing son of Bing Crosby's guitar accompanist, and Gene Estes and Don Ingle. "Boy," says Curley, "we yanked the nucleus right out of that Hollywood High band."
As Curley, the boss of the juvenile jazzbos, puts it, "We were pretty rough at first—everybody fighting for their own salad." Now, when they play together, they like to "get casual." Don Ingle does some of the arranging. Sample: their Show Me the Way to Go Home consists of 17 bars of written music, followed by the words "sing chorus" scrawled across the middle of the score sheet; at the end it demands a "jam out." They don't worry about programing. Says Ingle: "We play half what the audience wants, which is Dixieland, and the other half what we want, which, it happens, is also Dixieland." But they are already thinking about a new kind of music.
"Dixie is a happy music," says Bunny. "Swing makes you want to bounce, and guys that listen to bop drool at the mouth, get red-faced and excited. If we can get a combination of all three . . . we'll have something we'll call phuff."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801018,00.html#ixzz2Q0dqupTg
Thank yo so much, Mark Bagby!
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He, he....good point. Different times, different journalism.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if that whole quote about "phuff," complete with a drool reference, was invented by the reporter to mock the subject. That still happens today.
Thanks, Thor and Mark, for the article and picuture.
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TIME's infamous modus operandi was to divide the labor: the fact-finder who gathered the information was never the person who wrote the actual article. Embellishment, to put it kindly, was the order of the day, causing one wag to declare, "I wouldn't believe even the page numbers in TIME Magazine, unless I counted them myself."
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