Show Notes 3/12-15

Even Swing has its tragic stories

Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan

1908 - 1942

Bunny Berigan was one of the most exciting trumpeters to come along in quite a while. His sound was bright and energetic, leaping for high notes like a boy on the run hopping fences. He came out of the University of Wisconsin, where he had majored in music, even taught trumpet lessons to make a little scratch.  

At first, his tone was too bright; he failed his first audition for the Hal Kemp orchestra in 1929 because of what Hal later referred to as his "pea-shooter tone." However, Bunny kept working at it and was hired by Kemp after another audition later that same year. 

It was a faltering start to what became an amazing career. Bunny Berigan was a much-sought-after trumpet soloist who worked for many top bandleaders in the 1930s, including Abe Lyman, Rudy Vallee, Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. For a while, he freelanced in the New York recording studios, playing on hundreds of commercial recordings with the Dorsey Brothers, Freddie Rich, Ben Selvin, Freddy Martin and many more. He was even there for Glenn Miller's first recording as a bandleader, playing on Miller's recording of Solo Hop in 1935.  

Although Bunny's solos were amazing, his drinking was even more so, and it was a big part of the reason he worked for so many different bands before striking out on his own in 1937. But a string of bad luck and Bunny's alcoholism kept success just out of reach. Although the band had some great players and swinging, up-to-date arrangements, plenty of radio exposure and excellent recordings, the pressures of leading a band drove Bunny to drink even more heavily, eventually forcing him to disband and declare bankruptcy in 1939.  He went back to work for Tommy Dorsey in the solo trumpet spot. But even that arrangement proved unsustainable.

Bunny was showing up late, and sometimes not at all, often in very rough shape. His boss and lifelong friend, Tommy Dorsey, pleaded with him to clean up his act, but Bunny just couldn't revamp his lifestyle. Dorsey let him go after six months. 

Berigan put together a new band in the fall of 1940, and led it, to one extent or another, with moderate success until early in 1942, when his health took a turn for the worse. Cirrhosis was discovered. Against doctors' orders, he returned to playing the trumpet and to drinking. Bunny Berigan died of a massive hemorrhage on June 2, 1942. He was 33 years old.

Bunny's musical legacy is in his many recordings, some of which are now recognized landmarks in Jazz.  In Hour One of this week's In the Mood, we will hear some of Bunny's most memorable performances with his own Big Band. 

Bunny Berigan: one of the Swing Era's many stories of a brilliant talent whose achievement was undercut and whose life was shortened by addiction. 

In Hour Two of In the Mood we'll hear some trendy, danceable sides from Gene Krupa and his orchestra. Gene's post-Benny-Goodman band of 1938-49 boasted a roster of excellent players and arrangers who gained recognition in the Krupa band. Two of them, tenor saxist Charlie Ventura and trumpeter/singer Roy Eldridge, became Jazz stars in their own right. 

Gene was blessed, too, with good singers like Irene Daye, Martha Tilton, and especially, Anita O'Day, whose non-singing exploits with the band are still the stuff of Jazz legend. Anita was paired very effectively with Roy Eldridge on several successful singles, most notably, Let Me Off Uptown, in which the two actually sang directly to one another, and addressed each other by name. The fact that Anita was white and Roy was black should have caused an uproar, but it just didn't materialize. The record, made in 1941, IMHO represents a kind of a first in American entertainment. The public didn't seem to mind, either; it was a Top Ten hit record. 

We'll hear Let Me Off Uptown, along with a handful of other notable Krupa recordings during the first 20 minutes or so of Hour 2 this week. We'll also include a couple of seldom-heard Krupa recordings. One is his theme song, Star Burst, recorded for Columbia in 1947. The only copy of it I could find was on a 1950 10" Columbia LP titled Theme Songs. It contains the theme songs of 8 popular bands, including Krupa's. The early microgroove LP was in pretty rough shape, both due to abuse and to wear. I had to take some aggressive measures to make the recording suitable for air, but I think the results are pretty solid. Star Burst is an unusual composition, it was the theme song of the Gene Krupa band, and chances are you've never heard it.  You'll also hear a romping version of I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (!) recorded by Gene with a Dixieland group in 1950, while his Big Band was on hiatus. It's a return to Gene's roots in early Chicago style two-beat Jazz, and the players are all having a ball.

Other highlights on this week's show include a reminder that Billy Eckstine was a great trombonist as well as a great singer, some genuine a Capella Barbershop-style harmony from the Mills Brothers, a wild ride with Basie on Blee Blop Blues, and Charlie Barnet's 7-minute version of Cherokee in spectacular Stereo.

If you've read this far, it's probably safe to tell you that our Jazz band, the Usual Suspects, is getting back together this Sunday the 15th for the first time since my cancer treatments began last fall. I have dearly missed playing and singing with this great group of guys and gals, and now that I'm all done, I hope everybody has got their chops up, because I've been practicing, and I plan to smoke it like a Chesterfield on Sunday. 

Thanks for hanging in there with me! As always, feel free to leave a comment here, or on our Facebook Page. Scroll through the posts there, and you'll find a complete list of days, times and stations where you can hear the show, along with Live Links to the stations' live streams. Leave us a comment or a request. And Keep Swingin', My Friends!