The Art of Selling Movies #5

 

Greetings from Homer ... But What Is He Doing Here?

Art of ... When Music Masters Mastered Movies

That man Homer they credit with The Iliad and The Odyssey turns out to maybe not have existed. He, whoever he (or she?) actually was, got nowhere near Greek texts, these emerging instead from oral tradition, meaning stories told, retold, translated, gone through tens of thousands of iterations till what we read today has less to do with actual ancients than 104 minutes that is Jason and the Argonauts. More I read of music movements, the more they play like Homer, best and purest when new, watered down since like whiskey spoilt by ginger ale. Ragtime morphed to jazz, so did jazz derive from ragtime? Imagine “raw” beginnings played “from Below” as historian Ian Whitcomb describes “music lost in the folk fog of pre-history.” What revolutionized the twentieth century began in the nineteenth, so says Whitcomb, revivalist camp meetings in the 1840’s, “rave-ups” from 1823, none recorded because we didn’t have recorders yet. Pre-history was made, said Whitcomb, at “saloons, brothels, clip joints, gambling halls, honky tonks, and jook joints.” What people heard without being conscious of hearing was modern music aborning. I’ve read too that things otherworldly went on among artists who had no idea they were artists and probably would not have liked being called that. Deepest diggers claim what these people did has not been surpassed, understood even, by those said to be inspired by them. I like spooky aspects of popular music at birth and before it fell under commercial/corporate control. Performers were tamed from the time they stepped before microphones, in part for being self-conscious in an unaccustomed environment, and being instructed as to how to perform for a medium unfamiliar to them, not unlike actors doing talkies for a first time. To sell popular music was always to water it down, everything made slick for mass listening.

Pola as Silent Incidental to "Syncopation" Crowds Came Out to Hear

Academics and history hounds scoured back roads during the thirties to find “real” music as native-generated, the research supported by Depression-era government funding. Genuine folk art was thus rescued from soulless jazz soon to be swing, latter even more soulless some said. Quest for the unsullied went on against backdrop of commercial music increasingly debased. One record collector given to obscurest searching compiled his “Anthology of American Folk Music” in 1952, Harry Smith a born eccentric (had to be to pursue this, claimed observers). Choices for inclusion were fruit of Smith’s preference, records got from old warehouses and researched by him. Harry didn’t worry about copyrights because owners barely realized they owned such trifles. What he did was transfer 78 RPM shellac to long-play 33, his handsome box to host ghosts recorded during infancy of music made far afield of maps. We wonder if songs were sung from beyond, so uncanny do they sound. Did players till soil between here and shore off the river Styx? Such primitivism smacked of pagan “other” to make jazz seem square. Genius guitarist Robert Johnson was told he couldn’t play worth beans, disappeared for a year or so, reemerged as best man on a guitar anyone ever heard. They naturally figured Johnson sold his eternal soul to devils at a country crossroad of lost location, his reward ability to play the instrument beyond anyone living, or undead. Lots believed this, many still do. I’d rather buy the story than not.

Violin Vet Joe Venuti Puts Bow to Fiddle for Universal's Two-Color King of Jazz

More backward the jazz, said adherents, the better. Spoiler was the more popular it got, the sooner co-oppers smoothed the style to please-everybody place for vaudeville and emerging talkies like Broadway and King of Jazz to whip safe batter from outlaw jazzing. Silent movie palaces were anything but silent what with “syncopation” now attacking eardrums. The Majestic Theatre (ad above), wherever that was, staged its “Revelous” Mélange of Mirth, Melody, and Jazz, mere one of many along jazz line identified as equal to, maybe better, than what was presented as the screen “attraction.” Googled Revelous figuring I’d bust the Majestic for using a non-existent word (me being one to talk). Turns out they just misspelled perfectly respectable “Revelrous,” which means “marked by or full of boisterous, noisy merrymaking,” great descriptive word I’ll surely crowbar in again where appropriate, maybe even where it's not. Who says literacy died with online and smart phones? The Majestic tenders seeming afterthought that is Pola Negri in Flower of Night. In event Paramount wanted Pola put in place, just park her here. Note musical notes wrapped round the actress. To be Mistress of Moods, Lady of Love, or Radiant Regent of Romance would have little currency for a Majestic mob wanting less of Negri and more of Harry Waiman and His Debutantes. Harry’s was an All-Girl band, him the only “him” but also the conductor. We can look at an extensive array of Harry Waiman photos, donated by the “Brown family” from Kentucky, to the Newberry Library in Chicago, content “open for research” in their Special Collections Reading Room. Why do I ponder such detail? Guess it’s just for wondering when was the last time anyone asked to look at this stuff … then maybe ponder what will become of my own “Collection” someday. 

Also investigated Ed and Tom Hickey, found nothing apart from obits years-too-late to have been them plus another Hickey held at present by Kentucky law enforcement (Kentucky again!). Time I put this Majestic ad aside, except to draw parallel with what happened at New York’s Paramount when Benny Goodman’s band accompanied Zaza in 1939. Remember that column? (5/31/2021) Same disaster thing happened to Zaza as was likely put upon Pola. Further evidence is here if needed that live music, preferably swing by 1939, was King, over movies at least, herewith Constance Bennett humbled at the RKO Palace where Lady of the Tropics lies beneath the Andrews Sisters plus Joe Venuti and Orch (by way of personal tribute, I am now listening to Joe, and frequent performing partner Eddie Lang, on You Tube). Then let’s step back to hear Clara Bow first-time talk in The Wild Party, an Easter 1929 open at the Palace, “Home of Paramount Pictures,” trouble being Bow spoke too soon and before kinks got ironed out. “She Talks --- and How” (inadequately, some said). Saving grace may have been live cacophony to headline All-Music over All-Talking, “Old Kentucky in Jazz” courtesy Jimmy Ellard and his Stage Band. I Google searched for Jimmy. Nothing but a song sheet for “Drink Your Beer,” credited to Ellard. Try sourcing enough of these long-ago people and you begin to wonder if they ever even existed, Jimmy at the least to be admired for staging the Kentucky Derby on stage with live horses (presumably multiple live horses). I am a fan of Clara Bow, but those steeds would surely have shaded her. Were movies more the handmaidens for music that accompanied them? Most ads I have from urban sites put priority on live acts. It may be presentation houses that made music safest for mass consumption. If it could play these without serious incident, a ruling class had nothing to worry about. So this was a Golden Age ... but a Golden Age of what? Not of movies necessarily. I'm thinking it was more music making the world go round, being bigger noise than film in populous areas at least. Were movies most magical in small bergs where there was less on the program to compete with them?