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This Week on Riverwalk Jazz:Time-Tripping Back to 1929

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Beginning Thursday, October 28, the weekly Riverwalk Jazz public radio series will broadcast a show called Class of '29: Jazz on the Move from Chicago to New York. The show can be heard on public radio stations nationwide (check local listings), on XM/Sirius sattelite radio on Sundays, and streamed directly from the Riverwalk Jazz website here.

In 1929, jazz was making its way into mainstream America, moving from Chicago to New York, blossoming in Harlem nightclubs, on the Broadway stage and New York studio sessions. Everyone remembers 1929 for the Wall Street crash that launched the Great Depression, yet for most of the year the economy wasn't what people were talking about.

With Prohibition the law of the land, nightspots everywhere needed gangland connections for a steady supply of illegal liquor. The brutal New York mobster Dutch Schultz—the city's “beer baron"—had a stake in the Harlem nightclub, Connie's Inn. Rubbing shoulders with mobsters was just a part of life for songwriters like Fats Waller and Andy Razaf (pictured here).

Razaf was a prince from Madagascar. But upon arrival in America, he was just another Negro, and treated accordingly. He was working with Waller on a new show called Hot Chocolates. The money had been put up by Schultz. During the previews, Schulz told Razaf to write a funny song for a colored girl, about how difficult it is being colored. After Razaf refused him, Dutch Schulz slammed him up against the wall, cocked pistol pressed to his skull and said, “You will write the song, boy."

The result was a brilliant subterfuge. Razaf's lyric to “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?" was later adopted as a racial protest song.

Brown and yellows / All have fellows Gentlemen prefer them light Old empty bed / Springs hard as lead Feel like old Ned / Wish I was dead All my life through I've been so black and blue Even the mouse / Ran from my house They laugh at you / and scorn you too What did I do to be so black and blue? I'm white inside / But that don't help my case 'Cuz I can't hide / What is in my face How will it end / Ain't got a friend My only sin / Is in my skin What did I do to be so black and blue?

The Gershwin musical Show Girl turned out to be a flop of the 1929 Broadway season; even though it had a strong cast and score—plus the added notoriety of Duke Ellington conducting his Cotton Club Orchestra as part of the production. But the Gershwins often managed to revive songs from the ashes of shows that didn't make it. Their tune “Liza," composed for leading lady Ruby Keeler, got a jump start the night Show Girl opened. Keeler's newlywed husband, Al Jolson, flew in from Hollywood for the opening and blew everyone away when he hopped up on stage from the audience—and sang a chorus of “Liza" to his bride.

Jolson's stunt caused a sensation—and “Liza" became a favorite with jazz musicians, including Benny Goodman, Chick Webb and Art Tatum. Today, the tune ranks among the top 200 most-frequently-recorded jazz standards of all time. In our broadcast, he Jim Cullum Jazz Orchestra offers their version.

By 1929, Jerome Kern was the patriarch of American musical theater—and he had another hit on his hands that year with Sweet Adeline and a song from that show, “Why was I Born?" performed on our broadcast by The Jim Cullum Jazz Band.

MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929 delivered a lavish production to the screen with everything from comedy stars like Jack Benny and Buster Keaton to a scene from Romeo and Juliet. The enduring hit to come out of the Hollywood Revue would be re-introduced by Gene Kelly a couple decades later. On our show, the great Joe Williams does the honors on “Singin' in the Rain."

Topsy Chapman sets the tone with her rendition of “St. Louis Blues," in tribute to Bessie Smith, who made her movie debut (and only film appearance) in 1929, in the two-reeler, St. Louis Blues. Jack Teagarden and Louis Armstrong made their first recording in 1929, a bluesy number called “Knockin' a Jug."

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