Sing, sing, sing

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Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing) is a composition by Louis Prima from 1936, which became the jazz standard , especially in the cover version by Benny Goodman .

History of origin

Louis Prima - Sing, Sing, Sing

Louis Prima, who was born in New Orleans, was a jazz trumpeter who had performed with an initially five-piece band called the New Orleans Gang since 1934 . The line-up of the band later fluctuated between five and twelve members and was subject to greater fluctuation. In November 1934 Prima received his first recording contract with Brunswick Records . From March 1935 he appeared with the gang in New York's famous Famous Door Club. After 16 singles for Brunswick, of which only three came into the pop hit parade with moderate success , the swing title Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing) was recorded on February 28, 1936.

The exact line-up consisted of Prima (trumpet and vocals), Larry Altpeter (trumpet), Eddie Miller (clarinet / tenor saxophone), Frank Pinero (piano), Garrett McAdams (guitar), Jack Ryan (double bass), Joe Cataline (tenor saxophone) and George Pemberty (drums). The single was released in March 1936 as Brunswick # 7628, but like most previous records, it missed the hit parade. Originally his composition was titled Sing Bing Sing , a reference to Bing Crosby . To make it more versatile, he renamed it Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing) . Shortly thereafter, the band switched to Vocalion Records in October 1936 . This version improved the background sound and was accepted by the audience.

Cover versions

A first cover version came from Fletcher Henderson , who recorded his version of Sing, Sing, Sing on August 4, 1936, which came just as little in the charts as the country version of the Hilltoppers from October 8, 1936 or that of Willie Lewis & His Entertainers version recorded in Paris on October 15, 1936.

Benny Goodman - Sing, Sing, Sing (studio version)

Benny Goodman (clarinet) first recorded the title with 14 people in New York on July 6, 1937 in the recording studio, including Harry James , Chris Griffin and Ziggy Elman (trumpet), Hymie Shertzer and George Koenig (alto saxophone), Red Ballard and Murray McEachern (trombone), Gene Krupa (drums), released August 1937 as Parts I & II (Victor # 36205). The recording lasted 8 minutes and 43 seconds and took up both sides of a 12-inch 78- record vinyl record. Mundy's arrangement included, in addition to Primate's composition, the title Christopher Columbus , which was originally written by Chu Berry for Fletcher Henderson's band. This cover version had no lyrics, which makes it a slightly modified, purely instrumental version.

But it wasn't this version that made the song famous. It only became immortal and a jazz standard through Benny Goodman's famous live concert on the cold evening of January 16, 1938 in New York's Carnegie Hall . Goodman took a big risk because swing bands played in dance clubs. It was the first time that a swing band performed in Carnegie Hall, which is mainly used for classical music; Jazz concerts were rarely held here. The project turned out to be a great success, because weeks before the concert all 2,760 seats were sold out. Here he presented the title as the last of 22 songs and a jam session in an extended version, arranged by Jimmy Mundy , again as Parts I & II (Victor # 25796).

The specially written for the percussion piece allowed Gene Krupa, which initiates the play, extensive Tomtom solos. Other members also have ample opportunity to solo, such as Jess Stacy with his contrapuntal and almost pastoral piano solo, which he first introduces with a sequence of notes that does not belong to the song and then returns to the arrangement via improvisation. Tenor saxophonist Babe Russin and trumpeter Harry James introduce themselves swinging, and finally Goodman's intense clarinet solo rounds off a 12-minute performance with a forte finale.

It is thanks to Albert Marx that the legendary concert was recorded with just three microphones. Without prior mixing, the live sound was sent over a radio telephone line to the CBS control room, from where it was transferred to the Artist's Recording Studio (owner Harry Smith). The storage records were on 8:45 min. limited, so a second recording studio ( Universal Recording Studio by Raymond Scott) had to be turned on for the rest. Although it was not the biggest hit for Goodman after it was released in April 1938 with a seventh place in the pop charts, the title has since been associated with Goodman's band, now identified with the big band and swing era and is considered one of their “absolute highlights ". This live version has long been considered the definitive recording of the piece. "The vitality and perfection of this recording meant that the piece was hardly covered for a few decades". Soloist Harry James left the Goodman Band shortly after this recording, allegedly because the piece was always played at the end of the concerts and it was very difficult to be fit for the solo at this point.

A technically improved recording was released on the first ever double LP in November 1950, which is considered to be one of the first LPs with over a million copies sold. A digitized CD version has existed since November 1999, which eliminates almost all acoustic defects of the previous recordings.

Statistics and other cover versions

Composer Louis Prima has copyrighted 129 songs with ASCAP, Sing has been covered at least 49 times. According to the National Public Radio list, the song is one of the 100 most important titles of the 20th century.

New interpretations of the title

Since Benny Goodman recorded the title, it has been adopted by popular music artists such as u. a. by Henry Mancini (August 1960) or Anita O'Day , but only occasionally by jazz musicians like Gene Krupa, who contributed a lot to the Goodman version. Inspired by the Carnegy Hall version, Jon Hendricks further developed the lyrics of Louis Prima for his album Freddie Freeloader in August 1990 . Recent big band recordings include those by Peter Herbolzheimer (November 2000), Erich Kunzel's Cincinnati Pops Orchestra (October 1994) and the GRP All Star Big Band . Vibraphonists Terry Gibbs (1986), Peter Appleyard (1990, with Bucky Pizzarelli ) and Gary Burton (1992, with Eddie Daniels ) have made it clear that the title is also suitable for small ensembles. In the avant-garde, the piece was picked up by the Bloomdaddies as well as by Yosuke Yamashita (who went back to the Kodo drumming group in 1986 ). The piece is being picked up again in the course of the swing revival; Also worth mentioning are recordings by Lee Press-On & the Nails and Seamus Blake .

Use of the song in movies

The title has since been used in numerous cinema and television films, first in 1936 in the film The Thin Man (Part 2): After the Thin Man . On February 2, 1956, he was starred in the biographical film The Benny Goodman Story in a reenactment of the triumphant Carnegie Hall concert of 1938. The German documenta artist and former dancer Harry Kramer choreographed the 9-minute short film Die Sackgasse (Camera: Wolfgang Ramsbott ) on the long version of the piece in 1963, which was awarded as particularly valuable . The original version later inspired King Louis in Walt Disney's The Jungle Book (1967) .

Many of the musicians of the swing era then interpreted him in the film All That Jazz in December 1979 . Peter Bogdanovich used the song in They All Laughed (1980); Woody Allen included him in his film scores several times, "whenever he wants to show the pulsating diversity of" his "city in his films, first in 1989 in his contribution to New York Stories in the episode Oedipus at a loss , and in 1993 in the film Manhattan Murder Mystery and 1997 for Harry beside himself in the hell scene; Allen always uses Goodman's version from Carnegie Hall. The song was also part of the films Swing Kids (1993) and The Mask (1994). In 2002 he was heard in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York , and in 2003 as the theme song in Stephen Fry's comedy Bright Young Things .

The song was also used in the Nintendo GameCube Donkey Konga computer game and Xbox Live game Outpost Kaloki X (2006) as well as in numerous episodes of the animated series The Simpsons from 1994 to 2009.

literature

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brian Rust, Jazz Records 1932-1942 , 1965, p. 460
  2. ↑ a b Portrait of the song ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at WCIN Radio @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wicn.org
  3. ↑ Jitterbuzz about the concert
  4. ↑ the tomtom is the deepest sound that a jazz drummer produces
  5. ↑ Sing, Sing, Sing , NPR Music, January 31, 2000.
  6. ^ A b Hans-Jürgen Schaal, Jazz: Die neue Enzyklopädie , 2007, p. 430.
  7. ↑ Sing, Sing, Sing , ASCAP entry
  8. ↑ Use of Sing, Sing, Sing in the Internet Movie Database
  9. ^ Goodman IMDB
  10. ↑ Catalog raisonné Harry Kramer. In: Michael Willhardt (Ed.): A hairdresser from Lingen. Harry Kramer . Luca-Verlag, Freren 1990, ISBN 3-923641-30-3 ; P. 180.
  11. ^ All That Jazz in the Internet Movie Database
  12. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.) Jazz Standards. The lexicon . Bärenreiter, Kassel, 2004 (3rd edition), p. 430.