The Swing Book (20 page)

Tony Bennett:
Two words:
MTV Unplugged.
With his justly hyped special on the network and subsequent CD, Bennett’s coolness quotient hit the stratosphere in 1994.
Suddenly the music video generation found out what Sinatra, who always referred to Bennett as his favorite singer, had been
saying for years. Discovered in 1950 by Pearl Bailey and Bob Hope, Bennett put his signature smooth touch on such hits as
the country-inspired “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Because of You,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”; paired up with Basie on
Basie Swings, Bennett Sings;
and recorded critically acclaimed tributes to Billie Holiday, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, and fittingly, Sinatra. Not
bad for a guy who started his career as a singing waiter.

Bobby Darin:
Splish, splash? More like flip, flop. Like an earnest chameleon, Darin jumped from persona to persona. He was a Sinatra-esque
lounge singer (“Mack the Knife”); a rockin’ teen idol (“Dream Love,” “Queen of the Hop”); and, as Bob Darrin, an antiwar folkie
(“If I Were a Carpenter”). But his style hopping has become an inspiration to today’s genre-straddling swing musicians. And
his inspired ballad “Beyond the Sea” (recently covered by Royal Crown Revue) is an undisputed classic.

Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin:
Once you’ve got your Frankie albums, you’ll have a ring-ding of a time checking out the music of his Rat Pack buddies Sammy
and Dino. The pair, remembered more today for their Vegas Strip hijinks, cut their fair share of suave tunes.
Dean Martin: The Capitol Collector’s Series
(Capitol) includes “Volare,” “That’s Amore,” and “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head,” while
Sammy’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 1
(Garland/DNA) offers up “That Old Black Magic,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” and two numbers with drummer Buddy Rich.

Dick Haymes:
A former Hollywood stunt man, Haymes once equaled Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in popularity. His more than forty hits—many
with Helen Forrest, his former colleague in the Harry James Orchestra—include “It Might As Well Be Spring,” “It Can’t Be Wrong,”
and “I’ll Get By.” And Haymes certainly did that. He was married seven times, once to Rita Hay-worth.

Lena Horne:
Crushingly beautiful and amazingly multitalented, Horne turned up everywhere during the swing era with Zelig-like regularity.
She danced in the chorus line at the Cotton Club early in her career, starred in many movies, including
Stormy Weather
and
Cabin in the Sky,
enjoyed romances with both Joe Louis and Duke Ellington, toured with Charlie Barnet, and recorded with Artie Shaw. During
the war she also became the single most popular black pinup girl. More of a pop than jazz singer, Horne, who turned eighty
in 1999, remains a symbol of the class and sophistication of the age.

Anita O’Day:
Anything but just another canary, O’Day sings with a husky voice that imparts a knowing toughness to every number she grabs
hold of. Still performing today, O’Day began her career with drummer Gene Krupa in 1941 —
Uptown
(Columbia) collects her amazing work with Krupa and trumpeter Roy Eldridge from this time—then went to Stan Kenton’s band,
where she had a hit with “Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.” After that O’Day went solo and established herself as one of jazz’s
best scat singers. But as O’Day revealed in her 1981 autobiography
High Times, Hard Times,
she’d battled addictions to heroin and alcohol for years. The wine had flowed like tears too.

The Helens:
Do you know how to tell your Helens apart? Four major singers of the swing era shared this first name.

H
ELEN
F
ORREST
: The epitome of the big band girl singer, Forrest performed for the orchestras of Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman (whom she quite
disliked), and Harry James. Her claret voice endowed such romantic numbers as “I Had the Craziest Dream” and “I’m Always Chasing
Rainbows” with the most plaintive longing.

H
ELEN
H
UMES
: Succeeding Billie Holiday in the Count Basie Orchestra, Humes—known for her beautiful high voice—recorded such numbers as
the sensual “One Hour with You” and later had an R&B hit, “Be-Baba-Leba” in the fifties with pianist/organist Bill Doggett.

H
ELEN
O’C
ONNELL
: Known as the sweetest of canaries, O’Connell sang for the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra and recorded such 1940s hits as “Green Eyes”
and “Tangerine.”

H
ELEN
W
ARD
: Girl-next-door Ward, Benny Goodman’s first singer, most famously sang “Goody-Goody,” about the pleasure of hearing that an
ex-lover (and cad) has himself gotten dumped.

Jimmy Rushing:
Known as Mr. Five by Five (for his height and girth), Rushing brought blues to the big band, performing from 1935 to 1950
as the male vocalist for Count Basie. With his amazingly clear and strongly supported tenor voice, he was adept at taking
lovable ballads and casting them in dappled bluesy light. You’ll hear his warm, cheerful tone on Basie’s
Complete Decca Recordings
(Decca/GRP), singing such songs as “Georgianna,” “Blues in the Dark,” and the classic “Sent for You Yesterday.”

Jo Stafford:
Dreamy but sensible, sweet but substantial, Stafford was dubbed GI Jo during the war by her legion of enlisted fans. As part
of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, she was one of the Pied Pipers, backed up Frank Sinatra on “Stardust,” and had her own hits
with “Manhattan Serenade” and “You Took My Love.” After the big band era, Stafford’s career soared, including major duets
with Frankie Laine (“Hey, Good Looking”) and Gordon MacRae (“My Darling, My Darling”). But she’ll always be remembered for
her oddball campy side too. Using the pseudonym Cinderella Stump, she sang the hillbilly curiosity “I’m My Own Grandma.” And
she and her husband, Paul Weston, under the aliases Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, recorded a number of albums in which they
purposefully sang and played off-key, sending up everything from “Honeysuckle Rose” to “I Am Woman.”

Mel Tormé:
Tormé’s career went in the opposite direction of most singers’ of his era. Dubbed the Velvet Fog, a nickname he hated, Tormé
was a gifted songwriter who had his first song, “Lament to Love,” published at age fifteen after Harry James recorded it.
After he began his solo career in the mid-forties, he dueted with Peggy Lee on “The Old Master Painter,” penned the solid
gold chestnut “The Christmas Song” (more than seventeen hundred versions of it have been recorded), and charted with such
pop songs as “Careless Hands” and “Bewitched.” But he soon set out to prove his chops as a jazz singer, recording acclaimed
tributes to Benny Goodman, Fred Astaire, and Bing Crosby. As he once said of himself, “This syrupy, creamy bobby-sox sensation
was taking the musical bull by the horns and singing the kind of music he wanted to sing.” When Tormé died at age seventy-three
in 1999, he was lauded for doing just that.

Dinah Washington:
If she was mad at you, Washington would as likely pull a pistol on you as curse you out. Notoriously hot tempered and married
at least seven times, Washington began her career in 1942 singing for Lionel Hampton when she was just eighteen. In the fifties
she became known as the Queen of the Blues, admired for both her fearless gospel-influenced style, on such songs as “What
a Diff’rence a Day Makes” and “This Bitter Earth,” and for the way she could take a chestnut and make it new again, as she
did with Nat King Cole’s signature “Unforgettable.” Washington’s hard living caught up with her in 1959 when she died of an
overdose at age thirty-nine.

Joe Williams:
After knocking around with such orchestras as Lionel Hampton’s and Coleman Hawkins’s, Williams replaced Jimmy Rushing in
the Count Basie Orchestra and was instrumental in reviving the band’s fortunes during the fifties. His voice had an elegant
authority and deep soulful feeling, nowhere better heard than on “Every Day I Have the Blues,” the song that’s considered
his greatest triumph. He recorded the classic album
Count Basie Swings, foe Williams Sings,
scatted like mad with Ella on the 1956 song “Party Blues,” and in the eighties reached a whole new audience through his role
as Grandpa Al on
The Cosby Show.
As Duke Ellington once wrote of Williams, who died in 1999, “He sang real soul blues on which his perfect enunciation of
the words gave the blues a new dimension.”

1.
An Anthology of Big Band Swing 1930-1955
(GRP) is a Lindy Hopper’s dream. The two-CD collection not only features Henderson, the Dorsey Brothers, Lunceford, Armstrong,
and Kansas City blues pianist Jay McShann, to name just a few of the giants, but also includes competing versions of “One
O’clock Jump” recorded by Basie and Goodman.

2.
Oscillatin’ Rhythm
(Capitol) is the hands-down favorite of swing DJs around the country, putting such standards as “Sing, Sing, Sing,” “Smoke
Rings,” “For Dancers Only,” “Tain’t What You Do,” and “Leap Frog” all on one disc.

3.
Swingin’ at Capitol
(Capitol) is another great one-CD introduction, featuring a diverse lineup of swing greats, from Harry James and Les Brown
to Cootie Williams and Illinois Jacquet to Ray Anthony and Benny Carter.

4.
Swing Time, the Fabulous Big Band Era
(Columbia/Legacy) is truly the swing mother lode. This indispensable three-CD set brings together the best bands and their
biggest hits. From Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare” to Jimmy Dorsey’s “Green Eyes” to Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,”
the list never stops.

5.
Wild, Cool and Swinging
(Ultra Lounge/Capitol) is the essence of Las Vegas cool, featuring Dino singing “Volare,” Wayne Newton’s “Danke Schoen,”
Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” plus Lou Rawls, Bobby Darin, Louis Prima, Sammy Davis Jr., and Vic Damone. Just lie back and pretend
you’re sippin’ a martini at the Sands.