Crazy Rhythm
Encyclopedia
"Crazy Rhythm" is a thirty-two-bar
swing
show tune
written in 1928
by Irving Caesar
, Joseph Meyer
, and Roger Wolfe Kahn
for the Broadway
musical
Here's Howe. It has since become a jazz standard
, inspiring at least 15 jazz albums named Crazy Rhythm, often with the song itself included. This song is also featured in the Steve Martin movie: The JERK! The performing artist is unlisted in the credits.
21368-B) by Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra in New York
on 1928 April, with Franklyn Baur
singing the chorus:
In addition, a well-received and quite elegant version of the song was recorded by Whispering Jack Smith (noted for his soft, but crystal clear 'whispered' delivery over the air waves); his recording quickly became one of the most recognised and favorite renditions of the song to flappers, their beaux, and other Bright Young Things of the Jazz Age.
It has been covered by a full range of artists from mainstream jazz to hillbilly bebop
. At least 150 covers have been recorded. Harry James
, Chet Atkins
, Bix Beiderbecke
, Ben Bernie
, Miles Davis
, Stan Getz
, Stephane Grappelli
, Lionel Hampton
, Woody Herman
, Herman's Norwegian Jazz Group Soloist: Ragnar Robertsen (Recorded on October 27, 1954 and re-released on the extended play
Odeon GEON 2), Mark Murphy
, Les Paul
, Hank Penny
, Django Reinhardt
, Nellie McKay
, Bing Crosby
, and Frank Sinatra
have all recorded this catchy tune. Most, but not all, are strictly instrumental. The song was also covered by MECO for his 1978 album, Encounters of Every Kind.
Of special note is the performance by Doris Day
and Gene Nelson
in the 1950
film Tea for Two
. This is a frame tale around a putative production of No, No, Nanette
(written in 1925
by the prolific Caesar, Otto Harbach
, and Vincent Youmans
); "Tea for Two
" being a number inserted into the original Nanette. "Crazy Rhythm" is presented in this film as a demonstration for backers of the production-to-be. Thus, it has come to be associated with the popular "Tea" and Nanette, while Here's Howe is largely forgotten. Day and Nelson also recorded "Crazy Rhythm" on the album Tea for Two
-- not a soundtrack but a distinct studio recording in which Nelson does a tap
solo, not seen or heard on film.
Another notable recording of the song is on 1961
's Further Definitions
, by Benny Carter
with Coleman Hawkins
. This is one of Carter's most acclaimed recordings.
"Crazy Rhythm" is, for the working jazz musician, inescapable. At a 2006
Birdland
performance, post-bop
pianist Andrew Hill
"...who never plays anyone's standards but his own, began playing the opening motif from Meyer and Caeser's 1928 'Crazy Rhythm.' The drums played against the piano and the bass repeated an off-kilter Latin beat, but Tin Pan Alley was somewhere buried in the subtext... It was a clever moment, a rare nod to accessibility in an extremely opaque evening."
classic has affected musicians to the extent that many bands have styled themselves after one variation or another of Crazy Rhythm. It has lent its name to shows, albums, books, music stores, and bars.
Showing the deep impact of the song on culture beyond music is a 2001 book, Crazy Rhythm, by Washington
insider Leonard Garment
, subtitled "From Brooklyn and Jazz to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and Beyond". Garment, Nixon
's personal lawyer, advised him not to destroy the Watergate tapes.
"Crazy Rhythm" is credited by saxophone player Harry Francis with "...stepping up technical standards among British trombone
players of the period" (in 1928). He says that a mislabeled record, nonetheless immediately recognized as being performed by Miff Mole's Molers
, included a tricky phrase in the introduction, which local trombonist Edgar Jackson assumed had been given by Mole, also a trombone player. "At the time this assumption went more or less unchallenged, for although there were those around who felt sure that the phrase had been played on a valve instrument — nobody had ever heard of Mole using anything but the slide. The result of all this was that for weeks afterwards many British trombone players nearly killed themselves in an effort to reproduce a phrase that had in fact been played on the mellophone
of Dudley Fosdick!" Francis says that George Chisholm
, much later, confirmed to him that Fosdick, not Mole, had performed the tricky phrase. Still, Jackson's "...error of judgement must have served to loosen up local trombone technique no end!"
Thirty-two-bar form
The thirty-two-bar form, often called AABA from the musical form or order in which its melodies occur, is common in Tin Pan Alley songs and later popular music including rock, pop and jazz...
swing
Swing (genre)
Swing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...
show tune
Show tune
A show tune is a popular song originally written as part of the score of a "show" , especially if the piece in question has become a "standard", more or less detached in most people's minds from the original context...
written in 1928
1928 in music
-Events:*April 27 - Igor Stravinsky's ballet Apollon musagète is premiered in Washington.*September 11 - Leoš Janáček's String Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters, is premiered in Brno....
by Irving Caesar
Irving Caesar
Irving Caesar was an American lyricist and theater composer who wrote lyrics for "Swanee," "Sometimes I'm Happy," "Crazy Rhythm," and "Tea for Two," one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written. He was born and died in New York.Caesar, the son of Morris Keiser, a Romanian Jew, was...
, Joseph Meyer
Joseph Meyer (songwriter)
Joseph Meyer was an American songwriter who wrote some of the most notable songs of the first half of the twentieth century....
, and Roger Wolfe Kahn
Roger Wolfe Kahn
Roger Wolfe Kahn was an American jazz and popular musician, composer, and bandleader ....
for the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
Here's Howe. It has since become a jazz standard
Jazz standard
Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be...
, inspiring at least 15 jazz albums named Crazy Rhythm, often with the song itself included. This song is also featured in the Steve Martin movie: The JERK! The performing artist is unlisted in the credits.
Performances
"Crazy Rhythm" was first recorded (on VictorVictor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
21368-B) by Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on 1928 April, with Franklyn Baur
Franklyn Baur
-Recording career:Baur made hundreds of recordings for about a dozen different recording companies, including the three major labels, Victor, Columbia and Brunswick. His first recording, If the Rest of the World Don't Want You, was for Victor in 1923...
singing the chorus:
- Crazy rhythm, here's the doorway
- I'll go my way, you'll go your way
- Crazy rhythm, from now on
- We're through.
In addition, a well-received and quite elegant version of the song was recorded by Whispering Jack Smith (noted for his soft, but crystal clear 'whispered' delivery over the air waves); his recording quickly became one of the most recognised and favorite renditions of the song to flappers, their beaux, and other Bright Young Things of the Jazz Age.
It has been covered by a full range of artists from mainstream jazz to hillbilly bebop
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
. At least 150 covers have been recorded. Harry James
Harry James
Henry Haag “Harry” James was a trumpeter who led a jazz swing band during the Big Band Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.-Biography:He was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a...
, Chet Atkins
Chet Atkins
Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...
, Bix Beiderbecke
Bix Beiderbecke
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s...
, Ben Bernie
Ben Bernie
Ben Bernie , born Bernard Anzelevitz, was an American jazz violinist and radio personality, often introduced as The Old Maestro. He was noted for his showmanship and memorable bits of snappy dialogue....
, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
, Stan Getz
Stan Getz
Stanley Getz was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott...
, Stephane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....
, Lionel Hampton
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy...
, Woody Herman
Woody Herman
Woodrow Charles Herman , known as Woody Herman, was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called "The Herd," Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and '40s bandleaders...
, Herman's Norwegian Jazz Group Soloist: Ragnar Robertsen (Recorded on October 27, 1954 and re-released on the extended play
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
Odeon GEON 2), Mark Murphy
Mark Murphy (singer)
Mark Murphy is an American jazz singer based in New York. He is most noted for his definitive and unique vocalese and vocal improvisations with both melody and lyrics...
, Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
, Hank Penny
Hank Penny
Herbert Clayton Penny was an accomplished banjo player and practitioner of western swing. He worked as a comedian best known for his backwoods character "That Plain Ol' Country Boy" on TV with Spade Cooley...
, Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
, Nellie McKay
Nellie McKay
Nellie McKay , is an American singer-songwriter, actor, and former stand-up comedienne, noted for her critically acclaimed albums, and for her Broadway debut in The Threepenny Opera , for which she won a Theatre World Award...
, Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, and Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
have all recorded this catchy tune. Most, but not all, are strictly instrumental. The song was also covered by MECO for his 1978 album, Encounters of Every Kind.
Of special note is the performance by Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
and Gene Nelson
Gene Nelson
Gene Nelson was an American dancer, actor, screenwriter, and director.-Biography:Born Leander Eugene Berg in Astoria, Oregon, he moved to Seattle when he was one year old. He was inspired to become a dancer by watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films when he was a child...
in the 1950
1950 in film
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 15 - Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:*Ambush...
film Tea for Two
Tea for Two (film)
Tea for Two is a 1950 American musical film directed by David Butler. The screenplay by Harry Clork and William Jacobs was inspired by the 1925 stage musical No, No Nanette, although the plot was changed considerably from the original book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, and the score by Harbach,...
. This is a frame tale around a putative production of No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette
No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, based on Mandel's 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends...
(written in 1925
1925 in music
-Events:* February 25 - Art Gillham - The Whispering Pianist records the first electrical recordings to be released for Columbia using the Western Electric system ....
by the prolific Caesar, Otto Harbach
Otto Harbach
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of about 50 musical comedies...
, and Vincent Youmans
Vincent Youmans
Vincent Youmans was an American popular composer and Broadway producer.- Life :Vincent Millie Youmans was born in New York City on September 27, 1898 and grew-up on Central Park West on the site where the Mayflower Hotel once stood. His father, a prosperous hat manufacturer, moved the family to...
); "Tea for Two
Tea for Two (song)
"Tea for Two" is a song from the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette with music by Vincent Youmans and lyrics by Irving Caesar. It is a duet sung by Nanette and Tom in Act II as they imagine their future.-Analysis:...
" being a number inserted into the original Nanette. "Crazy Rhythm" is presented in this film as a demonstration for backers of the production-to-be. Thus, it has come to be associated with the popular "Tea" and Nanette, while Here's Howe is largely forgotten. Day and Nelson also recorded "Crazy Rhythm" on the album Tea for Two
Tea for Two (album)
Tea for Two was a 10" LP album released by Columbia Records on September 4, 1950 under catalog number CL-6149, featuring Doris Day, with Axel Stordahl conducting the orchestra on some pieces, and the Page Cavanaugh Trio as backup musicians on others...
-- not a soundtrack but a distinct studio recording in which Nelson does a tap
Tap dance
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sound of one's tap shoes hitting the floor as a percussive instrument. As such, it is also commonly considered to be a form of music. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses more on the...
solo, not seen or heard on film.
Another notable recording of the song is on 1961
1961 in music
-Events:*January 15 – Motown Records signs The Supremes.*January 20 – Francis Poulenc's Gloria receives its premiėre in Boston, USA.*February 12 – The Miracles' "Shop Around" becomes Motown's first million-selling single....
's Further Definitions
Further Definitions
Further Definitions is a jazz album by Benny Carter and his orchestra, rereleased on CD in 1997 coupled with his follow-up album, the 1966 Additions to Further Definitions...
, by Benny Carter
Benny Carter
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King...
with Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
. This is one of Carter's most acclaimed recordings.
"Crazy Rhythm" is, for the working jazz musician, inescapable. At a 2006
2006 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 2006.-January:*January 10 – Eric Burdon releases his album Soul of a Man and begins touring with a new band....
Birdland
Birdland (jazz club)
Birdland is a jazz club started in New York City on December 15, 1949. The original Birdland, which was located at 1678 Broadway, just north of West 52nd Street in Manhattan, was closed in 1965 due to increased rents, but it re-opened for one night in 1979...
performance, post-bop
Post-bop
Post-bop is a term for a form of small-combo jazz music that evolved in the early-to-mid sixties. The genre's origins lie in seminal work by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
pianist Andrew Hill
Andrew Hill
Andrew Hill was an American jazz pianist and composer.Hill is recognized as one of the most important innovators of jazz piano in the 1960s...
"...who never plays anyone's standards but his own, began playing the opening motif from Meyer and Caeser's 1928 'Crazy Rhythm.' The drums played against the piano and the bass repeated an off-kilter Latin beat, but Tin Pan Alley was somewhere buried in the subtext... It was a clever moment, a rare nod to accessibility in an extremely opaque evening."
Influences
This Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
classic has affected musicians to the extent that many bands have styled themselves after one variation or another of Crazy Rhythm. It has lent its name to shows, albums, books, music stores, and bars.
Showing the deep impact of the song on culture beyond music is a 2001 book, Crazy Rhythm, by Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
insider Leonard Garment
Leonard Garment
Leonard Garment was acting Special Counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon for the last two years of his presidency.Garment was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1949, Garment joined the law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin, and Todd. He became the head of litigation and a partner in the late fifties...
, subtitled "From Brooklyn and Jazz to Nixon's White House, Watergate, and Beyond". Garment, Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
's personal lawyer, advised him not to destroy the Watergate tapes.
"Crazy Rhythm" is credited by saxophone player Harry Francis with "...stepping up technical standards among British trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
players of the period" (in 1928). He says that a mislabeled record, nonetheless immediately recognized as being performed by Miff Mole's Molers
Miff Mole
Irving Milfred Mole, better known as Miff Mole was a jazz trombonist and band leader. He is generally considered as one of the greatest jazz trombonists and credited with creating "the first distinctive and influential solo jazz trombone style." His major recordings included "Slippin' Around",...
, included a tricky phrase in the introduction, which local trombonist Edgar Jackson assumed had been given by Mole, also a trombone player. "At the time this assumption went more or less unchallenged, for although there were those around who felt sure that the phrase had been played on a valve instrument — nobody had ever heard of Mole using anything but the slide. The result of all this was that for weeks afterwards many British trombone players nearly killed themselves in an effort to reproduce a phrase that had in fact been played on the mellophone
Mellophone
The mellophone is a brass instrument that is typically used in place of the horn in marching bands or drum and bugle corps....
of Dudley Fosdick!" Francis says that George Chisholm
George Chisholm (musician)
George Chisholm OBE was a Scottish jazz trombonist.Born in Glasgow to a family of musicians, Chisholm's musical career began in the Glasgow Playhouse orchestra. In the late 1930s he moved to London, where he played in dance bands led by Bert Ambrose and Teddy Joyce...
, much later, confirmed to him that Fosdick, not Mole, had performed the tricky phrase. Still, Jackson's "...error of judgement must have served to loosen up local trombone technique no end!"
External links
- "Crazy Rhythm" - Lead sheet at wikifonia.org