Ted Lewis (musician)
Encyclopedia
Theodore Leopold Friedman, better known as Ted Lewis (June 6, 1890 – August 25, 1971), was an American
entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He led a band presenting a combination of jazz
, hokey comedy, and schmaltzy sentimentality that was a hit with the American public. He was known by the moniker "Mr. Entertainment" or Ted "Is Everybody Happy?" Lewis.
, Lewis was one of the first Northern musicians to start imitating the New Orleans jazz musicians who came up to New York in the teens. He first recorded in 1917 with Earl Fuller's Jass Band
, who were making an energetic if somewhat clumsy attempt to copy the sound of the city's newest sensation, the Original Dixieland Jass Band
. At the time, Lewis didn't seem to be able to do much on the clarinet other than trill. (Promoting one recording the Victor catalog stated:"The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet"). He improved a bit later, forming his style from the influences of the first New Orleans clarinetists to reside in New York, Larry Shields
, Alcide Nunez
, and Achille Baquet
.
, which marketed him as their answer to the Original Dixieland Jass Band who recorded for Victor records. For a time (as they did with Paul Whiteman) Columbia gave him a special record label featuring his picture. At the start of the 1920s, he was considered by many people without previous knowledge of jazz (that is to say, most of America) to be one of the leading lights of hot jazz. Lewis's clarinet playing barely evolved beyond his style of 1919 which in later years would sound increasingly corny, but Lewis certainly knew what good clarinet playing sounded like, for he hired musicians like Benny Goodman
, Jimmy Dorsey
, and Don Murray
to play clarinet in his band. Lewis actually could play normally well (listen to his earliest records for an idea; no missed notes, for one). For years, his band also included jazz
greats Muggsy Spanier
on trumpet and George Brunis on trombone. Ted Lewis's band was second only to the Paul Whiteman
in popularity during the 1920s, and arguably played more real jazz with less pretension than Whiteman, especially in his recordings of the late 1920s.
Lewis recorded for Columbia from 1919-1933. He was on Decca
1934 into the 1940s. In 1932, Lewis recorded "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town
", which he had performed in the film "The Crooner" with his orchestra. It was released on a 78 and reached number one on the charts where it stayed for 10 weeks.
Lewis's band got cornier and schmaltzier as the Great Depression
wore on, but this seemed to match the general public's taste, as he remained commercially successful during an era when many bands broke up. Through it all he retained his famous catchphrase "Is everybody happy?". Lewis adopted a battered top hat for sentimental, hard-luck tunes (he called himself "the high-hatted tragedian of song"). Frequently he would stray from song lyrics, improvising chatter around them. This gave the effect of Lewis "speaking" the song spontaneously: "When ma' baby... when ma' baby smiles at me... gee, what a wonderful, wonderful light that comes to her eyes... look at that light, folks..."
In 1941 the band was recruited at the last minute, along with the Andrews Sisters, to furnish musical numbers for the Abbott and Costello
comedy Hold That Ghost
(1941), released by Universal Studios
on August 6, 1941. Musical numbers cut from the feature were released by Universal separately on September 3, 1941, in a short subject
entitled Is Everybody Happy?
In 1943 Columbia Pictures
mounted a feature-length biopic of Lewis—yet again titled Is Everybody Happy?
-- with actor Michael Duane portraying the bandleader and lip synching to Lewis's recordings.
There is an extended caricature of Lewis in the Warner Brothers short Speaking of the Weather (Tashlin, 1937), playing Plenty of Money and You.
and in Las Vegas
into the 1960s. True to his vaudeville
beginnings, he created a visual as well as a musical act. His physical presence with props like his top hat combined with bits of visual humor and dancing were as important to him as his music.
One of his most memorable songs was "Me and My Shadow
" with which he frequently closed his act. During the song he danced on stage with his own, spotlight-generated, shadow. In Vegas, a dancer was added to duet with Lewis' shadow on stage. He died in New York City
in 1971. In June 1977, Lewis's widow and friends dedicated the Ted Lewis Museum and park in his honor in his home town of Circleville, Ohio
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He led a band presenting a combination of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, hokey comedy, and schmaltzy sentimentality that was a hit with the American public. He was known by the moniker "Mr. Entertainment" or Ted "Is Everybody Happy?" Lewis.
Early life
Born in Circleville, OhioCircleville, Ohio
Circleville is a city in and the county seat of Pickaway County, Ohio, United States, along the Scioto River. The population was 13,485 at the 2000 census.-History:...
, Lewis was one of the first Northern musicians to start imitating the New Orleans jazz musicians who came up to New York in the teens. He first recorded in 1917 with Earl Fuller's Jass Band
Earl Fuller
Earl Fuller was an American society dance band leader, drummer and pianist.His group "Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra" was a regular feature at Rector's restaurant in New York City. Their records were released on Victor Records, Columbia Records, Emerson Records and Edison Records and sold...
, who were making an energetic if somewhat clumsy attempt to copy the sound of the city's newest sensation, the Original Dixieland Jass Band
Original Dixieland Jass Band
The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...
. At the time, Lewis didn't seem to be able to do much on the clarinet other than trill. (Promoting one recording the Victor catalog stated:"The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet"). He improved a bit later, forming his style from the influences of the first New Orleans clarinetists to reside in New York, Larry Shields
Larry Shields
Lawrence James "Larry" Shields was an early American dixieland jazz clarinetist.Shields was born into an Irish-American family in Uptown New Orleans, on the same block where jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden lived...
, Alcide Nunez
Alcide Nunez
Alcide Patrick Nunez was an early United States jazz clarinetist. Also known as Yellow Nunez and Al Nunez, he was born in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana of an Isleño family and moved to New Orleans in his childhood.He initially played guitar, then switched to clarinet about 1902...
, and Achille Baquet
Achille Baquet
Achille Joseph Baquet was an American jazz clarinetist and saxophonist. He was an early musician on the New Orleans jazz scene....
.
Career
By 1919, Lewis was leading his own band, and had a recording contract with Columbia RecordsColumbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, which marketed him as their answer to the Original Dixieland Jass Band who recorded for Victor records. For a time (as they did with Paul Whiteman) Columbia gave him a special record label featuring his picture. At the start of the 1920s, he was considered by many people without previous knowledge of jazz (that is to say, most of America) to be one of the leading lights of hot jazz. Lewis's clarinet playing barely evolved beyond his style of 1919 which in later years would sound increasingly corny, but Lewis certainly knew what good clarinet playing sounded like, for he hired musicians like Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
, Jimmy Dorsey
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...
, and Don Murray
Don Murray (clarinetist)
Don Murray was an early jazz clarinet and saxophone player.Don Murray was born in Joliet, Illinois, and attended high school in Chicago. In his teens he made a name for himself as one of the best young jazz clarinetists and saxophonists in the city...
to play clarinet in his band. Lewis actually could play normally well (listen to his earliest records for an idea; no missed notes, for one). For years, his band also included jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
greats Muggsy Spanier
Muggsy Spanier
Francis Joseph Julian "Muggsy" Spanier was a prominent cornet player based in Chicago. He was renowned as the best trumpet/cornet in Chicago until Bix Beiderbecke entered the scene....
on trumpet and George Brunis on trombone. Ted Lewis's band was second only to the Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader and orchestral director.Leader of the most popular dance bands in the United States during the 1920s, Whiteman's recordings were immensely successful, and press notices often referred to him as the "King of Jazz"...
in popularity during the 1920s, and arguably played more real jazz with less pretension than Whiteman, especially in his recordings of the late 1920s.
Lewis recorded for Columbia from 1919-1933. He was on Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
1934 into the 1940s. In 1932, Lewis recorded "In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town
In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town
"In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town" is a popular song written by Ira Schuster and Jack Little with lyrics by Joe Young, published in 1932. Ted Lewis performed it with his orchestra in the film "The Crooner" in 1932. His version was released as a single and it went to number one, where it remained...
", which he had performed in the film "The Crooner" with his orchestra. It was released on a 78 and reached number one on the charts where it stayed for 10 weeks.
Lewis's band got cornier and schmaltzier as the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
wore on, but this seemed to match the general public's taste, as he remained commercially successful during an era when many bands broke up. Through it all he retained his famous catchphrase "Is everybody happy?". Lewis adopted a battered top hat for sentimental, hard-luck tunes (he called himself "the high-hatted tragedian of song"). Frequently he would stray from song lyrics, improvising chatter around them. This gave the effect of Lewis "speaking" the song spontaneously: "When ma' baby... when ma' baby smiles at me... gee, what a wonderful, wonderful light that comes to her eyes... look at that light, folks..."
Films
Lewis and his band appeared in a few early-talkie movie musicals in 1929, notably the Warner Brothers revue The Show of Shows. The first of several films titled with Lewis' catchphrase, Is Everybody Happy? also premiered in 1929, while 1935 saw Lewis and his band performing several numbers in the film Here Comes the Band.In 1941 the band was recruited at the last minute, along with the Andrews Sisters, to furnish musical numbers for the Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
comedy Hold That Ghost
Hold That Ghost
Hold That Ghost is a 1941 comedy horror film starring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello and featuring Joan Davis, Evelyn Ankers, and Shemp Howard....
(1941), released by Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
on August 6, 1941. Musical numbers cut from the feature were released by Universal separately on September 3, 1941, in a short subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
entitled Is Everybody Happy?
In 1943 Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
mounted a feature-length biopic of Lewis—yet again titled Is Everybody Happy?
Is Everybody Happy? (1943 film)
Is Everybody Happy? is an American black and white musical film.The taglines for the film were: "18 of the grand songs made famous by the High-Hatted Tragedian of Song'", "A FAST-STEPPING MUSICAL JAMBOREE!", "GET HAPPY! - Here comes the sweetest show in town!" and "IT'S GAY IN A GREAT BIG WAY!".-...
-- with actor Michael Duane portraying the bandleader and lip synching to Lewis's recordings.
There is an extended caricature of Lewis in the Warner Brothers short Speaking of the Weather (Tashlin, 1937), playing Plenty of Money and You.
Later career
Lewis kept his band together through the 1950s, and continued to make appearances on televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
into the 1960s. True to his vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
beginnings, he created a visual as well as a musical act. His physical presence with props like his top hat combined with bits of visual humor and dancing were as important to him as his music.
One of his most memorable songs was "Me and My Shadow
Me and My Shadow
"Me and My Shadow" is a 1927 popular song. Officially the credits show it as written by Al Jolson, Billy Rose, and Dave Dreyer; in fact, Billy Rose was exclusively a lyricist, Dreyer a composer, and Al Jolson a performer who was often given credits so he could earn some more money, so the actual...
" with which he frequently closed his act. During the song he danced on stage with his own, spotlight-generated, shadow. In Vegas, a dancer was added to duet with Lewis' shadow on stage. He died in New York City
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...
in 1971. In June 1977, Lewis's widow and friends dedicated the Ted Lewis Museum and park in his honor in his home town of Circleville, Ohio
Circleville, Ohio
Circleville is a city in and the county seat of Pickaway County, Ohio, United States, along the Scioto River. The population was 13,485 at the 2000 census.-History:...
.