"There is Jolson in Perry Como, there’s certainly Jolson in Bing. So in a strange way, even artists that on the surface bear no resemblance to Jolson, modeled themselves on Jolson’s style or made a conscious effort not to sound like Jolson. The fact of Jolson’s very existence changed how people sang from the teens on."



Yowza, Yowza, Yowza. This is Brian Marcus Decker, for the Jolson and Friends blog located on the web at www.JolsonBlog.com , which is the first tech-nostalgic blog dedicated to the musical influences of Al Jolson and Friends.

Well folks, we now continue with part II of a new interview series with Rich Conaty from WFUV. He has been the host of the Big Broadcast radio program for over 30 years. This spectacular Sunday night radio show features only classic songs from the '20s and '30s. He will be sharing his thoughts on Al Jolson, Cab Calloway, Connee Boswell, tips on buying 78's, the upcoming DVD release of the Jazz Singer, the Ziegfeld Follies, Vince Giordano's Nighthawks and more.

After collecting audio assets for five Jolson related interviews, in the last few months I launched the First Jolson Podcast and you can listen to the entire series of interviews including my current seven-part interview with the Rich Conaty of the Big Broadcast radio show, Asa, the Magnificent Minstrel, the Vaudeville series with author Trav S.D. and Sybil Jason.

Use feed.jolsonblog.com and click on:

Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast: Jolson and The Big Broadcast Part II

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Brian Marcus Decker: Many of Jolson contemporaries have sighted Jolson as their major influence and inspiration, certainly including artists like Eddie Cantor and even one of your famous favorite performers, Bing Crosby. Who were some of the other performers that you believe were strongly influenced by Jolson?

Rich Conaty: It’s interesting, not long ago I did my annual tribute to Perry Como. And I think I just mentioned very matter of factly, playing one of the Como records with Ted Weems, how much Como had been influenced by Bing. And I got emails and phone calls and they said when they hear early Como, they hear a lot of Jolson. And I went back and, yeah, there’s a certain similarity in the tone of his voice and his phrasing that’s Crosby-like, but there is Jolson in Perry Como, there’s certainly Jolson in Bing. I think of this in terms of Crosby and Sinatra: it isn’t so much that Sinatra sounds like Crosby, it’s how much he doesn’t sound like Crosby.

So in a strange way, even artists that on the surface bear no resemblance to Jolson, modeled themselves on Jolson’s style or made a conscious effort not to sound like Jolson. The fact of Jolson’s very existence changed how people sang from the teens on.

Brian Marcus Decker: Como actually was a big Al Jolson fan and I’d be happy to share some interesting music with you, specifically a radio broadcast that was done which was a tribute to Al Jolson that was actually the first bi-coastal transmission on radio.

There are several things about The Big Broadcast that always amazes me. Certainly your in-depth knowledge, your vast musical catalogue, your fascination with some of the more obscure musical artists, and you’re focused not just on the musicians but the songwriters. These are the people who really drove the legends of this great American songbook. I’ve even heard several shows that you’ve done that have included some tributes to specific song writers like Berlin, Irving Caesar, Gus Kahn, and certainly the Gershwin’s. Who do you consider some of the most important, as well as obscure, tin-pan alley songwriters? And can you share some examples of these great tunes?

Rich Conaty: Well the show has certainly evolved into an almost exclusively birthday- driven program, and it’s mostly of the songwriters. I mean, you’ll have band leaders and singers and instrumentalists, but 9 times out of 10 there are songwriters. A typical show will have 3, 4, and 5, sometimes as many as 7 or 8 songwriters. And Irving Caesar actually used to listen to this show in the early ‘70s, I’ve got a fan letter from him, and I got a check which was very nice, and I’ve had the pleasure over the years of meeting a number of the songwriters that I play, like Edward Eliscu, who wrote Without a Song and Great Day. Had dinner with Mitchell Parish, had the pleasure of meeting a couple of times Gerald Marks, who gave us Is It True What They Say About Dixie?

You can’t argue the significance of Rodgers and Gershwin and Berlin, and I don’t even want to call them second tier, there were so many, so many, the depth of the bench, are just incredible back then. You had guys like J. Fred Coots and The Tobias Brothers, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Abel Baer that just devoted them selves to this music. There were just so many. I mean, it just goes on and on and on,. It really is endless and it’s such a pleasure for me to turn up new songs.

Brian Marcus Decker: It’s interesting you mentioned The Tobias Brothers who actually were related to Eddie Cantor (Eddie married Ida Tobias).

It also seems very interesting to me the business of songwriting. It was a relatively young business that I strongly believe started with Stephen Foster in 1849, which included the hit Nelly Was a Lady, which was made famous by the Christy Minstrels. And for Jolson fans, I’m sure you’ve seen the 1939 movie Swanee River, starring Jolson and Don Ameche, which covers Stephen Foster’s life story.

I find it fascinating that initially sheet music was actually a much more significant source of revenue than the actual recordings themselves. And often songwriters had to plug songs as if they were the court jesters appearing before the Kings and Queens of vaudeville. More often than not a number of these performers would agree to promote specific songs on the condition of a fixed royalty as it related to the sheet music. This practice continues probably even today, but was commonly referred to as a ‘cut in’. Can you share with us the context of some stories of how some of these classic tin-pan alley songwriters actually went through this process of plugging songs on their journey to their hopeful fame and fortune?

Rich Conaty: Well one thing that comes to mind is that whole subcategory of singing songwriters. And not just guys that would demonstrate a song in an office for an artist, but people that were fine songwriters that had careers as vocalists. I’m thinking of Sam Coslow and Sammy Fain, and Harold Arlen certainly. Arlen had a beautiful voice. Berlin made some records too, but I wouldn’t put him in that same category. All these guys could sell their songs.

With the business of cut in’s, there’s a story that Mitchell Parish told me, now he wrote after the fact lyrics in a lot of the cases. I think Star Dust had been around for a few years before he put words to it, and in the same way he added lyrics to a number of Duke Ellington songs. And I think he gets credit on Sophisticated Lady, and then he wrote the words to Mood Indigo, when it was time to publish Mood Indigo there wasn’t room on the sheet music for his name because it was Ellington, I think it might have been Barney Bigard, Irving Mills, published the song, also somehow got his name of the song. So Mitchell took a flat fee for Mood Indigo. But, I mean, they didn’t have to hold a benefit for Mitchell Parish, not when you’ve written Stardust and Stairway to the Stars.

Brian Marcus Decker: Bud DeSylva, Gus Kahn, Louis Hirsch, Gene Schwartz, Con Conrad, Harry Akst, Joseph Myers, Dave Dreyer, Billy Rose, Brown, Henderson, Benny Davis, Grant Clark, Cliff Friend, Harold Atteridge, Alfred Bryan, Vincent Rose, Louis Silvers, and Louis Hirsch all have strong connections to Jolson. They’ve all shared songwriting credits in fact with Jolson. However many of my most trusted resources are trusted resources are truly convinced that Jolson really had limited if any contributions to this catalogue of 39 songs that Jolson did take songwriting credits for.

Jolson probably was not motivated by the money, perhaps it was ego. However I find it interesting that Earl Krasner, Jolson, and Jolson’s son did renew the copyright to this catalogue of songs. These songs range from popular Jolson classics as California, Here I Come, Keep Smiling at Troubles, Golden Gate, Back in Your Own Backyard, There’s a Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder, Avalon, Me and My Shadow, and the Anniversary Song, as well as some more obscure tunes like My Sumerun Girl , which was recorded and never released, I Say She Does, Some Beautiful Morning, Miami, Mother of Mine (I Still Have You), and I’m in Seventh Heaven. And, my least favorite Jolson song, Stella, which was written by Harry Akst.

As the old expression goes, if every picture tells a story, I find that some of the stories behind some of these 39 songs that we’re talking about, that Jolson actually took a songwriting credit on, quite fascinating. However, I do sometimes wonder if there is any legitimacy behind Jolson taking credit even if it was justice being a muse. Or just as his successfully being the salesman of songs. In fact, I believe I once remember a quote, something to the extent that Jolson said that he could actually read a telephone book, and make a hit out of it.

For example, as the legend goes, that Sonny Boy would never exist without Jolson’s unreasonable last minute request to DeSylva, Henderson and Brown to write a song via telephone from California to Atlantic City and his insistence to have the song written within a couple of hours. Jolson gave them a simple story line from the singing fool, and what seemed to be some inebriated songwriters in Atlantic City, created what became the first million dollar record, Sonny Boy. Another example would be Jolson’s idea to liberate an old eastern European old folk melody that became the impetus for the Anniversary Song.

Rich, while song writing can be a collaborative process, and often is, what do you think was the extent of Jolson’s contribution to this catalogue of songs?

Rich Conaty: Well, it’s really, it’s impossible to know with complete certainty, I don’t know exactly what the yardstick should be, but you say 39 songs out of how many songs he recorded, doesn’t seem like a lot. I use that same yardstick in looking at the songs that Bing Crosby has a credit on, and there are relatively few. And so I think in the case of Bing, he may actually have made a contribution to the song because it happened so infrequently. But you get somebody like Billy Rose, who maybe in later years didn’t have all that much to do with the songs that he gets a credit on, and certainly in the case of Irving Mills. It may be that Jolson believed that he had written 39 songs and certainly as you say in the case of Anniversary Song and Sonny Boy that he was a force behind them.

I heard from a guy, this must be 20 years ago because I think it was when I was working at WNEW, a songwriter who went back to the 1940’s and who had cut Glenn Miller in on a song, had approached me at WNEW with an unpublished song about the big bands. And he wanted me to use it as a theme, and he actually offered to cut me in on the song. So that may have been one of the last instances of a cut in.

• There are many popular artists of their day who did become relatively obscure compared to some of their contemporaries. For example, Mildred Bailey, as compared to the more popular Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday. Bob Crosby as compared to his brother Bing, the Boswell Sisters as compared to the Andrew Sisters. Rich, how do you explain why time was not as kind to some of these artists and who are some of these other obscure artists who you’ve really have spent a lot of time promoting?

• As I was talking about the Boswell Sisters, I read somewhere that you actually had a chance to interview Connee Boswell. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Boswell Sisters from the first time I ever heard a record called When I Take My Sugar to Tea, which was recorded with the Dorsey Brothers in 1931. What was that experience like and can you share with us any stories from the interview with Connee Boswell?

Jolson and Friends Blog Required Reading List

No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (Paperback) by Trav S.D.

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

My Fifteen Minutes: An Autobiography of a Child Star of the Golden Era of Hollywood (Paperback) by Sybil Jason.

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

When Jolson Was King: (Paperback) by Richard Grudens. Richard Grudens has written an entertaining and informative (must read) book for anyone interested in the legendary, Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer".

"The book contains many facets of Jolson' career including those around him, his competition, employers, and comments from those he inspired enough to form their own careers, the issue of minstrel, blackface performers, fabled stories of the famed Friar's Club, a chapter of the infamous Shubert Brothers, and chapters covering Jolson's experiences in film, radio and his extensive USO travels. Covered too are vignettes of the theatres in which Jolson performed, and of those great theatrical competitors like the Barrymore's and where they were voicing their talents while Jolson was pulling them in at the Winter Garden, and a full feature on Jolson's films from the first talkie, The Jazz Singer to his famed bio-pics The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again." - Richard Grudens

In the upcoming months I am looking to continue to evolve the Jolson and Friends Blog and wanted preview some upcoming changes. As of this post, I am promoting the sale of Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Houdini, History of Baseball and several other unique Limited Edition T-shirt designs (featured above) and matching gift cards (all with free U.S. shipping). The sales from these items help offset the cost of maintaining this blog.

Due to the time intensive nature of ongoing research, content development, production and maintaining and the Blog, the next blog update will happen on November 18, 2007.

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