A week ago, I posted a link to the 40th and final episode of my audio suspense story "Freedom Island." The complete series can be found at the Facebook Page "Freedom Island - modern suspense."
As of now, I'm moving The Kay Kemble Project front and center. If this project is unfamiliar, I have been working for some time on a history of a mythical World War II era bandleader known as The Lady with the Gold Baton. There's a Facebook Page for the project, and a blog for it as well. Links to those at the bottom of this post.
The most important time of bandleader Kay Kemble's career was the period from 1938 to 1952. I use the figure of my invented bandleader to make pop culture notes about the 20th century. This is the stuff I'll be featuring in my Tuesday posts here at the group blog.
Today, we have the start of a series looking look at songs from roughly 1938 to around 1952, musical numbers which were later done in doo-wop style by other artists.
I like doo wop, but some tunes were not meant to be doo-wopped. I feel a good example of that is what happened to "Blue Moon," a song which already had a complicated history. It's always been attributed to songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, but there's an entire book called Blue Moon, entirely about the original songwriter, and his lawsuit against Rodgers and Hart. Here is a link to a short version of the tale.
Moving on from its composition, the song "Blue Moon" was originally featured in the 1934 film "Manhattan Melodrama," starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and William Powell. Here's a video clip.
In the same year as the movie "Manhattan Melodrama," bandleader Ted Del Rio did a Latin-style arrangement of "Blue Moon." It featured the same kind of squawky muted trumpet effect used later in songs like "Tampico" and "Rum and Coca-Cola."
Ella Fitzgerald's recording has the best known vocal for "Blue Moon" as it was originally arranged.
And then came The Marcels, in 1961, with...this.
Sigh.
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