SPOTLIGHT for OCTOBER 29TH: Fanny Brice

Entry for October 29, 2007

SPOTLIGHT for
OCTOBER 29TH!!!

BIRTHDAYS...

1916 Hadda Hopgood Brooks
piano/vocals
b: Los Angeles, CA, USA. d. Nov. 21, 2002

She was born Hadda Hopgood in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California.
A versatile performer whose career spanned almost six decades and whose repertoire included boogiefied classics, blues ,ballads and torch songs , Brooks became known as "the Queen of Boogie Woogie " right after the release, in 1945 , of her first single, "Swingin' the Boogie".

Born into a prominent African American family from Georgia , she was taught to play the piano from the age of four and later studied classical music. In the course of her career, Brooks also appeared in films, mainly as a pianist and/or lounge singer ( Out of the Blue ,1947 ;In a Lonely Place ,1950 , performing "I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You"). In the 1950s , she was one of the first African American women to host her own television show ( The Hadda Brooks Show ). After an early retirement, which she spent in Hawaii and Australia , she returned to Los Angeles to be rediscovered in 1986 .
She died of heart failure in Los Angeles at the age of 86.
Her most famous songs include:
"Swingin' the Boogie"
"That's My Desire"
"Romance in the Dark"
"Don't Take Your Love From Me"
"Say It with a Kiss"
~Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Official Site:
haddabrooks.tripod.com/
MORE:
trash.candysweet.com/fibbers...dda.html

1891
Fanny Brice
Actress/singer d. 1951.
Starred in the Ziegfeld Follies and on Radio and Films.
née: Frances Borach.

Biography
The fame of vaudeville legend Fanny Brice has been largely carried on in a biographical adaptation of her life that has almost nothing to do with the facts of the case, the musical Funny Girl, a star vehicle designed for Barbra Streisand. The real Fanny Brice was, in her time, a tremendously popular comedienne who first established herself in vaudeville and later in radio, portraying her trademark character, Baby Snooks. Her skill at Yiddish/English dialect, penchant for wacky facial expressions, and loud, perfectly timed comic singing voice endeared her to American audiences for more than four decades.

Fanny Brice was born Fania Borach in New York's Lower East Side and dropped out of school in the eighth grade to become a chorus girl. While some sources place the beginning of Brice's career in Yiddish vaudeville, she did not speak Yiddish and seems to have bypassed that step in favor of regular vaudeville. In 1909, she scored her first success singing an Irving Berlin song, "Sadie Salome, Go Home," in a musical called The College Girls while performing a parody on "The Dance of the Seven Veils" from Richard Strauss' opera Salome. This attracted the attention of impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, and though Brice, it seems, would've made an unlikely "Follies Girl," she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1910; Brice was 18 years old.

Fanny Brice & Billy Rose

Brice continued through 1923 to star in several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies as a top-billed performer alongside acts such as W.C. Fields, Raymond Hitchcock, Van & Schenck, Moran & Mack, and Ted Lewis. She was also a featured attraction in shows produced by Irving Berlin and Billy Rose, whom she married in 1929 (Brice divorced him in 1938). Brice popularized the classic torch song "My Man" and was indelibly associated with such comic songs as "Second-Hand Rose" and "I'm an Indian." At the height of her popularity as a stage star, Brice attempted to take on roles in serious plays, but her efforts to this end proved unsuccessful.

In 1918, Brice married Nicky Arnstein, a second-tier racketeer and con man who by 1920 had become implicated in a Wall Street bond robbery. Although in retrospect it seems likely that Arnstein was not guilty in the matter, he was convicted and sent to Leavenworth in 1924. Upon his release three years later, Arnstein disappeared and was never heard from again.

This sad tale ultimately became the seed for Funny Girl; Brice's later marriage to Billy Rose provided the inspiration for the film musical Funny Lady. While neither of these fictionalized projects reflects the true life story of Fanny Brice, one film that does is Rose of Washington Square (1939), starring Alice Faye. The resemblance was so close, in fact, that Brice sued the film's producer, 20th Century Fox, for defamation of character; Brice and the studio settled out of court.

Brice as "Baby Snooks" with Bob Hope.

With arrival of talking pictures, Brice went to Hollywood and starred in a Vitaphone feature, My Man (1928), and Be Yourself (1930) for United Artists. Both of these films were failures, and Brice soon returned to Broadway. At some point during the early '30s, while appearing in some of the posthumous stage editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, Brice developed the persona of the bratty widdle kid Baby Snooks. Brice revived this character on an episode of a radio program entitled The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air, which aired February 29, 1936. The public response was immediate, and throughout the late '30s Brice carried Baby Snooks through an assortment of variety programs until settling in with Maxwell House Coffee Time in 1940. By 1944, her spot on the radio schedule was finally named The Baby Snooks Show in earnest. Brice often performed the part of Baby Snooks in an adult-sized baby outfit, departing from the usual standard of radio actors in that relatively few of them dressed the part when playing a character. As popular as she had been on Broadway in the early '20s, it was nothing compared to her success portraying Baby Snooks, and through this character Fanny Brice became a national institution. Brice suffered a stroke on May 24, 1951, and died five days later at the age of 50. She had long suffered from nervous disorders, and in the past had been known to cancel out of stage productions on the advice of physicians. An entire subplot was developed on The Baby Snooks Show in 1945 in which Baby Snooks had been kidnapped -- this was in order to cover an illness that Brice suffered, taking her out of the cast for several weeks.

Interested persons hoping to grasp something of Brice's early stage career are in for a disappointment; although she began recording in 1916 for Columbia, she only did so sporadically through 1930, and cut just 26 titles -- six of these were rejected, and four of the issued recordings are versions of "My Man." The Vitaphone film musical bearing that title has disappeared; though all but one of the soundtrack discs have been recovered, these are long on spoken dialogue and short on music. Brice appeared in only 11 films, usually in guest cameos, and three of these are shorts; she apparently never appeared on television. In an attempt to get at the appeal of Fanny Brice, you would have to weigh this tiny amount of film clips and recordings against the veritable mountain of Baby Snooks broadcasts that survive, and under the circumstances there is no way to get a balanced picture of her talents -- several critics who have seen Brice on film have commented that they can't understand why she was so popular. Nonetheless, Fanny Brice was considered to be the greatest Jewish female comedienne of her day. It's a pity that her greatest moments were sustained on the Broadway stage, as more than 50 years after she died, posterity is barely able to grasp what Fanny Brice's celebrity was about, based on the legacy that has survived.
~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

Bio:
www.brice.nl/
Jewish Women in Comedy Bio:
www.jwa.org/discover/comedy/brice.html
Fanny Brice Slide Show!!!:
saxonyrecordcompany.com/v-web/...how.php

1916 "Ramblin' Jimmie Dolan
(Cowboy) vocals/guitar
b. Gardena, CA, USA. d: July 31, 1994.
Tag: "America's Cowboy Troubador".
MM Bio:
www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/arti...t.cgi

1815
Daniel Decatur Emmett
Composer
b: Mt. Vernon, OH, USA. d: June 28, 1904, Mt.Vernon, OH, USA.
Daniel Decatur Emmett is remembered today chiefly for a song he wrote in 1859 . . . Dixie. He is also known for his role in the Virginia Minstrels.

“I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!”
(Dixie's Land, 1-3)

BIO:
www.danemmett.org/
WIKI BIO:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Emmett

1922 Neal Hefti
Trumpet/Composer
b. Hastings, NE. trumpet/arranger with Woody Herman's Silver Award orch later with Joe Marsala.
SpaceAgePop Bio:
www.spaceagepop.com/hefti.htm
WIKI Bio:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Hefti

1911 Narciso Martinez
(Tejano Conjunto) accordion
b. Reynosa, Mexico
Bio:
www.lib.utexas.edu/benson/b...lie2.html
MORE:
www.vh1.com/artists/az/m.../artist.jhtml

1925 John Haley "Zoot" Sims
Tenor Sax
b. Inglewood, CA, USA. d: Mar. 23, 1985, New York, NY, USA.
Zoot worked with Bob Astor; Harry Biss(p); Art Blakey(dm); Sid Catlett; Al Cohn; Sonny Dunham; Benny Goodman; Bill Harris; Woody Herman; Don Lamond(dm); John Lewis(p); Clyde Lombardi(b); Gerry Mulligan Buddy Rich; Curley Russell(b); Artie Shaw and Bobby Sherwood.
BIO:
musicbase.h1.ru/PPB/ppb2/Bio_228.htm
VERVE Bio:
www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist.aspx

1943 Dan Scanlan
ukulele/songwriter
b. Los Angeles, CA, USA. aka: 'Cool Hand Uke'
Dan Scanlan Presents Cool Hand Uke's LAVA TUBE:
www.coolhanduke.com/

Notable Events
on this date include:

1987.
Bandleader/clarinetist Woody Herman
died in Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Age: 74.

1988.
Joe Comfort, bassist
died in Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Age: 71
Played with Lionel Hampton and with Nat "King" Cole.

1991.
Percy Randolph, harmonica
died in New Orleans, LA, USA.
Age: 77 Often appeared with guitarist "Snooks" Eaglin

1992.
Fred Maddox, C&W vocals/bass
died. Age: 73.
Member: "Maddox Brothers & Rose"

1995.
Louis Acorn, drums
died in Shreveport, LA, USA.

Songs Recorded/Released
on this date include:

1921 “I've Got My Habits On”,
(Jimmy Durante )
- Joseph Samuels' Jazz Band
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/sa...itson.ram

1923 “Barney Google”
(Billy Rose / Con Conrad)
- Original Capitol Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/OC...oogle.ram

1923 “Why Worry Blues”
- Original Capitol Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/OC...blues.ram

1923 “In Love With Love”
(from the Musical Comedy "The Stepping Stones"), (Jerome Kern)
- Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/wh...vwluv.ram

1923 “Mama Loves Papa (Papa Loves Mama)”
(Cliff Friend / Abel Baer) - Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/Wh...apapa.ram

1923 “Shake Your Feet”, (from "Ziegfeld Follies")
- Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/Wh...kfeet.ram

1924 “Eccentric”
- Johnny De Droit and his New Orleans Orchestra
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/de...ntric.ram

1926 “The Little White House (At The End Of Honeymoon Lane)”
Vocal refrain by Tom Waring - Waring's Pennsylvanians
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/wa...House.ram

1929 "Goin' Nuts"
Six Jolly Jesters
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/el...nnuts.ram

1929 "Oklahoma Stomp"
Six Jolly Jesters (Duke Ellington pseudonym on Vocalion - Teddy Bunn quitar.)
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/songs/el...homaA.ram

1929 “Beale Street Blues” (W.C. Handy)
- Boyd Senter and his Senterpedes
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/se...treet.ram

1929 “Sweetheart Blues”
- Boyd Senter and his Senterpedes
LISTEN:
www.redhotjazz.com/Songs/se...blues.ram

1942 "Daybreak "
- Tommy Dorsey Orch