Fred and Adele Astaire

A couple of jazz hoofers....

If you don’t know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out.

- Paul Bowles

I was recently thinking about an afternoon long ago, when I first saw a 78rpm record in the basement of an old, white house on the other side of the lake.

You never know why something moves you when you’re a kid - how it becomes so deeply a part of your being. It just does. At the time, you don’t even realize it. Only in retrospect do you try to piece together the source of these strange, early impulses.

But before I get into that, since last week was also a 78rpm-focused journey, if you’re looking for a more modern leg of my journey, steer your canoe down this fork of the river:

Nessa Records

Or just browse through my back catalog. I have been writing about my jazz journey on that Big River called Jazz weekly now since October 2020 - there’s a lot to choose from.

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When I was in grade school in the early 1970s, I only heard music either in church, on the car radio, or, in winter, playing on a radio in the warming house at school.

When I was first learning to skate, just about every night I’d walk up to the ice rink and play pick-up hockey. When I got cold, I’d go into the warming house and listen to songs playing on the radio. I liked a lot of songs and could sing along to them, but I didn’t have a passion for that music. My passion was first piqued by music of a different sort - movie music.

I loved the soundtracks to movies, particularly from old ones playing on the TV matinees. I remember liking: Al Jolson singing My Mammy in The Jazz Singer (1927); Maurice Chevalier singing I Remember It Well in Gigi (1958); and Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan singing and dancing to I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan in The Band Wagon (1953). For some reason, these were the songs that found a way into my soul.

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These movie classics were put on by a local TV station and produced by the famous film archivist Bob DeFlores. Bob is an amazing man. He has one of the largest private film archives in the country. Please take a few minutes to learn about him and listen to this from Ampers, an association of 18 independent community radio stations in Minnesota:

http://ampers.org/mn-art-culture-history/bob-deflores-film-archivist/

Perhaps I have Bob to thank for my passion for old movie soundtracks. Without him, I may never have had the chance to hear them. Oddly enough, my mom knew Bob. I’m not sure how they knew each other, but I think it was from our family’s days back in California. She would see him from time to time and tell him about how I loved the movies he was playing.

As I have shared many times already, more than any of the Hollywood stars, Fred Astaire made the most impact on me. Not only his singing but his dancing.

In particular, I remember seeing him in Broadway Melody of 1940:

This dance number with Eleanor Powell stands out for me. It was the only on-screen pairing of Astaire and Powell, who were considered the finest film musical dancers of their time.

In the movie, when talking about a dance step, Powell says, “It’s very simple. There’s nothing to it.” Then they dance. After that, I thought, I want to do that. It was moments like this that finally inspired me to ask my mom to sign me up for tap dance lessons. Of course, I knew nothing of tap dancing and dance schools - and neither did my mom.

I’m not sure she knew what to make of that. I think I know now because I had to ask her probably a dozen times how the dance lessons were coming. I think she thought I’d forget. I’m pretty sure that was the case because Lucy Peltier’s Dance Studio was right up the street, less than a mile away. That’s where I learned my first tap dance to Sweet Georgia Brown.

It was a tiny studio, right next to the Red Owl. Incidentally, my best friend and partner in crime, Jeff Butcher, also lived across from the Red Owl. Oddly enough, Jeff and I were movie buffs even in grade school. He was as passionate about the Marx Brothers as I was about Fred Astaire. We used to go to all the estate sales in the White Bear Lake area looking for movie memorabilia, like books, sheet music, and lobby cards, whatever we could dig up.

I recall one particular estate sale at an old, white house on the north side of the lake, next to Dellwood. We rode our bikes out there one Saturday afternoon. Down in the basement were stacks of old 78rpm records. I had never seen these before - a strange type of record. I started to browse through them and lo and behold, on the labels were names I knew: Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, and even Fred Astaire.

I think I bought five of those 78s that day: two Jolsons, two Chevaliers, and this one with Fred Astaire singing Cole Porter’s Night and Day:

I still can remember riding my bike back around the lake with one hand on the handle bars and the other holding those five 78s. I was riding on air. It didn’t matter that I had no way to play these old, shellac discs - they were treasures.

Night and Day was recorded on November 22, 1932, when Fred Astaire was performing it nightly on Broadway in The Gay Divorce.

This was Astaire’s last Broadway show before going to Hollywood, and the first without his sister. Before Fred Astaire became the Hollywood star most known for dancing with Ginger Rogers, he made a name for himself dancing with his sister, Adele. Last week’s journey with Vernon and Irene Castle made me think of this famous brother and sister dance team.

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As Fred Astaire wrote in his autobiography, Steps In Time:

I remembered so well the overwhelming influence inspired by almost every move Irene Castle made when she and Vernon swept the world with their fabulous dancing success. The present generation cannot possibly realize the size of the rage created by these two people. They were easily the most potent factor in the development of ballroom dancing as a public pastime and were received with such acclaim both professionally and socially that it seems almost impossible to describe it.

Fred was only fourteen years old when he and his sister Adele went to see the Castles nine times in The Sunshine Girl, when it played at the Knickerbocker Theatre on Broadway in 1913.

The Astaires first performed together on the vaudeville stage in 1903, when Adele was eight and Fred was six years old. The Castles had a tremendous influence on the Astaires, who “appropriated” some of their ballroom steps and styles in their vaudeville act. It took them awhile to find their step, so to speak, but they hung in there and finally, in 1917, performed together for the first time on Broadway in Lee Shubert’s Over the Top.

In 1922, they landed their first actual speaking roles in the Broadway musical For Goodness Sake. The show was a success and the idea came up to take it to England.

In May 1923, For Goodness Sake, renamed in England as Stop Flirting, opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End. From the play, here is The Whichness of the Whatness:

The play was an even bigger success in England, and the Prince of Wales attended the show ten times. Stop Flirting put the Astaires on the map.

After their success abroad, they returned to New York in late 1924 and their next show was George Gershwin’s Lady Be Good!, George and Ira Gershwin’s first Broadway musical score. This was also a huge hit and in the spring of 1926, Astaires were headed back to England. It opened at the Empire Theatre.

The show was another huge success, and the Astaires renewed their acquaintance with the British royal family, receiving an invitation from the Duke and Duchess of York to meet the newborn Princess Elizabeth. King George V and Queen Mary also made a special visit to see the Astaires perform.

From 1926, here’s a song I like from Lady Be Good!, Gershwin’s The Half of It, Dearie' Blues, with some Rhapsody in Blue rifs thrown in. Fred Astaire’s tap dancing steals the show. This Gershwin and Astaire recording is a treasure - I love how during the tap dance Astaire says: “How's that, George," to which Gershwin replies: "That's fine, Freddy, keep going.”

After the success of Lady Be Good!, in 1927, the Astaires joined forces again with the Gershwin brothers for their new musical Funny Face, which was the first show performed in the newly built Alvin Theatre in New York City, where the original Broadway production of Annie opened in 1977 and ran for five years.

Funny Face was yet another big hit for the Astaires. Recorded in 1928, here’s a fun one from Funny Face, Gershwin’s The Babbitt and The Bromide:

Here’s another incredible recording from Funny Face. It features Gershwin on piano and Fred Astaire again singing and dancing, this time to My One and Only. Astaire has an absolute killer tap dance solo in the end:

After a successful run in New York City, Gershwin’s Funny Face opened in London at Princes Theatre on November 8, 1928.

On the night of their last performance, Adele was introduced to Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire.

Back in New York City New York, the Astaires began working on The Band Wagon, which would be their last show together. It opened on Broadway on June 3, 1931.

After a successful run in New York City, the show hit the road. However, on March 5, 1932, at the Illinois Theater in Chicago, Adele quit the stage. She had been dancing with her brother for 27 years. Soon after, she travelled to England and married Lord Cavendish in the family’s private chapel at Chatsworth. She received the title of “Lady Charles.”

Here is Chatsworth House photographed for Vogue in 2010. That’s Deborah “Debo” Mitford, who became the Duchess of Devonshire, when in 1941 she married Andrew Cavendish, son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire. When Andrew’s older brother was killed in action in Belgium in WWII, Andrew inherited the title of the 11th Duke of Devonshire. The Mitfords were the six aristocrat sisters who took Britain’s social scene by storm in the 1930s and 1940s.

On the left is Stella Tennant, the Duchess’s granddaughter. Tennant was a big name in fashion modeling in the 1990s, appearing on the cover of Vogue and as the face of Chanel and Versace. Here’s another interesting article on the famous brides of Chatsworth, but let’s get back on the river….

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After I bought those first five 78s, time moved quickly and before I knew it I was in the Army and far away from White Bear Lake. Some time in 2000, after I moved to Minnesota from Chicago, my sister-in-law gave me her dad’s 78 collection. Not long after that, when her husband died, my aunt passed on to me his 78 collection. These gifts cast my mind back to my youth and that strange, early impulse for those old, shellac discs. It was like I had found an old friend.

Since then, my collection of 78s has grown and so has my appreciation for them. However, I’m still not sure why these records touched my youthful soul. I have tried to find out why, but I can’t. They just did.

Here’s one more for the road. This is one of my first five 78s, Maurice Chevalier’s Wait ‘Til You See “Ma Chérie”, recorded in New York City in March 15, 1929:

From time to time, I drive around White Bear Lake and pass that old, white house, where I bought my first five 78s. That’s where I first sunk my paddle into that Big River called Jazz - where my jazz journey began - and it makes my heart soar like a hawk.

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll travel to Africa for three expeditions. The first is into the waters of the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

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Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that.

Until then, keep on walking….