Duke Ellington's JUMP FOR JOY: radio program

[ghost of miles]

Hey all,

I'm in the midst of completing a one-hour program about Duke Ellington's 1941 satirical, civil-rights-oriented musical, JUMP FOR JOY, which was staged in Los Angeles. A number of Hollywood luminaries floated around the edges of the production, including Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, and John Garfield; the musical itself included Ellington classics such as "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good," "Rocks in My Bed," and the title song. The program will feature interviews with Patricia Willard, who worked as Ellington's assistant from 1949-74, and who wrote extensively about the musical for a 1988 Smithsonian LP; jazz educator David Baker; Ellington biographer and Smithsonian music curator John Hasse; and cultural historian Michael McGerr. The program will also include a promotional radio medley, a recreation of two Ellington speeches by IU poet Kevin Young, the Soundies version of "Bli-blip" with Marie Bryant singing, a portion of comedian Wonderful Smith's monologue, and all of the surviving Victor music recorded by the Blanton-Webster orchestra. It airs on Sunday, Feb. 22 at 9 p.m. on WFIU. You can read another brief description here (I got Duke on the cover of our monthly public radio magazine):

DirectionsInSoundFeb

(Choose the February Adobe--the Feb. HTML hasn't been updated yet.)

As always, feedback is more than welcome!

Edited February 6, 2008 by ghost of miles

[EKE BBB]

Looks like a very, very interesting program, GOM!!!

[brownie]

Ghost, would love to hear that. Will it get a replay at a decent time for us people on the other side of the earth? 9PM your time is middle of the night here and this will be on a very early Monday morning.

Looked at the radio program. WFIU seems to be a very interesting station to have around...

[catesta]

Nice.

[ghost of miles]

Ghost, would love to hear that. Will it get a replay at a decent time for us people on the other side of the earth? 9PM your time is middle of the night here and this will be on a very early Monday morning.

Looked at the radio program. WFIU seems to be a very interesting station to have around...

Brownie,

I doubt that we will do a re-run, but I'm pretty sure the program will be archived soon after broadcast--meaning that you'll be able to go to the website and listen to it at your discretion. I'll bring the thread back up when that happens (we'll probably archive the Bix special I did last year with Richard Sudhalter around the same time).

[Lazaro Vega]

Which recording on Smithsonian did Patricia Willard write notes for?

Very ambitious project. Are the interviews phoners or live? And where did you find the script and the promotional medley?

Was recently wondering if Lincoln Center would ever re-launch "Jump for Joy."

[ghost of miles]

Which recording on Smithsonian did Patricia Willard write notes for?

Very ambitious project. Are the interviews phoners or live? And where did you find the script and the promotional medley?

Was recently wondering if Lincoln Center would ever re-launch "Jump for Joy."

Patricia Willard wrote her essay for a 1988 Smithsonian LP (JUMP FOR JOY) that was produced by Martin Williams. It contains all of the surviving JFJ material that Duke recorded for Victor (also available on the red Duke Victor box), the transcriptions of "Bugle Breaks" and "Stomp Caprice" (currently available on Soundies' COMP. STANDARD TRANSCRIPTIONS 1941), the alternate "Bli-blip" with Marie Bryant on vocals, and the Wonderful Smith monologue as repeated for a movie he appeared in later that year. The LP was mail-order only, has never been put on CD, and, according to Willard, probably won't be, as it isn't long enough by Smithsonian standards to qualify for CD treatment.

The show is entirely pre-produced; we'll be playing it off a CD-R. I don't have a copy of the script--I'm taking Ellington's monologue as it appears in Willard's essay. (She has two different scripts. There may be more floating around somewhere, as the show involved 15 writers and was revised constantly. Here at IU's Lilly Library there's even a treatment done by Orson Welles, to which I'll refer in the program.) The promotional medley comes from the CENTRAL AVENUE SOUNDS box-set.

I, too, have wondered if Lincoln Center would ever re-stage JFJ. I met Marsalis briefly a couple of years ago and hoped to ask him about it, but never got the chance. However, I have heard there's a chance that a revival may be brought to Broadway. Given that Duke longed to take it to Broadway in 1941 but wasn't able to, that would be something--a 63-year-delayed triumph. It was revived by a community theater in Illinois in 1991, after much of the "lost" music re-surfaced (in leadsheet form) in the Ellington archives at the Smithsonian.

[Lazaro Vega]

That is so cool. Thanks for the info. I should write for that LP, and I have the complete RCA set at work so I'll delve. I don't know how you could do this project "live," which I didn't mean to infer by asking about the phoners. We do phoners all the time, but our hybrid rots. Just wondered if you caught these folks coming through or if you called. In any case I may have to give up "Alias" for a night (ha!) and catch this. "Jump For Joy." Looking forward to it.

Best,

Lazaro

Blue Lake Public Radio

[medjuck]

At an Ellington conference in LA in the 80's they did a panel discussion on Jump for Joy. Panelists included Herb Jeffries and Kuller (what was his first name) who wrote lyrics and was the main producer of the show. He was still pissed off that the recording of the title song had been censored and a verse about the South left out.

BTW I think the Smithsonian Lp and tape is Oop. But you can still got to the Mayan Theater where the show was performed. The orchestra seats have been removed and it's now a club. (Or was a few years ago.)

[ghost of miles]

At an Ellington conference in LA in the 80's they did a panel discussion on Jump for Joy. Panelists included Herb Jeffries and Kuller (what was his first name) who wrote lyrics and was the main producer of the show. He was still pissed off that the recording of the title song had been censored and a verse about the South left out.

Joe (and I should thank Joe publicly here--he helped me get this project started long ago by sending me a copy of Patricia Willard's essay), are you sure Kuller was talking about the title song? That's interesting, because Willard doesn't mention it being censored in any manner or having a verse dropped. The song that sparked the most controversy was "I've Got a Passport From Georgia," which provoked death threats from the Glendale KKK. Allegedly the song was dropped from the show, although Kuller told Willard that it wasn't (all other accounts say it was, and it certainly wasn't recorded). The title song does contain sardonic references to the South, so maybe I should double-check with Willard via e-mail this weekend to see if she remembers Kuller saying anything about that.

Sid Kuller was his full name. He was working on the screenplay for the Marx Brothers' THE BIG STORE when the concept for JUMP FOR JOY was hatched one night during a party at his house.

[brownie]

Brownie,

I doubt that we will do a re-run, but I'm pretty sure the program will be archived soon after broadcast--meaning that you'll be able to go to the website and listen to it at your discretion. I'll bring the thread back up when that happens (we'll probably archive the Bix special I did last year with Richard Sudhalter around the same time).

Ghost, excellent! Will give a listen to those broadcasts!

[medjuck]

At an Ellington conference in LA in the 80's they did a panel discussion on Jump for Joy.  Panelists included Herb Jeffries and Kuller (what was his first name) who wrote lyrics and was the main producer of the show. He was  still pissed off that the recording of the title song had been censored and a verse about the South left out.

Joe (and I should thank Joe publicly here--he helped me get this project started long ago by sending me a copy of Patricia Willard's essay), are you sure Kuller was talking about the title song? That's interesting, because Willard doesn't mention it being censored in any manner or having a verse dropped. The song that sparked the most controversy was "I've Got a Passport From Georgia," which provoked death threats from the Glendale KKK. Allegedly the song was dropped from the show, although Kuller told Willard that it wasn't (all other accounts say it was, and it certainly wasn't recorded). The title song does contain sardonic references to the South, so maybe I should double-check with Willard via e-mail this weekend to see if she remembers Kuller saying anything about that.

Sid Kuller was his full name. He was working on the screenplay for the Marx Brothers' THE BIG STORE when the concept for JUMP FOR JOY was hatched one night during a party at his house.

No, I'm not sure at all. Patrica Willard is certainly a better source than I am. I suspect that there's an audio tape of that panel around somewhere. I can try to find out if Patricia doesn't know.

[ghost of miles]

I just spent a pretty fascinating lunch break at the Lilly Library here in Bloomington. During my research for this program I came across a listing for a treatment of "Jump for Joy" that Duke Ellington dictated to Orson Welles in the summer of 1941; it's included in a large box of manuscripts that forms part of Lilly's Orson Welles collection. The treatment itself is only 4 typed pages (I'm assuming Welles' secretary, rather than Welles himself, typed it up) and included some material that I hadn't come across before, like the introduction to the so-called "Noel Coward" sketch:

In every Broadway colored show

the sketches start to sicken

when they show a frightened darkie

as he tries to steal a chicken

They must always have us playing

in a crap game that is witless

or else they show us madly praying

for a melon that is pitless

Away with honey chile and yassuh

Excuse me massah is you stayin'

Let us check into the plaza

with a drawing room to play in

So farewell to tradition

and poor Mammy's old bandanna

while we place on exhibition

life in the Noel Coward manner

Welles wanted to buy JUMP FOR JOY and make it a Mercury Theater production, but Duke and the other JFJ producers didn't want to give up rights to it. Welles' enthusiasm for JFJoy spilled over somewhat into his aborted project IT'S ALL TRUE, and I saw several manuscripts for that (the famous "Jazz Sequence"), but didn't have time to read them... there were also 1941 and '42 manuscripts of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Man, I'm going to have to go back when I have an afternoon to kill!

[brownie]

Ghost, there are four pretty detailed pages on the staging of 'Jump for Joy' in the invaluable book 'Duke Ellington Day By Day and Film by Film' by Klaus Stratemann. If it's not too late and you want a look at it, e-mail me with a fax number and the pages will be on your way.

[ghost of miles]

Ghost, there are four pretty detailed pages on the staging of 'Jump for Joy' in the invaluable book 'Duke Ellington Day By Day and Film by Film' by Klaus Stratemann. If it's not too late and you want a look at it, e-mail me with a fax number and the pages will be on your way.

Brownie,

Sent you an e-mail. Thanks!

[ghost of miles]

Odd research detail of the day: Wonderful Smith, a young comedian who had several roles in JUMP FOR JOY (you can hear one of his monologues on the Smithsonian LP) also played the janitor in THIS IS SPINAL TAP. And he apparently has a modern-day rock band named after him. (How much you want to bet they noticed his name in the credits for SPINAL TAP and thought it sounded cool? Believe it or not, it's actually his given name!)

[Joe M]

Ghost - has your station thought about making this program available in some way to other public radio outlets?

Joe Moore

KFSR FM

[ghost of miles]

Ghost - has your station thought about making this program available in some way to other public radio outlets?

Joe Moore

KFSR FM

Joe, yes. If you want a copy, just let me know, and I'll send you a CD-R. The program is 59:00 (give or take a second or two), and the production credit/station ID is already embedded in the outro. No compensation expected, either. Ellington's 105th birthday is coming up in late April, which might be a nice time to run it... I'll have copies ready to send as of Friday afternoon, so just drop me a PM or e-mail.

[ghost of miles]

Just wanted to add a timeclock for the many folks who live in different timezones. Bloomington is on the same time as Indianapolis.

[ghost of miles]

Up for broadcast in about 7 minutes on WFIU.

[Lazaro Vega]

the link for the real one player says it is no longer working...

[Lazaro Vega]

Yeah, this isn't happening. I'll have to wait until you archive it....Updated my Real Player stuff, etc, and this is a new machine, soo

[montg]

It's sounding good--thanks for the heads up. Man, Ellington was a genuis...there can't be enough written and said about him.

Cool version of Joe Turner singing 'Rocks in my Bed'

[Lazaro Vega]

Hey montg, did you click on the Real Player Media under listen live?

[montg]

Sorry, LV, just saw your message. I clicked on the Windows option I think.