Nat King Cole & W.C. Handy

These two musical giants from Alabama are linked by the 1958 film St. Louis Blues. Cole played Handy in the film named after one of his best known songs and loosely based on his life. Actress Ruby Dee and several other jazz greats such as Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald also appear. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson is in the movie, which features more than ten of Handy's songs. Cole released an album of Handy compositions to accompany the film. 

William Christopher Handy was  born in Florence on November 16, 1873. He was the son and grandson of ministers, and the family saw that he received a good education. His father Charles discouraged an interest in secular music, but Handy was able to gain local exposure to it anyway in the form of folk and popular music from a fiddler, "Uncle Whit" Walker and the marches and cakewalks of minstrel shows passing through his home town. 

Handy earned a teaching certificate, but soon was making more money at the Bessemer Iron Works near Birmingham. He joined a vocal quartet that toured as far as St. Louis, where they were stranded, and he heard some of the folk materials that would become his most famous composition. He then joined a minstrel show as the cornet player in their marching band and toured to Canada, Cuba, and many others places. After a time back in Alabama and in Mississippi, he settled in Memphis where his blues song writing and publishing flourished. By the time of his death on March 28, 1958, Handy was known around the world for his musical contributions. A U.S. postage stamp was issued in his honor in 1969. 

Handy felt the film would be "the crowning glory" of his career, as noted by David Robertson in his 2009 biography, W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues [p.228]. The "biopic" was hardly accurate, but as Robertson observes, Cole looked good in the role of Handy.

Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery on March 17, 1919. In 1923 Coles' Baptist minister father moved the family to Chicago along with so many other blacks moving north in the Great Migration. As he grew older the young Nat heard jazz legends such as pianists Earl Hinds, Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson in nearby clubs. His mother taught him piano, and he dropped out of high school at 17 and joined his older brother Eddie's jazz groups, Within a few years he had married, moved to Los Angeles, dropped the "s" from his last name and formed the Nat King Cole Trio with a guitarist and bass player. The group's lack of a drummer was unusual at the time. 

By the age of 25 Cole picked up the nickname "King" & the King Cole Trio had increasing popularity in both west and east coast venues. Their 1943 recording "Straighten Up and Fly Right" had such success the group crossed over to the pop charts. Capitol Records began marketing Cole's velvet voice with love ballads, and in 1955 the Trio disbanded. Cole's popularity continued until his death on February 15, 1965, and his recordings of "Unforgettable", "Ramblin' Rose" and others have remained popular. His 1960 release The Magic of Christmas was the biggest selling such holiday album of the 1960's. 

Cole's achievements include a short-lived variety program on the NBC television network. Due to a lack of sponsorship the show only ran for 30 episodes in 1956 and 1957. Yet the program broke new ground; never before had a black had such a prominent role on American television.

St. Louis Blues was not Cole's only film appearance. He is the uncredited piano player in the El Rancho nightclub sequence of the 1941 Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane and played the Sunrise Kid in Cat Ballou, released the year he died. In between he appeared as himself, as a singer or piano player in a variety of movies and television episodes. He had a major dramatic role alongside Gene Berry and Angie Dickinson in Samuel Fuller's 1957 war movie, China Gate. Other such roles includes Night of the Quarter Moon [1959] and Istanbul [1957].

If Cole had not died so young, perhaps he would have expanded his work in films and television. 

Nat King Cole and W.C. Handy in 1958

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Who Was Joseph E. Pullum?

Sometimes I'm researching something and follow it down a rabbit hole that leads to another rabbit hole. And here we are...

I recently watched PBS' "American Experience" episode on Alabama native Joe Louis and his June 1938 championship fight with Max Schmeling. Well worth watching, by the way. During the program I heard a song from the 1930's about Louis on the soundtrack. Hmm, I thought, I wonder who wrote and sang that ditty. A little time on Google led me to a 2001 New York Times article discussing  the songs written about Louis. In it the author noted that composer and music researcher Rena C. Kosersky has identified over 40 songs about the boxer from the 1930’s & 1940’s. The first was Joe Pullum’s “Joe Louis Is the Man” recorded 27 July 1935 in San Antonio. 

Lo and behold, Pullum was born in Anniston. Let's investigate. 

Wikipedia gives his birthdate as December 25, 1905, but Pullum's World War II draft registration card--filled out by Pullum on October 16, 1940, in Houston, Texas-- gives the date as December 20, 1907 [see below]. That earlier date appears in the California Death Index 1940-1997 [accessed via Ancestry.com]; Pullum died in Los Angeles on January 7, 1964. 

According to the Alabama Select Marriage Indexes, 1816-1942 [Ancestry.com], his parents William Pullum and Dora Ross were both Alabama natives and married in Calhoun County on April 3, 1898. The family moved not long after Joseph's birth, since the 1910 U.S. Census shows them living on Andrews Street in Houston, Texas. In addition to Joseph and his parents, the census lists two older siblings, William Jr. who was ten years old and Carlton, who was six. By the 1920 census, they had moved to Meyer Street and added sister Evelyn, who was eleven, and Mary A. Ross, presumably Dora's mother, to the family group. 

By 1930 only Joseph and his parents were listed in the household at 1211 Arthur Street. The record notes that he could read and write and worked as a presser in a cleaning shop. The 1937 City Directory for Houston has the same trio at the same address, but Joseph is working as a musician. His father was a porter. Brothers William, Jr. and Carlton and their wives are listed at other addresses in the city. 

Pullum made a total of 30 recordings on Bluebird Records between April 1934 and February 1936; most were done in San Antonio. A vocalist, Pullum worked with two pianists on those sessions, Rob Cooper and Andy Boy. In the 1940's he moved to Los Angeles and recorded with another pianist, Lloyd Glenn, for Swing Time Records in 1948. Other than a rumored demo made in 1953, that was the end of Pullum's recording career. 

Pullum appears in California voter registration records at two different addresses  in Los Angeles between 1946 until 1962. Wikipedia notes that although he died in Los Angeles, he was buried back in Houston. I was unable to find him listed in Find-A-Grave. All of his known recordings were reissued in 1995 on Document Records in two volumes available here and here. 

His very first recording was "Black Gal What Makes Your Head So Hard?" on April 3, 1934, at the Texas Hotel in San Antonio. That number would become his most successful; he recorded several different versions including one titled "My Woman". The recording sold well and was covered by a number of other artists. 

Other songs recorded in the San Antonio sessions included "Mississippi Flood Blues", "Married Woman Blues", "Telephone Blues", "Dixie My Home", and "Cow, See That Train Comin'". 

Pullum is one of numerous blues artists whose lives are poorly documented. Questions here include why did the Pullums leave Anniston for Houston? One source quoted by Wikipedia says Pullum performed on a Houston radio station in  the late 1930's, but that station was absorbed by another in August 1932. Did Pullum perform in public venues such as clubs and roadhouses? Why did he move to Los Angeles, did he perform live there and what did he do for a living until his 1964 death? Where in Houston is he buried?

Perhaps some day at least some of these questions will be answered....

You can find some of Pullum's recordings on YouTube. "Joe Louis Is the Man" is here. 

Source: Wirz' American Music

Recorded August 13, 1935, in San Antonio with Andy Boy on piano

Source: Wirz' American Music

Pullum's entire recorded output was issued on two CDs in 1995 by Document Records; see links above. 

Source: Ancestry.com 

Mobile and "Blues in the Night"

I am always on the lookout for appearances of Alabama-related things in popular culture and came across this one recently. Over the life of this blog I've posted several items discussing songs from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries that relate to Alabama in some fashion. You can read two of the posts here and here.

This example is a bit different--a shout out to various cities including Mobile. The song is "Blues in the Night", which first appeared in the 1941 film of the same name. The song has become a standard; versions by many singers can be found on YouTube. Everyone from Peggy Lee and the Benny Goodman Orchestra to Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney and Amy Winehouse have recorded it. The piece was nominated for a Best Song Academy Award. 

The film is an odd one, a little crime musical if you can believe it. The story follows a ragtag group of jazz musicians as they find and lose great success and learn that their original life riding the rails from town to town was not so bad. 

Richard Whorf plays pianist and leader Jigger Pine, and Jack Carson is the loudmouth trumpet player. Priscilla Lane is Carson's angelic and pregnant wife. The clarinetist is played by Elia Kazan in his acting days before he became one of Hollywood's best known producers and directors. Of course there's a gangster (Lloyd Nolan) and his sometime moll (Betty Field) to add the crime element. 

I remember seeing this film years ago and enjoying it. I watched it again recently and found it a bit silly and over the top in places, but still worth seeing. The cast is great at chewing the scenery, and there's some good music. Betty Field is a great femme fatale. 

Now about that song. I don't remember catching the reference to Mobile the first time I saw the film, but I did on this viewing. The music was written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, two giants of American popular song in the 20th century. Together and with others they both made numerous contributions to the "Great American Songbook".

During their collaboration in the 1940's the pair wrote other hits including "That Old Black Magic" and "One More for My Baby (and One More for the Road)". Arlen wrote film and Broadway music for many hits with other partners including the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz. Mercer also spent much of his career in Hollywood working in the film industry. 

Many popular songs about the South in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries were written by northerners selling an idealized vision of Dixie; most of them probably never traveled below the Mason-Dixon Line. Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia, and exposed to much African-American music growing up. We can probably attribute his choice of town names and music for the song to that upbringing. Now about that woman he mentions....
 
The film shows up periodically on Turner Classic Movies. A trailer can be found here. 

Harold Arlen [1905-1986]

Source: Wikipedia

Johnny Mercer [1909-1976]

Source: Wikipedia

"Blue in the Night"

Lyrics by Johnny Mercer

My mama done told me when I was in knee pants 
My mama done told me, "Son, A woman will sweet talk
And give you the big eye but when that sweet talk is done
A woman's a two face, a worrisome thing who will leave you to sing
A worrisome thing
Who will leave you to sing 
The blues in the night

Now the rain's a fallin'. Hear the train a callin' Hoowee! 
Hear that lonesome whistle 
Blowin across the trestle Hoowee! 
A hoowee ta hoowee, clickety clack 
It's echoing back the blues in the night.

The evening breeze will start the trees to crying
And the moon will hide it's plight
When you get the blues in the night
So take my word the mocking bird
Will sing the saddest kind of song
He knows things are wrong
And he's right

From Natchez to Mobile, From Memphis to St. Joe
Wherever... 
I've been in some big towns, and I've heard me some big talk 
I've been to some big towns
I've heard me some big talk 
But there is one thing I know
A woman's a two face
A worrisome thing who will leave you to sing
The blues in the night 

My mama was right, my mama was right
There's blues in the night