I feel music coming on this week; but I suspect it will be an eclectic mix. Here’s a classic song from the 1940s.
“Why don’t you do right?” started life as a song called “Weed-smoker’s dream,” recorded in 1936 by the Harlem Hamfats (not from Harlem, but Chicago; you can hear the original version here). It then was rewritten to its present form in 1941 by Hamfats member Joseph McCoy. You can hear that blues-y version, recorded by Lil Green, here. It clearly influenced Peggy Lee’s later cover.
As Wikipedia notes:
The song has its roots in blues music and originally dealt with a marijuana smoker reminiscing about lost financial opportunities. As it was rewritten, it takes on the perspective of the female partner, who chastises her man for his irresponsible ways and admonishes him to:
-
Why don’t you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too.
But the most famous version was recorded by Peggy Lee fronting Benny Goodman’s band in 1942 (original recording here). The live version shown below is from the 1943 wartime movie “Stage Door Canteen“, which I must watch (the whole movie, full of musicians, is on YouTube). Lee’s vocals are about as blues-y and sultry as they come, and Benny Goodman, does a superb solo. Who would have thought that a Jewish boy from Chicago would become the best jazz clarinetist ever?
You might remember that this song was also sung by Jessica Rabbit, a performance that poleaxed the private eye Bob Hoskins in the movie “Who Killed Roger Rabbit?” (go here to see that version).
Sub
What a verb ! poleaxe !
With so much world violence always out there as alleged ‘news’ nearly daily, then would that the media’s reporters, re violence in particular, tried to get a wee bit classier about it and in their pieces used such lexicon!
Blue
I’m playing Fallout: New Vegas – Old World Blues at the moment, and this song is my constant companion. 🙂
I disagree about Benny Goodman as the best jazz clarinetist. I know that many people think so. But I’ll take Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky) and Barney Bigard from the classic era of the Ellington Orchestra. Bigard was quoted as saying that Shaw was the best clarinetist he ever heard.
I do love Peggy Lee’s recording of “Why Don’t You Do Right” and have been listening to it since the early 1950s.
Gil Klapper
Kind of a personal choice don’t you think.
It was the top of music quality in America – the big bands.
How did Goodman’s and Shaw’s personalities compare?
I read somewhere that Shaw is supposed to have remarked, “Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.” Not exactly refulgent with epistemic humility. 😉
I enjoyed these videos but while watching I noticed the recommended old chain gang song by Lightning- Long John next to it and it’s worth listening to as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc The lyrics are below the vid. I defy you to get this one out of your head. Note almost a million views.
I think the original “Weed Smoker’s Dream” is a sales pitch by a pimp trying to recruit a prostitute (“Sittin’ on a million, sittin’ on it every day / Can’t make no money givin’ your stuff away”). As modified by Lil Green, “Do Right” became a stingingly sarcastic song about a woman demanding that her shiftless lover get his act together. (“I fell for your jivin’ and I took you in / Now all you got to offer me’s a drink of gin.”)
Peggy Lee had wanted to record “Do Right” previously, but Benny Goodman resisted because it was not the type of song he usually performed. At the time, a musician’s strike was looming, which would stop almost all commercial recordings for several years. In the pre-strike rush to create “inventory,” Goodman had pretty much run out of songs, and so finally agreed to let Lee record “Do Right” 5 days before the strike started. (Lee had wanted to record the song like Green had — slowly, intimately and intensely. But the Goodman/Lee version is faster, brassier and almost bombastic.)
After Lee’s recording the song became a minor standard, performed occasionally (and usually unremarkably) until Amy Irving’s 1988 performance for Roger Rabbit. This “sultry” version essentially ignores the meaning of the lyrics, and has become the most popular way to sing it since then (discomfiting some purists).
The Harlem Hamfats were formed by a music producer to make records — perhaps the first such group ever created. “Hamfat” is an old derogatory term for African Americans, and more pertinently, a mediocre musical or theatrical performer (often used to describe amateur jazz musicians). Its use in the band’s name was likely facetious; there was nothing second-rate about these musicians. (The term “ham,” for an over-eager performer may derive from “hamfat.”)
The Hamfats’ recording of “Weed Smoker’s Dream” is inevitably low fidelity (and may sound hokey to modern ears). Here’s a modern version with better sound quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OnVyVynhQA
Sinead O’Connor’s 2006 performance of “Do Right” is close in tone to the Lil Green original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVE2ovAdgx4
As a bonus, check out the bass player in this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWDaZ3ZjbRw
I particularly like that last one.
For me, your musical tastes come right out of the blue–but always interesting.
While well-known that Benny Goodman and jazz saxaphonist Stan Getz were Jewish, it may be more of a surprise to learn that Herb Albert of HA and the Tijuana Brass was. His Jewish parents were originally from the Ukraine and Romania.
Given that he largely performed Hispanic music (he was also with The Baja Marimba Band, Los Norte Americanos, the Mexicali Band, etc.) and his relatively dark complexion, it’s generally assumed he is of Mexican/Spanish/Latino origin.
Indeed. I never knew or guessed that. Given his name you’d think it would have occured to me that he was not of Mexican/Spanish/Latino origin.
Now I’ve got that song running through my head non-stop, over and over. Thanks!
Never occured to me that Herb or Stan were Jewish. Now I know.
Small correction and bit ‘o trivia: The movie was “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (sans question mark, for some reason) – based on the novel “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” Kathleen Turner provided Jessica’s spoken voice; Amy Irving sang Why Don’t You Do Right?
Nearly everything Benny did was brilliant, but I really like the Roger Rabbit version Why Don’t You Do Right.
“Who would have thought that a Jewish boy from Chicago would become the best jazz clarinetist ever?”
One of the best jazz clarinettists certainly. But “the best” is purely a subjective call. I’d actually prefer to listen to Ed Hall or Peanuts Hucko.
Of course it’s subjective! That’s implied, no?
cool and very cool..
It’s a nice song. Ella Fitzgerald’s version with Joe Pass on guitar is also worth a listen.
One of my favorite Harlem Hamfats songs is about a man who could have been a candidate for The Clergy Project, Halleluhah Joe. (“Halleluhah Joe Ain’t Preachin’ No More”)
Dang, that wasn’t supposed to imbed! Sorry about that.
Peggy Lee, a.k.a. Norma Egstrom, also has a very interesting history. She was raised in North Dakota and is considered a “favorite daughter” in the state. As a boy growing up in neighboring northwestern Minnesota, several North Dakota radio stations played much of her music in homage to her.
During her childhood, she filled in for her alcoholic father to manage operations over a short line railroad called the Midland Continental Railroad in eastern North Dakota. She later became a jazz singer and sang several pieces in some Disney animated movies.
“She later became a jazz singer and sang several pieces in some Disney animated movies.”
“He is a Tramp, he is a scoundrel . . . .”
Ms. Lee singing, as “Peg the Show Dog,” in “Lady and the Tramp.”
I have the record from my single-digit youth.
“Four steps ahead, and then to the left,
And right to the place where I marked it,
Wi’ me bonnie, bonnie bone,
That I’ll bury for me own,
In me bonnie, bonnie bank in the back yard.”
Jock, the Scottish Terrier