The Rhythm and Blues Revue

Alright, am off to NZX this weekend, so here’s a loooong entry with many clips for you guys to enjoy. I will update the site again when I am back!  Including vids from the All Balboa-Blues weekend!

The Rhythm and Blues Revue is a 1955 Musical variety show filmed at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York City featuring musical, comedy, and dance acts. The show features a stella cast of African-American performers: Willie Bryant (as host), Freddie Robinson, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Faye Adams, Bill Bailey, Herb Jeffries, Amos Milburn, Sarah Vaughan, Nipsey Russell, Big Joe Turner, Martha Davis, Little Buck, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Mantan Moreland, Cab Calloway and Ruth Brown.

Rhythm and Blues (also known as R&B, R’n'B or RnB) is the name given to a wide-ranging genre of popular music created by African-Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The term was originally used by record companies to refer to recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, though these days, it has come to mean something quite different.

I have featured some of these clips elsewhere, but decided to put the whole revue in its entirety here anyway just so you can watch it all in sequence and in context.

Lionel Hampton opens the whoel revue with a big band blues number. If you want to skip all the introductions, go straight to [5:10] to hear the cat’s vibes.  The music is interesting in that while Lionel Hampton was always a swing musician, you can hear strains of bebop in some of the phrasing in the piano and the horn sections…  I guess its inevitable as the music evolves…

Faye Adams andand Herb Jeffries croons here, but I am more interested in watching Bill Bailey tap at [3:56]

Amos Milburn [4:27] has a nice number here, and The Larks follow

Hampton comes back here [at 2:07] with another number that is more influenced by bebop inflections, including the afro-cuban rhythms which Dizzy Gillespie introduced during the Bebop Revolution

Sarah Vaughn opens this sgement, and it closes with a jam by Count Basie (this jam is also featured elsewhere in this blog under “Count Basie’s Small Groups”)

Part 5 features Big Joe Turner, the fantastic blues singer, the Delta Rhythm Boys (with the hilarious camera work to go with the song)

This segment features Monica Davis singing a great song (With great lyrics like “When I saw out… I mean… AWAY!”), Little Buck tapping to a bebop beat, and Nat King Cole also, singing and unusal tune.

A funny comedy opens this segment, followed by Cab Calloway with his signature tune, and ends with Ruth Brown

Count Basie closes the show with his signature tune

All Balboa-Blues Weekend Party (23rd Aug Sun)

The weekend is finally approaching, and the classes are all pretty full, with a few spaces left, so if you’re still undecided, don’t wait any longer.  There is a strong chance that people who decide to show up at the door on the day itself may be turned away, especially if you’re a follower for the Blues workshop on Saturday (unless you’re signing up with a leader), as it is almost full.  Do email sinclair.ang@gmail.com to register and secure your place!

So, the official weekend party will be on Sunday at Love the World Bar and Bistro, where we always have our regualr Swing by the Flyer on Mondays, at 830pm.  It’s a free event, so, even if you’ve not attended the weekend workshops, do swing by, for music suitable for Blues, Balboa and Lindy Hop as well of course. 

Here’s a clip of Maxi Dorf, one of the original Balboa dancers from back in the day, dancing with Sylvia Sykes, one of the teachers that was chiefly responsible for spreading the dance during the revival.

See you guys this weekend!

Swing Fever (1944)

Here’s a little bit of a fun clip from the movie Swing Fever (1944), where Kay Kyser and his Orchestra with Marilyn Maxwell performs “One Girl and Two Boys”. The dancing clips begins at 2:36, with the dancers – Jeanne Phelps Veloz, Don Gallagher, and Lenny Smith.