Sinatra! Deep Cuts: The Day After D-Day
"A crusade to free the world from the threat of slavery and oppression." (or "They'll change that 'Heil!' to 'What'Cha Know, Joe?'")
Ad for the Vimms Vitamin show Frank Sinatra in Person of Wednesday, September 20, 1944, with special guest Joan Blondell.
In 1944, Sinatra’s regular radio series - his most high profile yet - was sponsored by Vimms Vitamins; perhaps he was atoning for many, many years, mostly in the future, of working for cigarette corporations - here at last was a product that was intended to boost the customer’s health - rather than destroy it.
The Vimms show - formally titled Frank Sinatra in Person - aired on Wednesdays throughout 1944, even while Sinatra continued to headline on Lucky Strike Presents Your Hit Parade on Saturdays.
Sinatra’s broadcast of the first week in June happened on the day after D-Day. Clearly this was going to be a special broadcast. As was the custom, following the theme song (“This Love of Mine”) and the opening announcements, he would always open with a jaunty uptempo number, often one specific to the war. This week, it would be “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin.” But even before the first number, the program opens with a timely announcement:
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is Frank Sinatra. We're all mindful of the situation overseas and should any bulletins arrive from invasion headquarters, our program will be interrupted, so you may hear them immediately. Thank you very much.”
Sinatra already had quite a history with “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin,” composed by his longtime piano-playing buddy from the Dorsey days, Joe Bushkin. Bushkin and his partner, lyricist Johnny DeVries, had already written the Sinatra-Dorsey classic “Oh, Look at Me Now.” “Hot Time” is a very specific, super jingo-istic wartime-type tune, roughly inspired by “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” which was already ancient (like 1896 ancient) when Bessie Smith sang it in 1927. The lyrics also reference the WW1 era song “How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?”
In 1992, Bushkin told Chuck Granata and myself that he was visiting Sinatra backstage at the CBS radio studio in early 1943:
And Frank said, "Have you been writing any tunes?" I said, "Yeah, I wrote a march. That's as far as I've gone -- with DeVries." He said, "Play it for me." So I played it: "There’ll be a hot time in the town of Berlin." He said, "No, don't play it like a f***-ing march. Just play it straight. So I played it for him. He said, "I'm going to publish it, but I wish I could record it." That's when they had the strike. (Alas, Columbia Records had still not settled with the musicians local 802. ) But Bing [was affiliated with] Decca, and Decca had made a deal with the union, so they okayed it. So Frank said, "I'll send Ben Barton" -- he ran the publishing company... He said, "I'll send Benny over with the tune to Bing. I know he'll do it.” He said, So Ben said, "Bing's got a record date. Yeah, we got some other stuff to him. He's recording at the end of the week." So sure enough, Bing recorded it (with The Andrews Sisters) and it became a big hit for him.”
Sinatra had been singing “Hot Time” regularly for over a year by the time of D-Day. The arrangement is probably by George Siravo. (Above, the original sheet music, by Sgt. Joe Bushkin & Pvt. John De Vries, as published by Barton Music, the firm co-owned by Sinatra & Ben Barton - whose daughter Eileen Barton was already a regular on the Vimms show - and based in the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway.)
After the song, Sinatra speaks:
Friends, as I talk to you now, the armed forces of the United Nations are engaged in the greatest crusade of all times. A crusade to free the world from the threat of slavery and op-pression. These are historic hours. A time for courage and hope. With this thought in mind, my co-workers and I feel it only fitting to put aside our regular program. So, we naturally turn to our first love, music. Sometimes music can be more eloquent than the spoken word and is ofttimes comforting to those who have a loved one far away.
He continues with the classic Axel Stordahl arrangement of “The Song is You” (from Music in the Air (1932), a Kern-Hammerstein quasi-operetta) already a Sinatra classic, which he’d first recorded on his ground-breaking Bluebird solo date in January 1942 and sung on his final broadcast with Dorsey. This reading has the stratospheric high note at the end of the final “You.” (Thank you Dan Levinson: “The arrangement is in Bb and Sinatra ends on an F above middle C (the fifth of the chord) in falsetto.”)
Sinatra had been singing “Where or When” at least since his Paramount Theater solo debut at the end of 1942; it would be one of the very first major standards he would record after the 1942-’44 AFM Ban was over. Ultimately, it would also be one of three Rodgers & Hart classics he would sing from the 1937 Babes in Arms, along with “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady is a Tramp.”
Sinatra’s last song on the June 7, 1944 Vimms show is even more explicitly patriotic; this is the first of several occasions when he would sing the venerable anthem “America The Beautiful,” and would also record it for Columbia (again with the Ken Lane Singers).
A little while ago, we said that music can be more eloquent than the spoken word. Sometimes music stimulates our hopes for the future, for the day when peace will come and all of us will sing........ "
(Above Vintage 1944 Vimms magazine ad, courtesy (!) of eBay!)
PS: correction to the previous post: of course it wasn’t the Maisie movies I was talking about, it was the two "Annabelle” movies, Annabelle Takes a Tour and The Affairs of Annabelle (both 1938), in which Lucille Ball plays a hard-working movie star.
Very Special thanks to the fabulous Ms. Elizabeth Zimmer, for expert proofreading of this page, and scanning for typos, mistakes, and other assorted boo-boos!
Sing! Sing! Sing! : My tagline is, “Celebrating the great jazz - and jazz-adjacent - singers, as well as the composers, lyricists, arrangers, soloists, and sidemen, who help to make them great.”
A production of KSDS heard Saturdays at 10:00 AM Pacific; 1:00PM Eastern.
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June 15: Voices and Guitars
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Oops. You missed that Sinatra sang a fourth song from "Babes in Arms." He sang "I Wish I Were in Love Again" on "A Swinging Affair." It’s listed on the sheet music.
Obviously, he had to go along with the political program...