The Dinah Washington Centennial: A Complete Annotated Filmography, Part 2:

Television Variety Show Appearances, 1955-1957

Special Thanks to Mark Cantor for information and input in this series! 

Of all the major singers at the very pinnacle of the jazz pantheon, perhaps the least represented on film and video is, surprisingly, one of the most popular - both in her own lifetime and since.  Dinah Washington, whose centennial we celebrate this month, was no obscure artist in a garrett, but a hugely successful hitmaker, first as a band vocalist with Lionel Hampton, then as a solo star on the R&B circuit in the early postwar era, then as a true crossover sensation in the years leading up to her tragically early death at the age of 39.

Thus it’s curious that she was never captured on film in the same way that dozens of her colleagues were. Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day, and Peggy Lee are all represented in at least three incredibly prolific platforms for filmed musical performances of the ‘40s and ‘50s: Soundies, Universal short subjects, and Snader Telescriptions.  One has to wonder why.  (Side note: Nat King Cole qualifies as the rare African American artist who was documented extensively on all three of those platforms.)

Indeed, there are so few films extant of the woman who self-identified as “The Queen” that we can go through them all rather easily here on Slouching Towards Birdland.  In fact, it’s technically incorrect to describe this as a “filmography” since Washington only appeared once in something that could be considered a theatrical film, the 1958 release Jazz on a Summer’s Day.  The rest are all television productions, and other than the series of shorts described in this first installment, all of them were completely live performances that were fortunately captured via kinescope.

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FRIGIDAIRE ENTERTAINS, SHOW #21
Broadcast February 25, 1955 on the CBC

Dinah Washington sings “Teach Me Tonight” (Cahn-DePaul) and “A Foggy Day” (Gershwin-Gershwin)

Very special thanks to Mark Selby of the Canadian Broadcasting Company for providing us with this intel.  It’s well know that Washington appeared on the CBC in 1959 - those numbers have been issued on DVD - but this 1955 performance is a major discovery.  And yes, it exists; apparently there is a master copy in the CBC vaults, but so far, no one, including Mark Selby, has seen it. However, he does confirm that it’s there, and hopefully, someday, will be exhumed and shown.

In the absence of getting to actually see it, here’s the info from the CBC archives.  (In addition to Dinah, I know that we would all love to see Frigi the Poodle doing one of her tricks, not to mention Canadian comic Lenny Colyer performing what seems like an homage to Red Skelton and his famous “Guzzler’s Gin” routine - as immortalized in the 1945 MGM film Ziegfeld Follies, more famously the source of the “Vitameatavegimen” episode of I Love Lucy.

A weekly variety show with Byng Whitteker, singer Frosia Gregory, and Jimmy Namaro and his orchestra featuring the three Niosi brothers, Bert, Joe, and Johnny. Guests are Beth Lockerbie, American singer Dinah Washington, acrobatic dancers The Dyerettes featuring Vera Wilson, Muriel Burno, Gloria Broussart, Clarice White and Shirley Hall, and comic Lenny Colyer. Dinah Washington sings 'Teach Me Tonight' and 'A Foggy Day'; Jimmy Namaro and his band play an instrumental number; comedian Lenny Colyer plays a commercial spokesperson on the late show who samples too much 'Guzzler's Gin', the product he's selling; 'Frigi' the poodle, with her trainer Lorna Jackson, demonstrates one of her tricks; singer Frosia Gregory sings 'Love Comes But Once'; The Dyerettes perform a routine choreographed to the songs 'How High The Moon' and 'Zing Went the Strings (Of My Heart)'.

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BANDSTAND REVUE (probably early 1955)
“That’s All I Want from You”
(Fritz Rotter, aka Erna Maria Rotter - actually the name of his wife, sometimes credited as “M. Rotha”)

This is the only “random” piece of Dinah Washington footage that I have found, by which I mean something that we had no idea existed until it turned up on the YouTubes.  The program Bandstand Revue appears to be a series in the general style of other hit record-oriented shows of the period, most famously Lucky Strike Presents Your Hit Parade, which had already made a successful transition to television, and, slightly later, The Big Record, starring Patti Page.  

According to notices in Down Beat, a show called Bandstand Revue, originating from KTLA TV Los Angeles, goes back at least as far as April 1952.  However, an advertisement from a few years later states that the shows comes on the air in April 1955, indicating that this was a summer replacement variety series. Another trade publication, Broadcasting Telecasting, dated April 25, 1955, informs us that Paramount Television Productions was “syndicated kinescopes of the weekly hour-long Bandstand Revue, which emanates from the PTP-owned KTLA (TV) in Hollywood.”  

There are three clips on the YouTubes from Bandstand Revue, very likely all from the same episode; two feature banjo virtuoso and slapstick/pantomime comic Freddy Morgan, on loan from the Spike Jones organization (as the announcer says) and one is a remarkable, rare clip of Dinah Washington, in surprisingly good quality.  Looking at the roster of regulars, the only name that means anything is that of Anita Gordon, who served as duet partner (sort of) for Buddy Clark on his big hit “Linda” and more fully on the follow-up, “I’ll Dance at Your Wedding.” (In which she utters the immortal line, “You oughta be brushing up that new suit and those new shoes instead of dancing around the room like a goon!”)

Dinah’s song, “That’s All I Want from You” was a hit for Jane Morgan on RCA in late 1954. Dinah cut her version in January 1955; it’s known that she was on the west coast in November of 1955, so perhaps that’s when she did this TV appearance.   This is the work of the Austrian songwriter Fritz Rotter, who spent most of his career writing for German and Austrian films, and who, thank God - yes, he was Jewish - was able to get out of Europe during the Nazi-WW2 period. (There’s a big gap in his filmography - all German, Austrian, and Hungarian films - between 1933 and 1952.)  “That’s All I Want from You” is a catchy and decent enough song, but one that you might never notice - - if not for what Washington does with it.  (Apparently, Nina Simone was impressed enough with Washington’s performance that she recorded her own version in 1979.)

“Lazy Gondolier” Freddy Morgan, Jad Paul (offscreen) 1955

“Hey Mr Banjo” Freddy Morgan, Jad Paul, Margie Rayburn

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DUPONT SHOW OF THE MONTH: “CRESCENDO” 
CBS-TV, September 29, 1957
“Birth of the Blues”
(Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, & Ray Henderson) 

The 1950s was the great decade of corporate-produced variety shows, some with regular hosts and stars, most famously Perry Como for Kraft and Dinah Shore for Chevrolet, but also many as anthology-type programs with no pre-set host.  At the very start of the 1957-’58 season, CBS launched the most ambitious of them all, the DuPont Show of the Month, which premiered on September 29, 1957 with “Crescendo” presented live and in full color.  This was just about the most exhaustive survey of American vernacular music as ever presented on commercial television.  The show was built around Rex Harrison, then still appearing as “Henry Higgins” in My Fair Lady, as a typical Englishman arriving in the USA and being taken on a tour of all the various strains of American music.

Jazz and musical comedy are particularly well-represented: Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, the great and rarely-filmed New Orleans blues singer Lizzie Miles, as well as Peggy Lee in the first category; Carol Channing, Stubby Kaye, Diahann Carroll, in the latter; as well as Julie Andrews and Stanley Holloway, then both also still in the cast of My Fair Lady.  There’s also Gospel from Mahalia Jackson, country-pop star Sonny James telling us about what a lovable man he is, and a particularly poignant performance from C&W legend Eddy Arnold on the traditional folk song “Sweet Betsy from Pike.”  It’s a great and spectacular show - we’re lucky it survives at all, even in a murky B&W copy.

From the Paley Center: 

This episode features a musical presentation starring Rex Harrison and an all-star cast. Highlights include: Eddy Arnold singing “Sweet Betsy from Pike”; a chorus singing “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Be My Little Bumble Bee”; Sonny James performing “A Mighty Loveable Man”; Carol Channing singing “Delightful Down in Chile” and a version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”; Lizzie Miles singing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey”; a performance of swing music by Benny Goodman and his band (“Let’s Dance” and “Don’t Be That Way”); Peggy Lee performing “The Lullaby of Broadway” and “Lullaby of Birdland”; Harrison and Louis Armstrong performing “Now You Has Jazz”; Stubby Kaye singing “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat”; Mahalia Jackson singing “Didn’t It Rain”; Diahann Carroll and Armstrong performing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen”; Dinah Washington performing “Birth of the Blues”; Lee performing “Blues in the Night”; Channing performing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”; Stanley Holloway performing “Get Me to the Church on Time”; Julie Andrews singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly”; and Harrison performing “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Includes commercials.

Washington performed “Birth of the Blues” twice in 1955, first at the Newport Jazz Festival in July, and then again in a Los Angeles studio in November, an oddball track that wasn’t easily available until the CD era. “Birth of the Blues,” first heard in a Broadway revue, George White’s Scandals of 1926, was traditionally a pop song “about” the blues, rather than employing actual blues form or harmony, that allowed non-blues and even non-jazz singers to incorporate an element of the blues - even if was only in the title and the lyrics - into their acts.   For her part, Washington doesn’t sing it like a blues at all, but like a vigorous, uptempo swinging standard.  

The number comes in the middle of a blues/gospel segment that includes Mahalia Jackson giving forth with “Didn’t It Rain?,” followed by a marvelously intimate reading of “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” by the 22-year-old Diahann Carroll joined by Louis Armstrong in a very powerful, moving trumpet solo. (Ricky Riccardi has written meaningfully about this performance.) With all the visual and musical references to blues and gospel music, clearly this is supposed to transpire in a deep south setting.  We see Dinah Washington in a rocking chair on a porch surrounded by female African American dancers literally draped around the set, not dancing but fanning themselves, thereby conveying a languid Louisiana-type mood.  Peggy Lee then follows with “Blues in the Night.”  Still there’s nothing languid or lazy in Washington’s vocal; it’s full of uptempo energy.

Musicom Productions has done their best to give us a “restored version”; alas, they seem to have worked from the same very murky source material, but at least this version is at least slightly easier on the eyes. Of course, we should thank the Blessed Lord that it even survives at all!

also from Crescendo - this version of Benny Goodman’s segment (“Let’s Dance” into “Don’t Be That Way”) apparently uses audio he dubbed in from another (stereo) source. Is that Eddie Bert on trombone?

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The Dinah Washington Centennial:
A Complete Annotated Filmography

Part One:
The Showtime at the Apollo Films (1954)

Part Two:
Bandstand Revue (1955)
”That’s All I Want From You”
Crescendo (1957)
”Birth of the Blues”

Part Three:
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (filmed 1957, released 1958)
”All of Me”

Part Four:
Here’s Duffy (CBC 1959)
”Lover Come Back to Me”
”Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair”
The Singin’, Swingin’ Years (1960)
”Makin’ Whoopee”
”What a Diff’rence a Day Makes”
1960 Europe (?)
“Lover Come Back To Me/I've Got A Crush On You/They Didn't Believe Me”

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Remembering Russell Malone, a Jazz Guitar Great With a Larger-Than-Life Personality

Huge thanks to The New York Sun for allowing me to write this memoir of our dear friend Russell Malone, whose untimely passing a few days ago has both shocked and saddened the jazz world. The New York Sun story is here, but if you have a hard time accessing it, write me for a PDF. God Bless.

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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!

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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.”
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SING! SING! SING!

June 29 - Americana - For the Fourth of July - Songs of Civil Rights & The African American Experience
July 6 - The Four Freshmen & Other Great Jazz Vocal Groups of the 1950s
July 13 - Bastille Day: Guest Co-Host ERIC COMSTOCK shares his favorite French songs! Formidable!
July 20 - The Margaret Whiting Centennial: “Happy Birthday Maggie!”
July 27 - “Calypso Blues” OR “It’s The New Calypso Bebop!”
August 3 - The Tony Bennett Birthday Special: Tony Sings the Cole Porter Songbook
August 10 - “A Little Moonlight & A Little Tenderness: The Harry Woods Songbook”
August 17 - “Fat Daddies & Skinny Mamas: The Body Shaming Show”

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