TIKI CULTURE

Miles Davis’ Birthday, May 26

A child was born in Alton, IL on May 26, 1926. No one realized that child would evolve into the cat known as Miles.

Skip the groove to 20 years later. Miles. Parker. Gillespie. Yeah.

He was bop. He was Jazz. He could swing or play it straight, hot or cool, but cool was his gig.

Then there was the horse, the big white horse galloping through his veins. It killed his friend, Bird. He quit cold turkey and never looked back.

Modern Jazz. Progressive. Funk-Fusion. He did it all.

Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Seven Steps To Heaven, Miles Smiles. He swung with the times, but always came back to his true Jazz roots.

Miles left this planet on September 28, 1991, too soon, too soon. But he left plenty for us to dig.

Yeah.

Dig it…

Hard bop, Walkin’

All Blues.

So What.

Footprints, 1967…Times were Changin’.

One of my favorites, Bye Bye Blackbird, 1955 (no video)

–Zoot Jackson, from the lounge

Glenn Miller’s Orchestra Wives and Sun Valley Serenade for Mod Movie Monday!

Since it’s nearly the end of Jazz Appreciation Month, I thought it would be kool to spotlight one of the swingin’ kats that helped make Jazz (and Big Band music) as popular as it is today. See, when most people think of Jazz today, they think of the small combo bands of the 50s like The Modern Jazz Quintet or Dave Brubeck’s band. They think of Bop players like Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, or smooth Jazzers like Stan Getz or modern swingers like Wynton Marsallis. Many people forget that these Jazz greats built on the styles that were created by early Jazz musicians including Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong…and that Jazz, as it evolved into the sounds of the Big Bands, was really made popular by the more commercial yet still fantastic legends of the era…Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller… So, here are both of Miller’s movies,  with plenty of 40s Jazz in its original Big Band form:

Orchestra Wives, 1942 and
Sun Valley Serenade, 1941

Orchestra wives is a funny little movie about…you guessed it…the wives of the guys in the band, and how they travel around with their musician husbands. The chicks are catty as hell, the music is hot and jokes are typical of the time, that is to say they’re good. The real actors include George Montgomery, Anne Rutherford, Harry Morgan and Cesar Romero. Songs include the original version of At Last, I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo, Serenade in Blue and Bugle Call Rag, among others. The plot is actually not bad for a movie made to showcase a band, and the added entertainment of The Modernaires and The Nicholas Brothers makes it a lot of fun to watch. What’s kind of funny is watching poor old Glenn Miller (his character’s name is Gene Morrison) try to act. He’s as stiff as a double bourbon.

Sun Valley Serenade

Sun Valley Serenade was the first of his two movies. This one features ice skater supreme Sonja Henie, John Payne and Milton Berle. The plot has something to do with the band taking on a Norwegian refugee as a publicity stunt…blah blah, watch it for the incredible music and fantastic dancing by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. In fact, this flick has the longest, swinginest ever performance of Chattanooga ever. In fact, it was this movie that song was written for…and became so popular it received the first Gold Record ever awarded. Additional songs include Sun Valley Jump, I Know Why and So Do You, and a very swingin’ version (better than the original in my opinion) of In the Mood.

What’s also great about these flicks is that all the music…for the first time for the Miller orchestra…was recorded on magnetic tape, not wax. So the sound is fantastic, full and vibrant, and all the songs from the movies are available on CD, sounding like they were recorded yesterday.

Orchestra Wives

Miller’s band was a big, swingin’, hard-hitting Jazz band that was almost never referred to as a Jazz band. His charts were made for dancing, and even sounded a little corny at times (on purpose…songs like “I want a hat with cherries”). But the real purpose of the band was to swing, and to do it in a very tight, very professional way, with plenty of open areas for soloists to show off their true Jazz chops.

Glenn Miller’s orchestra became, and remains, the most popular and well-loved band of the entire big band era. It’s Miller’s music you hear in any movie that harkens to the 1940s. Songs like In the Mood, Moonlight Serenade, Chattanooga Choo Choo (The world’s first million-selling gold record) and I’ve Got A Gal in Kalamazoo remain some of the most recognizable songs of the last 100 years.

Riding that wave of popularity, Glenn Miller was asked to do some movies in Hollywood, as was the custom at the time. Miller was able to make two full-length features before he signed up for military duty in World War Two. Unfortunately, his disappearance prevented any more movies with the Miller band to ever be made.

Here’s the full segment of Chattanooga Choo Choo, including the entire orchestra, Tex Beneke on vocals and solos sax, the Modernaires, plus Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers. A side note: It’s a credit to the movie’s producers and Miller that they had no problem with black and white performers in the same scene in a movie made in 1941. A number of southern states refused to show the film because of this, and only showed it after editing out the dance sequence themselves. Man, we’ve come a long way.

Jazz Appreciation Month, April Fools and Your Weekend Tiki Cocktail, The Stinger

Duke Ellington's Orchestra

Here ye, Here ye, utmost Jazz-appreciating hipsters and hipsterettes; knock your lobes to the groove I’m layin’ down on you, as this is

Jazz Appreciation Month,

The 30 days on the calendar when you can truly appreciate good music.

Huh?

Ok, what we’ve really got here is a month dedicated to all the swingin’ kats, past and present, who’ve taken a tune and bent it into one of America’s true original styles of music. It’s to remind us of some of the great tunes and players we may have forgotten, and to let the younger kids get hip to the swing…because as the Master himself said, It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.

The Stinger

To go along with your appreciation of Jazz, here’s one of the cocktails I find to be perfect to sip tunes by.

The Stinger.

Short and to the point. Not a fancy Tiki cocktail, not a pretentious apple Martini, just..The Stinger.

1 1/2 oz good quality Brandy (I prefer Courvoisier)
1/2 oz White Creme de Menthe

This seems simple but like all true cocktails, it must be built with care. Too much Brandy and it will taste dull and lifeless. Too much Creme de Methe and you’ll have a sickeningly sweet drink that tastes like a candy cane. Don’t use Green Creme de Menthe…that’s for Grasshoppers and ice cream parfaits.

This is the wrong kind of stinger.

Add the booze to a shaker with ice and shake. Serve straight up in an old fashioned glass, or on the rocks (I prefer rocks). No garnish. This is the kind of drink you sip when sitting in a basement bar in the Village, listening to some kats wailing on a pipehorn or banging the keys to some smooth, east coast Jazz. Asking for a Courvoisier Stinger in a jazz club like that will get you a lot of respect from the bartender and a real shot at the brunette with the peakaboo haircut and the four inch stilettos (assuming you travel in a time machine back to 1955).

More Jazz

When I first started this B-Lounge I added a Jazz 101 page for kats and kittens who wanted to learn a little more about the greatest music on Earth, but didn’t know where to start. Check it out just for fun here. There’s also a suggested playlist of some of the greatest jazz and swing tunes ever recorded…not a comprehensive list by any means, but a good start for people who want to dig it.

Peter Gunn, 1957

I’ll post a few spotlights on Jazz musicians this month, so stay tuned, kids.

-Tiki “Zoot” Pinto reporting from the sound booth at Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, Florida

Unofficial Word on The Tonga Room, San Francisco: “I think we’ll be open for a long time to come.”

The Tonga Room

A quick call to the reservations line at The Fairmount Hotel’s historic Tonga Room gave some great news. They were ready to accept a reservation for the last weekend in June, and when I asked if the rumors that they were closing were true, the answer was “I think we’ll be open for a long time to come.” Great news. Not official, of course, but promising. After all, a town meeting this February was supposed to decide the fate of the famous Tonga Room, as the hotel’s owners have plans to dismantle the mid-century Tiki Bar to make way for the development of a new condo tower. But no news has come out of San Fran this February…at least nothing that made it to the net.

We Tiki people really want to see the Tonga Room preserved. Of course, we want the owners of the Tiki bar and the hotel to make money, too. In a perfect world, the hotel owners would be able to have their condos and keep the Tonga Room intact. The money made on the condos could further enhance the hotel and promote the Tonga Room as a major tourist destination, much like the highly successful Mai Kai in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is.

By the 1960s The Tonga Room was transformed into a full-fledge Tiki Bar complete with mid-pool bandstand, hurricane bar and a real tropical storm

If anyone has any additional info on the Fairmount or the Tonga Room, please comment below. I’ve never been to the Tonga Room, and hope it will still be there when I swing out to the West Coast in the future.

-Tiki Chris Pinto reporting from the lanai, at Tiki Lounge Talk. Tiki news, Tiki Talk, all the Tiki Time.

Super Bowl Sunday at the Tiki Bar

I had a really fun post featuring the artwork of Doug Horne, Tiki Artist Extraordinaire for this weekend, but realized it’s Super Bowl Weekend…which means most people in the country have their mind on chips, dips, and footballs, and probably haven’t even thought about stopping by the Tiki Bar this weekend! That’s all fine and kool too, so here’s a little football trivia from the past. I’ll put up the swingin’ post on Doug later this week.

Since there’s still a few hours before the game, here’s a couple of last-minute ideas for your game day party:

Check out the Tiki Drinks page for some ideas beyond cheap beer

Check out the Luau page to turn your Super Bowl Party into a Super Bowl Luau

Check out the Atomic Age New Year’s Cocktail Party page and apply the ideas to your Super Bowl Party. (Ok, that might be a little too much)

Here’s the trivia…

The First AFL-NFL World Championship Game in professional American football, later known as Super Bowl I and referred to in some contemporary reports as the Supergame, was played on January 15, 1967 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. It was played between the Nat…ional Football League (Green Bay Packers) and the upstart American Football League (Kansas City Chiefs). The Packers beat the tails off the Chiefs 35-10. Although it was the first Super Bowl, it wasn’t called the Super Bowl until years later when the name caught on. So the first Super Bowl wasn’t really the Super Bowl. Crazy 60’s hippies.