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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: National anthem performance in a jazzed fashion
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-11-2004 01:36 AM
I remember Mel Torme singing the national anthem in the 70s, & he gave it a little swing here & there. It was a cappella, nobody disliked it. As usual, I think it boils down to what musical style is more acceptable to any listener. The style is going to change in any performance unless they are all the same: and a cappella rendition is not going to sound like a marching band, or like a symphony orchestra, or a solo guitarist. I like his national anthem, but I'm more appreciative than really a fan of Jimi Hendrix except when he plays the blues & shows that he came from dragging Elmore James' amp even further into psychosis (what kinda specific miracle is it with these Mississippi guitar players in Chicago?)
I'm just not very fond of The Star Spangled Banner musically. As far as the melody goes, it's lugubrious & lurchy. More than anything else, it sounds like the soundtrack of trying to pull a truck out of the mud. You can practically see downshifting, upshifting, & wheels spinning. Carl Stalling would have been on it in a second if it weren't the national anthem.
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Therefore, only the third verse is sung which basically means "unity, justice and freedom for the German fatherland, let us all strive for that as brothers" etc etc. That is much more free of negative associations.
Claude has pointed out that for many people, & really I think by definition all, the associations with a piece of music come first. Almost everyone my age & older when hearing the melody of Deutschland Uber Alles immediately think of it as The Nazi Theme Song. Zap goes every nerve! It can be argued that music also exists independently of the associations that others bring to it, but it ends up in someone's head & whatever happens there is part of the manipulation machinery which is what makes music effective. In that tunes case, it doesn't matter even if you go back past Haydn. Many, many church organists have been ripped a new one after playing Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken, they've argued that it pre-dates the song which folks are associating it with, but the argument ignores the response.
I agree with Mark Twain that Dixie is probably the best march ever written; I'll go beyond that & say it's one of the best songs. Spritely, hooky, immediately familiar, it's a hit. Unfortunately, it's got baggage that won't go away, & it's even been whistled, sung, & played to insult & injure. It's damaged beyond repair. That's musically; lyrically it didn't even have a good start. It went through several changes of lyrics, the last being very effective, evocative, & not very offensive, but the original by Dan Emmett & several later versions were standard outsize cartoon blackface minstrel doggerel monsters.
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Bruce McGee
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1776
From: Asheville, NC USA... Nowhere in Particular.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted 02-11-2004 07:14 AM
I'm another of the people that would like to see a new National Anthem. The Star Spangled Banner has only been our official anthem since the 1930's.
My mother, who in her day had an incredible vocal range, often said that the national anthem was very difficult to sing. In order to get it right, you basically have to start in the basement on the 'twilight's last gleaming,' and hit the roof on the 'rockets red glare.'
America The Beautiful is my choice for a replacement. Lovely, simple, and too the point. No bombs, no rockets. Just grain, mountains, and things that endure.
As for the Roseanne fiasco, I blame whoever invited her to do the anthem, not her. I knew her voice could cut glass long before she sang.
Wanna a nice America The Beautiful? Run the old film "Spencer's Mountain" (1963 WB--on DVD) and enjoy Barbra McNair's rendition of this song. Lovely.
Next?
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 02-12-2004 01:16 AM
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How old ARE you?
Sheesh, let's see, Ed Jurich is a little older than I am, so judging by his picture I'd say I'm probably about 9. Maybe 11.
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And on which occasion have you heard it in connection with the NSDAP?
Casablanca, for one! Steiner uses a minor key quote from it as a cue! I think it's when Bogart & Bergman are in Paris.
It's been a standard cue for all the US WWII era and a couple decades after cartoons, documentaries & movies about WW II. ENGLAND! (Couple bars of Rule, Britannia) FRANCE! (La Marseillaise) Tympani roll....GERMANY. (Deutschland uber alles) Not just in original release, but OVER & OVER for decades in TV packages. You don't see them as much since TV programming today won't run black & white for anything outside of the classic movie channels, but they were saturated up through the 70s'. Probably for folks 30 & younger the association hasn't been burned in, due to the extinction of b&w movies on mainstream TV during their time.
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Paul Cassidy
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 549
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted 02-12-2004 02:24 AM
The unofficial National Anthem of NZ is Engelbert Humperdinck's "Ten Guitars" ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
How Ten Guitars became popular in New Zealand
Eddie O'Strange has kindly sent details of his part in making Ten Guitars so popular in NZ, while it has remained unknown elsewhere in the world. Thanks Eddie.
September 1967, Rotorua. I was chief programme officer at station 1YZ. That day the weekly box of new records arrived from Head Office, Wellington. As usual we took a quick listen to all the singles.
An HMV rep had asked us to look out for Engelbert Humperdinck's Please Release Me- "In England they've got high hopes for this guy, but his name's unmarketable and it's been a struggle to get it charted back home". My first impression was that the guy was a great singer but the old song's popped-up arrangement was a tad too histrionic.
I flipped the single to Ten Guitars and before it was over I said "That's a song that could be turned into a hit in this country." The reaction was underwhelming and cynical. I had a mission!
I played in a band 5 nights a week at the Redwood Lounge at the DB Hotel. That same week I scrawled out chord charts and started singing Ten Guitars. Within a couple of weeks we were getting constant requests for the song.
It wasn't long before I was typing out the words and handing out carbon copies at the pub to patrons who wanted to learn the song. By the end of the year we heard that some people on the East Coast and up in Northland were singing it.
The local record shop firstly ordered a few copies of the record, then started ordering by the box [25 copies]. Meanwhile, back at the radio station, we played both sides of the single but it was the B-Side that got requests. The A-Side, Please Release Me was doing nothing on the national charts, but the sales of Ten Guitars in Rotorua were enough for HMV to claim that Please Release Me was chart-bound, and persuaded radio stations around NZ to spin it.
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Claude S. Ayakawa
Film God
Posts: 2738
From: Waipahu, Hawaii, USA
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted 02-12-2004 02:53 PM
I was once listening to a Vienna Philharmonic New Year's concert on a CD while I was working in my studio and a good friend plaid me a visit. Yugo was much older than me and when the orchestra played the "Radetzky March by Johann Starauss Sr and the audience joined in my clapping their hands, my friend said it sounded like a room full of Nazi's having a good time.
On the other hand, back in 1978, I was covering a football game between Campbell High, the school I provided year book photography service and Nanakuli High, a brand new school on the west shore of the island of Oahu. Before the game started the Nanakuli band played the national anthem followed by their school song and I was surprised when it turned out to be "Deutschland Uber Alles". Since that game, a lot of the seniors from that school came to me to have their portraits made for family and friends and just to amuse them, I played the "Kaiser" Quartet by Haydn and when the kids heard the familiar melody, they asked how I got a recording of their school song. After I told them the music was a little over two hundred years old, they though it was sooooo cool. It is very obvious when the school selected "Deutschland Uber Alles" by changing the German lyric of the anthem to their own, many who knew it was used a lot in films involving the Nazi's, never felt it was the 'Evil Empire" theme song. I also agree and that it why I always enjoy hearing it when it is played. It is also the same when I listen to "DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN", a four opera cycle by Richard Wagner that gave Adolph Hitler the idea to create a perfect Aryan society in Germany by first eliminating the Jews.
-Claude
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