Back in January of 1944 and 1945 Esquire Magazine organized two serious all-star jazz concerts, featuring all the poll winners—people like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington—all joining together, and, remarkably, for the most part playing together without the whole thing turning into all-star ego-fest. The concerts were broadcast live, the first largely to sell U.S. War Bonds, the second, more elaborate, just to celebrate jazz.
I have an old CD, no longer available, of the first concert, that includes introductions by once-famous jazz critic Leonard Feather, as well as a super-patriotic announcer—the was a war going on, remember—reminding us that the great musicians there were “Americans All!”, and all urging you to “Buy Bonds”!
The YouTube “video” featured above has no video, and seems to jumble the order of the numbers, with the “introduction” coming almost 40 minutes in, although the music does correspond to the old disc I have, with the announcer largely snipped out. Despite all the stars, most of them playing at the height of their powers, it’s Billie Holiday who steals the show, to the extent that that is possible, with her rendition of “Billie’s Blues”, about 13 minutes in.
The second concert is currently available on CD complete as it was broadcast in the U.S,, though it isn’t on YouTube. It makes a fascinating period piece—an historic radio broadcasting extravaganza, in fact! All the musicians from the first concert are back, but the whole thing is broadcast from three locations—New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles! And we have celebrities congratulating each of the poll winners! Presenters like Judy Garland! Jack Benny! Danny Kaye! And Beatrice Lillie! Yes, Beatrice Lillie!
That I did not see coming. Judy, it seems, will live pretty much forever, while Jack and Danny, once huge stars, started fading from public consciousness in the early seventies, but if you know who Bea Lillie is, you’re either seriously old or seriously weird, and, probably, both. Below is a doubly bizarre clip, from, I’m guessing, the early fifties, because the video is terrible, featuring Bea on the Ed Sullivan Show, singing that most Bea Lillie of numbers, “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of My Garden”, but first she has to disencumber herself from the clearly unwelcome embrace of Big Ed, who for some reason feels compelled to give us a potted history of Bea while draped all over her, almost as if Young Ed had a fairly serious crush on Bea, and, once he has his hands on her, can’t quite let go. Anyway, Bea finally does free herself, so she can do her classic number, without some creepy Irish fanboy hanging all over her. After that is another clip, this one of Bea in her prime, suggesting that, alas, all those classic stars of the past weren’t always that funny.
