Red Nichols & His 5 Pennies - Can't We Be Friends? 1929

Red Nichols & His Five Pennies, v. Scrappy Lambert - Can't We Be Friends? (Paul James, Kay Swift) From: "THE LITTLE SHOW OF 1929", Brunswick 1929
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From redhotjazz:

RED NICHOLS and his Five Pennies were one of the most popular bands of the New York Jazz scene of the 1920s. They recorded under a variety of different names, including the Arkansas Travelers, The Red Heads, The Louisiana Rhythm Kings, The Charleston Chasers, The Six Hottentots, The Hottentots and Miff Mole and his Little Molers. The band's style was often called "Chamber Jazz" by critics and for what it lacked in hot intensity it made up for with a cool somewhat detached, yet urban and sophisticated sound. In 1959 Hollywood made a highly fictionalized movie about the band called "The Five Pennies", starring Danny Kaye as Red Nichols.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Roaring
• Twenties
• Jazz
• Age
• 78s
• American
• hot
• dance
• band

[cacnix]

I always loved the homoerotic overtones, being the big Man Lover that I am. George O'brien is hot too!

[abstrus]

Warburg married the composer and musician Kay Swift in 1918, but they divorced in late 1934. Under the pseudonym Paul James he wrote the lyrics to Swift's 1929 hit song "Can't We Be Friends?" and their 1930 musical, Fine and Dandy, which introduced the song "Fine And Dandy".

[priapus56]

Richard Nixon! The man who always had to wear coloured shirts because there could be no white-wash at the White House.

[78timothy]

Continued from previous entry. Then there were no more "band-aids" to stop the Economic Crash that was inevitable.

When the 1920 econimic depression started it was nothing like the one that it transformed into in 1929. The Harding Tea-Pot Dome Scandal didn't help matters much. The Secretary of Commerce at the time in the Harding Administration was Herbert Hoover BTW.

[78timothy]

Hi & thanks for the reply. 1920 was not a typo. Our Country went into an economic Depression in 1920 during the Harding Administration from the glut of AEF Soldiers coming back into the work force. From Europe after the Great War (WWI) Flu epidemic victims from 1918 not with standing. The Crash of 1929 was the end result of a band-aid being place on this economic problem in 1920, & coddled it's the way thru the Coolidge administration & one year into the Hoover Administration. Continued...

[up2space]

i agree with you. but was 1920 a typo. i think you mean 1930. but i think it was about 1932. thanks for mentioning Joe Haymes. the "big" bands of the 1920s that morphed into the 1930s where still kicking out some syncopatin stuff, but the element of commercialism is ever so present. i think that the depression did kill jazz. at least what came before which to me is the only jazz. Red Nichols is a case in point. dropped out to make a living. like so many others.

[78timothy]

Remember, it was not the Depression or Swing that destroyed jazz. Jazz was/is always there. Commercial and Swing sounds were a mere extention of that Art form. The early elements of the Swing 4 beat sound go as far back as 1932 (Joe Haymes Orch in NYC). Also the Great

Depression really began in 1920, and did not end until Frankli D. Roosevelt held an emergency meeting of congress, and declared War on the Empire fo Japan on Monday Dec. 8, 1941; after the Pearl Harbor Attack.

[78timothy]

The depression did not destroy jazz. How can you destroy something that comes from the heart & soul. More commercial (Ben Selvin, Fred Rich etc..) music became more popular, because of it's steadyness, structure & sweet sounding arrangements. Although there was some jazz riffs in the music to keep it a little hot;, to keep the masses calmer, and not think of their troubles. The swing sound was merely an extension of this type of commercial sounding music.

Conntinued...

[78timothy]

Loring "Rred" Nichols put his horn down to work in the Ship-yards in L.A. for the War Effort. I know nothing about the story line in the rather highly fictionalized movie from Paramount in 1959 about his daughter suffering from polio, but there may be an element of truth in that tragedy, I don't think screenplay writers would go that far to sell a story. This may be why Nichols needed a steady income, as he had a family to support.

[78timothy]

The Clicquot Club Ginger Alge sides were done w/Harry Reser as director for both Records and Radio (NBC) between 1928-1931. Pre-War. He found more income in being a pop commercial band leader, and player. Armstrong was a fabulous Jazz cornetist, switching to Trumpet in the 40's, from the time he stared recording to about 1932. After that, his lip was shot since he was never trained in to protect his embochure (lip) when playing hot. continued...