From Tap Dance to "Salt Peanuts" to Armstrong's Daughter

On occasion I’ve asked you to follow me as I investigate a complicated matter that leads from one thing to another, “down the rabbit hole,” as they say. (The expression comes, of course, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.) Well, today we’ll begin to pursue a few leads that will take us to some fascinating places.

It all started when the leading jazz film historian Mark Cantor read my essay about “Salt Peanuts,” the piece written by Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke. He emailed me to say that he had a short film clip, one of the “Soundies,” that was relevant to the history of that tune. It's the only film of a husband and wife dance team called “Slim and Sweets” who were very successful during the 1940s. The film was copyrighted December 31, 1943 and released January 31, 1944. (In some sources, the copyright date is listed as the release date, but Mark’s research shows that is incorrect.)

Here are some examples of their newspaper mentions in the Black press. The first mentions their Chicago debut at the Club DeLisa. The second gives their Manhattan address, an apartment building on West 116th Street, from which they send greetings to the staff at the Club DeLisa. And the last shows how well they (and/or their management) knew how to use the press to their advantage. They wrote to the columnist Bob Hayes simply to send warm greetings, which he then mentioned in his column, as they surely hoped he would:

News from Club Delisa, Chicago Defender 9-12-42

Bob Hayes column,Chicago Defender 3-6-43

Bob Hayes column, Chicago Defender 10-9-43

Mark had noticed that in the film clip, called Tap Happy, the opening of “Salt Peanuts” is briefly but clearly played behind the dancers! Please watch the clip, and enjoy the dance routine. But then watch it again, and this time listen to the music. It’s definitely pre-recorded music, because there are breaks in the soundtrack when they switch records. This may seem bizarre, but it was not unusual in low-budget productions—you can hear breaks between recordings in the music behind some early Laurel and Hardy film shorts, for example. This is the best copy of the film and it comes to us courtesy of Mark Cantor:

The music selections are medleys, going directly from one song to the next. Neither I nor some fellow jazz historians could identify the song played at the very beginning. (If you know it, please tell me.) At 0:37 there is a short interlude, a holding pattern or “vamp,” which leads at 0:54 into just two statements of the “Salt Peanuts” theme, with one ornamental note added each time. Then it’s back to the holding pattern, and the first recording ends at 1:09.

After three seconds of silence, a new song plays on the soundtrack at 1:12. This one was identified for us by Peter Mintun, an accomplished pianist who is also a historian of American popular song:

This is “It Must Be True,” a song closely identified with Bing Crosby when he sang at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles, with the song’s co-writers Gus Arnheim (lyrics, with Gordon Clifford) and Harry Barris (melody). They recorded it in 1930, and the song was popular enough to have spawned at least nine American commercial recordings in 1931.

Again, this leads directly into something else: At 1:32 we hear an AABA riff number featuring a pianist. There’s another break from 2:10 to 2:13, then a few seconds of something else, and starting at 2:23 there’s a fast, lively riff number. (Again, if anybody recognizes this music, please let me know.) Up to now, we heard the dancers’ taps loud and clear. But during this more acrobatic, less tap-oriented finale, whatever sounds their feet are making are not on the soundtrack—one hears only the music. It’s possible that the taps as they landed from their leaps were distracting on film, even if they were fine in live performances. So the director decided not to include the sounds of their feet.

Because the Earl Hines big band had been the first to perform “Salt Peanuts,” I had hoped that I could show that the band heard on the soundtrack was somehow connected with Hines—perhaps by having an arranger or a few musicians in common—or that I could somehow identify the band playing, even if it wasn’t Hines. After all, these dancers performed on bills with the Snookum Russell band, and even Armstrong’s. But none of those bands sounded at all like the soundtrack (and there is very little of Russell on record in any case). I even listened to about a dozen different recordings of “It Must Be True” that were available before the end of 1943, but none matched the one in the film. So after quite a bit of research, I gave up on that idea, and I accepted that, as was common in such films, this music came from a stock library of mostly anonymous pieces recorded by equally anonymous studio orchestras.

Most pre-recorded soundtracks were licensed from the Cleveland-based Sam Fox company, which still exists. (Other such libraries are active today.) This was the cheapest and easiest way to get music for film soundtracks. Mark notes that the producers here were the most cost-conscious of any of the 50 companies that made Soundies, so it is impossible that they would have had the budget to record the band of Hines, or of anybody else, exclusively for this little film. In addition, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM, or the musicians’ union) recording ban, a strike to collect payments from the recording companies, had only just ended for the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America. They signed with the union in late October 1943 and were only just getting back into making new recordings.

But the biggest proof that the music was pre-recorded is that it has those pauses between songs: If they had commissioned recordings specifically for Tap Happy, it would have been truly insane to leave gaps like that in the soundtrack. We can conclude that what happened here is as follows: The film’s production files, which Cantor saw, indicate that “arrangements were brought to the session," presumably by Slim and Sweets. This most likely means that they brought commercial 78 r.p.m. recordings of pieces that they had danced to on stage, to give the film’s producers an idea of what they needed. (It’s also possible that they had sheet music, which they brought and had someone play through at the piano. Sweets’s daughter, who I’ll talk about later, told me that she once saw some written “theme music,” but it no longer exists.) The producers then played for them some of these inexpensive pre-recorded medleys. Slim and Sweets tried out their steps over each one and when they found one that worked, they said “That’s fine.” Then they moved on to the next segment, until they had enough music for their entire routine.

So, that leaves us with the big question: How did “Salt Peanuts” get onto that soundtrack? Well, the tune certainly was already written. It was registered for copyright by Gillespie and Kenny Clarke (in that name order) on October 13, 1941:

It was unpublished (it says “unp.”) but Dizzy and Kenny certainly must have played it for other musicians. And, as noted in the previous essay, a few similar riffs had already been recorded. But the most direct precedent is “Little John Special” by the Lucky Millinder band, an arrangement by alto saxophonist Tab Smith, who is the first soloist. (This piece, like most others by this band, is credited solely to Millinder, as was the common practice, even though Millinder was not a musician and did not read music.) The band was performing this “live” from about mid-1941 for the next few years. It was also recorded, and although that 78 was only issued in England, it preserves the arrangement for us to hear. The recording features a terrific Dizzy Gillespie solo at 1:30. and at 2:17 “Salt Peanuts” is played behind the baritone sax solo:

Dizzy wrote in his memoir (pp.162 and 171) that he “set” (initiated) that riff for the record. And Dizzy was the only member of the band whose real name was John, so the piece might even have been named for him. It was recorded in N.Y.C. on July 29, 1942.

Now, the recording ban started on August 1, 1942, so if this medley was recorded before the ban, it would be tied with Millinder’s as the earliest version. It’s also possible that the Fox company was recording during the ban, but if so, they would have had to use musicians who were not union members. If that was the case, let’s remember that the Earl Hines band with Dizzy was performing “Salt Peanuts” from January 1943 through the next few months, while touring the country. So, many musicians were certainly familiar with that opening riff. But, keep in mind, nobody could have memorized Gillespie’s sophisticated arrangement, interludes, or bridge, and in any case those would not have been included in a “generic” music library. In short, this soundtrack demonstrates that the memorable “Salt Peanuts” riff, the A section of the AABA piece, was out in the world, and that whoever composed this medley knew it at an early stage.

And here’s something else interesting: later on, “Sweets” was the mother of Louis Armstrong’s only child, his daughter Sharon. More on that next time.

All the best,
Lewis

P.S. For help with this essay, I thank pianist Peter Mintun, guitarist Nick Rossi, pianist Anthony Coleman, bandleader and music historian Vince Giordano, and especially film historian Mark Cantor.