Vocalese, 4 of 4: Delta Rhythm Boys—Two Film Discoveries of "One O'Clock Jump"! (+Bonus Film)

(Paying Subscribers, I’ve got a great film clip for you at the bottom. For the preceding essays in this series, see the Index under “singing.”)

In Part 3 of this series on vocalese singing, film historian Mark Cantor, author of the Soundies reference book, shared with us a print of the earliest example on film—the Delta Rhythm Boys performing “Take the ‘A’ Train” in 1941. In early 2024, Mark discovered that they performed another of their vocalese numbers, Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump,” in two films in 1943. It was known that the Delta Rhythm Boys appeared in both films—they are listed in IMDB and the group’s name appeared on the posters promoting the films—but it was not known what pieces they performed. Cantor found both while working on his next book, which will be about short music films for Universal Studios from 1932 to 1959. The Delta quartet appeared in many Universal feature films and shorts during the early 1940s—counts vary from 11 to 18 films—but many of these are hard to find. Mark explains how he came upon these clips:

First, I made a digital copy from my 16mm print of a short entitled Sweet Jam. It was recorded and filmed in early July 1943, and features Jan Garber and his Orchestra, a white dance band, as well as the customary vocalist and a comic dance act. Then came the highlight of the short for me, the Delta Rhythm Boys. They do their version of “Don't Get Around Much Anymore,” which was part of their "book" at the time. But then comes the surprise: The group moves into their vocalese version of Basie’s original 1937 recording of “One O'Clock Jump.” About two months later, I decided to do research on an obscure feature film, made around the same time, called Hi Ya, Sailor, because I knew that it included performances by Wingy Manone, harmonica virtuoso Leo Diamond (a contemporary of Larry Adler), and the Delta Rhythm Boys—who, as it turned out, performed a different version of “One O’Clock Jump”!

Both filmed versions are abridged, as I’ll explain. That is not unusual, since musical numbers in films are almost always very short. And since these two appearances were both for Universal Films, even though there were two different directors, they surely needed to make them a bit different from each other, as they would have been recorded around the same time and would be not far apart in theater showings as well. The singers are the same as in “‘A’ Train” except that baritone Lewis has been replaced by clean-shaven Kelsey Pharr, in the foreground. The other singers are tenor Clinton Holland (with moustache), tenor Traverse Crawford, and the tall bass singer, and lyricist, Otho “Lee” Gaines. Their long-time accompanist Rene DeKnight is at the piano.

First let’s see the version from the short, Sweet Jam. To abridge this one, they left out the trombone and trumpet solos:

And here, for easier comparison, is the original Herschel Evans tenor sax solo, followed by the singers, with Traverse Crawford performing Herschel’s solo

Now, Pres, followed by the quartet’s version. Notice that his solo is the only one that they all sing together:

And finally, the bass of Walter Page, followed by the quartet’s bass singer, Lee Gaines:

For the film Hi Ya, Sailors, they only omitted the trombone solo. As with most feature films, there’s a little backstory here—four white sailors are waiting to present their song to the publisher after the Delta group. It’s great to see Holland perform Buck Clayton’s trumpet solo:

But I'm especially pleased that they were hip to Pres's solo. Jon Hendricks must have known their studio recording from 1947, which we heard last time. But when he recorded that same Pres solo in 1957, for the first Lambert, Hendricks and Ross album, Sing a Song of Basie, he came up with different words:

Let’s end our exploration of vocalese here. As we’ve seen, it appears that vocalese was pioneered by Bee Palmer (recorded 1929, but never released until 1997) and Marion Harris (in 1934), inspired by the popularity of the Trumbauer and Beiderbecke solos on the February 1927 recording of “Singin’ the Blues.” Thanks to the audio recordings of the Delta Rhythm Boys and these new film discoveries, we can now continue the thread of vocalese into the 1940s. And we’ve studied the first “modern jazz” vocalese hits of the 1950s, and learned that Annie Ross’s work inspired Leonard Feather to coin the term “vocalese.” So, this explosion of vocalese in the early 1950s did not come out of nowhere—it came from a small but long tradition!

All the best,
Lewis