Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Hot, Lovable, and Sweet: Annette Hanshaw and Early Female Vocal Jazz


Annette Hanshaw was one of the very first female jazz vocalists, as well as one of the most exciting singers of the 1920s and early 30s. Critic Will Friedwald, who has written extensively (and most insightfully) on jazz singing, ranks her alongside Al Bowlly as one of the few artists that “used the musical idiom of the twenties in a creative, modern way” (1). Although I believe that there were more singers other than these two that also experimented with more modern approaches to the vocal art in that era, Friedwald is certainly right concerning Hanshaw: she was well ahead of her time in that she understood the rhythmic qualities of jazz much better than most of her contemporaries and applied them to her singing in a very personal, highly inventive way. From today’s standpoint, there is no doubt that her records sound more modern and engaging than those of Helen Kane or Ruth Etting.

Born into a wealthy family in 1901 (although for many years the date was believed to be 1910), Hanshaw got her start performing at her father’s hotels. On a certain night in 1926, producer Herman “Wally” Rose (whom she would later marry) happened to be among the audience and was quick to realize her potential, subsequently signing her to a contract with Pathé. These were the years of the recording boom, when large amounts of records were produced and sold worldwide, and so Hanshaw recorded extensively, soon becoming one of the most popular artists on the label and gaining more public exposure through a series of radio spots. It did not take her long to graduate to one of the major labels, Columbia, who also put out the records of Ruth Etting, at the time one of the most popular singing stars in the country. Columbia issued Hanshaw’s efforts on subsidiary budget labels in order to prevent any kind of conflict between the two singers, but this did not affect her record sales, and even in the years following the 1929 stock market crash, Hanshaw still proved to be extremely popular with record buyers.


But despite the success of her records, Hanshaw apparently dreaded public appearances and did not exploit her image as the quintessential 1920s flapper in movies. After her marriage to Rose in 1934, she decided to put an end to her very popular radio show and stopped recording altogether around 1938. Hanshaw would live to see her records reissued in the 1970s, when she was certainly surprised to find out that there was a kind of renewed interest in her recorded output. Unfortunately, unlike other stars from the twenties such as Nick Lucas, she never really attempted to make a comeback. Her husband had passed away in 1954, and in 1975 she remarried; nobody seems to have advised her that it would have been a good idea to get back into the recording studio, and if anyone did, she did not listen. Hanshaw died in New York in 1985, leaving behind a very valuable legacy of recorded music that is highly interesting to both pop and jazz aficionados.

Her complete recordings are yet to be reissued in their entirety (a project that, like the release of Cliff Edwards’s Hot Combinations, should be undertaken by some label like Proper or JSP), but there are a couple of fine compilations on CD that serve as good introductions to her music. Lovable & Sweet (ASV / Living Era, 1997) is perhaps the best one around, and although the English reissue label seems to have gone out of business, the disc is still fairly easy to find. The material included in the collection proves, on the one hand, that Hanshaw very adeptly assimilated the jazz idiom very early on, and on the other, that her selection of material is very wide-ranging. She sings rather straight on two Hawaiian-flavored sides with Frank Ferera (“Pagan Love Song” and “Ua Like No a Like,” from 1929) but she applies her jazz inflections not only to jazz numbers like “Black Bottom” and “Six Feet of Papa,” but also to more conventional pop tunes such as “Little White Lies” and “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home.” When she runs through “Everything’s Made for Love” (1926), with Irving Brodsky on piano, she sounds way hipper than crooner Gene Austin in his version of the tune recorded that same year. Two of my personal favorites on this compilation, which features tracks waxed between 1926 and 1934, are her outstanding 1930 rendition of “Body and Soul” (which even includes an accordion) and her 1934 recording of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Let’s Fall in Love,” in which she is backed by an all-star band including Jack Teagarden and Joe Venuti.


As a matter of fact, many of her hot sides included such jazz luminaries as Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Eddie Lang, Red Nichols, Miff Mole, Manny Klein, and Adrian Rollini. These are well represented in The Twenties Sweetheart (Jasmine, 1995), a compilation that concentrates on Hanshaw’s earlier recordings, cut between 1926 and 1928. Here, Hanshaw’s vocals are at their jazziest best, bouncing along effortlessly, her voice shining atop the hot backings: these are the records that built her reputation as a jazz singer, and many of them end with her idiosyncratic “That’s all!,” used to mark the end of the record right after the last note has been played. As her records clearly show, Annette Hanshaw is an essential figure of the early stages of recorded vocal jazz. It is too bad that she decided to cut short her remarkable career, that she chose not to make any more records. But the records that she made are certainly jazz classics and prove as enjoyable more than eighty years after they were cut as when they were first released. In my opinion, no assessment of Hanshaw’s stature as an artist is more accurate than that of John Hammond, who is reported to have said about her, “I don’t think she realizes how good she is” (2). Fortunately, any jazz fan easily does.

Notes

(1) Will Friedwald. Jazz Singing. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996: page 59.

(2) Jazz Singing, page 62.



Videos

WE JUST COULDN'T SAY GOODBYE



HERE OR THERE



BODY AND SOUL



LET'S FALL IN LOVE



BLACK BOTTOM



DON'T TAKE THAT BLACK BOTTOM AWAY

8 comments:

Chester Proudfoot said...

I believe that someone has been issuing (or issued) a chronological series of Hanshaw recordings (not to be confused with the Classics label) and that they can be found. Sorry that I can't recall the label or any info, but I'll see if I can find them.

Anton Garcia-Fernandez said...

Chester,

You are right: a chronological series of Hanshaw's recordings is being issued by the Sensation label, but so far the way that the CDs are being released is rather strange. Volumes 5, 6, and 7 are available (you can buy them from Amazon), but Volumes 1 through 4 don't seem to have been released yet... It's too bad that JSP or Proper haven't decided to dig into the Hanshaw vaults yet: her music deserves one of their usually excellent reissues!!!

And, incidentally, there is also a nice website on Hanshaw with quite a bit of information about her, including a discography:

http://annettehanshaw.tripod.com

Cheers,

Anton.

drizzz said...

I agree that Annette deserves a box set. I'm not sure if any more Sensation cds will be forth coming. I believe the label was started by Jeff Healey, a great guitarist in his own right, who sadly passed away some time back.

Anton Garcia-Fernandez said...

Drizzz,

I am sorry that it has taken me so long to read and reply to your comment. I have been really busy lately with various things and have had less time to devote to the blog. However, I am thinking of ideas for new articles and listening to lots of great vintage jazz stuff every day.

I don't understand why no labels have decided to put out a boxset with Annette's complete recorded works. That would make a wonderful project, and if anyone ever decided to undertake it, I'd be so happy that I'd offer to write the liner notes for free!!! :-)

Thanks for stopping by the blog! More articles coming soon...

Cheers,

Anton.

Διάττων said...

Dear friend... Many thanks for the message you sent me. I'm also sending you my greetings from Greece. Your website focus especially on Jazz music... So, we are close in our musical preferences... I was born with the real blues, you know. Growing up, i liked also the world music. You can see many related videos in my both blogs:
http://diattonsworld.blogspot.com/
http://musicarrows.blogspot.com/

Have always good health and good mood...

Cladrite Radio said...

It seems Ms. Hanshaw considered making a comeback later in life, and some amateur recordings she made as a way of sort of dipping her toe in the water of performing again can be found on YouTube.

Anton Garcia-Fernandez said...

Dear Cladrite Radio,

Thank you very much for your comment. If Annette Hanshaw had a comeback in mind late in life, it unfortunately did not come to fruition. She is the perfect example of an extremely talented artist who was somehow not aware of how good she really was, so it is too bad that she did not record any LPs in the era of HiFi. I am not aware of the existence of those recordings that you mention but would be really grateful if you could leave us the YouTube links here because I would certainly like to hear them!!! :-)

Thanks again for your comment,

Anton.

pwlsax said...

Reportedly, Annette suffered from stage fright more than the average singer, and that might have contributed to her early retirement in 1936. She did go on in radio after her recording career ended, appearing on the Maxwell House Showboat and Camel Caravan programs.

Brian Rust met with her on a trip to the US in the late '50s and she was helpful to his research efforts. There's a great photo of the two here: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Tm6rbwLR7Es/TQR7r8JOx4I/AAAAAAAAZPY/LGaHSOoUX6U/s320/annette%2Bandf%2Bbrian.jpg