March 16, 2009
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B
Mark Steyn, the massively talented columnist and pundit, is also a music historian of some note, and this week he turns to one of my favorite numbers from the war years, as performed by the most successful female singing group of all time. Steyn's hook is the centennial of the songwriter's birth.
He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way
He had a boogie style that no one else could play
He was the top man at his craft
But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft
He's in the army now
A-blowin' reveille
He's the Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B...In fact, he was an obscure dancing man from out Virginia way: the state dancing champion at the age of 15. And he was born Donald Macrae Wilhoite, Jr in Washington, DC one hundred years ago today, March 16th 1909. But he cut down his name and cut up the crowds as "Don Raye", a fairly obscure vaudevillian who evolved into a fairly obscure songwriter. But in the Second World War his words and music were part of the soundtrack of America. Don Raye was a song'n'dance man who turned to writing mainly to provide himself with some material. But he wound up providing it not just for himself but for Harry James, Billie Holiday, the Andrews Sisters, Nat "King" Cole, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones and many more. In the early 1940s, he was the man who, as Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball put it in Reading Lyrics, "helped America make joyous music during an unjoyous time."
[...]
Don Raye's run of hits wasn't long, but the big rhythm numbers prefigured rock'n'roll just enough to ensure a ton of cover versions from the Fifties onwards that kept his royalties healthy for the rest of his life. That was especially true for a goofy novelty that was a huge hit in the early Forties but so indelibly part of its era that it seemed almost certain to fade with it. Yet, in the midst of progressive rock and bubblegum and Philadelphia soul and the Partridge Family, it came roaring back, and never really went away again. It seems like a "war song", but, in fact, Don Raye and Hughie Prince wrote it in late 1940, about a year before Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War Two. Like any savvy songwriter, the boys were thinking ahead. But you notice, the lyric refers not to any hostilities or combat, but only to what was still a nominally peacetime draft:
He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way
He had a boogie style that no one else could play
He was the top man at his craft
But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft...It was introduced in the 1941 film Buck Privates, starring Abbott & Costello. They were new to Hollywood, and Universal wasn't convinced they had the makings of movie stars. The studio assigned Arthur Lubin to direct and he declined. "I just don't feel I'm right for this project," he said. "I know nothing about dancing." It turned out he'd mixed them up with an act then playing the Figueroa Theatre: the Abbott Dancers. Once that had been straightened out, Universal hired the supporting cast, including, in a small role, Don Raye.
The execs still weren't persuaded that Abbott & Costello could carry a movie, but then they didn't think the Andrews Sisters, whom they also had under contract, could carry a movie, either. To this day, Patty, Maxene and Laverne remain the biggest-selling female vocal group of all time, but in 1941 most of their big hits (and they had more than Elvis or the Beatles) were still ahead of them. So Universal figured, if you had a singing act that couldn't carry a picture and a comedy act that couldn't carry a picture, maybe if you stuck 'em in the same film, two losers might add up to one winner.
Don Raye and Hughie Prince were signed to write the songs, and, as the Andrews gals had liked "Beat Me, Daddy, Eight To The Bar", they started thinking about which variation on a boogie woogie theme might work this time: Drill Me, Sergeant, Eight To The Bar? Jive Me, General, With A Solid War? Camp Me, Colonel, On A Boogie Base? Torture Me, Tojo, With A Bamboo Beat? But in the end they came up with that rare beast - a variation that trumps the original.
Starting with the somewhat whimsical concept of a boogie woogie trumpeter, Raye and Prince constructed a jumping narrative to which any number of enlisted men could relate - the free spirit who finds it tough adjusting to a regimented way of life:
They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam
It really brought him down because he could not jam
The captain seemed to understand
Because the next day the cap went out and drafted a band
And now the company jumps
When he plays reveille
He's the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B...And the company really jumps: It's the second great army-bugler song after Irving Berlin's hit of the First World War, "Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning".
[...]
Universal Pictures liked the song, but weren't sure about the ladies. "The Andrews Sisters can't sing boogie woogie," one exec said. "It's too tough for them." But these were three tough gals, and Raye & Prince stuck to their guns. Yet, even when they'd warmed up to the concept of boogieing Andrews sisters, Universal still didn't want to put money into it. "We begged the executives to bring in Nick Castle from Twentieth Century Fox to choreograph that song," said Maxene Andrews. "Universal didn't want a choreographer." In fact, they didn't like the idea of the gals dancing at all.
"When Don and Hughie wrote 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' for us, we had to learn the routines at night! We were busy shooting during the daytime, and we were not allowed to learn dancing on Universal's time." Maybe the studio had the right idea. What eventually emerged looks less staged than a Nick Castle routine might - as if a group of grunts are just hanging out, and a song emerges. It starts with the eponymous bugler himself boogie-woogieing up a storm, and then suddenly, at the back of the bar, there they are - Patty, Maxene and Laverne, emerging from the throng of servicemen to jump up a storm:
And when he played
Boogie woogie bugle
He was busy as a bzzz-y bee…[...]
In the early Seventies, Bette Midler re-drafted the famous trumpet man from out Chicago way and, courtesy of overdubbing, sang all three vocal parts. It was an unlikely Top Ten hit: True, America was at war again, but it wasn't that kind of war, and, even if you didn't subscribe to Country Joe and the Fish's view of Vietnam, most songwriters had opted to sit it out. Yet, for whatever reason, Miss Midler brought the song back, and it remains a linchpin of her act to this day. As for En Vogue's "Boogie Woogie Hip-Hop Boy" or Christina Aguilera's more recent appropriation, Don Raye never heard either, which is probably just as well. He died, aged 75, in 1985.
So on his hundredth birthday let us celebrate a forgotten man with a handful of unforgettable songs: couple of ballads, couple of rockers, and one indestructible novelty. "You Don't Know What Love Is," he told us, "until you've learned the meaning of the blues." But you don't know what hits are until you've learned the meaning of the boogie:
And now the company jumps
When he plays reveille
He's the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B!
Man, those gals could sing, with harmonies so tight they put today's over-produced, digitally-enhanced singers to shame. And, as it turns out, as much as I love the Andrews Sisters, I apparently owe the talented Don Raye for introducing me as a kid to the wonders of that horn-playin' Chicago kid.
Happy birthday, Mr. Raye.
Gone, but not forgotten.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 16, 2009 11:08 PM
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Comments
I love the Andrew Sisters!!!!
Posted by: Carrie at March 28, 2009 12:51 PM