A recent book by Warren
Craig called “The Great Songwriters of
Hollywood”, starts with Irving Berlin, goes
through Harry Warren, Jerome Kern, Johnny
Mercer, etc., and ends with Livingston and
Evans, whom the book calls “the Last of the
Great Songwriters of Hollywood”. Like those
that came before them, their respectable
list of hit songs have all become standards
which are still constantly being recorded
and performed.
Livingston and Evans both grew up in small
towns, and their main contact with the
outside world was through radio. Jay
Livingston was a DXer, a hobby that no one
practices anymore. DXers tried to see how
many radio stations they could pick up and
then entered them in a log book. Jay found
235 stations before he went off to college.
During his kilocyclic meanderings, he heard
music from all over the country, and was
especially impressed by the big bands he
picked up from New York, Chicago, New
Orleans and other cities.
His favorite performer was Little Jack
Little, a pianist-singer from WLW,
Cincinnati. Little Jack Little had a
marvelous technique on the piano, which
inspired Jay to work hard at the piano to
try to emulate him. When he auditioned for
Pittsburgh radio stations, he did an
imitation of Little Jack Little, which they
allowed him to perform on the air.
Ray’s heroes were the big New York show
writers, especially Cole Porter. He got
first hand experience watching the movie
musicals that came to the theatre in
Salamancc, NY. He would get the advance
programs from this theatre, and always made
sure to catch all the musicals. This theatre
is now called the Ray Evans Theatre, in
honor of the local boy who made good.
Their orchestra at Penn played on cruise
ships during Easter and summer vacations,
and Jay credits this with giving him his
broad experience with all kinds of music.
When they stopped in Havana, they bought
rhumba instruments from a man on the street,
who taught them to play them. That night,
they imitated what they had heard in Havana,
on the ship, with the three sax players
playing piano improvised in Havana rhumba
style. |
The cruise director, who was the head cruise
director of the Holland-America line, got
very excited and told them to keep playing
until he found a partner. As he danced by,
he kept saying, "Don’t stop," which
surprised the band because he had enjoined
them to cut their sets to a minimum, to keep
him from being stuck with partners he didn’t
care for. It turned out that this cruise
director was crazy about the rhumba, which
other college bands didn’t play. When they
finished, he told them, “You can have any
cruise you want on this line,” which enabled
them to cruise the world during their
college years. |
|
When the ship stopped in
Buenos Aires, they heard the authentic
Argentine tango, which they also imitated,
and in Rio de Janeiro, they had their first
exposure to the samba, which had not yet
reached the United States. And in Trinidad,
they heard the calypso, and both Ray and Jay
learned how to write for this medium, which
purposely stressed a word on the wrong
syllable. During their first days in
Hollywood, they were invited to a party by
the famous King Sisters, which was peopled
by greats in the music and motion picture
world, and they decided to impress this
august assemblage by writing and performing
The Hollywood Calypso, about their
impressions of Hollywood—”a-ba-lo-ne a-vo-ca-do,”
using the style they had learned in
Trinidad. This was a big hit, and garnered
them many friends. In fact, the King Sisters
began singing “The Hollywood Calypso” in
their public appearances.
At the end of their last cruise, Ray came
into Jay’s stateroom and, to Jay’s great
surprise, suggested that they stay in New
York and become songwriters. And, thus, the
team was born.
|
|
|
