The Lion of Judah and the Queen of Denial
(13 downloads)Friday, Dec 21, 2007
Egyptian Ella was written in 1931 by Walter Doyle and first performed by Ted Weems and his Orchestra. Milt Herth obviously saw this novelty song as a nice venue to show off two of his trademarks: the exotic new sounds of the Hammond organ (introduced in 1934- this recording is from 1938), and his flair for writing novel arrangements for his small combo of organ, piano, drums and sometimes, as we have here, guitar.
The other really nice thing here is the piano break by the legendary stride player Willie “The Lion” Smith. Really, there’s great piano playing throughout as Smith and Herth trade off each other nicely. And on guitar we have Teddy Bunn, one of the important early single note style acoustic players. He gets a solo after the piano break. The drummer is O’Neill Spencer who played with the John Kirby Sextet and later with Louis Armstrong’s Orchestra. Spencer died in 1944 at the age of 33 of tuberculosis.
The song is about a dancing girl who gets too fat and gets fired from her dancing gig. In order to take her mind off losing her job (and her boyfriend) she plans a vacation to Egypt unaware that they love their women big over there. Now, gaining a new perspective on life and couple more pounds, she’s in no hurry to come home. I’m giving this synopsis because the Herth recording drops the first few verses that explain this “back story”.
Now, how about a few words on the biography of Willie “The Lion” Smith.
Willie the Lion was born in 1894 in Goshen NY and his family moved to Newark NJ in 1901. His parents were mixed, his father being light skinned black man who was half Jewish and his mother being Spanish, Mohawk and black. His parents split up when he was very young and when they moved to Newark, his mother remarried changing his name from William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff to William H. Smith. Early on Willie seems to embrace his Jewish ancestry, he learns Hebrew from a local Rabbi and has his Bar Mitzvah in 1907. He plays around the area: Newark, New York City, Atlantic City; until the mid-teens when he enlists in the army. In Atlantic City he replaces Eubie Blake as the house pianist at Kelly’s Lounge. In 1916 he marries Blanche Merrill (nee Howard) a white woman who was also a musician and song writer. They separate within the year, though never actually getting a divorce. During their marriage, Smith was the only black man living in their Newark apartment building.
Also in 1916, Willie enlists in the US Army, 92nd Division, 153rd Negro Brigade, 350th Field Artillery ("the Black Devils"). The US declared war on Germany in 1917 and he apparently earned his nickname “The Lion” for the exceptional valor that he displayed on the battlefield. After the armistice, he stays on in France for about a year playing piano in dancehalls. When he returns to New York, a decorated veteran, his career takes off as he and James P. Johnson and Fats Waller become known as the “Big 3”, the hottest pianists in the city and Princes of Jazz Age New York. They are admired by and influential on such important young artists as Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, and George Gershwin and are frequent guests at white society engagements throughout the 20’s. Smith performs with some of the earliest integrated groups during the early 30's.
A big part of the reason Willie the Lion didn’t achieve the same lasting recognition as his contemporaries, (Blake, Johnson and, Waller), was because he made relatively few solo recordings and likewise, was rarely the front man in any of his ensemble projects. And it seems like he preferred it this way, through the 30’s and 40’s he followed the path of a formidably talented sideman, highly regarded among his peers, but not making many inroads with the public at large. In 1944, he is said to have become Cantor for an African-American synagogue in Harlem, which may suggest where his priorities lay. Willie the Lion died in 1973. An interesting life for an interesting and important figure in the jazz world highlighting the variables of race and racial identity which cannot be avoided when you talk about jazz, or any other form of American music.
Take the information in Willie's bio with a grain of salt because he is the source for most of it and one of the things stride pianists have in common is a predilection for "Tall Tales" (the others are smoking fat cigars, and sporting bowler derbies).
Here’s a guy doing a pretty wicked version of this song on the ukulele:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Jt25_Na3k
Decca 1868, 1938