Whitney Darrow, Jr.: "Annie Get Your Gun"

Back in 2003, when three drawings came up together at auction, you were lucky to get a picture of even one of them. Such is the case with the sale of three illustrations by Whitney Darrow, Jr. created for a Rodgers and Hammerstein theatre library catalogue. The musical "Annie Get Your Gun" (Irving Berlin and Dorothy Fields with Herbert Fields) is illustrated here. Drawings for "Showboat" (Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II) and "Oklahoma!" (Rodgers & Hammerstein) are not shown.

Whitney Darrow, Jr. "Annie Get Your Gun"

Swann Auction Galleries, November 13, 2003
Sale 1985, Lot 237
Hammer Price $2,400

http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=1985+++++237+&refno=++533352&saletype=

Note:  "Annie Get Your Gun" doesn't take a comma. What's with that?

Perhaps the buyer of this lot would like to come forward with scans or photos of the two other drawings. It's worth a shot.

Is any reader familiar with the catalogue in which these drawings were published? One at a time, please.

It's a closely-guarded secret, but this blogger has been humming Broadway show tunes for years. Come and hum along with me.

You might think that the music of Irving Berlin never comes up here, but you would be wrong.

By now you probably think you're familiar with my posts about Whitney Darrow, Jr. But are you really?

Today on Ink Spill, Michael Maslin writes about his tipping point as a cartoonist, and Whitney Darrow is part of the tale.

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Big Band Lost and Found

I lost a favorite big band song for a quarter century. Today I have it back and I finally know who performed it. Don't you love happy endings?

Billy Ray Cyrus sings, "I want my mullet back. My ol' Camero, an' my eight-track." I say, keep the Camero, lose the eight-track.

Eight-track tapes are a source of derision today, and rightly so. They were never as sensible as cassette tapes, but they avoided the minor problem of having to fast-forward to the end of a side. They had significant drawbacks of their own, namely interruptions in the middle of the music as you clunked through each of the four stereo channels.

They were also much bulkier than cassettes. But almost everyone had them for a while, and I listened to them quite a bit in the car. One favorite tape was called "Those Swingin' Days of the Big Bands!" It's an awful title, I'm afraid, a flagrant attempt to market the compilation with both the terms Swing and Big Bands. Who could possibly resist? The thing is, despite that godawful title, the music was really good, and much of it I found to be extraordinary.

I had gotten into the habit of listening to the tape frequently when the unthinkable happened. During a routine ejection, the tape got caught in the internal works. Now I had a problem.

The solution came from my grandfather, a veteran of the movie theater projection booth for his entire career. He was able to splice the damaged area of tape and return a playable eight-track cartridge to me. Unfortunatley, in order to open up the casing, he had had to remove the label that identified all the songs and their performers. I think you can see where this is going.

For the most part, though, that was not a problem. But there was one rapturous tune that I just couldn't get out of my head. What on earth was it?

Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, 
"The Way You Look To-Night" Sheet Music (1936)
From Swing Time

 http://yourhitparade.blogspot.com/2011/06/tune-that-nearly-killed-dorothy-fields.html

My father was able to identify the song right away: "The Way You Look Tonight" by Jerome Kern. It's a great song. The lyrics are by Dorothy Fields, but this version was instrumental and quite sweet. The obvious question was who performed it?

Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, 
"The Way You Look To-Night" Sheet Music (1936)
From Swing Time

 http://www.amazon.com/Look-Tonight-Radio-Picture-Swing/dp/B000NBYP1G

It's taken me more than a quarter century to answer that. "Those Swingin' Days of the Big Bands!" was long out of print, and other Big Band compilations just didn't seem to have the version of the song I was looking for.

The internet came along, but for years no search engine could give me the information I needed. Today, thankfully, finding this song has become ridiculously easy.

For the past year, the version I love of this song has been available on YouTube for the asking. YouTube videos have become a kind of clandestine way of posting recorded music. I don't think that's always a bad thing, particularly when the music is orphaned or out of print.

 Will Osborne

"The Way You Look Tonight"

Jerome Kern

I just found this video, and all the pieces of the puzzle finally have fallen together. To my astonishment I don't recall ever hearing of Will Osborne and his orchestra, but I hope to familiarize myself with a lot more of the recorded music now. How on earth was this exquisite song unearthed for "Those Swinging Days of the Big Bands?" I have no idea. But it's great to have this music back in my life where it belongs.

A 1936 Advertisement for Will Osborne and his Orchestra in the Terrace Restaurant at the Hotel New Yorker

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1936-Ad-Hotel-New-Yorker-Dancing-Music-Will-Osborne-ORIGINAL-ADVERTISING-/370694387874?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item564f1b78a2&nma=true&si=VJo29%2F7WbHpl1SY9gWmnl4%2FkT80%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Maurice Seymour, Photograph of Will Osborne
Inscribed "To Harry [McLaughlin, Patriot Newspaper Reporter]/ Best Wishes Again/ Will Osborne"

http://www.ebay.com/itm/WILL-OSBORNE-PHOTOGRAPH-AUTOGRAPH-8X10-VINTAGE-orchestra-maurice-seymour-bx2-/380506929838?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5897fafaae&nma=true&si=VJo29%2F7WbHpl1SY9gWmnl4%2FkT80%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557 

And now I see I could just as easily have gotten the full playlist from this eBay photo. It seems this 3 LP set contains a lot more music than was ever on my eight-track:

Those Swingin' Days of the Big Bands! LP

 http://www.ebay.com/itm/251171297781?nma=true&si=VJo29%2F7WbHpl1SY9gWmnl4%2FkT80%3D&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2557&orig_cvip=true

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