Michael Danzi | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 1, 1898 New York City |
| Died | February 13, 1986 (aged 87) New York City, United States |
| Occupation(s) | Banjoist, guitarist Jazz band leader |
| Years active | 1921-1961 |
Mike Danzi (September 1, 1898, New York City - February 13, 1986, New York City) was an American jazz and light music banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. He has been cited as one of several musicians who successfully transplanted American popular musical genres to Germany during the 1920s and authored a valuable eyewitness account of the evolution of popular music in Germany prior to World War II.
Danzi was the son of Italian immigrants. His father, Domenico Danzi, arrived in the United States in 1892. Michael was born several years later in New York City. [1]
Danzi played violin early in his career, including as the leader of an early jazz group called the Red Devils Jazz Band. In 1921, he switched to playing banjo and worked as a vaudeville performer. From 1917-1924 he also performed extensively within nightclubs, hotels, dance halls, movie theaters, hotels and at Coney island. [2] As a member of Wilbur Sweatman's orchestra in 1924, he played alongside Duke Ellington. Later that year he began playing the banjo with Alex Hyde's Romance Rhythm Orchestra, which toured Europe in 1924-1925. [3]
While performing in Berlin during 1925, he emerged with the Hyde's Original New York Jazz Orchestra playing banjo and clarinet in an on-screen performance within the silent film "Variete" which was directed by E. A. Dupont and featured the music of Erno Rapee. [4] This was the first of several films in which Danzi would perform while concertizing in Germany. [5] In addition he appeared in Berlin's Luna Park and at the Esplanade Hotel near Potsdamer Plaz for the boxer Jack Dempsey. [6] Soon after his arrival in Germany, he was also introduced to the bandleader Eric Borchard and an English saxophonist named Billy Bartholomew during a visit to a cellar cabaret in Hamburg while traveling to Munich. Danzi gladly joined them both in a performance which lasted until midnight. [7]
Instead of returning to the United States with the Hyde's band however, Danzi remained in Germany for the next fourteen years, playing with Bernard Etté, Harry Revel, Erno Rapee [8] and Dajos Béla. In addition, he concertized with his own group, The Virginians, which he founded in 1929 and was formally led by Teddy Kline . From 1924-1939 he appeared as a free-lancer with several jazz bands while performing in hotels, radio stations, theaters, cabarets and film studios. [9] During this time, he also collaborated with the English Jazz trumpeter Howard McFarlene as a member of the Marek Weber Orchestra in performances at the landmark Adlon Hotel in 1926. [10] Later in 1929, he collaborated with Mischa Spoliansky's orchestra in the musical revue Zwei Krawatten. [11] While contributing to an early production of Kurt Weill's Aufstiegund Fall der Stadt Mahagonny , Danzi was also praised by the composer for his unique ability to interpret and perform the chords featured in the score exactly as written. Weill noted that most banjo players claimed that the part was not really written for the banjo at all! [12] [13]
Danzi worked in Germany through the 1930s, even though the Nazis condemned jazz music and it became less palatable for Italians to live in Germany after Benito Mussolini's rise to power. [14] [15] He played in the orchestra at La Scala under Otto Stenzel in 1935, and worked on German radio and with light-music orchestras. In 1938 he made a few early television appearances with Otto Sachsenhauser.
In October 1939, he had an altercation with the doorman at the UFA Film Studios when he refused to carry out the Hitler salute, and he left Germany to return to the United States a few days later. He continued his career in the United States while appearing in the 1950s on the Broadway stage in productions of the musical The Threepenny Opera and The Rose Tattoo in addition to playing at the Radio City Music Hall in 1956. [16] He also emerged in the Off-Broadway Phoenix Theater while collaborating with the accordionist John Serry. [17] In addition, he performed regularly in Broadway pit orchestras, weekly television shows, commercials and in concert hall orchestras. [18] He also served as chief copyist and librarian at the Radio City Music Hall. [19]
Over the decades, Danzi collaborated with a variety of notable performing artists within the United States and Europe including: Julius Rudel, Marlene Dietrich, Marek Weber, Lotte Lenya, Richard Tauber and Pat Boone. [20]
Danzi was a virtuoso banjo player and also proficient on several other instruments including: guitar, mandolin, and Hawaiian guitar. He was also capable of performing on the violin, clarinet and trumpet. [21] As a prolific performer, he is credited with contributing to recordings of over 17,000 different titles. [22] In addition, he has been cited as one of several musicians who successfully transplanted American popular musical genres to Germany during the 1920s. [23] [24] His autobiography has been cited as a valuable resource for scholars and researchers specializing in the evolution of Jazz music in Europe during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. [25] [26]
Micahel Daniz died in New York City on February 13, 1986
Jean Reinhardt, known by his Romani nickname Django, was a Romani-Belgian jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.
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Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
The Jazz Age was a period in the 1920s and 1930s in which jazz music and dance styles gained worldwide popularity. The Jazz Age's cultural repercussions were primarily felt in the United States, the birthplace of jazz. Originating in New Orleans as mainly sourced from the culture of African Americans, jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes in this period, and its influence on popular culture continued long afterwards.
Adolph Ignatievich Rosner, known professionally as Ady Rosner and Eddie Rosner was a German, Polish, and Soviet jazz trumpeter sometimes called "The White Louis Armstrong" or "Polish Louis Armstrong". He was a prisoner in the Gulag when Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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Jonny spielt auf, Op. 45, is a German-language Zeitoper with words and music by Austrian composer Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. He dedicated the opera to his second wife, Berta Herrmann. A performance lasts about two hours. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic.
Rudolph Dunbar was a Guyanese conductor, clarinetist, and composer, as well as being a jazz musician of note in the 1920s. Leaving British Guiana at the age of 20, he had settled in England by 1931, and subsequently worked in other parts of Europe but lived most of his later years in London. Among numerous "firsts", he was the first black man to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1942), the first black man to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic (1945) and the first black man to conduct orchestras in Poland (1959) and Russia (1964). Dunbar also worked as a journalist and a war correspondent.
An overview of the evolution of Jazz music in Germany reveals that the development of jazz in Germany and its public notice differ from the "motherland" of jazz, the US, in several respects.
Art Christmas was a Canadian dance band and jazz musician. For many years during the exciting dance band and jazz era of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Art Christmas was often said to be Britain's leading saxophone player and multi-instrumentalist. In the 1930s and 1940s, young musicians in their teens and early twenties would follow Art all over Britain listening to him play and trying to copy his style, especially on alto saxophone.
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Marek Weber was a German violinist and bandleader.
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The Chocolate Kiddies is a three-act Broadway-styled revue that, in its inaugural production – from May to September 1925 – toured Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. The show never actually performed on Broadway, but was conceived, assembled, and rehearsed there. Chocolate Kiddies commissioned new works, but was also an amalgamation and adaptation of several leading African American acts in New York, specifically Harlem, intended to showcase exemplary jazz and African American artistry of the Harlem Renaissance. Early jazz was uniquely American; and, while New Orleans enjoys popularity for being its birthplace, the jazz emerging from Harlem during the Renaissance had, on its own merits, captured international intrigue.
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