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 Belgian-French Manouche or Sinti jazz guitarist and composer. Since he was born on Belgian soil, in Liberchies, he is also often named a Belgian musician. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.
Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 1933. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German-speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture.
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 in 1943.
Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols was an American jazz cornetist, composer, and jazz bandleader. He was one of the most prolific and influential jazz musicians in the late 1920s and early 1930s, appearing on over 4,000 recordings. In 1959, a biopic was made of his life and career, The Five Pennies, starring Danny Kaye.
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.
World War II was the first conflict to take place in the age of electronically distributed music.
Ignatz Waghalter was a Polish-German composer and conductor.
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.
The German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra was a musical ensemble formed in 1942 by musicians Franz Grothe and Georg Haentzschel on the initiative of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. It was an attempt to create an acceptable alternative to jazz, which was a popular genre among Germans but was considered a form of degenerate music by the Nazis due to its racial associations. The self-styled "rhythmic dance music" produced by the German Dance and Entertainment Orchestra was intended especially to satisfy the musical desires of military personnel, thus preventing them from listening to British radio broadcasts which also contained anti-Nazi propaganda material. Walter Dobschinski worked with the ensemble.
Negermusik was a derogatory term used by the Nazi Party during the Third Reich to demonize musical styles that had been invented by black people such as blues and jazz. The Nazi Party viewed these musical styles as degenerate works created by an "inferior" race and they were therefore prohibited. The term, at that same time, was also applied to indigenous music styles of black Africans.
Leon Golzmann or as he was more commonly known, Dajos Béla, was a Russian jazz violinist and bandleader.
Music in Nazi Germany, like all cultural activities in the regime, was controlled and "co-ordinated" (Gleichschaltung) by various entities of the state and the Nazi Party, with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the prominent Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg playing leading – and competing – roles. The primary concerns of these organizations was to exclude Jewish composers and musicians from publishing and performing music, and to prevent the public exhibition of music considered to be "Jewish", "anti-German", or otherwise "degenerate", while at the same time promoting the work of favored "Germanic" composers, such as Richard Wagner, Ludwig van Beethoven and Anton Bruckner. These works were believed to be positive contributions to the Volksgemeinschaft, or German folk community.
Marek Weber was an Austrian violinist and bandleader.
Chaim "Efim" Schachmeister was a German violinist and bandleader. He also recorded under the pseudonyms Sascha Elmo and Joan Florescu.
The Phoenix Theatre was a pioneering off-Broadway theatre in New York City, extant from 1953 to 1982. The Phoenix was founded by impresario Norris Houghton and T. Edward Hambleton. The project was a pioneering effort in the establishment of off-Broadway theatre. Houghton and Hambleton wanted a theatre away from Times Square, that would host a permanent company, abjure the star system, produce four or five plays a season for limited engagements, and with ticket prices much lower than on Broadway.
Bernard Etté was a German jazz and light music violinist and conductor.
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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