Wilbur Hall | |
---|---|
Birth name | Wilbur Francis Hall |
Also known as | Willie Hall |
Born | November 18, 1894 Shawnee Mound, Missouri, U.S. |
Died | June 30, 1983 (aged 88) Newbury Park, California, U.S. |
Genres | Jazz, vaudeville, comedy music |
Instruments | Trombone, violin, bicycle pump |
Wilbur Francis Hall, sometimes billed as Willie Hall (November 18, 1894 – June 30, 1983), was an American trombonist, violinist, and entertainer.
Hall was born in Shawnee Mound, Missouri. [1]
Hall was working in vaudeville when, in 1924, he was hired by Paul Whiteman. Hall stayed with Whiteman's orchestra until 1930, mainly featured as a trombone player (his speciality on this instrument was a lightning-fast rendition of Felix Arndt's Nola, which he also recorded in 1929). However, Hall was apt a playing several other instruments, conventional as well as unconventional. Amongst the latter was his ability to play melodies on a bicycle pump. Whiteman's main arranger Ferde Grofé even wrote a special feature number for Hall on this "instrument" called Free Air: Based on Noises from a Garage. Hall can also be seen playing his pump and novelty violin in the early color film The King of Jazz . This routine, called "Pop Goes the Weasel", partly resembles the earlier work by vaudevillian Little Tich. [2]
After leaving Whiteman Hall toured as a solo act with the Publix circuit and then joined the Ken Murray Blackouts in Los Angeles. Later, he toured nationally and internationally with his wife, mixing music with comedy, He also appeared on television where he would reprise his violin bit from The King of Jazz on the Ken Murray and Spike Jones shows in the 1950s and on The Gong Show in the 1970s.
An act called "Wilbur Hall and Renée Fields" appeared in the variety program Eastern Cabaret on BBC Television December 12 and 17, 1938. [3] The same month, an advertisement by Fred Collins' Agency in British newspaper The Era , known for its theatrical content, announced a forthcoming appearance in Dundee, Scotland by the same act, who may have been Wilbur and his wife. [4]
Hall died in Newbury Park, California.
In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestration in that the latter process is limited to the assignment of notes to instruments for performance by an orchestra, concert band, or other musical ensemble. Arranging "involves adding compositional techniques, such as new thematic material for introductions, transitions, or modulations, and endings. Arranging is the art of giving an existing melody musical variety". In jazz, a memorized (unwritten) arrangement of a new or pre-existing composition is known as a head arrangement.
A slide whistle is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorder's and a tube with a piston in it. Thus it has an air reed like some woodwinds, but varies the pitch with a slide. The construction is rather like a bicycle pump. Because the air column is cylindrical and open at one end and closed at the other, it overblows the third harmonic. "A whistle made out of a long tube with a slide at one end. An ascending and descending glissando is produced by moving the slide back and forth while blowing into the mouthpiece." "Tubular whistle with a plunger unit in its column, approximately 12 inches long. The pitch is changed by moving the slide plunger in and out, producing ascending and descending glisses."
Paul Samuel Whiteman was an American bandleader, composer, orchestral director, and violinist.
Theodore Leopold Friedman, known as Ted Lewis, was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He fronted a band and touring stage show that presented a combination of jazz, comedy, and nostalgia that was a hit with the American public before and after World War II. He was known by the moniker "Mr. Entertainment" or Ted "Is Everybody Happy?" Lewis. He died of lung failure in August 1971.
Rhapsody in Blue is a 1924 musical composition for solo piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects. Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman and written by George Gershwin, the work premiered in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music" on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York City. Whiteman's band performed the rhapsody with Gershwin playing the piano. Whiteman's arranger Ferde Grofé orchestrated the rhapsody several times including the 1924 original scoring, the 1926 pit orchestra scoring, and the 1942 symphonic scoring.
Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, known as Ferde Grofé was an American composer, arranger, pianist, and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement symphonic poem, Grand Canyon Suite, and for orchestrating George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for its 1924 premiere.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1923.
Eddie Lang was an American musician who is credited as the father of jazz guitar. During the 1920s, he gave the guitar a prominence it previously lacked as a solo instrument, as part of a band or orchestra, and as accompaniment for vocalists. He recorded duets with guitarists Lonnie Johnson and Carl Kress and jazz violinist Joe Venuti, and played rhythm guitar in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and was the favoured accompanist of Bing Crosby.
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King of Jazz is a 1930 American pre-Code color musical film starring Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. The film title refers to Whiteman's popular cultural appellation. At the time the film was made, "jazz", to the general public, meant jazz-influenced syncopated dance music heard on phonograph records, on radio broadcasts, and in dance halls. In the 1920s Whiteman signed and featured white jazz musicians including Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, and others.
Lester Willis Young, nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.
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Harrison Franklin Reser was an American banjo player and bandleader. Born in Piqua, Ohio, Reser was best known as the leader of The Clicquot Club Eskimos. He was regarded by some as the best banjoist of the 1920s.
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The Kraft Music Hall was a popular old-time radio variety program, featuring top show business entertainers, which aired first on NBC radio from 1933 to 1949.
Murray McEachern was a Canadian jazz trombonist and alto saxophonist, perhaps best known for having played trombone for Benny Goodman from 1936 to 1937. McEachern is also remembered for playing both the trombone and alto saxophone for the Casa Loma Orchestra from 1937 to 1941.
Jazz guitarists are guitarists who play jazz using an approach to chords, melodies, and improvised solo lines which is called jazz guitar playing. The guitar has fulfilled the roles of accompanist and soloist in small and large ensembles and also as an unaccompanied solo instrument.
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