Re: School of Syncopation - Jazz, Stride, Novelties & the Li
Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2013 5:30 pm
source, Grove.
Youmans, Vincent (Millie)[/b]
(b New York, 27 Sept 1898; d Denver, 5 April 1946).
American composer. He worked as a piano salesman and music-roll maker at Aeolian, where he came under the tutelage of Felix Arndt, and later worked as a song plugger for Remick and Harms. He began composing while in the navy during World War I; Sousa admired one of his marches and orchestrated it for the Marine Corps band. In 1920, when his first song was published (The Country Cousin), he was working as a rehearsal pianist for Victor Herbert. He composed his first Broadway score, Two Little Girls in Blue, in collaboration with Paul Lannin in 1921. The success of this and his next work, The Wildflower (1923), established his fame. No, No, Nanette, also of 1923, and including ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘I want to be happy’, was the biggest musical-comedy success of the 1920s in both Europe and the USA. From 1927 Youmans also produced his own shows. He had another major success with Hit the Deck! (1927; including ‘Hallelujah’), but his subsequent productions were failures, though many of their songs remain popular. His last contributions to Broadway were some songs for Take a Chance (1932).
Youmans’s early songs are remarkable for their economy of melodic material: two-, three- or four-note phrases are constantly repeated and varied by subtle harmonic or rhythmic changes. In later years, however, apparently influenced by Kern, he turned to longer musical sentences and more free-flowing melodic lines. Youmans was forced to retire in 1934, owing to tuberculosis, after a professional career of only 13 years. More than any of his contemporaries he made constant re-use of a limited number of melodies; he published fewer than 100 songs, but 18 of these were considered standards by ASCAP.
Bibliography
S. Green: The World of Musical Comedy: the Story of the American Musical Stage as told through the Careers of its Foremost Composers and Lyricists (New York, 1960, rev. and enlarged 4/1980)
D. Dunn: The Making of No, No, Nanette (Secaucus, NJ, 1972)
G. Bordman: Days to be Happy, Years to be Sad: the Life and Music of Vincent Youmans (New York, 1982)
Gerald Bordman
(b New York, 27 Sept 1898; d Denver, 5 April 1946).
American composer. He worked as a piano salesman and music-roll maker at Aeolian, where he came under the tutelage of Felix Arndt, and later worked as a song plugger for Remick and Harms. He began composing while in the navy during World War I; Sousa admired one of his marches and orchestrated it for the Marine Corps band. In 1920, when his first song was published (The Country Cousin), he was working as a rehearsal pianist for Victor Herbert. He composed his first Broadway score, Two Little Girls in Blue, in collaboration with Paul Lannin in 1921. The success of this and his next work, The Wildflower (1923), established his fame. No, No, Nanette, also of 1923, and including ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘I want to be happy’, was the biggest musical-comedy success of the 1920s in both Europe and the USA. From 1927 Youmans also produced his own shows. He had another major success with Hit the Deck! (1927; including ‘Hallelujah’), but his subsequent productions were failures, though many of their songs remain popular. His last contributions to Broadway were some songs for Take a Chance (1932).
Youmans’s early songs are remarkable for their economy of melodic material: two-, three- or four-note phrases are constantly repeated and varied by subtle harmonic or rhythmic changes. In later years, however, apparently influenced by Kern, he turned to longer musical sentences and more free-flowing melodic lines. Youmans was forced to retire in 1934, owing to tuberculosis, after a professional career of only 13 years. More than any of his contemporaries he made constant re-use of a limited number of melodies; he published fewer than 100 songs, but 18 of these were considered standards by ASCAP.
Bibliography
S. Green: The World of Musical Comedy: the Story of the American Musical Stage as told through the Careers of its Foremost Composers and Lyricists (New York, 1960, rev. and enlarged 4/1980)
D. Dunn: The Making of No, No, Nanette (Secaucus, NJ, 1972)
G. Bordman: Days to be Happy, Years to be Sad: the Life and Music of Vincent Youmans (New York, 1982)
Gerald Bordman
