[ Kurt Weill ]
b. March 2, 1900, Dessau, Germany d. April 3, 1950, New York, N.Y.
Note: Because there is much literature extant on Kurt Weill, only a very brief overview will be presented here.

Overview:
Composer Kurt Weill was a very successful avant-garde composer for the German stage. He had two problems. One, was that his works were often attacks on the social and political life in Germany. The other was that he was Jewish, at the time when the Nazis' and Adoph Hilter came to power in Germany. Weill and his wife, Lotte Lenya, (né: Karoline Blamauer b: Oct. 18, 1900, Vienna, Austria, d: Nov. 27, 1981, New York, NY, USA) escaped to Paris, then to London and to New York in 1935. He became an American citizen in 1943. Germany's loss was America's (and the world's) gain.

Kurt was reaching physical and emotional maturity at the end of World War 1, 'the war to end all wars'. His young adulthood was spent in Post-War Germany where new ideas in music, sex, writing, films, politics, and theater were rampant. (Kurt and his lyricist Bertold Brecht were ardent Socialists.) Kurt was to become a spokesman for that cultural movement then sweeping Germany: Gebrauchsmusik (functional music) and Zeitkunst (Contemporary Art) Kurt remained in Germany until 1933, when Hitler's evil Bund burned the Reichstag. Kurt, a Jew, well read the writing on the wall, and emigrated to America, where he became a naturalized citizen.

Weill came from a musical family. His father was a Cantor in a Synagogue, while his mother was an excellent amateur pianist. At a very early age, he received his first compostion lessons from Albert Bing. At the end of World War 1, he attended Berlin's Hochschule where he studied under Inglebert Humperdinck and Krasselt. In 1920, he was working with the Leudenscheid Opera, in Dessau, as a conductor and opera coach. Also in 1921, he composed a symphony (that was long presumed lost until it was happily re-discovered in 1958). From 1921 through 1924, he studied with Ferrucio Busoni.

By 1926, his work had already marked him a leader of the young German composers of his time. His work was still in the best traditions of the German avant-garde iconoclastic style. But from then on, his thinking slowly started to metamorphose. He began to feel that composers should not live in ivory towers; that opera should be entertainment for the masses, not just for a few elite; and that the music should mirror contemporary problems of sex, politics and social satire.

Brief Chronology:
1924 Weill wrote 'The Protagonist', his first opera, which was mounted in Dresden in 1926. The text was a one act melodrama written by Georg Kaiser. It was a popular success. Weill had already started to use some jazz idioms and techniques.

1927 The Berlin State Opera commissioned him to write 'The Royal Palace', with text by Ivan Goll. This experimental work had drama, pantomime, and motion pictures projected onto a screen. Weill's interest in American Jazz was very much in evidence.

1927 He wrote 'Mahagonny', the text was by Bertold Brecht and it was a one act 'singspiel (songplay), merely a succession of lyrics and choruses. It was considered by many critics to be a 'jazz opera', and, in retrospect, we can see it as a turning point in Weill's life. He was sweeping away the last vestiges of 'classicism' that Busoni had taught him. j

1928 proved to be a seminal year for Weill. First he wrote the music for a Georg Kaiser satirical play 'The Czar Has Himself Photographed.' Weill and Brecht then wrote an opera called 'Die Dreigroschenoper' or in English 'The Three Penny Opera', a modern adaptation of John Gay's 18th century 'The Beggar's Opera'. Brecht's text was a sardonic, bitter, cynical comment on the crime and corruption rampant in Germany of the 1920's, Weill's music combined a 'shimmy'; a canon in fox-trot tempo; blues; ensemble numbers; ballads and even a mock chorale. This opera was a sensation in Europe, and a dismal failure in America. It was to achieve fame in America when, in later years, the great trumpeter, Louis Armstrong recorded the "Mack The Knife" tune in his dixieland style.

In 1928, the starring role of Jenny was played by Lotte Lenya Blamauer, whom Weill married in that same year.

1930 Weill and Brecht expand the one-act 'Mahogonny' into the three-act 'The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny' opera. The most famous song, in Germany, from this opera was "Alabama Song", with lyric in English.

1933 Weill wrote the opera 'The Silver Lake' with book by Georg Kaiser. The opera opened on February 18th. The Reichstag was burned on the 19th, and Kurt Weill left Germany for good, just a little later.

First in Paris and then in London, Weill did some musical work, now largely unremembered. In 1935, director Max Reinhardt invited him to the U.S. to score a play he was producing; 'The Eternal Road', the story of Jewish history written by Franz Werfel. Weill arrived in New York in the fall of 1935, and by 1943, he had become an American citizen.

1936 Weill scored the Broadway show 'Johnny Johnson', with a few cowboy songs, and some ballads such as: "Oh, Heart of Mine" "To Love You and To Leave You" "They All Take Up Psychiatry"

1937 Weill scored the Broadway show 'The Eternal Road'.

1938 Finds Weill in Hollywood, writing for the films 'Blockade' and 'You and Me'.

1938 Weill scored the Broadway play 'Knickerbocker Holiday'. Walter Huston starred. This show was writer Maxwell Anderson's first musical comedy text. "September Song"

1941 Weill scored the Broadway Hit 'Lady In The Dark', with a text by Moss Hart; all lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Gertrude Lawrence sang:
"My Ship"
"Saga of Jenny"
"Princess of Pure Delight"
"Oh Fabulous One, in Your Ivory Tower"
"Tschaikovsky" made Danny Kaye a star when he sang it.

1943 Scored the Broadway show 'One Touch of Venus', the adaptation of F. Anstey's 'The Tinted Venus'was done by S.J.Perelman and Ogden Nash. Ogden Nash wrote the lyrics.
"Speak Low"
"How Much Do I Love You"
"That's Him"

1945 Scored the Broadway musical 'The Firebrand of Florence' had lryics by Ira Gershwin. One of Weill's few box office flops.

1946 He scored the Hollywood film 'Where Do We Go From Here', with lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

1947 Weill's first Broadway Musical Play 'Street Scene'. Langston Hughes wrote the lyrics.
"Lonely House"
"A Boy Like You"
"We'll All Go Away Together"

In 1955, this 'play' was mounted in Germany by the Dusseldorf Opera. In 1959, it became part of the repettoire of the New York City Opera.

1948 Scored the Broadway show 'Love Life', with story and lyric by Alan Jay Lerner.
"Green-Up Time"

1949 Scored the Broadway musical 'Lost in the Stars', an adaptation of Alan Payton's "Cry, The Beloved Country", a novel of the oppression in South Africa.
"Trouble Man"
"O, Tixo, Tixo"
"Cry, The Beloved Country"
"Lost in the Stars"

In 1958, this opera became a permanent part of the New York City Opera's repettoire.

Kurt Weill died in New York City on April 3, 1950. He was just 50 years old. In 1961, the singer Andy Williams had a big hit with the song "Bilbao", written in 1929 with music by Weill and lyric by Brecht.

The Songwriters' Hall of Fame honored Weill by inducting him into the society.

   [ Clarence Williams ]
b. Oct. 8, 1893, Plaquemine (suburb of Baton Rouge), LA, USA. d. Nov. 6, 1965, New York, NY, USA.
NOTE: Please also see the Clarence Williams entry on our American Bands Database
Overview
In 1920, with the Storyville section of New Oreans just a distant memory, and with the increasing popularity of Jazz in the north, Williams moved to Chicago, and then in 1923, Clarence and his wife, singer Eva Taylor, permanently relocated to New York City, perhaps the first in a long line of Jazz musicians to eventually make New York their permanent residence.
Not only was Clarence a great songwriter and performer, but his brother Spencer Williams was an equally talented tunesmith.

The Clarence Williams Music Company had it's beginnings in Chicago. His technique was to create a demand by performing songs, that he had written, in cabarets and in dance halls. Williams then peddled these songs on street corners and from door to door. By 1924, he had moved his office to New York City, - to the heart of Tin Pan Alley at 1547 Broadway.

He traveled the U.S. demonstrating (in five-and-ten cent stores) the songs he had composed. Later, he formed a recording group called 'Clarence Williams and the Blue Five', which had Louis Armstrong on trumpet. Among the 'Blue Five' hit recordings were: "Everybody Loves My Baby, But My Baby Don't Love Nobady But Me", and "I've Found A New Baby" Both songs were written by Jack Palmer and Spencer Williams.

Among the songs Clarence Williams wrote during the 1920's were:
1915 "I Ain't Got Nobody", co-composed with Roger Graham, Spencer Williams, and Dave Peyton
1918 "Royal Garden Blues" (co-written with Spencer Williams)
1919 "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home", co-composed with Charles Warfield
1923 "Sugar Blues",co-composed with Lucy Fletcher (bandleader Clyde McCoy made it his theme song.)
1925 "Squeeze Me", co-written with Fats Waller.

   [ Spencer Williams ]
b. Oct. 14, 1889, New Orleans, LA, USA, d. July 14, 1965, New York City (Flushing), NY, USA.
Overview
This talented black tunesmith was the brother of composer-performer Clarence Williams. Spencer had an interesting idiosyncrasy. On sheet music, 'moderato' is one of the most common tempi markings. To replace this, Williams dreamed up such inventive substitutions as 'Tempo di Sadness'; 'Tempo di dissappointo', and 'Tempo di weary', as well as many others.

Among his songs are:
1924 "Everybody Loves My Baby But My Baby Don't Love Nobody But Me", his first big hit, written in collaboration with Jack Palmer. Brother Clarence William's Blue Five (Armstrong on trumpet) were the first to record the tune, but it was songbird Ruth Etting who made it a hit.

In 1925, Spencer traveled to Paris to write special material for Josephine Baker. Returning to the U.S., he wrote such hits as:
1926 "I've Found A New Baby"
1928 "Basin Street Blues"
Followed by:
"Royal Garden Blues"
"Tishomingo Blues"
"Shim-Me-Sha-Wabble"
amd still others.

In 1932, he returned to Paris for an extended stay. Fats Waller accompanied him on the trip over to Europe.