Lena Horne - Honeysuckle Rose

"Honeysuckle Rose" is a 1928 song composed by Fats Waller, whose lyrics were written by Andy Razaf. Fats Waller's 1934 recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Lena Horne sings the song in the film "Thousands Cheer".

Thousands Cheer is a 1943 American comedy musical film released by MGM. Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families.The film was nominated for three Academy Awards; Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best Art Direction

BENNY GOODMAN - Minnie's in the Money

Written for: The Gang's All Here (1943)
Lyric: Leo Robin
Music: Harry Warren

There's a lot of talk about our old pal Minnie,
All around the neighborhood;
Ev'rybody's happy when you mention Minnie,
She's been doin' mighty good,
But we always knew she would.

Have you heard that Minnie's in the money?
Take my word that Minnie's in the money.

She hasn't got a guy who's got a diamond mine,
But she's a welder on the old assembly line.
So bless her, yes, sir, Minnie's in the money,
Minnie's in the money, that's fine!
She's helping Uncle Sam to keep his people free,
She's okay, hooray, Minnie's in the dough re mi.

Harry James with Helen Forrest - I've Heard That Song Before

"I've Heard That Song Before" is a 1942 popular song with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. It was introduced by Martha O'Driscoll (dubbed by Margaret Whiting) in the 1942 film Youth on Parade.

It was recorded by Harry James and his Orchestra with Helen Forrest on vocal on July 31, 1942. This was the last day of recording before the Musician Union's ban. The recording was issued on Columbia 36668 and became a number one hit on both the pop and R&B charts in the USA in early 1943. This version of the song can be heard in Woody Allen's movie Hannah and Her Sisters

Henry Haag “Harry” James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an American musician and bandleader. James was an instrumentalist of the swing era, employing a bravura playing style that made his trumpet work identifiable. He was one of the most popular bandleaders of the first half of the 1940s, and he continued to lead his band until just before his death, 40 years later.

Helen Forrest (April 12, 1917 – July 11, 1999) was one of the most popular female jazz vocalists during America's Big Band era. She was born Helen Fogel to a Jewish family in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 12, 1917. She first sang with her brother's band at the age of 10, and later began her career singing on CBS radio under the name Bonnie Blue

Betty Grable - I Heard the Birdies Sing

Betty Grable (December 18, 1916 – July 2, 1973) was an American actress, dancer and singer. Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World".

Grable was particularly noted for having the most beautiful legs in Hollywood and studio publicity widely dispersed photos featuring them. Hosiery specialists of the era often noted the ideal proportions of her legs as: thigh (18.5") calf (12"), and ankle (7.5"). Grable's legs were famously insured by her studio for $1,000,000 with Lloyds of London.

Grable became 20th Century Fox's top star during the 40s decade. She appeared in Technicolor movies such as Down Argentine Way (1940), Moon Over Miami (1941) (both with Don Ameche), Springtime in The Rockies (1942), Coney Island (1943) with George Montgomery, Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943) with Robert Young, Pin Up Girl (1944), Diamond Horseshoe (1945) with Dick Haymes, The Dolly Sisters (1945) with John Payne and June Haver. Mother Wore Tights (1947), her most popular film, was with her favorite costar, Dan Dailey.

It was during her reign as box office queen in 1943 that Grable posed for her famous pinup photo, which (along with her movies) soon became escapist fare among GIs fighting in World War II. The image was taken by studio photographer Frank Powolny.It was rumored that the particular pose and angle were chosen to hide the fact that Grable was pregnant at the time of the photo.

Starting in 1942, Grable was named in the top 10 box office draws for 10 consecutive years. For eight of those ten years, she was the top female-box office star. In 1943, she was named the #1 movie box office attraction.
By the end of the 1940s Grable was the highest-paid female star in Hollywood, receiving $300,000 a year. During the 1940s and early 1950s, thirty Fox films were among the top ten highest grossing films of the year. Of those, ten were movies featuring Grable; eight of those movies were Fox's highest grossing pictures for their respective years.
Footlight Serenade is a 1942 musical comedy film directed by Gregory Ratoff, starring Betty Grable, John Payne and Victor Mature.

Fox's star Betty Grable appeared in this black and white musical, Footlight Serenade (1942), as secretly-married dancer Pat Lambert in a Broadway show who was pursued by arrogant champion heavyweight fighter Tommy Lundy (Victor Mature) in the lead role; in one memorable number in which she wore boxing gloves, she sang and danced to I Heard the Birdies Sing with the chorus.

Martha Tilton - And the Angels Sing

Martha Tilton (November 14, 1915, - December 8, 2006 )was an American popular singer, best-known for her 1939 recording of "And the Angels Sing" with Benny Goodman. She was sometimes introduced as The Liltin' Miss Tilton.

While attending Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, she was singing on a small radio station when she was heard by an agent who signed her and began booking her with larger stations. She then dropped out of school in the 11th grade to join Hal Grayson's band.

After singing with the quartet, Three Hits and a Miss, she joined the Myer Alexander chorus on Benny Goodman's radio show, Camel Caravan. Goodman hired Tilton as a vocalist with his band in August 1937. She was with Goodman in January 1938, when the band performed the first jazz performance at Carnegie Hall. She continued to appear as Goodman's star vocalist through the end of 1939.

Tilton had a major success from 1942 to 1949 as one of the first artists to record for Capitol Records. Her first recording for Capitol was "Moon Dreams", Capitol 138, with Orchestra and The Mellowaires, composed by Johnny Mercer and Glenn Miller pianist Chummy MacGregor in 1942.

"Moon Dreams" would be recorded by Glenn Miller in 1944 and by Miles Davis in 1950. Among her biggest hits as a solo artist were "I'll Walk Alone," a wartime ballad which rose to #4 on the charts in 1944; "I Should Care" and "A Stranger in Town," which both peaked at #10 in 1945; and three in 1947: "How Are Things in Glocca Morra" from Finian's Rainbow, which climbed to #8; "That's My Desire", which hit #10; and "I Wonder, I Wonder, I Wonder", which reached #9.

Gene Krupa - Drum Boogie

Ball of Fire (also known as The Professor and the Burlesque Queen) is a 1941 comedy film about a group of professors laboring for years to write an encyclopedia and their encounter with a nightclub performer who provides her own unique knowledge.

The film stars Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, with a supporting cast that includes Oskar Homolka, S.Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea and Elisha Cook, Jr.

In 1948, the plot was resurrected as a musical film, A Song Is Born, starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo.

Ball of Fire was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Barbara Stanwyck), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture, Best Sound, Recording and Best Story.

Martha Tilton provided Barbara Stanwyck's singing voice for the song "Drum Boogie". Drummer and bandleader Gene Krupa performed the song with his band. In an unusual twist, he also played it on a matchbox with matches for drumsticks. Krupa band member and famed trumpeter Roy Eldridge received a brief on-camera spell during "Drum Boogie."

Kay Kyser & His Orchestra - Jingle, Jangle, Jingle

James Kern (“Kay”) Kyser (June 18, 1905 – July 23, 1985) was a popular bandleader and radio personality of the 1930s and 1940s.

He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was senior class president, with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Because of his popularity and enthusiasm as a cheerleader, he was invited by Hal Kemp to take over as bandleader when Kemp ventured north to further his career. He began taking clarinet lessons but was better as an entertaining announcer than a musician.He adopted the initial of his middle name as part of his stage name, for its alliterative effect.

Following graduation, Kyser and his band, which included Sully Mason on saxophone and arranger George Duning, toured Midwest restaurants and night clubs and gradually built a following. They were particularly popular at Chicago's Blackhawk restaurant, where Kyser came up with an act combining a quiz with music which became Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge.

The act was broadcast on the Mutual Radio in 1938 and then moved to NBC Radio from 1939 to 1949. The show rose in the ratings and spawned many imitators. Kyser led the band as “The Ol’ Perfessor,” spouting catch phrases: “That’s right—you’re wrong,” “Evenin’ folks, how y’all?” and “C'mon, chillun! Le's dance!”

Although Kyser and his orchestra gained fame through the Kollege of Musical Knowledge, they were an excellent band in their own right. They had 11 number one records, including some of the most popular songs of the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Jingle Jangle Jingle is a song written by Joseph J. Lilley and Frank Loesser, and published in 1942. It was featured in the film The Forest Rangers, in which it was sung by Dick Thomas.

The most commercially successful recording was by Kay Kyser, whose version reached no. 1 in the Billboard charts in July 1942. Versions were recorded by many other musicians, including Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, Glenn Miller, The Merry Macs and Burl Ives.

The song is used in the 2010 role-playing video game Fallout: New Vegas.

Duke Ellington - C Jam Blues

New Orleans-born clarinetist Barney Bigard is likely the originator of this tune, a simple blues riff in the key of C. Since Bigard was a veteran member of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in 1941, Duke had a slice of the pie, too, and undoubtedly arranged the piece for the orchestra. Yet Duke referred to the number somewhat disparagingly as “one of our more or less trite things.”

The number was introduced in a Soundie short film. These three-minute features, produced to be shown on a jukebox-type player, illustrated the band miming to a pre-recorded performance. Entitled “Jam Session” the Soundie was filmed late in 1941 along with four other Ellington numbers. Duke introduces various band members, who then solo: Ray Nance (violin), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Rex Stewart (cornet), Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton (trombone), and Sonny Greer (drums). The complete ensemble carries the tune to its finish with composer Bigard (clarinet) providing some improvised upper register piping.

“C Jam Blues” was formally recorded under that title in January, 1942, for RCA Victor Records. It continued be a staple of the Ellington repertoire, generally featuring a handful of the soloists in the band.

Glenn Miller - A String of Pearls

A String of Pearls (song) is a 1942 #1 song recorded by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra on RCA Bluebird, composed by Jerry Gray with lyrics by Eddie DeLange. The song is a Big Band and jazz standard.

"A String of Pearls" was released as an RCA Bluebird 78 single, B-11382-B, backed with "Day Dreaming", in 1942 by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. The record was #1 for two weeks on the Billboard Best Sellers chart in 1941. The song was featured in the 1953 Glenn Miller biopic The Glenn Miller Story starring James Stewart. The song was also recorded by Benny Goodman , Harry James, Woody Herman, Ritchie Lee, and Narciso Yepes.

Glenn Miller and His Orchestra recorded the song on November 8, 1941, which was copyrighted and published by The Mutual Music Society, Inc., ASCAP.

Charlie Christian - Stompin' at the Savoy & Swing to Bop

Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist.

Christian was an important early performer on the electric guitar, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941.

His single-string technique combined with amplification helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. John Hammond and George T. Simon called Christian the best improvisational talent of the swing era.

In the liner notes to the 1972 Columbia album Solo Flight: The Genius of Charlie Christian, Gene Lees writes that "many critics and musicians consider that Christian was one of the founding fathers of bebop, or if not that, at least a precursor to it".

Christian's influence reached beyond jazz and swing — in 1990 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Christian was raised in Oklahoma City and was one of many musicians who jammed along the city's "Deep Deuce" section on N.E. Second Street. In 2006 Oklahoma City renamed a street in its Bricktown entertainment district Charlie Christian Avenue.

Famed jazz guitarist Barney Kessel spent three days with Charlie watching him play. "He played probably 95% downstrokes and held a very stiff big triangular pick very tightly between his thumb and first finger. He rested his second, third and fourth fingers very firmly on the pickguard...". Source: Guitar Player March 1982.

Glenn Miller - Song of the Volga Boatmen

The "Song of the Volga Boatmen" (Russian: Эй, ухнем!) is a well-known traditional Russian song collected by Mily Balakirev, and published in his book of folk songs in 1866. It is a genuine shanty sung by burlaks, or barge-haulers, on the Volga River.

Balakirev published it with only one verse (the first). The other two verses were added at a later date. The song inspired Ilya Repin's famous painting, Barge Haulers on the Volga, which depicts burlaks in Tsarist Russia.

The song was popularised by Feodor Chaliapin, and has been a favourite concert piece of bass singers ever since. Glenn Miller's jazz arrangement took the song to #1 in the US charts in 1941.

Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra - Tangerine

"Tangerine" was written by Victor Schertzinger, the lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The song was published in 1941.

It was introduced in the 1942 movie, The Fleet's In, produced by Paramount Pictures, directed by Schertzinger, and starring Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, Eddie Bracken, singer Cass Daley, and Betty Hutton in her feature film debut.

The most popular recorded version of the song was made by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra with vocalists Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly. The record first reached the Billboard charts on April 10, 1942 and lasted 15 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1.

The lyrics in this version differ slightly from those in the movie. On the record, Eberle sings "And I've seen toasts to Tangerine/Raised in every bar across the Argentine," the lyric that became standard. In the movie at that point, the line is "And I've seen times when Tangerine/Had the bourgeoisie believing she was queen."

James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD". He composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's The Dreamer In Me".

Helen O'Connell (May 23, 1920 – September 9, 1993) was an American singer, actress, and dancer.Born in Lima, Ohio, O'Connell joined the Jimmy Dorsey band in 1939 and achieved her best selling records in the early 1940s with "Green Eyes", "Amapola," "Tangerine" and "Yours". In each of these Latin-influenced numbers, Bob Eberly crooned the song which Helen then reprised in an up-tempo arrangement. O'Connell was selected by Down Beat readers as best female singer in 1940 and 1941 and won the 1940 Metronome magazine poll for best female vocalist.

Bob Eberly (July 24, 1916, Mechanicville, New York — November 17, 1981, ) was a big band vocalist, best-known for his association with Jimmy Dorsey and his duets with Helen O'Connell.
Eberly was born Robert Eberle, but changed the spelling of his surname slightly to Eberly. His younger brother Ray was also a big-band singer, most notably with Glenn Miller's orchestra. He recorded the original version of "I'm Glad There Is You" in 1942 with Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra on Decca Records, 4197B. The song subsequently became a jazz and pop standard.

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. The film is often considered the greatest of all time and is particularly praised for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure.

Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories; it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles.

The story is a film à clef that examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Welles' own life.Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power.

Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnate's dying word: "Rosebud."

A critical success, Citizen Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box-office. The film faded from view soon after but its reputation was restored, initially by French critics and more widely after its American revival in 1956.

There is a semi-official consensus among film critics that Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made. It topped both the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list and the 10th Anniversary Update, as well as all of the Sight & Sound polls of the 10 greatest films for nearly half a century

Bernard Herrmann (June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.

An Academy Award-winner (for The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1941), Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo.

He also composed notable scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (most notably for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs including most notably Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun–Will Travel.

Herrmann's score for Citizen Kane was a watershed in film soundtrack composition and proved as influential as any of the film's other innovations, establishing him as an important voice in film soundtrack composition. The score eschewed the typical Hollywood practice of scoring a film with virtually non-stop music.

Instead Herrmann used what he later described as '"radio scoring", musical cues which typically lasted between five and fifteen seconds to bridge the action or suggest a different emotional response.

One of the most effective musical cues was the "Breakfast Montage." The scene begins with a graceful waltz theme and gets darker with each variation on that theme as the passage of time leads to the hardening of Kane's personality and the breakup of his marriage to Emily.

In the final sequence of the film, which shows the destruction of Rosebud in the fireplace of Kane's castle, Welles choreographed the scene while he had Herrmann's cue playing on the set.

In 1972 Herrmann said "I was fortunate to start my career with a film like Citizen Kane, it's been a downhill run ever since!" Shortly before his death in 1985, Welles told director Henry Jaglom that the score was fifty per cent responsible for the film's artistic success.

1941 : Greta Garbo retires at age 36

Greta Lovisa Gustafsson (18 September 1905 – 15 April 1990), better known as Greta Garbo, was a noted Swedish actress and recluse. She was a major star in the United States during the silent film era and the Golden Age of Hollywood. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Garbo fifth on their list of greatest female stars of all time, after Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.

Garbo launched her career with a major role in the Swedish film The Saga of Gosta Berling. Her performance caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer, who brought her to Hollywood in 1925 to work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). She became a star of silent films.

Her first talking film was Anna Christie (1930), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. MGM marketers enticed the public with the catchphrase "Garbo talks!" In 1932, her popularity allowed her to dictate the terms of her contract, and she became increasingly choosy about her roles.

She received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Anna Karenina (1935), but she considered her performance as the courtesan Marguerite Gautier in Camille (1936) her best performance; the role gained her a second Academy Award nomination. After working exclusively in dramatic films, Garbo turned to comedy with Ninotchka (1939) and Two-Faced Woman (1941). For Ninotchka, Garbo was again nominated for an Academy Award; Two-Faced Woman did well at the box office, but was a critical failure.

After 1941, she retired after appearing in 27 films, and became increasingly reclusive. She has been indelibly linked to one of her lines from the film Grand Hotel: "I want to be alone". She later remarked, "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone.' There is all the difference." To the end of her life, Garbo-watching became a sport among the paparazzi and the media, but she remained elusive up until her death in 1990 at the age of 84.

Two-Faced Woman (1941) is a romantic comedy made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film stars Greta Garbo, in her final film role, and Melvyn Douglas, with Constance Bennett, Roland Young and Ruth Gordon. The movie is about a fashion magazine editor who marries a ski instructor and what befalls the couple when they settle in New York City.

It was directed by George Cukor and produced by Gottfried Reinhardt from a screenplay by S. N. Behrman, Salka Viertel and George Oppenheimer, based on a play by Ludwig Fulda. The music score was by Bronislau Kaper.

1941 In Music

1941 was the height of the Big Band Era. The bobby-soxers may have swooned over Frank Sinatra, but it was Tommy Dorsey's name on the record. Ditto Bob Eberle, whose silky smooth vocals with Helen O'Connell sold many a record for Jimmy Dorsey.

The musicians' union strike was only a year away, but for 1941 the dance halls ruled, ballroom tickets were affordable, the great Depression was quickly becoming a memory, and the war was something the Europeans would have to figure out.

Sinatra was Tommy Dorsey's lead vocalist, backed by the Pied Pipers on at least ten of his chart hits. The Pied Pipers were a quartet of three men and one woman, who happened to be Jo Stafford. Stafford's first hit came in 1941, a song called Yes Indeed that she sang solo. Tommy Dorsey allegedly fired one of the Pied Pipers in 1942, which led to the departure of the whole group in a show of team unity.

With the eventual departure of Sinatra in 1942, Tommy turned to Dick Haymes for vocal leadership. A bit of trivia: a certain trumpet player joined Dorsey after his discharge following World War II. The kid was young, and talent was still raw, but Dorsey saw something he liked. That trumpeter was Carl "Doc" Severinson.

Jimmy Dorsey ran something of a smoother ship in the early 1940s. He owned the #1 spot for 19 weeks out of 52 in 1941, a record that wouldn't stand long.

Glenn Miller eclipsed it just a year later. But don't let that minimize Jimmy's achievement in '41; each of the 5 songs listed above spent at least a week on top of the charts. Amapola spent 10 weeks at #1 and is therefore one of the all-time "monster" chart toppers. It would've topped Artie Shaw's Frenesi on this list, but for the fact that Shaw's number already had a few weeks at #1 in December of 1940.

Dorsey's hits featured a unique 3-part format. This "A-B-C" arrangement saw Bob Eberly lead the first third, the band - led by Jimmy's sax - took the second part, and Helen O'Connell would finish it out with a flourish.

As the average playing time of a commercial 78 RPM record was 3 minutes, each "section" lasted about a minute. It was an unstoppable formula in 1941.

August 18th,1941 : Swing Kids

On 18 August 1941, in a brutal police operation, over 300 Swing Kids were arrested. The measures against them ranged from cutting their hair and sending them back to school under close monitoring, to the deportation of the leaders to concentration camps. This mass arrest encouraged the youth to further their political consciousness and opposition to National Socialism.

They started to distribute anti-fascist propaganda. In January 1943, Günter Discher, as one of the ringleaders of the Swing Kids, was deported to the youth concentration camp of Moringen.

On 2 January 1942, Heinrich Himmler wrote to Reinhard Heydrich calling on him to clamp down on the ringleaders of the swing movement, recommending a few years in a concentration camp with beatings and forced labor. The crackdown soon followed: clubs were raided, and participants were hauled off to camps.
"My judgment is that the whole evil must be radically exterminated now. I cannot but see that we have taken only half measures. All ringleaders (...) are into a concentration camp to be re-educated (...) detention in concentration camp for these youths must be longer, 2-3 years (...) it is only through the utmost brutality that we will be able to avert the dangerous spread of anglophile tendencies, in these times where Germany fights for its survival."

The Swing Kids (German: Swingjugend) were a group of jazz and swing lovers in Germany in the 1930s, mainly in Hamburg (St. Pauli) and Berlin. They were composed of 14- to 18-year-old boys and girls in high school, most of them middle- or upper-class students, but some apprentice workers as well. They sought the British and American way of life, defining themselves in swing music and opposing the National-Socialist ideology, especially the Hitlerjugend.

In 1993, a film called Swing Kids examined this underground culture of rebellion during Nazi Germany in some detail. Directed by Thomas Carter and starring Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale, Frank Whaley, and Kenneth Branagh (uncredited), the picture was not a commercial success but sustains a large underground following and is nonetheless a moderately accurate history-based film.

Gene Krupa - Let me off uptown

Gene Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an influential American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.

Many consider Krupa to be one of the most influential drummers of the 20th century, particularly regarding the development of the drum kit. Many jazz historians believe he made history in 1927 as the first kit drummer ever to record using a bass drum pedal.

The 1937 recording of Louis Prima's "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra featuring Gene Krupa on drums was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Anita O'Day (October 18, 1919 – November 23, 2006) was an American jazz singer.

Born Anita Belle Colton, O'Day was admired for her sense of rhythm and dynamics, and her early big band appearances shattered the traditional image of the "girl singer". Refusing to pander to any female stereotype, O'Day presented herself as a "hip" jazz musician, wearing a band jacket and skirt as opposed to an evening gown. She changed her surname from Colton to O'Day, pig Latin for "dough," slang for money.

The call from Krupa came in early 1941. Of the 34 sides she recorded with Krupa, it was "Let Me Off Uptown", a novelty duet with Roy Eldridge, that became her first big hit. That year, Down Beat named O'Day "New Star of the Year".

Roy David Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz" was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos and his strong influence on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most exciting musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.

Blues in the Night

"Blues in the Night" is a popular song which has become a pop standard and is generally considered to be part of the Great American Songbook. The music was written by Harold Arlen, the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, for a 1941 film begun with the working title Hot Nocturne, but finally released as Blues in the Night. The song is sung in the film by William Gillespie. Blues in the Night (1941) is a musical drama film released by Warner Brothers, directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Priscilla Lane, Richard Whorf, Betty Field, Lloyd Nolan, Elia Kazan, and Jack Carson.

In 1941 "Blues in the Night" was one of nine songs nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.Observers expected that either "Blues in the Night" or "Chattanooga Choo Choo" would win, so that when "The Last Time I Saw Paris" actually won, neither its composer, Jerome Kern, nor lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II, was present at the ceremony. Kern was so upset at winning with a song that had not been specifically written for a motion picture and that had been published and recorded before the film came out that he petitioned the Motion Picture Academy to change the rules. Since then, a nominated song has to have been written specifically for the motion picture in which it is performed.

Duke Ellington - I Got it Bad and That Ain't Good

"I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good)" is a pop and jazz standard with music by Duke Ellington and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster published in 1941.

Duke Ellington’s original “I Got It Bad,” featuring Johnny Hodges and Ivie Anderson, is unarguably the definitive version of this beautiful tune. Thelonious Monk’s 1955 rendition (Plays Duke Ellington) is a more recent classic, with Monk showing the tune’s appropriateness as a modern jazz vehicle while paying tribute to Ellington, one of his own musical heroes.

Considered by some as her best performance, “I Got It Bad” was introduced by Ivie Anderson in Jump for Joy. The West Coast musical revue opened on July 10, 1941, at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles and ran for 101 performances. Although the show’s run was short, in October a Duke Ellington recording, also featuring Anderson and with solos by Ellington and Johnny Hodges, became a hit, rising on the pop charts to number thirteen. A month later, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra would also score with their recording which had the further distinction of being Peggy Lee’s first hit vocal. Ironically, Goodman’s trumpeter Cootie Williams played the Ellington song in the Goodman band after leaving Ellington.

John Cornelius "Johnny" Hodges (July 25, 1906 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist, best known for his solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years, except the period between 1932 – 1946 when Otto Hardwick generally played first chair. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946, when he also got the task of playing the lead chair.

Hodges started playing with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges, who was featured on both alto and soprano sax. His playing became one of the identifying voices of the Ellington orchestra. Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band (1951 – 1955), but returned to the large ensemble shortly before Ellington's triumphant return to prominence – the orchestra's performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.

1941 Movies : The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name.Written and directed by John Huston, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade; Mary Astor as his femme fatale client; Gladys George, who received third billing despite having a relatively minor role; Peter Lorre; and Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut. The film was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

The story concerns a San Francisco private detective's dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers who compete to obtain a fabulous jewel-encrusted statuette of a falcon.

The Maltese Falcon has been named as one of the greatest films of all time by Roger Ebert, and Entertainment Weekly,and was cited by Panorama du Film Noir Américain, the first major work on film noir, as the first film of that genre.
The film premiered on October 3, 1941, in New York City and was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1989.

The music to The Maltese Falcon was written by Adolph Deutsch who later went on the win an Academy Award for his incidental music for Oklahoma! in 1955.
The recording was re-released in 2002 with the soundtracks to other film works of Deutsch, including George Washington Slept Here, The Mask of Dimitrios, High Sierra, and Northern Pursuit.