MEMORIES OF TONY MARTIN

Here is a great article from the Huffington Post on the late Tony Martin. Martin was a very underrated crooner...


I was privileged to know Tony Martin in the last few decades of his life. He died Friday (he died in July of 2012) night at his West L.A. home at the age of 98. Last night at dinner someone noted that Frank Sinatra said about Tony, "He had the best pipes of any one of us." My dear friend Ginny Mancini was very friendly with Tony and his wife of 60 years, Cyd Charisse, so we would occasionally double-date. Tony was the most charming, fun and provocative dinner companion. We once compared war stories; I pontificated about my Korean service and he quietly told me of his three Army years in the Far East during World War II, ending up singing in Captain Glenn Miller's band. Cyd Charisse may have been the most beautiful woman I ever encountered. When we met she was already suffering from some hearing problems (as am I), so she was the quiet one among us. But no red-blooded boy on the planet will ever recover from seeing her steaming dance with Gene Kelly in the movie, Singing in the Rain.

Tony and Cyd performed a nightclub act for many years, she danced enchantedly while he sang "I Get Ideas" and "It's Magic." Even into his 90s he was up-and-eager for any challenge. I remember seeing him a few years ago at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood, sitting on a stool with a hot jazz group behind him, singing his classics and joking with the enthusiastic crowd, especially when he forgot some lyrics. A 2009 New York Times review of his five-night appearance at Feinstein's in New York said, "The rich timbre of his voice was surprisingly unchanged from what is was in the 1940s and '50s. He sang perfectly-recollected versions of songs associated with him such as 'I Surrender, Dear' and 'There's No Tomorrow." (which Tony said was passed on to him by Perry Como, according to the review.

And there was a night at a beautiful Mancini dinner party when, after dinner, Tony's long-time accompanist appeared and Mr. Martin sang his heart out... there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd. "Stranger in Paradise," "La Vie en Rose," "Fools Rush In" (oh, my, so beautiful!) and Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." My favorite: "I'll See You in My Dreams."

I am of a certain age, so I well remember when Tony was in his heyday as the last big star of Hollywood's golden age of musicals. Whenever TCM shows the 1948 remake of Pepe LeMoko called Casbah, I watch entranced as he sings For Every Man There's a Woman. He told me that he had appeared in some two dozen movies, starting in the late '30s, and I know that the handsome devil had met and married the reigning queen of films, blonde bombshell Alice Faye, while co-starring in Sally, Irene and Mary in 1937... a marriage which did not last very long. From '38 to '56 he was a major recording star, with 14 top-10 hits in those years. He told me that his recording career virtually ended when rock-n-roll ascended. I remember his doing a 15-minute TV show in the mid-50s, on which Dinah Shore made an appearance. (Dear Dinah, whom I met at the invitation of Kirk Douglas' wife, Anne, who seated us together at a dinner party and whom I dated 'til she died unexpectedly.) It was on this show, directed by Bud Yorkin, where Ginny -- then married to composer Hank Mancini -- went back to work as part of his backup singing group... and established a friendship with Tony which lasted through the years. Tony was the featured singer on the Burns-and-Allen TV show, and Wikipedia tells the story of Gracie, adoring him, saying, "Oh, Tony, you look so tired. Why don't you rest your lips on mine." Funny.

with Ginny Mancini

From Wikipedia, I learned that he was born Alvin Morris to Jewish immigrant parents in San Francisco on Christmas Day in 1913. His parents divorced when he was young, and he once mentioned that his grandmother gave him a saxophone when he was 10, and he was hooked on music. He broke into films in the mid-'30s and built a remarkable career after returning from the Second World War.

Remember him playing Gaylord Ravenal in the Showboat segment of the film Till The Clouds Roll By? Twice songs which he sang in movie musicals were nominated for Academy Award; the one I mentioned from Casbah and also "It's a Blue World" from Music in my Heart. And I still love seeing him singing to Hedy LaMarr, Judy Garland and Lana Turner in 1941's Ziegfield Girl... the song was "You Stepped Out of Dream." Being a huge Marx Bros. fan, I kidded him about his appearing in their classic film The Big Store, and he told me that he remained friends with Groucho until the latter's death. He married Cyd in 1948 and they remained a stunning, fascinating couple until her death in 2008. So I want to imagine that this weekend, somewhere up there, God assembled a big audience of music fans and Tony sang his heart out to an enthusiastic audience. Ginny and I can hear him now...

SOURCE

THE SOCIETY OF SINGERS

Singers helped to add romance, glamour, and style to the big bands. But unless they also played an instrument, they usually received the least pay.

"Bob Eberly was a good friend of mine," trombonist Vincent Lopez Jr., son of the famous pianist - bandleader, said to me recently. "I remember we were talking onetime . . . about all these television stations were reproducing recordings of originals, saying, alright, 'Here's Tangerine with Bob Eberly," and so forth. And I said, 'Do you get any residuals for this?' He said, 'No! If we did, we'd be millionaires . . . we'd go off the road with the Jimmy Dorsey band, we'd go to New York, and we would record, literally, five or six cuts a day . . . I got $35 a record . . . that was a lot of money to me. So it was a one-shot deal, whether the record sold one or a million and one, I still got $35.'"

Of course, there was no retirement plan or health insurance for singers like Eberly.

"It's sad," Lopez Jr. observed, "because here's people of stature, that are recognizable names from 'the big band era,' from the heyday of that music, and they're penniless or terminally ill in the hospital, such as Bob was. I remember, his niece, Jan, and I were working with the band (I forget where-the-hell we were working at), and I said something about Bob being in the hospital and she said, 'Yeah, he's in Sloan-Kettering.' Of course, he was dying from lung cancer at the time. She said, 'He got a visitor the other night.' I said, 'really? Who was that?' She said, 'Frank Sinatra walked into the room after one of his shows, walked into Bob's room, and said, 'Bob, I know that you and I were both with different bands and we never really met up with each other through the business, but don't worry about the hospital bills. It's taken care of.' I thought that was a helluva thing, and I never really cared that much for Frank Sinatra [laughs] but I just thought it was a helluva thing. From what I understand . . . he had done a lot of things like that."

Witnessing the plight of Eberly, other singers began to worry about ending up in the same way, and wondered who would take care of them?

So in March 1984, a group of songbirds formally organized to help themselves, incorporating as The Society of Singers, to assist professional singers who face financial, medical, family or other crises. ("SOS," as the organization refers to itself, defines a singer as someone who has earned a living being a singer for at least five years.) Services are financial aid, case management and referrals, housing, scholarships, and community outreach.

Among the founding members were Gilda Maiken, one of The Skylarks, a vocal group which performed with Harry James' band in 1949, and Ginny Mancini, wife of composer - pianist Henry Mancini and once part of the Mello-Larks, a group that sang with the Tex Beneke/Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1946-47.

Bea Wain, featured vocalist with Larry Clinton during 1937-39, volunteered her time and talents with The Society from the start. She's still active, and when I spoke with her over the phone recently, I asked her about it.

"I'm now in Los Angeles," she said. "And a lot of the singers are around here, that I knew."

Many of them had settled down or retired to the West Coast. Sadly, a number have since died.

"There were a few singers that were down on their luck, they were hungry," she recalled.

Assistance from The Society is strictly confidential, though some gave permission for their plights to be told. One was Ella Mae Morse, who recorded Cow Cow Boogie with Freddie Slack's band in 1942. Although that hit disc was one of Capitol Records' first big money-makers, Ella Mae, years later, was having a tough time making ends meet.

"[She] was working in Sears, a Sears store," Wain said. "She had to get a job."

Another was Bonnie Lou Williams, a vocalist with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra in 1944-45, who, according to an SOS release, later "became terminally ill, and while unable to pay her medical bills, she was served with an eviction notice compounding her humiliation."

Mancini, Maiken, and the others said they had to do something about people like Morse.

Wain took a moment to tell me about Ginny Mancini. "You know, she is now heir to remarkable music, I mean Henry's songs," she commented. "There's a lot, a lot of money in royalties there. She's a woman that has the money and does the right thing with it, which is really wonderful."

The bulk of the Society's present operating capital is raised through memberships, which begin at $50.

"You don't have to be a singer to be a member of The Society of Singers," Wain noted. "You just have to pay the dues."

More funding comes from benefit affairs and showcases held every eightteen or so months. The first such major event, in 1989, presented honors to Ella Fitzgerald, and thereafter The Society named the award for her. As part of that year's program, Wain, Martha Tilton, Helen Forrest, Kay Starr, Helen O'Connell, Kitty Kallen, Fran Warren, and The Clark Sisters were featured in a special tribute, "The Ladies Who Sang With the Bands."

One-time band vocalists Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Joe Williams, Tony Martin, and Rosemary Clooney were among those to receive an "Ella" award in the years following.

"We have wonderful affairs," Wain observed. ""The people love the singers, everybody loves the singers. It's a really good group and we help a lot of people."

For more information, view The Society of Singers website: SOCIETY OF SINGERS

SOURCE