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From:  Karen Mercedes <dalila@R...>
Date:  Tue Mar 5, 2002  8:26 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] April Showers

On Mon, 4 Mar 2002 Mezzoid@a... wrote:

> Does anyone know if "April Showers" was ever in a B-way musical or movie
> musical? It's by B.G. DaSilva, I believe. Did some searches, couldn't find
> anything. Thanks.

"April Showers", with music by Louis Silvers and lyrics by George G.
"Buddy" De Sylva (who wrote and published as B.G. De Sylva) was included in the
1921 "musical extravaganza" BOMBO (some sources mistakenly say 1924 -
not the year the song written, but probably the year it was published),
which starred Al Jolson, and also featured the song "California, here I come"
(Jolson's lyrics set to music by Joseph Meyer). Jolson reprised the song -
which came to be known as one of his "signature" tunes (along with
"Mammy") - in three movies, THE SINGING KID (1936; as part of a song medley),
THE
JOLSON STORY (1946; a biopic in which Jolson dubbed the song for the
apparently unmusical Larry Parks, who portrayed Jolson), and JOLSON SINGS AGAIN
(1949, with Jolson again dubbing the song for Larry Parks with chorus).
Jolson also used the song as the theme song for his radio programme.

If you've got RealPlayer configured on your system, you can hear Jolson
singing the song at:

http://www.jolson.org/ra/col/c48april.ram

BOMBO opened in the autumn of 1921 at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre
- indeed, it was the curtain raiser for that new theatre. The show ran for six
months,
with the music originally credited to Sigmund Romberg, apparently.
The show was slim on discernible plot line, but with Jolson in it, no-one
much cared. "April Showers" was sung by Jolson from a platform jutting
into the audience, from where he would point up into the gallery when
singing the line "Look, look, they're not clouds, no, no - they're crowds
of daffodils" and the audience would go wild. During the last week of the
run, the audiences were so enthusiastic, Jolson would reward their
ovations with up to fifteen encores, keeping the curtain up until after
midnight (with the chorus girls complaining about how the extended hours
were eating into their social life; Jolson assuaged them by throwing a
party for them on stage after the Saturday night closing.

When the show played Atlantic City and Philadelphia, Gus Kahn's "Toot,
Toot, Tootsie" was added to the lineup. The show ran on tour into the
summer of 1923, took a break, and then continued on to Chicago. It opened
for a third season in October 1923 in Albany, New York, thence on to
California. It was 1923 when Joe Meyer was approached by Jolson to write a
song especially for the California tour; the result, of course, was
"California, Here I Come". The show broke attendance records in Los
Angeles, but audiences had their money refunded in Riverside when Jolson
came down with acute laryngitis, and was ordered to complete silence and
bed rest by his doctors; the last four weeks of the tour were cancelled.


Judy Garland recorded a popular rendition with Nelson Riddle and his
orchestra for Capitol Records on 19 March 1956 (on the LP album JUDY,
released on 10 October of that year), having first performed it on the
Bing Crosby Show on 28 March 1951. Sinatra's version had been recorded in
1946, with other notable recordings by Guy Lombardo and his Royal
Canadians (1947), Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, Ernie Hare, Charles
Harrison, and Arthur Fields.


By the way, all of this info was easily found on the Internet, using the
Google search engine (www.google.com) - hint HINT - including at this
site:

http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/pic/96.april.html

Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
***************************************
What lies behind us, and what lies before us
are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson





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