[Dixielandjazz] "Five Pennies" - Composer and lead sheet question

Craig I. Johnson civanj at adelphia.net
Sat Jun 26 12:56:18 PDT 2004


I have just finished transferring the Five Pennies lead sheet into Sibelius, so I can arrange it some.

This leads to some questions. My source was the Charles Anderson Fake Book. I compared the lead
sheet to the 3 recordings by Nichols and 1 by Phil Napoleon, on RedHotJazz,com..
It matches none of them including the fact that a cursory look would indicate that the section "D"
in that chart was not played by any of the above on any of the recordings (Charleston Chasers, Five Pennies,
Red Nichols & His Orchestra, nor Phil Napoleon and his Orch.. Does anyone know the source for the
Anderson Chart?

Further, Anderson lists Nichols as the composer (1927, I believe), but RedHotJazz.com listed it for
all of the recordings listed as being composed by Sylvia Fine, who appears to have received and Oscar
for that tune relative to the '50's movie " 5 Pennies" with Danny Kaye - her husband - playing Nichols
(and Nichols playing cornet "behind" him). She appears to have been credited with creating original material for the movie
If she were born in 1913 as I see cited in various bios, she would have been 14 when the song was first recorded in 1927.

Did Nichols write the a part and then Fine add the D part and paraphrase the add lib choruses as "C"? - or something like that?

Can someone sort out the answers to these 2 questions?

Regards,
Craig Johnson


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