[Dixielandjazz] Boardwalk Empire

[Stephen G Barbone]

On September 19, a new HBO series premiers. This from a NY Times TV  
Review:

“Boardwalk Empire” is set in Atlantic City in 1920, during the first  
year of Prohibition, and the big outdoor set, the vintage clothing and  
the kind of historical research that delights in Houdini’s sibling are  
all evidence of the unusual, painstaking lengths the show’s creators  
have gone to recreate an era that barely registers in the American  
historical consciousness. Don't miss it. Lots of OKOM

The show’s music, bright and ebullient, is also authentic and also a  
reaction to the end of the war. People wanted to get up and dance, as  
Mr. Okrent pointed out, and Prohibition, or the speakeasy culture,  
conveniently (and for the first time) mingled men, women and alcohol  
in an atmosphere of congenial illicitness. Some of the show’s tunes,  
taken from silent movie arrangements or music found in old  
nickelodeons, hasn’t been heard for close to a century. The soundtrack  
also makes use of remastered 78 recordings by people like Al Jolson,  
who sings “Avalon” on the pilot. Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker are  
actual characters on the show and sing hits from the period like “Some  
of These Days” and the comic ballad “I Never Knew I Had a Wonderful  
Wife Until the Town Went Dry.”

“Marty and Terry both wanted the music to be historically accurate,”  
said Randall Poster, the music coordinator for the series. “So we just  
immersed ourselves in this fascinating transitional period when  
ragtime is just beginning to turn into jazz. It was like a musical  
scavenger hunt. A lot of the music on the show had never been recorded  
before because after talkies came in, there was no reason to record  
it. And yet it’s the birth of so much of what came later.”

The below about Vince Giordano who has a lot to do with the music is  
from a second NY Times article. See and her The Nighthawks on the  
series.


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


Playing a Bandleader and Keeping It Real

NY TIMES - by Charles McGrath - September 5 2010.

VINCE GIORDANO didn’t just record, with his band, the Nighthawks, much  
of the music on “Boardwalk Empire.” He also served as an invaluable  
historical resource.

Mr. Giordano, 58, who plays a bandleader on the series, lives in a  
small house in the Midwood section of Brooklyn that has virtually been  
taken over by his collection of early-20th-century American music and  
music memorabilia: piano rolls, old 78s, silent-movie scores, big-band  
arrangements, all carefully cataloged. The collection has even invaded  
his bedroom, where at the foot of the bed he keeps what he calls his  
Rosebud: his grandmother’s windup Victrola, on which as a 5-year-old  
he began listening to music from the ’20s.

“So much of the music that I play and seek has been dispersed,” he  
said. “The 20th century was such a disposable time. Old is out, new is  
better.” He added that the music of “Boardwalk Empire” is really a  
hybrid form: “It was called rag-a-jazz. You’re just getting out of  
World War I, which was such a horrific event, and I think young people  
just said, ‘We’re going to have a good time,’ and the music really  
reflects that. You had early syncopation but still a little bit of  
ragtime feel. It was the baby steps of jazz.”

If the show is renewed for a second season or more and moves on later  
into the ’20s, Mr. Giordano assumes that the music will advance with  
it. He is greatly looking forward to incorporating the music of the  
bandleader Paul Whiteman, who became a fixture in Atlantic City  
starting in late 1920 with songs like “Wang Wang Blues.”

Randall Poster, the music coordinator for the series, is similarly  
enthusiastic. “Whiteman was so famous, he was like a combination of  
Frank Sinatra with a band of Justin Biebers,” he said. But he added  
quickly that he felt very protective of Mr. Giordano: “We adore Vince.  
He embodies the lost memories of that time.” So Mr. Poster has already  
figured out that when Whiteman arrives and pushes Mr. Giordano’s band  
off the bandstand, Mr. Giordano will just have to join the Whiteman  
orchestra.