“THE WOOF SONG” (1937), or A WOOF A DAY KEEPS URGENT CARE AWAY

Everything I know about alternative medicine at home I learned from the gifted practitioner Dr. Winston Comba of Richmond, Virginia, so this post is a small thank-you to him.

For those of you wondering why such a post is on JAZZ LIVES, which should be properly devoted to hours of coverage to your favorite band or musician, whom everyone knows is the greatest ever, be patient.  (Or don’t.)

Thanks to Confetta-Ann Rasmussen, the hardest-working woman west of the Rockies, for pointing me to this: Bert Lahr’s “The Woof Song,” from the 1937 film LOVE AND HISSES.  Some sources say that the sequence was deleted before the film’s release, although not everyone agrees.  Lahr was cast as “Sugar” Boles, which should give an idea of the film’s comic subtleties.  LOVE AND HISSES depicted the feud between columnist Walter Winchell and bandleader Ben Bernie, with, alas, forgettable songs by Gordon and Revel and dubbed singing by Simone Simon.  It is not a film I feel a deep need to see, but Lahr’s bit is wonderful, and relevant here.  “The Woof Song,” misheard as “Wolf,” on one site, was written by Norman Zeno and Will Irwin — a vaudeville turn full of hot-music references.  See if you catch the most prominent ones:

Immediately, it’s clear that Stuff Smith’s I’SE A-MUGGIN’ (the second side, with the counting game) is being referenced, as is Cab Calloway, TIGER RAG, SWEET AND HOT, YOU RASCAL YOU, and more.  Perhaps Jolson is being evoked on SHOE SHINE BOY, and there’s the obligatory high-note trumpet passage (the band is Ben Bernie’s, according to Mark Cantor).  It’s a Wonderful Woof, isn’t it?

May your happiness increase!

PAGES FROM THE DIARY OF DILLON OBER

I cannot find out much information about the drummer-xylophonist Dillon Ober.  John Chilton wrote no thumbnail biography of him; he does not appear in Sudhalter’s LOST CHORDS.  I have no photograph to share with you (although Don Ingle says that Ober looked like Robert Benchley, later went to work in the Hollywood studios, and was a superb drummer).

All I can ascertain is that he recorded with a Ted Weems small band in 1922, with Irving Mills, Ben Bernie, and Jack Pettis in the latter half of the Twenties.  After that . . . ?

But a jazz scholar who wishes to remain anonymous has been able to read a diary that Ober kept in that period.  Aside from the intriguing period data (gigs played, personnel of bands, wages, names of friends, telephone numbers and addresses) there are a number of strongly worded philosophical statements: Ober was obviously someone who observed the scene closely and expressed himself wittily.

Here are two gems:

I like jazz music and my girlfriends to be SOFT and HOT.  That FAST and LOUD that other people go for does nothing for me.

and

Those people who say they “like the music” are fine, I guess.  We need them.  But they want to talk to me before I’m playing, after I’m playing, sometimes even when I have the sticks in my hands.  Do I come up to a doctor or a lawyer while he’s in the operating room or the courtroom to tell him how he should have done that operation or won that case?  I can’t stand them.

More to come.

May your happiness increase.