 |
| The good times were good. Which makes the bad times worse. |
“The following night, they sat in the Edison's soda fountain, hoisting a final toast to their failed dreams.”
“In her 1993 memoir Over Here, Over There, Maxene wrote about that night. As they sat in the soda fountain, in walked a man with pointed-toe shoes and a wide, snap-brim hat. In a gruff New York tone, he announced he was looking for the Andrews Sisters.”
“’Who's asking?’ they responded. ‘Jack Kapp from Decca Records,’ the man said. ‘He wants them to come audition.’”
“In unison, they declared, ‘We're the Andrews Sisters!’”
- MNopedia, short bio (2017)
The Andrews Sisters did plenty in unison – singing, dancing, acting, the classic triple-threat – but long, incredibly bitter feuds defined their lives off-stage, particularly after their parents died. The only performer who out-performed them through the 1940s was Bing Crosby (covered in an earlier chapter, because how could I avoid it?) – but he out-performed (literally) everybody – but Andrews Sisters helped him score several of his biggest hits, including “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and (I love this damn song) “Don’t Fence Me In.” (And that was the tip of the iceberg: Bing and the Andrews Sisters shared 47 recordings through the ‘40s, 23 of them hits.)
With Bing or without him, they recorded over 600 songs, moved 90 million units, and earned 15 gold records on the back of jukebox play and 46 Top 10 hits. The peak of their fame coincided with World War II to the extent that they went a long way to defining the pop culture of the war years – and it goes way beyond “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (that's a video-clip for a V-disc, btw) Their pop culture footprint both was and is, frankly, stunning (you’ll see). Their success only makes the way they started more surprising.
By birth-year and vocal range, the Andrews Sisters were, LaVerne Sophia (1911; contralto), Maxene Anglyn (1916, soprano) and Patricia “Patty” Marie (1918, mezzo-soprano); there was a second sister, between LaVerne and Maxene named Anglyn, but she died at eight months in 1916. Their mother, Olga “Ollie” Sollie, came from Norwegian stock, while their father, Peter Andreas, was Greek; the Norwegian side didn’t approve of the union, but they got over it after LaVerne’s birth. And, reading between the lines, they went with Andrews as a stage-name.
Two fateful things happened in or around 1925: their father’s Minneapolis restaurant went under and the three sisters won a talent contest at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theater, a victory that led to touring with “comic bandleader” Larry Rich’s 55-member troupe. Anyone who did the math probably noticed Patty was all of seven-years-old at the time, but all three girls sang as soon as they could vocalize – one source or another included an anecdote about LaVerne getting the other two to hit notes she played on the piano – and they both loved and, in their early days, emulated The Boswell Sisters (covered in an earlier chapter). Due to their young age, their father joined them on the road and they honed their craft while driving between shows.
After cutting ties with rich, the Andrews Sisters continued on the vaudeville circuit, hit county fairs and things like that. The incident quoted above happened after they performed on a radio broadcast called Saturday Night Swing Club at New York City’s Edison Theater in 1937. And they were about to give it all up when Decca offered the audition. The label lined them up with a reworking of a Yiddish tune called, “Bei Mir Bistu Shein,” that a songwriter named Sammy Cahn reworked into their first hit, 1937’s “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” (in English, “To Me, You Are Beautiful”). The succession of hits that followed – “Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)” (1939), “Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar” (1940), and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (1941, just in time for the war) – made them household names by the time America joined World War II.
The Andrews Sisters became a staple of USO shows all over the world – everywhere from States-side, to Africa, to Italy, munitions depots, hospitals, Coast Guard bases; anywhere someone served, basically - they urged the public to buy for war bonds (e.g., the single “Any Bonds Today?” an update on an old Irving Berlin tune), and they appeared in war-time Abbott & Costello movies like Buck Privates (in which they performed “(I’ll Be With You in) Apple Blossom Time” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”) and Private Buckaroo (featuring “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”). All that touring, along with regular radio broadcasts, earned them the nickname, “the Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service.” In the same vein, they made a tradition of treating three servicemen to one-on-one dates after their performances. Not long after the war ended, the wars between them started.
Before digging into that, I wanted to slip in a note about “Rum and Coca Cola,” a song I first heard growing up in the Goldie Hawn vehicle Swing Shift. It’s a playful song and, like so many Andrews Sisters song, it has a deadly hook. Thematically, on the other hand:
“Some radio stations were reluctant to play the record because it mentioned a commercial product by name, and because the lyrics were subtly suggestive of local women prostituting themselves to U.S. servicemen serving at the then naval base on Trinidad. The song was based on a Trinidadian calypso, and a dispute over its provenance led to a well-publicized court case.”
With the mood now shifted to sordid, let’s continue.
The death of their parents, their mother in 1948 and their father in 1949, upended their lives – and that might be the last thing Patty and Maxene agreed on. Another blow came in the early 1950s when their (very) long-time bandleader/composer/arranger Vic Shoen left the group (per their official website, he’d had a hand in 90% of their recordings). A slow-motion catastrophe unfolded from there when Patty got involved with the band’s pianist, Walter Weschler, who became the trio’s manager and Patty’s husband around the same time. Upon taking over, he demanded a larger cut for Patty; things only got worse after LaVerne and Maxene found out Patty had decided to go solo, not from her (or Walter), but through the gossip columns: all that came to a rather vicious head when Patty sued the other two for a larger share of their parents estate. All that ended with LaVerne and Maxene carrying on the act and neither speaking to Patty for two years.
It's easy and, judging by later events, not entirely unfair to put most of the blame for the break on Patty. And comments like this (and this was in 1971) don’t help her case:
“Ever since I was born, Maxene has been a problem, and that problem hasn't stopped.”
Still, whether the other two sisters December 1954 appearance on The Red Skelton Show was deserved or whether it was payback, they took their swings too:
“Maxene and LaVerne did appear together on The Red Skelton Show on October 26, 1954, singing the humorous ‘Why Do They Give the Solos to Patty’ (about 11:15) as well as lip-synching ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ with Skelton in drag filling in for Patty (about 25:00). This however did not sit well with Patty and a cease-and-desist order was sent to Skelton.”
Sadly, this became the pattern for the rest of their lives. Most of what little I read agreed that a shared devotion to their parents kept a lid on the sisters’ squabbles and, after their death, LaVerne did what she could as a peacemaker. After they got back to talking, the Andrews Sisters returned as an act and to the studios in the second half of the 1950s. They recorded prodigiously, but, with the arrival of doo-wop and rock-‘n’-roll, the music world had left them behind. They switched to Dot Records in 1962 and tired to keep up with the times by recording singles like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Satin Doll,” but their audience tended to age with them. A large chunk of what they could keep going ended in 1967 when cancer caught up with LaVerne. The Andrews Sisters performed their last show on the September 29, 1966 broadcast of The Dean Martin Show.
“In her 1993 memoir Over Here, Over There, Maxene wrote about that night. As they sat in the soda fountain, in walked a man with pointed-toe shoes and a wide, snap-brim hat. In a gruff New York tone, he announced he was looking for the Andrews Sisters.”
“’Who's asking?’ they responded. ‘Jack Kapp from Decca Records,’ the man said. ‘He wants them to come audition.’”
“In unison, they declared, ‘We're the Andrews Sisters!’”
- MNopedia, short bio (2017)
The Andrews Sisters did plenty in unison – singing, dancing, acting, the classic triple-threat – but long, incredibly bitter feuds defined their lives off-stage, particularly after their parents died. The only performer who out-performed them through the 1940s was Bing Crosby (covered in an earlier chapter, because how could I avoid it?) – but he out-performed (literally) everybody – but Andrews Sisters helped him score several of his biggest hits, including “Pistol Packin’ Mama” and (I love this damn song) “Don’t Fence Me In.” (And that was the tip of the iceberg: Bing and the Andrews Sisters shared 47 recordings through the ‘40s, 23 of them hits.)
With Bing or without him, they recorded over 600 songs, moved 90 million units, and earned 15 gold records on the back of jukebox play and 46 Top 10 hits. The peak of their fame coincided with World War II to the extent that they went a long way to defining the pop culture of the war years – and it goes way beyond “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (that's a video-clip for a V-disc, btw) Their pop culture footprint both was and is, frankly, stunning (you’ll see). Their success only makes the way they started more surprising.
By birth-year and vocal range, the Andrews Sisters were, LaVerne Sophia (1911; contralto), Maxene Anglyn (1916, soprano) and Patricia “Patty” Marie (1918, mezzo-soprano); there was a second sister, between LaVerne and Maxene named Anglyn, but she died at eight months in 1916. Their mother, Olga “Ollie” Sollie, came from Norwegian stock, while their father, Peter Andreas, was Greek; the Norwegian side didn’t approve of the union, but they got over it after LaVerne’s birth. And, reading between the lines, they went with Andrews as a stage-name.
Two fateful things happened in or around 1925: their father’s Minneapolis restaurant went under and the three sisters won a talent contest at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theater, a victory that led to touring with “comic bandleader” Larry Rich’s 55-member troupe. Anyone who did the math probably noticed Patty was all of seven-years-old at the time, but all three girls sang as soon as they could vocalize – one source or another included an anecdote about LaVerne getting the other two to hit notes she played on the piano – and they both loved and, in their early days, emulated The Boswell Sisters (covered in an earlier chapter). Due to their young age, their father joined them on the road and they honed their craft while driving between shows.
After cutting ties with rich, the Andrews Sisters continued on the vaudeville circuit, hit county fairs and things like that. The incident quoted above happened after they performed on a radio broadcast called Saturday Night Swing Club at New York City’s Edison Theater in 1937. And they were about to give it all up when Decca offered the audition. The label lined them up with a reworking of a Yiddish tune called, “Bei Mir Bistu Shein,” that a songwriter named Sammy Cahn reworked into their first hit, 1937’s “Bei Mir Bist du Schoen” (in English, “To Me, You Are Beautiful”). The succession of hits that followed – “Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)” (1939), “Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar” (1940), and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” (1941, just in time for the war) – made them household names by the time America joined World War II.
The Andrews Sisters became a staple of USO shows all over the world – everywhere from States-side, to Africa, to Italy, munitions depots, hospitals, Coast Guard bases; anywhere someone served, basically - they urged the public to buy for war bonds (e.g., the single “Any Bonds Today?” an update on an old Irving Berlin tune), and they appeared in war-time Abbott & Costello movies like Buck Privates (in which they performed “(I’ll Be With You in) Apple Blossom Time” and “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”) and Private Buckaroo (featuring “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”). All that touring, along with regular radio broadcasts, earned them the nickname, “the Sweethearts of the Armed Forces Radio Service.” In the same vein, they made a tradition of treating three servicemen to one-on-one dates after their performances. Not long after the war ended, the wars between them started.
Before digging into that, I wanted to slip in a note about “Rum and Coca Cola,” a song I first heard growing up in the Goldie Hawn vehicle Swing Shift. It’s a playful song and, like so many Andrews Sisters song, it has a deadly hook. Thematically, on the other hand:
“Some radio stations were reluctant to play the record because it mentioned a commercial product by name, and because the lyrics were subtly suggestive of local women prostituting themselves to U.S. servicemen serving at the then naval base on Trinidad. The song was based on a Trinidadian calypso, and a dispute over its provenance led to a well-publicized court case.”
With the mood now shifted to sordid, let’s continue.
The death of their parents, their mother in 1948 and their father in 1949, upended their lives – and that might be the last thing Patty and Maxene agreed on. Another blow came in the early 1950s when their (very) long-time bandleader/composer/arranger Vic Shoen left the group (per their official website, he’d had a hand in 90% of their recordings). A slow-motion catastrophe unfolded from there when Patty got involved with the band’s pianist, Walter Weschler, who became the trio’s manager and Patty’s husband around the same time. Upon taking over, he demanded a larger cut for Patty; things only got worse after LaVerne and Maxene found out Patty had decided to go solo, not from her (or Walter), but through the gossip columns: all that came to a rather vicious head when Patty sued the other two for a larger share of their parents estate. All that ended with LaVerne and Maxene carrying on the act and neither speaking to Patty for two years.
It's easy and, judging by later events, not entirely unfair to put most of the blame for the break on Patty. And comments like this (and this was in 1971) don’t help her case:
“Ever since I was born, Maxene has been a problem, and that problem hasn't stopped.”
Still, whether the other two sisters December 1954 appearance on The Red Skelton Show was deserved or whether it was payback, they took their swings too:
“Maxene and LaVerne did appear together on The Red Skelton Show on October 26, 1954, singing the humorous ‘Why Do They Give the Solos to Patty’ (about 11:15) as well as lip-synching ‘Beer Barrel Polka’ with Skelton in drag filling in for Patty (about 25:00). This however did not sit well with Patty and a cease-and-desist order was sent to Skelton.”
Sadly, this became the pattern for the rest of their lives. Most of what little I read agreed that a shared devotion to their parents kept a lid on the sisters’ squabbles and, after their death, LaVerne did what she could as a peacemaker. After they got back to talking, the Andrews Sisters returned as an act and to the studios in the second half of the 1950s. They recorded prodigiously, but, with the arrival of doo-wop and rock-‘n’-roll, the music world had left them behind. They switched to Dot Records in 1962 and tired to keep up with the times by recording singles like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Satin Doll,” but their audience tended to age with them. A large chunk of what they could keep going ended in 1967 when cancer caught up with LaVerne. The Andrews Sisters performed their last show on the September 29, 1966 broadcast of The Dean Martin Show.
 |
| Familiar face. |
The other two sisters would get one last hoorah, a shot that came courtesy of Bette Midler, who recorded a cover of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in 1973. That led to Patty and Maxene getting casted a Sherman Brothers nostalgia musical called Over Here! Despite launching some truly impressive careers – e.g., John Travolta, Marilu Henner, Treat Williams, Ann Reinking – and, based on what I read, it did pretty well...until constant bickering between the sisters forced the show to fold.
Maxene and Patty continued on separate paths from there, Patty going back to solo work (that didn’t do so great) and becoming a regular panelist on The Gong Show, while Maxene hit the road as a cabaret performer (and a well-received one, at that) and, more impressively, “Maxene became the Dean of Women at Tahoe Paradise College, teaching acting, drama, and speech at a Lake Tahoe college and working with troubled teens.” And, for anyone left wondering where the general sympathies of the few sources I read lie:
“I have nothing to regret. We got on the carousel and we each got the ring and I was satisfied with that. There's nothing I would do to change things if I could...Yes, I would. I wish I had the ability and the power to bridge the gap between my relationship with my sister, Patty.”
- a “late interview” with Maxene
“She was more than part of The Andrews Sisters, much more than a singer. She was a warm and wonderful lady who shared her talent and wisdom with others.”
- Bob Hope, at Maxene’s 1995 funeral
Patty did not attend her older sister’s funeral, though she “became distraught” on hearing the news of her passing. I appreciate it’s unfair to take sides when one knows so little, but...damn.
About the Sampler
Damn my eyes, but I went a little overboard on my Andrews Sisters sampler. Still, there was a method to it. To flag the songs not already linked to above...
I wanted to give a fair taste the Bing/Andrews Sisters collaborations, so I larded the selection with the following: “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” (a standard), “Anything You Can Do” (another standard), “South America, Take It Away,” “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” “The Three Caballeros,” “South Rampart Street Parade,” and, to represent a couple hits cheering on the end of the war, “Vict’ry Polka,” and “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin.”
I went with Andrews Sisters solo tunes for the rest – and some of them should showcase their very real charm as performers. In no particular order, there are mildly racy numbers like “Last Night on the Back Porch (I Loved Her Best of All)” and “I Want to Linger.” I rounded out the sampler with some swinging numbers – e.g., “Shoo-Shoo Baby,” “Ti Pi Tin,” and “Hold Tight (Want Some Sea Food Mama)” (and did this inspire the name of Quarterflash’s predecessor band?) – a couple slow moon-gazers with “Melancholy Moon” (which has a very rock vibe) and “I Can Dream, Cant’ I?” and, finally, an awkward number called “Proper Cup of Coffee” that shows that “Rum and Coca Cola” wasn’t the only number that dabbled in...such things.
If there’s one thing the Andrews Sisters get deserved credit for, it was breaking genre lines. For all their faults and bickering, they had the talent and dexterity to sing just about any song the era served up. And, finally, in Patty’s defense, they’d performed together for 25-plus years before things went south. Because a lot of musical acts implode in half that time, I’m willing to cut her some slack....even if Maxene attempted suicide in 1954. Though that could have been the strain of that Australian tour too...
Maxene and Patty continued on separate paths from there, Patty going back to solo work (that didn’t do so great) and becoming a regular panelist on The Gong Show, while Maxene hit the road as a cabaret performer (and a well-received one, at that) and, more impressively, “Maxene became the Dean of Women at Tahoe Paradise College, teaching acting, drama, and speech at a Lake Tahoe college and working with troubled teens.” And, for anyone left wondering where the general sympathies of the few sources I read lie:
“I have nothing to regret. We got on the carousel and we each got the ring and I was satisfied with that. There's nothing I would do to change things if I could...Yes, I would. I wish I had the ability and the power to bridge the gap between my relationship with my sister, Patty.”
- a “late interview” with Maxene
“She was more than part of The Andrews Sisters, much more than a singer. She was a warm and wonderful lady who shared her talent and wisdom with others.”
- Bob Hope, at Maxene’s 1995 funeral
Patty did not attend her older sister’s funeral, though she “became distraught” on hearing the news of her passing. I appreciate it’s unfair to take sides when one knows so little, but...damn.
About the Sampler
Damn my eyes, but I went a little overboard on my Andrews Sisters sampler. Still, there was a method to it. To flag the songs not already linked to above...
I wanted to give a fair taste the Bing/Andrews Sisters collaborations, so I larded the selection with the following: “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” (a standard), “Anything You Can Do” (another standard), “South America, Take It Away,” “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” “The Three Caballeros,” “South Rampart Street Parade,” and, to represent a couple hits cheering on the end of the war, “Vict’ry Polka,” and “(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin.”
I went with Andrews Sisters solo tunes for the rest – and some of them should showcase their very real charm as performers. In no particular order, there are mildly racy numbers like “Last Night on the Back Porch (I Loved Her Best of All)” and “I Want to Linger.” I rounded out the sampler with some swinging numbers – e.g., “Shoo-Shoo Baby,” “Ti Pi Tin,” and “Hold Tight (Want Some Sea Food Mama)” (and did this inspire the name of Quarterflash’s predecessor band?) – a couple slow moon-gazers with “Melancholy Moon” (which has a very rock vibe) and “I Can Dream, Cant’ I?” and, finally, an awkward number called “Proper Cup of Coffee” that shows that “Rum and Coca Cola” wasn’t the only number that dabbled in...such things.
If there’s one thing the Andrews Sisters get deserved credit for, it was breaking genre lines. For all their faults and bickering, they had the talent and dexterity to sing just about any song the era served up. And, finally, in Patty’s defense, they’d performed together for 25-plus years before things went south. Because a lot of musical acts implode in half that time, I’m willing to cut her some slack....even if Maxene attempted suicide in 1954. Though that could have been the strain of that Australian tour too...
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