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| "Why don't you choke those Boswell Sisters?" Jesus... |
“Why don't you choke those Boswell Sisters? How wonderful it would be if they sang just one song like it was written. Really when they get through murdering it, one can never recognize the original.”
“Please get those terrible Boswell Sisters off the station! You can't follow the melody and the beat is going too rapidly. And to me they sound like savage chanters!”
Consider that another installment in the “don’t let your grandparents tell you [_______] about how rude people have become these days.” Also, trust me: you will not understand where that anger comes from by the end of this post. Or even after one listen to the sampler.
Despite the rage-mail that haters sent to their employers and sponsors, the Boswell Sisters achieved remarkable renown in their prime - about 1930-1936 - and some of the biggest artists and bandleaders their era appreciated working with people who knew their way around music as well as they did. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep the musical world from forgetting them. As one of the first close-harmony singing groups in the recorded music/radio era, they opened space for contemporary competitors - e.g., the Three X Sisters and the Pickens Sisters - and paved the way for some famous imitators, most notably, the Andrews Sisters. Left-filed shit like “savage chanters” notwithstanding, those disgruntled fans had a point. From a long passage about some of their most famous recording sessions, quoted by Wikipedia (fwiw, my overwhelmingly primary source for this post):
“Some of the sessions with Dorsey Brothers' band musicians were notable in having the young Glenn Miller writing instrumental arrangements for his bandmates from Connie’s dictation. Melodies were rearranged and slowed down, major keys were changed to minor keys (sometimes in mid-song), and unexpected rhythmic changes were par for the course. The Boswells were among the few performers who were allowed to make changes to current popular tunes since, during this era, music publishers and record companies pressured performers not to alter current popular song arrangements.”
Now, the story of how the Boswell Sisters earned the right to tell music publishers and record companies to blow.
“Please get those terrible Boswell Sisters off the station! You can't follow the melody and the beat is going too rapidly. And to me they sound like savage chanters!”
Consider that another installment in the “don’t let your grandparents tell you [_______] about how rude people have become these days.” Also, trust me: you will not understand where that anger comes from by the end of this post. Or even after one listen to the sampler.
Despite the rage-mail that haters sent to their employers and sponsors, the Boswell Sisters achieved remarkable renown in their prime - about 1930-1936 - and some of the biggest artists and bandleaders their era appreciated working with people who knew their way around music as well as they did. Unfortunately, that didn’t keep the musical world from forgetting them. As one of the first close-harmony singing groups in the recorded music/radio era, they opened space for contemporary competitors - e.g., the Three X Sisters and the Pickens Sisters - and paved the way for some famous imitators, most notably, the Andrews Sisters. Left-filed shit like “savage chanters” notwithstanding, those disgruntled fans had a point. From a long passage about some of their most famous recording sessions, quoted by Wikipedia (fwiw, my overwhelmingly primary source for this post):
“Some of the sessions with Dorsey Brothers' band musicians were notable in having the young Glenn Miller writing instrumental arrangements for his bandmates from Connie’s dictation. Melodies were rearranged and slowed down, major keys were changed to minor keys (sometimes in mid-song), and unexpected rhythmic changes were par for the course. The Boswells were among the few performers who were allowed to make changes to current popular tunes since, during this era, music publishers and record companies pressured performers not to alter current popular song arrangements.”
Now, the story of how the Boswell Sisters earned the right to tell music publishers and record companies to blow.
