Advent of Sound Recalled by Jazz Singer Musician

Photo: Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, the first "talking" motion picture.

Publisher: Down Beat, December 17, 1952, p 22.

Copyright ©  Maher Publications . All rights reserved.

Hollywood - Out at Warner Brothers, where they are at work on a modern version of THE JAZZ SINGER, the picture that just 25 years ago this month turned the movie business inside out and hit the music world with an impact that is yet to be fully measured, there aren’t many musicians around who can give first-hand reminiscences of the occasion. One is composer-pianist Paul Lamkoff, who is doing almost exactly the same assignment on the new version, starring Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee, that he did on the first, which starred the late Al Jolson.

For the 1927 JAZZ SINGER, Lamkoff, who in addition to being a composer (and graduate of what was then Russia's Petrograd Conservatory of Music) is a cantor by profession, coached Jolson for the sequence in which he sang the Hebrew sacred song Kol Nidre. Lamkoff also supervised the choral backgrounds. In the 1952 version (to be released in 1953) he has an assignment, except that the singer is now Danny Thomas, and he has been given more opportunity to make use of Hebrew sacred music, on which he is an authority, in portions of the scoring.

Memories - Recalling his first JAZZ SINGER assignment, Lamkoff says: “Jolson wasn't as easy to work with as Thomas, even though he was Jewish, the son of a cantor, and familiar with the idiom. Thomas is a Syrian, but he grew up in a Jewish environment, loves the Hebrew music and is a really great actor. Maybe not the singer that Al was, but he puts a sincerity into this sequence that will make it thrilling to persons of every religious faith. Of course, when I was working with Al on the first JAZZ SINGER, recording techniques were in their infancy. Everything was an experiment.”

Touch of History - For the benefit of the many who cannot recall what happened in that early-day JAZZ SINGER, a brief bit of history may be of interest: Warner Brothers, a relatively new producing firm, was on the brink of financial collapse. Warners turned to the Vitaphone (as the early method of synchronizing sound with film - using disc recordings - was called) as a last resort - and because the idea of sound films had been turned down by every other Hollywood film company. They used the idea first only for background music and recorded sound effects. Nothing happened. Then, with the very last of their financial resources they brought Al Jolson to Hollywood to star in THE JAZZ SINGER and inserted two vocal sequences and a bit of spoken dialogue in what was otherwise an all-silent fiIm.

Mad Panic - In one sequence Jolson sang a truly great rendition of Kol Nidre; in the other he sang April Showers, which he had popularized a few years before on the stage. (Maybe we should point out that the word “jazz” as it is used in THE JAZZ SINGER has no relation to the word as it is currently used, at least in Down Beat. Audiences and critics, up to that time completely cold to the idea of sound films, went into raptures over the picture - and in Hollywood the entire film industry went into a mad panic with the hysterical rush to convert to “talking pictures” as rapidly as possible. Careers crumbled and heads fell right and left.

Profitable Period - Lamkoff, who had worked with movie makers since his arrival in Hollywood in 1924, preparing and adapting the music with which orchestras in the larger film theaters accompanied feature pictures, recalls the advent of sound pictures as a hectic but highly profitable period for the handful of Hollywood musicians, mostly members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra, the only ones who were then considered capable of doing recording work. He recalls: “It was not unusual for a recording orchestra to be on the job at eight in the morning, and still be there at midnight, drawing overtime scale, with most of the time spent sitting around while the technicians experimented with mike set-ups and that sort of thing. Most of them didn't know what they were doing, but they got away with it because the producers and directors knew even less.”

First Score - Lamkoff, who is believed to have done the first original score for a U.S.-made sound film, relates the matter like this: “I asked if I would get screen credit. The head of the music department said, ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but the main title, with all of the credits, already has been completed.* We didn't knew then who would do the music - so they just put my name on it as the composer.” Another Lamkoff story: “The late Fred Fisher was signed to write some songs for a picture in which there was a sequence calling for an original symphonic work. Fisher told the producer that for him writing symphonic music was just like writing- songs - only easier because he didn't have to have any words.

Dictated His Symphony - “So I sat with Fred Fisher, who didn't know one note from another, while he ‘dictated his symphony’ to me by punching it out on one finger at the piano." Lamkoff feels that for musicians - composers, arrangers and instrumentalists - conditions have improved much in recent years in the film studios. “In those early days the heads of music departments were often fast-talking phonies. Nowadays the trend is to place a bona fide musician in charge of the music and to give him real authority. An example is Ray Heindorf, who started here at Warner Brothers years ago as an arranger - he was, and still is, an excellent pianist, also - and worked his way up to head of the music department. Other examples are Alfred Newman at 20th Century-Fox and Johnny Green at MGM,”

Who Listens? - To Lamkoff, doing music for pictures is just a job - a job he performs as a skilled craftsman. His real efforts as a composer go into works on religious themes, works which he hopes will someday be performed by major symphony orchestras. We mentioned to Lamkoff that one prominent composer of films scores had told us that to him the important thing about writing for pictures, was that he was assured of what every composer wants most - not only one performance of his works, but many. Lamkoff’s, comment, with a quid grin: “The film composer is sure of performances, all right - but who listens?”

(*) Paul Lamkoff (1888-1953),  a student of Alexander Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov at the Petrograd Conservatory, came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1921 as Peter Lampkovitz, and for a time was married to the vocalist Bessie Millman (nine years his junior). He was among the earliest in America to compose and copyright a suite of eight original cues for the part-talkie MGM picture Mysterious Island (1929) starring Lionel Barrymore. However, credit for the music score went to Martin Broones and Arthur Lange. Lamkoff’s filmography includes e.g. The King of Kings (1927, musical director & singer), THREE FACES EAST (1930, composer ‘love theme’), Resurrection (1931, vocal coach), Treasure Island (1934, co-orchestrator together with Charles Maxwell, Maurice de Packh, et. al) and Cavalcade of San Francisco (1940, composer). Lamkoff appears in a home move of the MGM Music Department made by Arthur Lange c1930. An image also survives showing him conducting the chorus in Dimitri Tiomkin’s Resurrection. For a biographical profile see milkenarchive . Lamkoff’s obituary appeared in Variety, March 18, 1953, p63.