HAROLD ARLEN: IT ALL BEGAN IN BUFFALO

It all began in Buffalo:   Born on February 15,1905, Hyman Arluck was the son of Celia and Samuel Arluck. Harold was blessed right from the beginning since he father was a noted cantor. In the Jewish synagogue ceremony, the cantor often sings unaccompanied and relies on a great deal of improvised singing. What better introduction to the idea that one could make up one's own music on the spot. His father had young Hyman sing during services but, from an early age, he was drawn to jazz and blues music.He was so attracted to the new and exciting popular music forms that he quit school in his mid-teens and formed a touring band known as the Buffalodians. He changed his name to Arlen and became Harold rather than Hyman which, in Hebrew, means " life."
Arlen was busy writing arrangements, creating new pieces and playing the piano. His singing was highly regarded  and combined elements of Jewish as well as black influenced musical
styles. Later on, his writing style was ideally suited to performances by major black American performers like Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne and Cab Calloway. It seems that the mournful nature of the synagogue was quite similar to the blues and jazz influences of Afro American musicians that Arlen listened to in his teens and early twenties.

Listen to a 1928 recording of the Buffalodians in which Arlen sings an up tempo number written by Irving Berlin. Later on the blog post, it will be interesting to trace the development of Arlen's writing as it becomes more complex and advanced, a far cry from the jazzy, but strict, metronomic rhythmic accompaniment. Both the music and the accompanying images seem so natural a depiction of the Roaring Twenties-- bootleg booze, flappers and gangsters and a world that seemed not to have  a care in the world.

LINK:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OsEv6GQbEA

You can hear Arlen singing in his light, high voice which led him to believe he could follow a career as a solo act on the Vaudeville circuit.

In the following blog, we will see how he followed a singing career and the accidental way in which his first hit song came about.