Some nice posts about Wendell Hall!
31Jim, when I was a kid, my mom and aunt taught us little cousins a game with “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No’ Mo’”. They learned it from my grandmother. There were a ton of verses, and going around in a circle, you’d have to either remember and sing a verse, or if you couldn’t do that, make one up. If you couldn’t do either – out of the game.
Peewee, thanks for the Library of Congress link. I used to have a nice little collection of Wendell’s music, but lost most of it in 2005. I had forgotten some of the songs on that link – was great to hear them again.
Jim T - was great to hear that Ian Whitcomb will be including Wendell amongst his “Ukulele Heroes”. I hope he was able to find out more about his background than I could. He was, as you say, a mid-westerner by birth, and lived in New York, and I think San Francisco. His music was very southern, however, and he spent his last years just down the coast, on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, where he passed away.
There was a sheriff there – Baldwin County – named Wendell Hall. I tried to get in touch a couple of times – no luck. Seems like more than a coincidence.
It would seem to me that Wendell would be more of a “ukulele hero” today, now that the instrument is becoming so popular again. After all, for one of the most popular singers of an era to be rooted in an ukulele blues style is something that will probably never happen again. One likely reason is that his recordings are so difficult to come by. I had put some of mine on disc – I still have those, and put them up on our website awhile ago for download. If you want them, click on Wendell’s picture, here:
http://www.southcoastukes.com/index_files/gumbo.htm
There are just seven songs - mostly the same you find on the Library of Congress link, but two are Stephen Foster songs not found there.
The other reason I think he may not be more popular is that his music is so foreign to us today. Even here in New Orleans, where old time music of various styles is played on street corners all over the city, this is stuff you won’t generally hear.
If you think you’ll hear ‘20s era jazz, you’ll be in for a disappointment. Wendell was wildly popular in the 20s, but not because he played the modern jazz age music. Even with his original compositions, his music was a throwback to the later 19th century. His blues was more a minstrel holler. He sang all sorts of popular forms, but all from an earlier age. He brought Stephen Foster’s music back from obscurity, and I imagine for the post-war people of that era, the old-time sounds were comforting among all the hustle and bustle of automobiles and “modern times”. Since the 19th century was before the recording era, in a way, you could say Wendell Hall is the finest recorded example of that century.
For historical interest, if for nothing else, I would think he would attract more interest. I think if you can get over what amounts to a form of “culture shock”, you can really enjoy the music on its’ own terms.
The evening I started this thread I had been doing one of my all too typical dawn to dusk routines – trying to put things back the way they used to be. Since the last bit of the day’s work would take me past sundown, I knocked off a little early. I went up on the front porch to relax a bit – the sun was going down over the Ponchartrain. The dog came bounding up to lay down beside me – he takes the canine companionship thing very seriously. My sweet wife brought out a glass of wine.
We have speakers set up out there, and it came to me to ask her to put on Wendell Hall – I hadn’t listened to him in a long time. Maybe because of the “old time” quality to the music, my mind just sort of drifted along – no real focus – to images and memories from before the hurricane.
The last song was “Land of My Sunset Dreams”, and it brought me abruptly back to the music. Wendell blares out the verse (that’s putting it mildly) in his best Bravura Irish Baritone: “The sun is slowly sinking, and the world is all aglow – That’s when you’ll find me thinking, of days of long ago”. He continues pummeling his way through the rest of the verse, but the second time through, he drops to a murmur, a semi-operatic device they loved in “the old times”. Think of old sheet music where you see above the bars, the words “tenderly”.
The light was almost gone when he hit his last muted falsetto, and almost on cue, the church bells from Our Lady of the Lake began to chime for evening vespers. A very fine moment, indeed.
Later that evening, I started wondering if anyone still paid much attention to this old “Ukulele Hero”, and decided to post this thread.