This is Brian Marcus Decker and this is the Jolson Blog, this is the first blog dedicated to the life and musical influences of Al Jolson, "The World's Greatest Entertainer" and Friends.

120 Years and the spirit of Jolie lives on!

This Friday, May 26, 2006 will be the 120^th birthday of Asa Yoelson born in Srednik, Lithuania.  Jolson would grow up to be more than just a legend.  Even 56 years after Jolson’s death, he continues to be recognized as “The World’s Greatest Entertainer”.

• JolsonBlog.com will continue to provide engaging content on Jolson including special interviews on Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Vaudeville, book, film and audio reviews as well as a monthly trivia quiz with special T-shirt give-aways.

• This week we have Part II of a special six-part interview with Richard Grudens who has recently published an entertaining and informative book entitled, “When Jolson Was King”.

Standing in the Shadow of Love

I have just come back from the 2006 International Al Jolson Society Annual Convention in Philadelphia. Rather than provide a recap of the event, I wanted to let you know that International Al Jolson Society (IAJS) is alive and well.  The event was attended by almost 200 people. The IAJS has over 1,000 members who range from a one year old to over 80.  Yes, there was actually a birthday celebration at the convention for David Michael, the youngest member of the Jolson society on his first birthday.

While many members have never seen Jolson perform live, it is comforting that many people (including myself) were introduced to Jolson through The Jolson Story.  In fact I was about four years old when I saw the movie and I was about seven or eight before I realized that Larry Parks was only acting the part of Al Jolson. 

Even 56 years after Jolson’s death, there are many people who wonder, who will preserve the living memory of Jolson society in future generations?  Well I already mentioned this one year old from Livingston, New Jersey, but I have yet another unusual story to tell.

Mike (aka “Smikes”) works in a lumber yard in Indiana. Every week, each person in his department gets to pick out music for a day.  Mike thought it would be really funny to play a song from an old cartoon.  The song was, “Mammy” (no it wasn’t my favorite cartoon of Owl Jolson singing “I Love to Singa”).  Everyone in his department cracked up and what started out to be an inside joke 18-months ago, created more than just another Jolson fan. In fact, he drove, with his wife Jennifer, 12 hours from Greenwood, Indiana to the Jolson convention. Smikes has become an inspired 30-year old singer whose talent was recognized by several exceptional performers at the IAJS convention including Rudy Wissler (voice of young Asa Yoelson in The Jolson Story), Bill Campbell (from Aberdeen, Scotland) and Richard Halpern (Mr. Tin Pan Alley).

Standing in the Shadow of Love

Smikes with the legendary Jolie

For more information on becoming a member of the Al Jolson Society, please go to International Al Jolson Society at http://www.jolson.org/ .

Interview Part II: “When Jolson Was King”

Brian Marcus Decker: Also in your book you cover a number of important songwriters and teams including the great Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Caesar, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, Gus Kahn, Saul Chaplin, the great song writing team of DeSylva, Henderson, Brown, Harry Warren and Al Dubin. Of all the songwriters that are included in When Jolson Was King, which songwriters do you feel had the greatest impact on Jolson’s career?

Richard Grudens: I do not think you could really say that.  I think it is a collective thing.  There are too many songwriters with too many (songs). There were groups of like Henderson and Brown, there people like Harold Arlen.  Harold Arlen had so many collaborators, lyricists that he is not known as well as George Gershwin, Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.  Irving Berlin who wrote all the words and all the music, I think to all the things that he has been given credit for, but I thought that we would find the songs that Jolson or the strongest songs that we was famous for and just attach the song writers to each of the songs and that is pretty much how I did it.  Of course, I couldn’t cover every songwriter because there were many more that I give mention to but not elaborate upon because they were incidental songs and again they were the lyricists sometimes they were the musical writer, the composer and I think I just tried to collect the names that were most prominent in the area and that were attached to Jolson like we were saying before that George Gershwin did not write a lot of work or Richard Rodgers a lot of work that Jolson did.  So, we give a little background to those people because you may say George Gershwin, you may say Richard Rodgers, and the average reader may not know who it is but if you attach a name of the songs that were not associated with Jolson to their names the people get a better picture of who their songwriter was.  And, Harold Arlen for instance is a perfect example who wrote the songs to the Wizard of Oz that everyone knows.

Brian Marcus Decker: In an interview I did with Joe Franklin, the King of Nostalgia, he told me emphatically that Jolson had a strong influence on everyone including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Dean Martin and interestingly enough even Elvis Presley. Do you consider this the short list and if so who would you add to the list?

Richard Grudens: I think that every singer who has come along since Jolson had to be influenced by either Jolson or the singers that follow Jolson.  Frank Sinatra openly says that Bing Crosby was the father of his career.  Crosby gives all the credit to Jolson for his interests in becoming a performer and a singer and I just think it is an issue like a domino effect in reverse that each one influenced the other who else would have influenced them.  The only other singers before them they had to have something to go by have something to reflect upon and someone to imitate so they all imitated each other and very rarely did any of them step off.  When Sinatra imitated Crosby he found his own way after a while he said, “Well I am not going to sing like Crosby”.  I have taken the right steps I am going to sing like I want to sing and the same thing with Crosby.  He may have been interested in songs that Al Jolson did but on the other hand, he found his own way and each one of them find their own way from Frankie Laine to Perry Como to Jerry Vale and any of these singers who have succeeded have to have had someone to copy.  So Jerry Vale and Frankie Laine and all those Italian singers followed Sinatra, some even tried to sing like him, and then mostly all found their own way.

Come back next week for Part III of our continuing interview with Richard Grudens, the author of: “When Jolson Was King” where we will discuss:

• I was delighted to hear Jolson singing, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World” at the beginning of Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong. From your perspective, what did Jolson represent to the American people during the Great Depression?

• With Celebrity Profiles Publishing you covered an interesting range of musical and comic performers including Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, Bob Hope, and Connie Haines.  Can you share with us some background information on how Celebrity Profiles Publishing started?

For more information about, “When Jolson was King”, please visit www.RichardGrudens.com.

Also I encourage all of you to also visit other relevant websites and become members of the International Al Jolson Society http://www.jolson.org/ and the Eddie Cantor Appreciation Society http://www.eddiecantor.com/.