Word: grofe
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...producers do not wish to be too soon familiarized. On the current special list are also Deems Taylor's Through the Looking Glass, his operas Peter Ibbetson and The King's Henchman; George Gershwin's An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue, Second Rhapsody; Ferde Grofe's Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon and Metropolis; seven songs sung by Sir Harry Lauder. who will sing no song previously broadcast...
...Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday had left him, gone adventuring on his own, it would have upset 18th Century literature no more than jazzdom was upset last week when Ferde Grofe stepped forth in Manhattan as a conductor. For 13 years Ferde Grofe was Paul Whiteman's right-hand man. He made all the symphonicky arrangements which earned the Whiteman orchestra its serious regard. Expensive radio stars had a hand in last week's concert : enormous Vaughn De Leath, announced as the first voice to go on the air; fat Morton Downey who looked foolish singing "Kiss...
...novelty for Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofe to be performing in public. He used to play first viola in the Los Angeles Philharmonic beside his grandfather, a 'cellist, and his uncle who was concertmaster. Grofe's family in-tended him for business so at 14 he ran away, became an elevator operator, then a truckman, a milkman, a heaver in an iron foundry, a pressman in a bookbindery. When he composed a march for an Elks' Reunion in Los Angeles his family relented, let him go in for music...
Music for Grofe then came to mean playing every instrument in the band. He toured the California mining camps with one Professor Jerome who gave the miners dancing lessons. He played once in a brothel. He played in the first Paul Whiteman orchestra when jazz, unknown in the East, was starting its swift, insidious advance on the Barbary Coast. A good musician, a born improviser, he was soon mak-ing all the Whiteman arrangements. Whiteman commissioned George Gershwin to write him some music for a serious concert. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was a piano solo. Grofe scored...
...Grofe needs outside inspiration to build on. He played his own compositions last week (Metropolis, Mississippi Suite, Kmite Rockne, Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon) and just as for years he made sleazy dance tunes sound like something, so his own music was effective because of the way he varied his rhythms and instruments. Conducting, he made his big climax bigger by crouching down on his square legs, pointing a stubby forefinger. Grofe is planning an orchestra of his own now, but he is also fulfilling the destiny laid out for him by his parents. In Teaneck...