SwingDJs

So...I was going to play the song from the hellzapoppin clip last night when I was djing but tested it out before the dance started and noticed that it was too distorted to play properly. Someone told me the song is by Slim Gaillard and was wondering if there's any truth to that, if so, would anyone know the name of the song?

Harrison

lindyholic wrote:So...I was going to play the song from the hellzapoppin clip last night when I was djing but tested it out before the dance started and noticed that it was too distorted to play properly. Someone told me the song is by Slim Gaillard and was wondering if there's any truth to that, if so, would anyone know the name of the song?

Harrison

I've only seen it referred to as "Hellapoppin' Jam". I have had no luck in finding a quality recording of it... only rips from the movie, and the quality there isn't so good (as you've noted).

In the Helzapoppin' video, Slim is playing instruments and singing. He's the one that says, "If I'm not mistaken, here comes something NOW!" And if I'm not mistaken, it's Slam playing bass (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not sure whether he wrote the song or not, but he's definitely in it.

A search for 'hellzapoppin' on CDNow shows one result by Slim, on Complete Columbia Master Takes [Definitive Classics]. This was just released last month. It lists the authors as Gene DePaul and Don Raye, who wrote "Cow Cow Boogie", "Mr. Five by Five", and "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet", among many others. I'm wondering if they are just listed because they did the rest of the music in the movie, and whether the musicians assembled came up with it. I would love to get the album but it's three discs and I already own most of the material on it from Slim's Chronological Classics :\

I picked this up in DC in late spring or early summer. It is a sweet set; some of the quality of songs leaves something to be desired. hellazapoppin (I think) is basically the movie audio. You can hear the dancers hooting and hollering. The full song actually starts off very slow, it doesn't get fast for about 2 minutes.

Yeah...that's the same as the audio clip, I guess they just ripped it from the clip then, does anyone know of any good programs to rip sound from movie clips and then thus clean up the sound?

Harrison

Mike, I just ordered that set. You can borrow mine when I get it.

Sweet--- I've always wondered if we could somehow get a digital copy of the print that George Eastman House owns... But if this one is good enough, that's good enough for me.

I thought you were going to order the DVD?

ad-roc wrote:I picked this up in DC in late spring or early summer. It is a sweet set; some of the quality of songs leaves something to be desired. hellazapoppin (I think) is basically the movie audio. You can hear the dancers hooting and hollering.

I thought the song in the film was overdubbed and that they danced to a different tune. Anyone know?

Swifty wrote:I thought the song in the film was overdubbed and that they danced to a different tune. Anyone know?

I know that A Day at the Races is an overdub, I don't think that hellzapoppin is.

From what people have told me is that it was choreographed to Jumpin At The Woodside I believe, and then they overdubbed it.

Harrison

I thought the song in the film was overdubbed and that they danced to a different tune. Anyone know?

Of course it's overdubbed. That scene is made up of a bunch of clips from different takes. They didn't just go out and dance once and then leave. It took something like 2 weeks to film the Helzapoppin' dance scene.

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers were working on the set with the same musicians that appear in the film (Slim, Slam, Rex Stuart, C.C. Johnson), so I'm guessing they were actually dancing to that song.

yedancer wrote:Whitey's Lindy Hoppers were working on the set with the same musicians that appear in the film, so I'm guessing they were actually dancing to that song.

You never see the musicians and the dancers in the same scene, only the same set. Add to that the fact already mentioned that they would have danced to a recording as opposed to a live playing (multiple takes = hell to edit) it's possible (but I personally don't know) whether they danced to JATW - but they didn't automatically dance to that song, either. Depends, perhaps, whether the song was written and recorded in time for them to practice and dance to it during the filmings.

-FF

funkyfreak wrote: You never see the musicians and the dancers in the same scene, only the same set. Add to that the fact already mentioned that they would have danced to a recording as opposed to a live playing (multiple takes = hell to edit) it's possible (but I personally don't know) whether they danced to JATW - but they didn't automatically dance to that song, either. Depends, perhaps, whether the song was written and recorded in time for them to practice and dance to it during the filmings.

-FF

Add to that the fact that I was primarily referring to Norma Miller's book in which she says, "Life on the set was exciting, the scene we were shooting was the jazz scene with some of the top Duke Ellington sidemen including Ben Webster, Lawrence Carney, Slim and Slam, and C. C. Johnson on drums (tom-toms). The set jumped from the get-go."

I'm no historian or expert, I was just repeating what I'd read.