Misfit's Manifesto The Spiritual Journey of a Rock-And-Roll Heart

Part One THE KISHKA KING OF BROOKLYN There's an old saying, God never gives us more than we can handle. What actually happens is repression: The mind shuts down so the heart won't explode. This is the story of my mother and father. In the classical era of swing, the late 1930s and 1940s, large jazz dance bands fused rhythm & blues and pop, generating a rich orchestral sway known today as the Big Band sound. Upbeat, even the ballads were optimistic. Like New Wave was to punk, swing was cleaner, smoother, offering wider audiences a sound more inclusive than the hot jazz of the previous decade. Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw were the gods of the day. Vocalists smiled graciously, musicianship was critical, phrasing was everything. A music of celebration, swing catapulted the GI Generation from Depression-era scarcity to Big Yank victory, to a promised land of economic opportunity and prosperity. Pushing upward and onward, propelled forward by the Big Band sound, our parents ushered in the American dream, a paradise of big cars, interstate highways, home ownership, suburbia, television, and a big fat baby boom. Betty Bradley was a vocalist. She told reporters she came from a showbiz family, although she was the only one who ever really made it. Her mother, Miriam, played piano for the silent theater, her aunts were original Mack Sennett bathing beauties, sirens of the silent screen. Grace was a stage actress, Ethel a drama critic, and Naomi a painter. Betty started singing in 1932. At ten, she won a spot on WINS radio. Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour was one of the most popular shows in America, known for launching successful stars. With Miriam prodding her along, Betty won several talent contests in the tristate area. The first contract was with Gray Gordon and His Tic Toc Rhythm Orchestra. Her father, Willie, a civil engineer, had to sign the papers because Betty was only seventeen. The contract included out-of-town weekly theater engagements at sixty-five dollars a week, "one-night stands" at ten dollars a night with a minimum of fifty dollars a week. Recordings paid ten dollars a day, and New York City engagements forty dollars a week. In 1939 this was nice money. Gray Gordon had a regular gig at the Edison Hotel. Betty made fun of the slow fox-trots, making silly faces onstage, and he fired her. Onstage, though, her sweet melodies were sultry, soothing, the sort that propelled fans into clouds of sentiment and feeling. Then there were the perky, upbeat tunes like "Feed the Kitty." Still, by any standard, Gray Gordon's sound was corny. Betty liked mischief, jazz and swing, so she moved on to bigger and better. Bob Chester had played sax with Tommy Dorsey in the 1930s; now he had his own orchestra. Once signed to Chester, Betty sometimes filled in as emcee. Critics declared her "a honey with a sweet delivery and the kind of personality that goes all too rarely with these popular singers. She can sing 'em hot and deliver 'em tropical." The verdict: "She should go places." Betty's blues vocals had traces of Mildred Bailey, she had a "delicately husky voice of an extremely attractive quality and two of the prettiest dimples in the business, the right one slightly deeper than the left." Bradley was known for deft renditions of standards like "I Want to Get Married" and "Hit That Mess," for "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "Do It Again." Bandleaders knew her to be reliable; she wasn't a drunk or a junkie. And she didn't run aroundshe always stuck with one man. I remember her for her ballads, for "My Funny Valentine," &aGaines, Donna is the author of 'Misfit's Manifesto The Spiritual Journey of a Rock-And-Roll Heart' with ISBN 9780679463276 and ISBN 0679463275.