Savoy Ballroom (3 results)
More imagesPublished by New York: The Savoy Ballroom, 1930s 1930
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United KingdomPeter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB.
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
US$ 2,078.02
US$ 29.59 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
From the collection of Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts, with his posthumous bookplate: a striking souvenir of the fabled Savoy, "the World's Greatest Ballroom", situated on Lenox Avenue. Langston Hughes surely had it in mind when, in "Juke Box Love Song", he referred to "Harlem's heartbeat". Entirely uns…egregated from the beginning, this was a ballroom, not a night club - they came to dance. The long narrow dance floor, known to the regulars as the "Track", was not a place for the faint-hearted, it was every bit as competitive as the Savoy's dual bandstands where the Battles of the Bands or Cutting Contests took place and for which the venue became famous. Through the 1930s, until his unfortunately premature demise in 1939, the great Chick Webb, the original King of Swing, held sway with his hard-driving band, defeating all comers of the stature of Benny Goodman and Count Basie, the winners chosen by the dancers, of course. The folder contains the original table photograph, which shows a booth with four African-American couples in their thirties and a couple of hangers-on outside the booth, all of them sharply turned out and ready for a good time. And - if the debris on the table is anything to go by, with at least one champagne bottle in evidence - on their way to having one. This is a wonderfully evocative piece of jazz ephemera from the Charlie Parker and Night Club Memorabilia collection of Norman R. Saks. Ken Vail, The Norman R. Saks Collection, 292 Pink card photo-folder (238 x 278 mm), superb graphic of a dancing couple to front panel. Original silver gelatin table photograph in the window mount. A little rubbed and soiled, some minor stripping at the spine and lower edge of the front panel, short split to the window-mount, the photograph slightly mottled.
More imagesPublished by New York: Savoy Ballroom, [1935] 1935
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United KingdomPeter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB.
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
US$ 2,424.35
US$ 29.59 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
From the collection of Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts: impossible to ignore handbill for a sensational "battle of the bands" at the celebrated Savoy Ballroom, the scene of many such encounters but in this instance boasting a particularly stellar line up: Chick Webb ("I'll Kill 'Em"), Fletcher Henderson…("I'll Murder 'Em"), Fess Williams ("I'll Slay 'Em"), Teddy Hill ("I'll Slaughter 'Em"). The artwork certainly buttonholes the eyeballs: on the left, four "big guns" blast out the names of the participants and, on the right, a mock-up of a newsstand headline declaims "EXTRA - 4 Blazing Bands Declare - JAZZ WAR - Breakfast Dance - All Night Sat. April 13th. 5 pm to 8am - 50¢ Admits You to the Musical Battle Sector". A flavour of the atmosphere of these famous sessions is captured by jazz historian Lewis A. Erenberg: "When the curtain came down on Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert [of 1938], the Count Basie band and many of the other musicians present raced uptown to the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem for the momentous battle of the bands with the Chick Webb Orchestra. 'That was one hell of a battle,' recalled Buck Clayton, Basie's trumpeter. 'All concerned were putting down some heavy swing' Webb's orchestra, the house band at the Savoy all through the late 1930s and the winner of numerous battles against visiting hopefuls, aimed its 'sensational, whirlwind barrage chiefly at the ears and head with resounding arrangements'". A genuinely remarkable survival from the heyday of Swing, advertising "Four Big Guns of Dance Music in a Dynamic Battle of Music" when "Hot Licks" were pitched against "Hot Piano" and "High Notes" went toe-to-toe with "Low Notes" - as the strapline says: "What A Fight!" From the celebrated jazz ephemera collection of Norman R. Saks. Lewis A. Erenberg, Swingin' the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture, 1998. Handbill (210 x 280 mm). Printed on recto only in red and black. Neat ownership inscription (in green ink) of one "Chas Roy" straddling the printed name of Teddy Hill; remains of paper on verso (where once pasted into an album), short closed tear into lower edge, general creasing and signs of handling, overall light toning, yet remarkably well preserved.
More imagesPublished by New York: Savoy Ballroom, [1941 & 1942] 1942
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United KingdomPeter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB.
Contact seller5-star sellerCondition: Used
US$ 3,117.02
US$ 29.59 shippingShips from United Kingdom to U.S.A.Quantity: 1 available
From the collection of Rolling Stones drummer and jazz aficionado Charlie Watts: a conspicuously uncommon pair of handbills for the celebrated Savoy Ballroom, both advertising Labor Day celebrations, that for the 1942 party featuring Cootie Williams and His Orchestra and the Savoy Sultans. The jive talk strapline of the day requ…ires attendees to "Relax in Slacks, Jump in Jumpers, Swing in Ginghams, Bounce in Pajamas". The sub-title of "The Goose Hangs High Over Harlem" derives from an old expression whose rather obscure meaning may have origins in the superstition that if geese were seen flying high then evil spirits were gone and good times were at hand. What may have been uppermost in the mind of the Savoy organisers, however, was Woody Herman's 1936 vocal version of the song of the same name (also recorded by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis in 1958 as a "honker" with a tight, bouncing groove). "Special events by Afro-American community associations and the booking of Latin bands sustained the variety of the [Savoy] ballroom's dances. Fancy-dress events were the one enduring feature of the original cabaret-style entertainment that remained popular enough to survive Perhaps the reason for this popularity was the opportunity that fancy dress provided Harlemites to indulge a sense of what seemed to be the 'exotic,' such as Arabian, Russian, and Chinese nights or the annual Barn Dance on Labor Day Authenticity was not a great concern when attempting square dancing, but complaints were voiced on occasions if real bales of straw were not used to decorate the ballroom!" (Malnig, p. 137). From the celebrated jazz ephemera collection of Norman R. Saks. Julie Malnig, ed., Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, 2009. Two handbills (190 x 135 mm; 240 x 148 mm). Printed on recto only, both featuring the image of a rustic skyline, harvest moon and barn labelled "Savoy Hay Station". Some creasing and light signs of handling but in very good condition.
