ANNETTE HANSHAW: acc. by Charlie Spivak, t / Tommy Dorsey, tb / ? Jimmy
Dorsey, bar / vn / ? Rube Bloom, p / Tommy Fellini, g. New York, March
11, 1930.
Annette Hanshaw - The One I Love Just Can't Be Bothered With Me - 1930
This week’s Snapshot in Prose captures Cladrite Radio Sweetheart
Annette Hanshaw at the height of her fame. The year is 1935, and she’s
already sold more than 4,000,000 records, has declined stage and screen
offers, and claims to be mulling over the marketing of her personal
method for reading music without any training. Alas, just two or three
years later, she’ll give up recording and performing altogether, opting
instead for a sedate married life with her husband, Pathé Records
executive Herman “Wally” Rose.
And just FYI, Hanshaw’s nephew, one Frank W. Hanshaw III, says that
her birth certificate says she was entered the world not in 1910, as the
story below claims, but in 1901. Oh Annette, you deceitful minx!
It's an Art
DO YOU KNOW that the best known and highest paid artists on the air
never studied music in their lives and wouldn’t know a cadenza from a
condenser? ‘S a fact! If you studied the lives of Bing Crosby, Kate
Smith and Annette Hanshaw with a microscope, you’d find that their music
educations have been sadly neglected.
Do you think they worry over the fact that their technical knowledge
of music is so limited? No, and you wouldn’t either if you had their
incomes. Their stories only go to prove that you don’t have to have
special privileges to get places in radio, singing, music. And the same
thing is probably true in every other field of endeavor.
Let’s take the career of Annette Hanshaw, for instance. She was born
in New York City in 1910. Her father instilled in her a natural love of
music and she believes she could sing before she could speak. Anyhow,
she was able to sing the choruses of 16 popular ditties of the day
before she was 16 months old, and she’s added at least a song a month to
her repertoire ever since.
Annette liked to sing always. Most of us are the same way. She
surely had a natural flair for singing but since it was so effortless
for her she never dreamed that some day it would pay substantial
dividends.
She thought a career necessarily meant hard work, so she ploughed
through school and took various courses, specializing in portrait
painting. She aspired to be a commercial artist. She entered the
National Academy of Design in New York and showed remarkable promise.
She went to parties often during the days when she was a popular
young debutante and it was at one of these gatherings that an executive
for a record company heard her warbling in her own, carefree way. He
listened while she sang song after song to rounds of applause and many
encores. At the end of the evening he handed her his card and suggested
that she call at his office.
More as a lark than anything else she made a voice test at the
recording executive’s request. She was having loads of fun and enjoyed
it immensely when they put her in front of an orchestra while the wax
disc whirled. She had had such a good time that she was almost ashamed
to accept the check they handed her.
All of this took place less than seven years ago and since then her
phonograph recordings have sold more than 4,000,000 copies, and she has
managed to lose all hesitancy about accepting checks.
Throughout this entire procedure—and even today—she never read a
note of music. She couldn’t. What she could and did do, though, was
thoroughly memorize and cue every song she sang.
Although she has had many stage and screen offers, Annette has
consistently refused to accept any of them because she wants to
concentrate on her radio broadcasting and phonograph recording. She once
even refused an offer from the great Florenz Ziegfeld, himself.
She rehearses in the evening, drinks lots of water before and during
broadcasts, dictates all replies to her fan mail herself and
scrupulously autographs all pictures herself.
Someday she may patent her method of reading music. Annette says it
is really very simple and anyone ought to be able to learn the system in
ten easy lessons.
*******
The HUGE Annette Hanshaw list........
Daddy won't You please come Home? (from "Thunderbolt") 5-31-1929
Ain't cha 11-27-1929
Ain't he sweet 1-28-1927
Big city blues (From the Fox "Movietone Follies of 1929") 4-5-1929
Black bottom 9-12-1926
Medley: Blue evening-You heavenly thing-what's the reason I'm not pleasin' you (very poor quality) unissued private acetate 1936
Body and soul (from "Three's A Crowd") 10-7-1930
Calling me home 10-20-1926
Carolina moon 1-11-1929
Cherie, I love you 10-20-1926
Chiquita 8-31-1928
Do, do, do 11-26-1926
You know I know ev'rything's made for Love 11-26-1926
Fit as a Fiddle 12-2-1932
For Old Times' Sake 6-12-1928
Forget-Me-Not 8-20-1929
That's just my way of forgetting You 9-13-1928
her first recording - 1925 Audition medley (What can I say Dear
after I say I'm sorry/Bye Bye Blackbird/The day that I met You/Don't
want Nobody but You?/I wonder what's become of Joe?/Has anybody seen My
Gal)
Here or There 2-2-1927
Here We Are 7-24-1929
He's the Last Word 1-28-1927
Ho Hum 5-9-1931
I cover the Waterfront 6-3-1933
I get the Blues when it Rains 4-30-1929
I like what You Like 6-1927 w/ Joe Venuti
I love a Ukelele 4-17-1930
I think You'll like It 10-28-1929
I want to be Bad (from "Follow Thru") 3-14-1929
If I'd only believed in You 10-22-1926
If You Can't Tell The World She's A Good Little Girl Just Say Nothing At All 11-1926
If You See Sally 2-26-1927
I'm a Dreamer (but aren't we all) (from "Sunny Side Up) 12-4-1929
I'm All Alone in a Palace of Stone (The "Peaches" and Browning song) 11-1926
I'm Following You (from "It's a Great Life") 2-11-1930
(I'm Cryin' 'Cause I Know) I'm Losin' You 1-1928
I'm Somebody's Somebody Now 6-1927
In a Great Big Way (from "Hello Daddy") 1-17-1929
In The Sing-Song Sycamore Tree 1-1928
I've got a Feeling I'm Falling 5-9-1929
I've got it (but it don't do Me no Good) 5-5-1930
My inspiration is You 11-8-1928
Have you ever seen a Dream Walking?
Ain't that a Grand and Glorious Feeling 6-1927
All I do is Dream of You
Aw, Gee! don't be that Way, Now 4-1-1927
You must have been a Beautiful Baby (private acetate)
My Bill-(excerpt from Maxwell House "Showboat" Radio Program 6-12-33)
Blue Moon (just piano/voice...private acetate, later recording '30s)
Button up your Overcoat (from "Follow Thru") 3-14-1929
Can't help loving that Man of Mine (excerpt from Maxwell House "Showboat" 6-12-33)
Ever since time Began 2-20-1931
Get Out And Get Under The Moon 5-1928 OR 8-10-1928
Give me Liberty or give Me love (From "Broadway Singer") 11-22-1933
Goodnight my Love
He's funny that Way
How about You
If I had a Boy like You 6-16-1930
If I had a talking picture of you (from "Sunny Side Up") 12-4-1929
If you want the rainbow (you must have the rain) 10-19-1928
I Gotta' Get Myself Somebody To Love 12-20-1931
It's the Talk of the Town 9-1-1933
I Wanna Be Loved By You (from "Good Boy") 11-22-1928
I have to have You 11-27-1929 w/ the Ben Selvin Orch.
Happy days are here again (from "Chasing Rainbows") 2-11-1930
Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love 2-25-1930 w/ the Sam Lanin Orch.
A Precious Little Thing Called Love (From "The Shopworn Angel") 2-20-1929
Mine all Mine 11-23-1927
It All Depends On You 1-28-1927
It Was Only A Sun Shower 9-8-1927
Just Like A Butterfly 4-29-1927
Kiss Your Little Baby Goodnight 11-26-1926
Lay Me Down To Sleep In Caroline 9-13-1926
Lazy Lou'siana Moon 3-10-1930
Lets fall in Love (From the Film) 2-3-1934
Little White Lies 7-21-1930
Lonely Nights in Hawaii 8-10-1928
Love Me Tonight 8-18-1932
Lover come back to Me (from "The New Moon") 3-15-1929
Maui chimes 1-11-1929
Maui girl 8-31-1928
Mean to me 2-20-1929
Miss Anabelle Lee 8-1927
Moanin' low (From the "Little Show") 8-29-1929
Moon song 1-25-1933
My baby knows How 10-22-1926
My Bill (excerpt from Maxwell House "Showboat" radio program 6-12-33 ** see note above)
My idea of Heaven 4-1-1927
My Sin 4-30-1929
Nothin' 4-14-1927
One sweet letter from You 11-26-1926
Pale Blue Waters 3-10-1930
Rosy Cheeks 4-29-1927
Say it isn't So 9-12-1932
Six feet of Papa 9-12-1926
So Blue 4-1-1927
Sweet Lei Lahua 11-8-1928
That's why I love You 9-13-1926
That's you Baby 4-5-1929
The One in the World 5-9-1929
The right kinda Man (From Motion Picture "Frozen Justice") 10-19-1929
The Way I Feel Today 7-21-1930
There must be Somebody Else 11-23-1927
Thinking of You 11-23-1927
Tiptoe through the Tulips with Me (from "The Gold Diggers Of Broadway") 9-20-1929
True Blue Lou (from "The Dance Of Life") 7-24-1929
Ua like no a Like 6-4-1929
Walkin' my Baby back Home 2-20-1931
Was it a Dream 6-12-1928
What do I care what Somebody Said? 4-14-1927
When the world is at Rest 1-17-1929
Who's that Knocking at my Door? 9-8-1927
Wistful and Blue 4-14-1927
Would you like to take a Walk? 1-20-1931
You're the Cream in My Coffee (from "Hold Everything!") 11-8-1928
You're the One I Care For 12-20-1931
You wouldn't fool me, would You (from "Follow Thru") 3-15-1929
The song is Ended 11-23-1927
Who'oo You-oo Thats Who! 6-1927
Loveable and Sweet (From Motion Picture - "Street Girl") 8-29-1929
Under the Moon 6-1927
Are you Happy 10-1927
It was so Beautiful 8-16-1932
Manhattan Serenade (another later private recording)
Say it isn't so 9-12-1932
My future just Passed (from "Safety In Numbers") 6-16-1930
My Man
Nobody cares if I'm Blue (from "Bright Lights") 7-21-1930
Sing a little low down Tune 6-22-1933
Sonny Boy (from "The Singing Fool") 11-8-1928
So this is Love
Sweetheart Darlin' 6-3-1933
Telling it to the Daisies (but it never gets back to you) 5-5-1930
There Ought to be a Moonlight Savings Time 5-9-1931
What I wouldn't do for that Man (From "Applause") 9-16-1929
When I'm Housekeeping for You (from "The Battle Of Paris") 12-4-1929 OR 12-13-1929
You're just to sweet for words, Honey O' Mine 2-20-1931
