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‘Parisomania’? Jack Hylton and the French Connection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
Like many figures in popular music, the British dance bandleader and entrepreneur Jack Hylton (1892–1965) has been largely forgotten. Through concert tours of France and nostalgic recordings with Chevalier, Hylton forged a connection which peaked at the Paris Opéra. Despite his large French-related repertory, which included ‘jazz’ arrangements of Stravinsky's Mavra, Ravel's Boléro and chansons, his American-influenced style was ultimately international. If his obsession justified the quip of ‘Parisomania’, there was reason in his madness.
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- Copyright © The Author 2008
References
Much of the archival and interpretative work for this article was undertaken in spring and summer 2007 at the Jack Hylton Archive (JHA), Lancaster University, supplemented by research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (especially the Collection Rondel, with its many press cuttings on Hylton). For this stage of the Jack Hylton and France Project, I am grateful for funding from Lancaster University and PALATINE, for the generous response of Helen Clish and Liz Fawcett at Lancaster's Rare Books Archive, which houses the Hylton collection, and for the excellent contribution of my research assistant, Adam Greig. I should also like to thank Derek Scott and the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, which helped me to clarify some of the ideas presented here.Google Scholar
1 L. R., ‘Deux artistes américains [sic] “bien parisiens” sont décorés par le gouvernement français’, Paris Presse (24 August 1930), International News Cuttings (Jack and Band), 1 March 1930–15 August 1930 (JHA): ‘C'est que Jack Hylton […] est atteint de “parisomanie”. Cette maladie terrible ne se saigne pas mais on a cherché à la lui rendre plus douce par la pastille violette qu'il porte à sa boutonnière. […] Hope Hampton et Jack Hylton sont officiers de l'Instruction publique! C'est très juste … et très parisien.’ (All English translations are my own.) The ‘Officier’ award comprised a violet rosette and ribbon worn in the button-hole, hence the pun. Hope Hampton sang with Los Angeles Opera and made her French début at the Opéra-Comique.Google Scholar
2 A more conservative estimate, closer to three million, was given by Alasdair Fenton, quoted in Peter Faint, ‘Jack Hylton: His Life in Music’ (M.Phil. dissertation, Lancaster University, 1998), 25.Google Scholar
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52 See Milhaud, Darius, ‘Les ressources nouvelles de la musique (jazz-band et instruments mécaniques)’, L'esprit nouveau, 25 (July 1924; unpaginated), Études (Paris, 1927) and Ma vie heureuse (Paris, 1974, repr. 1987); and Maurice Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music (1928) and ‘Take Jazz Seriously!’ (1928), A Ravel Reader, ed. Arbie Orenstein (New York, 1990), 40–9, 390–2. More generally, see Perloff, Nancy, Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of Erik Satie (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar
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55 Vedey, Band Leaders, xi.Google Scholar
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63 Contemporary with this is a fascinating review of Milhaud's La creation du monde: ‘it was amusing to watch [Ernest] Ansermet, the conductor, getting worked up into rhythmic fervour until his back view became more animated than Jack Hylton's. In point of fact, Milhaud's jazz is rhythmically more ingenious than the authentic brand of that commodity.’ ‘Broadcast from Within’, Liverpool Post (10 January 1928). ‘Jack's back’ became a classic pun of the Hylton years; the comment about the relative rhythmic simplicity of Hylton's style is not unfair, and ‘commodity’ has a significant role, though there was more to the band than this alone.Google Scholar
64 ‘Czar of Jazz’, The People (22 January 1928); ‘Jack Hylton's Arranger’, The Era (25 January 1928). On the classic–jazz interaction, Lucas made his views felt in ‘What I Hate in “Jazz”'. He conceded (toeing Hylton's early line) that jazz can be vulgar, but he was much more damning about ‘pseudo-classics': tear-jerkers lacking musical value. Ironically, he placed Rachmaninov's C# minor Prelude, later to be arranged by Yorke, in this category.Google Scholar
65 Charles Gombault, ‘Le merveilleux Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Parissoir (8 March 1928).Google Scholar
66 Hylton, ‘Taking or Inflicting Pains’, 513.Google Scholar
67 [Writer unknown], ‘Our Band Room’, Rhythm (28 May 1928), 5. This was still the case for Parissoir (31 May 1930), when the impact of Grégor's band was only just being felt.Google Scholar
68 Notice in The Performer (18 April 1928); similar coverage in Encore (5 April 1928).Google Scholar
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70 Louis-Léon Martin, ‘Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Paris-midi (6 January 1928): ‘Jack Hylton est merveilleusement spectaculaire. A proprement parler, il extériorise et dessine l'harmonie, et il le feit dans les proportions, aveccet humour, ce mouvement, cette fantaisie, ce rien en excès qu'exige le music-hall. […] Son jazz évoque et parodie tour à tour.’ By contrast, a minority of critics still denigrated jazz and engaged in racial prejudice, Hylton himself bizarrely being dismissed as ‘le petit nègre': ‘La rentrée de Jack Hylton et ses boys à Paris’, Volonté (14 October 1929). On Hylton and changing perceptions of jazz, see Jackson, Making Jazz French, 94–5, 109–12.Google Scholar
71 ‘Paris Notes’, Dancing Times (May 1929). For ‘Bye bye blackbird’, see Appendix, no. 5.Google Scholar
72 Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La musique: Jack Hylton et ses “boys” au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Les concerts’, Excelsior (7 April 1930).Google Scholar
73 Ibid.: ‘deux soirées d'apothéose’; ‘cette compagnie de virtuoses’; ‘Je ne prétends pas édifier l'esthétique du jazz sur les ruines de la musique dite sérieuse. Mais j'estime que nos mélomanes ont besoin de voir comment il faut aimer la musique.‘Google Scholar
74 Ibid.: ‘les clowneries supérieures de ces acrobates instrumentaux’.Google Scholar
75 Ibid. : ‘C'est une sonorité, c'est un rythme, c'est un accord qui les fait naître. […] le prolongement ironique et plaisant d'une inflexion de la mélodie, les cocasseries de timbres constituent souvent une critique très fine de la personnalité d'un instrument, les pitreries des saxophonistes […] Voilà de la parodie musicale de premier ordre.’ This critique strongly echoes a review of Fréjaville, ‘La semaine au music-hall’, Comædia (7 January 1928), Collection Rondel, Ro 16443.Google Scholar
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86 Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 93.Google Scholar
87 Klein, ‘Borrowing, Syncretism, Hybridisation’, 179.Google Scholar
88 ‘Valencia’, to whose vulgarity Ravel related when writing Boléro (see Joaquín Nin, ‘Comment est né le Boléro de Ravel’, La revue musicale, 19 (December 1938), 211–13 (p. 213)), held much currency for Hylton. Several arrangements exist: Yorke's version (V1), Williams's reading and Lucas's witty ‘Valencia variations’ in the styles of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Offenbach and Sullivan (both V3), plus Ternent's reusage in Jubilee Cavalcade of 1935 (J2). (Whiteman also later arranged ‘Valencia’.) See Appendix, no. 40.Google Scholar
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91 Parts 1 and 2: HMV B-3686/K-6058 (Souvenirs de Chevalier); Parts 3 and 4: HMV K-3065.Google Scholar
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94 ‘M. Chevalier Arrives in Manchester; ‘Maurice Chevalier Medley’, Daily Mirror (14 December 1930); ‘Chevalier Records HMV's Latest Issue’, Kinematograph (11 December 1930).Google Scholar
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97 ‘From Opera to Jazz: Covent Garden as a Dancing Palace – 2,000 Revellers’, Daily Mirror (26 February 1925), in JHCU970002. Hylton had also played to an estimated 7,000 in the Albert Hall on 19 December 1926.Google Scholar
98 Programme: ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra, mardi 17 février [1931], en soirée, à 21 heures’: JHPR9701267.Google Scholar
99 This study was delivered as a research seminar entitled ‘Hylton and Stravinsky's Mavra at the Paris Opéra: Jazzing a Classic?’, in the series ‘Directions in Musical Research’ hosted by the Institute of Musical Research (IMR), London (October 2007), and will be published in due course.Google Scholar
100 Quoted in ‘Jack Hylton's 9,000 Mile Tour’, Daily Sketch (29 May 1930). Stravinsky and Hylton's band appear to have met up in May 1930.Google Scholar
101 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London, 1962), 82n.Google Scholar
102 ‘Jack Hylton's Jazz Guiding Stravinsky’, Variety ([New York], 4 June 1930); Lew Davis, ‘Warned against Music!‘, Melody Maker (July 1930). By late summer seemingly nothing had happened, which prompted Hylton to write to Stravinsky (10 September 1930) requesting an update: see Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft, 3 vols. (London, 1982–5), ii (1984), 123n.Google Scholar
103 JHA holdings; annotations inside are in Ternent's hand.Google Scholar
104 Our special correspondent, ‘A Gramophone Rehearsal, Stravinsky and Hylton’, Daily Telegraph (29 January 1931).Google Scholar
105 Stravinsky and Craft, Expositions and Developments, 82.Google Scholar
106 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1996), ii, 1539ff.Google Scholar
107 Stephen Walsh, The Music of Stravinsky (Oxford, 1988), 115.Google Scholar
108 Ibid.Google Scholar
109 Band member Les Carew described his experience in rehearsing the piece as ‘nightmarish’: ‘How are the Mighty …?’, Nostalgia, 10/40 (October 1990), 19–21 (p. 19). For the saxophonist ‘Chappie’ d'Amato, it was also ‘a bit nerve-wracking’; see Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 122.Google Scholar
110 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 67.Google Scholar
111 The Concert-Goer, ‘Jazz at Paris Opera’, Continental Daily Mail (18 February 1931); Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Excelsior (21 February 1931): ‘Le Mavra de Strawinsky […] ne provoqua qu'un ennui assez visible.’ On the jazz crowd, see especially Emile [Vuillermoz], ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Excelsior (24 February 1931). ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Le monde musical (28 February 1931): ‘Cette exécution fut échec total. Un échec parfaitement mérité.’ (See too Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La musique: Les concerts’, Excelsior, 23 February 1931) Pierre Leroi, ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, L'édition musicale vivante, 37 (February 1931), 12–13: ‘La confusion de genres aboutit toujours à un résultat mauvais.’ Sources: Jack Hylton Continental Tours, 1930–1935 and Collection Rondel, Ro 586. A thoughtful, balanced response is found in Ray Ventura, ‘Le triomphe du jazz: Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Jazz-Tango, 2/6 (1 March 1931), n.p., where it is suggested that Jacques Rouché, the Opéra's director, may have urged for the band's programme to depart from its norm.Google Scholar
112 ‘Sixteen Hyltonisms: Jack Hylton and his Orchestra’, Gramophone (March 1931).Google Scholar
113 Clément Vautel, ‘Le jazz à l'Opéra’, Cyrano, 350 (1 March 1931): ‘VERDI: Qu'entends-je? Quel est ce vacarme affreux? […] GOUNOD: C'est le sabbat… Méphisto est au pupitre. SAINT-SAËNS: Vous ne trouvez pas que cela ressemble à du Reyer? MASSENET: Mon cher Saint-Saëns, c'est de vous, cette délicieuse musique-là? BIZET: Messieurs, on profane le temple … C'est un sacrilège!’ The Frenchman Ernest Reyer (1823–1909) was an overrated Wagnerian opera composer. Interestingly Hylton had already arranged Massenet's ‘Méditation'.Google Scholar
114 An advertisement placed by the Parisian record company Le Chant du Monde promoted La belle époque: 14 Chansons 1900, in a programme for ‘Le Ballet du Moulin Rouge’ (18 April–1 May 1954): JHPRIN970013. The precise nature of Hylton's involvement here is unclear.Google Scholar
115 Photograph of Hylton captioned ‘Dans la Légion d'Honneur’, L'ouest (12 January 1932). See too, Le Loup de Den[tell?]e, ‘Cours et leçons’, Comædia (14 January 1932); ‘Jack Hilton a le ruban rouge’, Indépendant ([Pau], 14 January 1932). The honour was reported in papers such as the Républicain orléannais (20 January 1932), Dépêche de Rouen (12 January 1932) and Petit Dauphinois ([Grenoble], 20 January 1932).Google Scholar
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117 L.-R. Dauven, ‘A l'Empire, la rentrée de Jack Hylton’, Ami du peuple (édition du soir, 3 January 1932): 'Les mêmes qualités techniques, un métier sûr, un sens du rythme étonnant et, surtout, cette invention humoristique. […] C'était toujours la perfection, mais c'était toujours la froide perfection.’ JHA and Collection Rondel, Ro 15718. At this time, Hylton reduced the visual component of his shows, which proved a mistake.Google Scholar
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119 ‘Hylton's Tactful Rule Pacifies Musicians’, Variety (19 January 1932).Google Scholar
120 [G. P.], ‘Un jazz qui feit jaser’, Le bavard (16 January 1932): ‘La nouvelle que le chef du jazz Jack Hylton avait le ruban rouge a donné l'espoir à tous les musiciens et les artistes de music-halls, à condition qu'ils ne soient pas Français.‘Google Scholar
121 ‘Hylton Scores New Success in Paris: A Super Kinema Engagement’, Melody Maker (February 1933), in Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, May 1931–June 1933; ‘Au Rex’, Le petit journal (25 January 1933), in Foreign Press Cuttings, 1932–3.Google Scholar
122 Gilbert Chase, Ellington review, Continental Daily Mail (31 July 1933), in Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 1933–4. On Hylton, Ellington and politics, see Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz, 252–3.Google Scholar
123 ‘Le hot Feast for Frenchmen’, Melody Maker (15 December 1934); ‘Hylton Conquers Paris Again’, Melody Maker (January 1935), in Jack Hylton Press Book, 1934–5. Hawkins was not, however, allowed into Germany with the band: evidence of the increasingly intolerant Nazi régime. For Hylton's later views on jazz, see Hylton, ‘The High Finance of Jazz’.Google Scholar
124 Jack Hylton, ‘Christmas with the Band’, Loughborough Echo (14 December 1934).Google Scholar
125 Jack Hylton, ‘Jazz Music: Is the Expression Objectionable?‘, Midland Daily Telegraph (6 March 1931).Google Scholar
126 As kindly pointed out to me by crossword enthusiast Nigel Simeone, ‘Branga’ is an anagram of Ravel's friend Lucien Garban. That Garban might have been the arranger of this somewhat compromising version is most intriguing.Google Scholar
127 Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 87.Google Scholar
128 See Woodley, Ronald, ‘Style and Practice in the Early Recordings’, The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer (Cambridge, 1000), 213–39 (p. 236).Google Scholar
129 See A Ravel Reader, ed. Orenstein, 305–6.Google Scholar
130 See ‘Gracie to Sing at BEF Again’, Manchester Dispatch (5 March 1940), in Jack Hylton Cuttings, 1938–40.Google Scholar
131 ‘Concert in Paris’, Edinburgh Evening News (12 April 1940); ‘Duke of Windsor will Hear Gracie’, Nottingham News (13 April 1940).Google Scholar
132 Daily Mail reporter, ‘Gracie was “Entente” Hit’, Daily Mail (17 April 1940); Ernest Betts, ‘This was Grade's Night at the “Opéra”‘, Manchester Daily Mail (17 April 1940).Google Scholar
133 Grace Wyndham Goldie, ‘Critic on the Hearth. Broadcast Drama: The Troops – Gracie’, Listener (2 May 1940).Google Scholar
134 Nott, Music for the People, 209.Google Scholar
135 Hylton, ‘Taking or Inflicting Pains’, 513.Google Scholar
136 See Wood, Ean, The Josephine Baker Story (London, 2000), 103.Google Scholar
137 Jackson, Making Jazz French, 10.Google Scholar