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I'm Lou Vergoni, your host till high noon Central
Time.
Flag day.
Started out of Wisconsin,
they say.
Civic Media, Radio Network.
What's the number one record of all time?
I know, I
know.
But you don't, you don't know the guy's name.
See if you do, I'll have it for you in
just a bit.
And it's his birthday.
Keep your hanging on.
Okay, all right, I'll tell you his
name.
No, not him.
The music of the stars.
That's John Scott Trotter.
How you're saying who?
John Scott Trotter, Bing Crosby, White Christmas, number one record of all time.
John Scott Trotter's birthday.
Cut your little
ditty, eh?
As winter slowly leaves the night From Kenosha's Lakeshore Breeze Is fair to Milwaukee's busy city air The budding trees begin to sway Wisconsin greets another man Springtime
There's a special kind of magic in a Wisconsin spring.
In Jamesville parks, the children play while flowers bloom along the way.
The river sparkles in La Crosse, reflecting sunlight.
Fishing boats leave harbour side in Sheboygan's waters deep and wide And Appleton hears the church bells ring Welcome in another spring The dairy farms and country lanes awaken gently after rains And every town from north to south has a hope
For springtime in Wisconsin We'll always feel like home
Music of the Star Here's an air check with John Scott Trotter Bing Crosby
The Music Maids, 1939.
When we discovered who was paying a visit to our town this week, we just couldn't help trotting out our memory microphones for a chat with John Scott Trotter Welcome back to Chicago.
Thank
you very much Chuck.
It's a great pleasure to be here I come I try to come twice a year now a good friend of mine is your fine musical director George Shorty Sir George now
and
We've known each other since 53 which is now getting to be a quite a number of years ago
And so I always come hoping to be able to be here when the big things happen.
And I'm here now to hear Das Lied van der Erde, which I did last week, and the Beethoven 9th on Friday and Saturday.
And including rehearsals, which are a fantastic privilege.
Everybody doesn't get that?
No.
And strangely enough, not strangely enough, I go right along with it.
The members of the orchestra
feel that there's such a dedicated group of musicians and they feel that they are there to work and it really is closed from the musicians.
Music of the Stars is John Scott Trotter's birthday.
On this day I'll tell you who he is and here's Perry Coma with a thought about how time passes.
That's the part of...
But somehow once upon a time It never comes again
John Scott Trotter had the number one record of all time.
But to be fair, that's Bing Crosby.
John did, Uncle John, they called him, did the arranging, instrumental work.
Born in this day, 1908, we lost him in 75, conducted the orchestra, backed up, Bing Crosby on record after record, and at all the radio shows, he did two to 54.
Did those peanuts animated TV specials with Vince Corraldy?
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Play piano in the college band.
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Join the Hell Kemp Band.
See, Johnny Burke asked him to be with the band.
Do you want to do the arranging for Holiday Inn?
One of the first independent films.
Well, you know, I didn't come out here to work, he said.
Well, would you help with the piano parts?
Well, that's what he said.
You'd think it'd be struggling for a gig.
Here's John Scott Trotter, a nice little date he called
Walk, he can walk.
For instance, I don't think that there were any Barragan, Bunny Barragan did play with the band, and I don't think there were ever any Barragan choruses on a record, you know.
And so that's a loss.
And also, when did you, now you mentioned Bing Crosby writing that number that became Muddy Waters that became Crosby's, when did you first meet Bing Crosby's?
Well, Honey was a member of the Rhythm Boys, but at that time,
You didn't know that he was Ben Crosby or going to be Ben Crosby, you know I mean and so he was just a member of the Whiteman band I mean we admired the Rhythm Boys for their you know, his Rada Viv
that they
had in Singing and but I met him in New York when we were playing at the Manga Hotel, which I was just in New York and Said the manga that I played at the Manga Hotel and this
group of people.
Manga Hotel, where was that?
You know, it's now the Taft.
They knew where that was.
Who's Big with John Scott Trotter?
a patch of land where I work like a beaver but I got an awful case of the old spring fever I want to get away but there's no use of talking if I really had my way I would just start walking
myself again say I just couldn't leave her so I'm in between my heart and the old spring fever what's the good of dreaming I guess I'm lucky yes I'm lucky my
Rain fever, get the best of me.
What's the good of dreamin'?
I guess I...
Come to think it over, what a fool I'd be.
Let no spring fever get the best of me.
Can't let old spring fever
It's a real song, Elan.
Fistural, that is.
were nothing.
There's Ella with the Chick Web Orchestra.
This is Spring's last week, next Sunday, summer.
And what a spring.
drip
drip drip
waterloo she swims all the channels waterloo she swims in red flannels she dives like an otter takes the water like a blotter waterloo
kisses delicious I love her with passion but she's always busy splashing water loo
on Sunday evening.
I know I've met my Waterloo.
Oh, Waterloo.
She drinks only water.
Waterloo.
That other stuff got her.
Her knees started sagging.
Now she's on the water wagon.
Waterloo.
Trip, trip, trip.
Spike Jonze, Frank Sinatra.
You keep going
your way I'll keep going my way River, stay away from the door I just got a cabin You don't need my cabin River, stay away from the door
Don't come up any higher I'm so alone Leave the bed in the fire That is all
Keep going my way.
You keep rolling your way.
River, stay away from the door.
Frank
Sinatra,
1943
Got a
Those guys must have invented 5-4 time, Homer and Jethro.
Had enough rain?
Don't answer that.
She swims all the channels Waterloo She swims in red flannels She dives like an otter Takes the water like a blotter Waterloo Drip, drip,
drip
I paddle up to see her revered Sunday morning In my old canoe And when I paddle home again On Sunday evening I know I've met my Waterloo
with the fishes.
Waterloo.
Her kiss is delicious.
I love her with passion, but she's always busy splashing.
Waterloo.
Drip drip.
Since you've been gone I haven't shed a tear I'll never cry my love Though every day seems like a hundred
Sit down now from some dizzy up where the crowds of raindrops bump and jostle and make ready to fall in a thing called cloud.
A liquid door opens and invites you in.
You sit down in a globe of warped rainbows.
Before you can adjust yourself, you are riding with raindrops through the glistening air.
blinded by silver and sun.
Now the colors break from everywhere, and you are bathed in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, all flashing one against the other.
And below, coming up to greet you, the arms of the grass.
You break apart on the open hand of green.
But there is only a delicious joy in you
as you watch part of your former self delude the laboring ant.
While another part of you rolls, head over heels in love with the long, curving loveliness of the green blade that bends under your weight.
Doors of chlorophyll open, and you walk quietly from cell to cell, a maze of warmth
that changes your watery identity.
And you have become a small member of an organization called a small blade of grass.
You've forgotten where the other part of you that washed the ant is now.
You see for the first time the bright green sun shining through the edge of a dark green cloud shape in the big green above.
Now walking across you and all your cellmates the ant The wet stranger is your guest Using you and all your friends as a bridge And you wonder if he remembers the bath you gave him Just a way to imagine just close your eyes
I wish you'd be here now,
but he's here.
Wait, you're...
Give it to the gentleman right over there.
The music of the stars stand by for news on
NBC.
like an apple whirling silently in space like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own down a hollow to a cavern where the sun
has never shown like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a scream like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face and the world is like an apple
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