Still Truckin' On Down The Avenue

Van Alexander's Life Set To Music While In Semi-Retirement

The following article on Van Alexander was originally published in the November 2000 issue of Jazz Connection Magazine.

Van Alexander may well be the only arranger and co-composer in the annals of American popular music to take a simple nursery rhyme and turn it into a mega-hit in its day. That song was A-Tisket, A-Tasket, recorded by drummer Chick Webb and his Orchestra on May 2, 1938, and sung by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. The song has secured for Alexander, who wrote the tune under his birth name of Al Feldman, a bit a musical immortality. 

"I think A-Tisket, A-Tasket will go down through the generations," said Alexander, 85, via telephone from his high rise condominium on Wilshire Boulevard in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. "Ella added her own special ideas to the lyrics. It was her idea to put the piece down in writing in the first place. It's a public domain nursery rhyme so that's why we were able to claim authorship of it."

A-Tisket, A-Tasket went on the charts at No.10 on June 18 of that year and hit No. 1 two weeks later. It stayed on the hit parade at the No.1 position for a total of 19 incredible weeks. It eventually became a million seller in 1950, its sales helped after it was revived in the 1944 movie, Two Girls And A Sailor, starring June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Van Johnson, with specialty numbers by Lena Horne, Harry James and Xavier Cugat. The song was first sung by Fitzgerald in the 1942 Abbott & Costello musical-comedy, Ride 'Em Cowboy.

"I had no idea at the the time that it would be such a great hit," Alexander said.

Because of the enormous success of A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Fitzgerald and Alexander were all inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1986.

"That was a big honor," Alexander said. "Unfortunately, Chick past away (in June 16, 1939) right at the height of the song's popularity. He never got to really reap the benefits of it."

Besides arranging for Webb, Alexander also led his own swing outfit for almost two years. He also arranged for the bands of  Benny Goodman, Larry Clinton, Abe Lyman, Tommy Tucker, Bob Crosby, Kay Kyser and earlier this year, a new CD by Les Brown. He also became arranger-conductor for singer Gordon MacRae. During the mid-1940's, he moved to Hollywood and arranged for film, television and records. He's scored twenty-three movies and was nominated three times for Emmy Awards for his work on various television specials.

Born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman on May 2, 1915, in New York City, the future arranger-composer-bandleader was named after his grandfather who was born in Rotterdam, Holland.

"My grandfather would say, 'If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much!'" Alexander said with a laugh.

Alexander's father owned at pharmacy at 131st and Amsterdam while his mother was a concert pianist for WEAF in New York during the early days of radio. She taught her son to play the piano at age six.

While growing up, Alexander became fascinated with the mechanics of how a song was orchestrated but it wasn't until he was attending George Washington High School in Manhattan that he first started experimenting with arranging, he said.

"I was always in awe of listening to bands on radio in those days," Alexander said. "I loved the Mills Brothers and how they imitated instruments with their voices. I never dreamed that some day I'd be writing arrangements for them. I was in a small band at the time and when I heard my first arrangement played, I was hooked and I knew this is what I wanted to do."

Also in that high school ensemble was saxophonist Henry "Butch" Stone, who later played in Alexander's big band and went on to greater notoriety after joining Les Brown and His Band of Renown in 1941. At age 88, Stone still performs with Brown today as a featured vocalist.

"Butch and I still talk on the phone to each other almost daily," Alexander said of his 70-plus-years of endearing friendship with Stone.

After graduating high school in 1933, Alexander entered Columbia University to study music, concentrating on arranging and orchestration.

It was during this time that Alexander regularly frequented the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem to hear the great black bands of the day such as Don Redman, Erskine Hawkins, Lucky Millinder and of course, Chick Webb, who was the house band at the famed dance spot.

After going to the Savoy for as long as he did, Alexander developed a nodding acquaintance with Webb that led to his first break in 1936.

"One night I got up the nerve to approach Chick and told him I had a couple of arrangements at home that I thought might fit his orchestra," Alexander said. "He told me to bring them to his rehearsal the following Friday night. I was bluffing. I didn't have any arrangements. I went home and started to write two:  Fats Waller's Keepin' Out Of Mischief and the Dixieland classic, That's A Plenty."

Alexander brought the arrangements to the Webb rehearsal which started at 2 a.m. after the band played the Savoy gig, he said.

The charts by Edgar Sampson, Webb's saxophonist and stellar arranger, were played first, recalled Alexander. It was Sampson who collaborated with Benny Goodman and Webb on the famed swing piece, Stompin' At The Savoy, so named after the famous ballroom, and who also had in writing and arranging other swing classics such as Don't Be That Way, Blue Lou and Clap Hands! Here Comes Charley!

"Chick finally got to my arrangements about 4 a.m.," Alexander said. "By that time, the guys were a little tired. Since I hadn't come home at my usual time, my mother had called the police!"

Webb liked Alexander's work and the drummer took a $20 advance ($10 a piece) on his salary from Charlie Buchanan, the Savoy manager, to pay the young arranger.

"It was my first sale and I went home on Cloud Nine," Alexander said.

Alexander soon joined Webb's band as a full time arranger. He was hired to do arrangements for the band's up-and-coming female vocalist, Ella Fitzgerald, who had joined the band less than a year earlier.

"I did all her early Decca recordings," Alexander said. "They were successful."

Some of those successful Alexander-Fitzgerald collaborations included Sing Me A Swing Song and Love, You're Just A Laugh (both recorded June 2, 1936) ; I've Got The Swing Fever Blues and Vote For Mr. Rhythm (both recorded Oct. 29, 1936); I Got A Guy (Oct. 27, 1937);  If Dreams Come True (Dec. 17, 1937); I'm Just A Jitterbug (May 2, 1938); and Everybody Step (June 9, 1938).

Alexander also contributed some outstanding swing instrumental arrangements for Webb's band including Liza, (the "B" side to A-Tisket, A-Tasket) which features the drum-playing leader.

"A number of publications at the time mistakenly gave credit for the arrangement to Benny Carter," Alexander said. "Even Benny himself will tell you that it was my arrangement."

Some of the other jazz stalwarts who made Webb's band such a powerhouse outfit at the time included trumpeter Taft Jordan and saxophonists Louis Jordan and Teddy McRae.

The date of  May 2, 1938, proved to be a double blessing for Alexander. Not only was he celebrating his 23rd birthday and working as a successful arranger with one of the top swing bands in the nation, but he would gain greater recognition for the recording made that day on an arrangement he did on a nursery rhyme that dated back to 1879.

Webb's band was playing at Levaggi's Restaurant in Boston and was broadcasting over the radio coast to coast four times a week. Alexander was writing three arrangements a week for the band and would make the weekly trek from his home in Manhattan to Boston to drop off the new music to Webb.

"One time Ella told me she had a great idea for a song," Alexander said. "She suggested that I put something together on the old nursery rhyme, 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket.'  I thought it was a great idea and told her to let me think about it. I didn't get around to it because I found I didn't have the time. Every week when I'd come up to Boston, Ella would ask about it and I kept putting her off. Finally, one week she got a little huffy and told me if I can't do it or if I didn't want to do it, she'd give it to Edgar Sampson to work on.

"I said to her, 'Don't do that! Give me one more week.' I went home and sat up all night to write it. I put it in a 32-bar frame and wrote all the novelty lyrics including the dialog between Ella and the band where they sang 'Was it blue? No! No! No!'  Ella loved my arrangement but wanted to changed some of the lyrics.  I had originally written in the middle part of the song, 'She was walkin' on down the avenue without a single thing to do.'  Ella suggested we use don't use 'walkin' on down the avenue' but rather 'truckin' on down the avenue.' The rest, as they say, is history."

Alexander and Fitzgerald worked well together from the start and became life-long friends.

"There will never be anyone like Ella," Alexander said. "Her intonation and her projection were impeccable. She never lost her innocence from the day I met her until she past away (in June1996). I guess she never realized how great she was."

Although the intermingling of black and white musicians on the same stage was not widely accepted in America during this period, however, Alexander's association arranging for a black band was not troublesome at all, he said.

"The guys were wonderful to me," Alexander said. "I even traveled with them on the bus. I really got an education. Chick was magnanimous of his praise for me.  He even introduced me to Benny Goodman and others at the Savoy. It was a blessing for me."

Through Webb's introduction, Alexander was able to do some arrangements for "The King of Swing."

"I did some things he never recorded," Alexander said. "I did  Mean To Me and some selections in early 1937 when Frances Hunt was Benny's vocalist at the time."

Alexander was even in attendance at the Savoy Ballroom the night of May 11, 1937, during the famous "Battle of Swing" pitting Goodman's outfit against the formidable Webb band.

"The consensus was that Chick won that night," Alexander recalled. "As far as individual musicianship, Benny had the better band. But Chick's band had a spirit that night that was unbeatable. Even Gene Krupa said he was cut by a better man. There were thousands of people standing in front of the bands and thousands more outside. It was a night to remember and something I'll never forget."

Because of the tremendous success of A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Alexander was approached by Eli Oberstein, head of RCA Victor Records, to form his own band.  Oberstein already had a stable of songwriting bandleaders which included Larry Clinton and Les Brown.

Oberstein offered Alexander a good deal to record on the RCA Bluebird label for $100 a week against all royalties.

"It sounded to be a very good deal at the time and so I jumped into the band leading business," Alexander said. "That's when I changed my name to Van Alexander. Eli said to me that Al Feldman and his Orchestra wouldn't sound too good on the marquise. He asked me to take my middle name, Van, and make it my first name, and to take my first name, Alexander, and make it my last name. That's how it became."

The first tune the fledgling bandleader recorded for Bluebird was his own composition of Alexander's Swinging (Nov. 3, 1938). It would be his orchestra's theme song, based on a variation of the ever-popular Alexander's Ragtime Band.

Soon after, the band's first radio broadcast was on the Fitch Bandwagon Show. They played mostly at New York City's Roseland Ballroom, the Paramount Theater and Loew's State Theater. Band promoter Cy Shribman booked the band at all the fine spots in Boston and the New England states. The band also frequented Atlantic City and traveled as far west as Chicago.

"It was a good swing band," Alexander said. "I tried to emulate the good brass sound or that 'fat' sound of the brass section that Isham Jones had in his band. I could never tolerate 'under-nourished' brass. We always had a good rhythm section with solid drummers."

Some of the more noted drummers to filter through the Alexander ranks were Irv Cottler, who later played for Frank Sinatra for many years, and a very young 16-year-old Shelly Manne.

"I gave Shelly his first start," Alexander said proudly.

Other Alexander alumni of note included trombonist Si Zentner; pianist Ray Barr, who later carved himself a long career as singer Frankie Laine's accompanist; and saxophonist Butch Stone, who joined the band in 1938 and who also sang novelty tunes.

"Butch was a big asset for my band," Alexander said. "When he was with me, he did my arrangement of A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Every time he did it, he broke up the place. When he left my band he took the arrangement with him and continued to break up the place while with Jack Teagarden and then with Larry Clinton. When he went with Les Brown, Les had the foresight to record it and it sold something like a half-million copies. I still haven't gotten paid for my arrangement!"

Some of the more prominent novelty tunes that Stone recorded while with Alexander include Got A Pebble In My Shoe (recorded Nov. 3, 1938. Alexander collaborated with lyricist Charlie Tobias, who also wrote Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree and Trade Winds); The Girl Friend Of The Whirling Dervish (Dec, 27, 1938); Hooray For Spinach (Feb. 16, 1939); The Jumpin' Jive (June 21, 1939); Hot Dog Joe (August 1939, another Alexander composition); The Yodelin' Jive (Oct. 10, 1939); On Behalf Of The Visiting Firemen and Jungle Jive (both recorded on May 10, 1940).

Between Nov. 3, 1938 and June 21, 1939, Alexander recorded 52 sides for the Bluebird label. In August 1939, Oberstein recorded Alexander on his now-defunct Varisty label, waxing 30 sides, until May 10, 1940.

When listening to Alexander's body of recorded work, it seems that his band focused more on an ensemble sound than it did showcasing individual soloists.

"We featured soloists, to be sure," Alexander said. "But to do that consistently, you had to have outstanding jazz players. If a fellow tries to plays jazz and doesn't make it, it's embarrassing. We also had some fine singers like Shirley Brown, Jane Dover and Phyllis Kenney."

During his tenure as a bandleader, Alexander could only recall one performance that he considered a disaster. In fact, it turned out to be the band's Waterloo. It  was at New York City's Paramount Theater in 1940.

"The most important element of a stage band show was the accompanying picture," Alexander said. "We had the unfortunate luck of playing with the picture, Geronimo. It was a terrible movie! We ended up only getting one week's engagement when we were looking for three or four. I could have gotten a little more healthier financially if we could have have stayed there longer."

Shortly after that Paramount Theater engagement, Alexander disbanded.

In the aftermath, Alexander also did outside arranging for the bands of Larry Clinton, Les Brown and Kay Kyser.

"Kay was the most commercial of all the bands," Alexander said. "He was a great personality. You have to have that in order to be a successful bandleader."

By late 1942, Alexander concentrated on writing and teaching orchestration to supplement his income. His first student was13-year-old Johnny Mandel, who later became an Academy Award-winning and Grammy-winning composer and arranger.

During this period Alexander began writing a how-to book on arranging, entitled First Arrangements. First published in 1945, the book was geared for novice arrangers by giving them the fundamentals of orchestration along with information about each instrument with its ranges and capabilities, he said.

"The book did very well and to this day I have well-known people coming up to me saying that they've used my book," Alexander said. "It's gratifying to hear. Along with my teaching, writing this book was a natural progression."

Some luminaries who have used First Arrangements include Quincy Jones and Elmer Bernstein, Alexander said.

Alexander's book was updated in the 1960s and was re-titled First Chart. The book is still in print and is published by Criterion Music Corp. in Los Angeles, according to Alexander.

In 1943, Alexander was ready to heed Uncle Sam's call to military service but was rerouted instead to do defense work at home. Classified as 1-A by the draft board, his orders were rescinded two days before he was to be inducted into the Army because he was married with two children, he said.

"No fathers were being drafted so I worked for the Russian War Relief," Alexander said. "They were our allies at the time and we were supplying them with meat.  I was working at a wholesale meat factory in New York. I worked the job for six months doing the 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. shift."

The following year, Alexander arranged for the Abe Lyman and Tommy Tucker bands.

"Tommy wanted to have his band swing a little more so he called me to do some arrangements for him," Alexander recalled.

The "new" sound to Tucker's outfit was short lived as fans so identified him with "mickey-mouse music" that they didn't go along with the switch. He eventually reverted to his rodent routine.

By World War II's end in 1945, Alexander teamed up with Bob Crosby, an association that opened up a whole new chapter in the arranger's life.

"Bob had just been discharged from the Navy and he and I put on a four-week show together at the Capital Theater in Manhattan," Alexander recalled. "He didn't have a band at the time so we billed it as 'Bob Crosby with the Van Alexander Orchestra.' We developed a good rapport with each other and after the show he invited me to go out to California with him to put together a band for him and to do his arranging. It sounded like a great opportunity. My wife and I talked it over and decided to make the move."

Unfortunately the honeymoon between Crosby and Alexander was short-lived. After three months, Alexander was fired due to a major disagreement he had with Crosby.

"It was a blessing in disguise," Alexander said. "I probably wouldn't have gotten out here to California if it weren't for dear ol' Bob."

Alexander's blessing came by way of The Jack Benny Show. He heard that Benny's popular Irish tenor, Dennis Day, was searching for a new arranger.  Alexander was hired and spent a full season working with Day on Benny's radio show.

"Working with Dennis helped to get me established in Hollywood," Alexander said.

During the late 1940's throughout the 1950's, Alexander also worked for Capitol Records, orchestrating for many of Capitol's recordings artists, including comedian/impersonator Mel Blanc who waxed some children's novelty sides. In 1954, Alexander also landed a spot arranging for Mickey Rooney's Hey Mulligan television show which led to scoring Rooney's next five films. He even scored the last of the Andy Hardy films.

When Rooney's show came to a close in 1955, Alexander then became the musical director for The Guy Mitchell Show.

One of the more endearing personal and professional associations Alexander had was with baritone Gordon MacRae. As musical director for the singer, they performed together at many top venues around the world and recorded thirteen albums together including Gordon MacRae In Concert (Capitol Records).

"Gordon was great to work for," Alexander said. "He had such a magnificent voice."

He also arranged for singer Kay Starr, including her popular and swinging Movin'! album from 1960 (Capitol).

While at Capitol, Alexander also found the time to produce three of his own record albums: Home Of Happy Feet (which was later re-issued as Savoy Stomp), Swing! Staged For Sound and Let's Dance The Last Dance.

Alexander said that his favorite of the three albums is Savoy Stomp, a dedication of the themes of twelve different bands that played at the Savoy Ballroom. Joining the recording session were eleven members of his original band, including Butch Stone on baritone sax; and Irv Cottler and Shelly Manne on drums.

By the early 1960s, Alexander was a respected musical name in the television industry working with Screen Gems doing arrangements for such shows as Bewitched, Dennis The Menace, Donna Reed, Hazel and I Dream Of Genie. He also scored several movies, including two Joan Crawford films, Straight Jacket and I Saw What You Did. Other movie scores include Baby Face Nelson, The Atomic Kid, and Safe At Home, starring the late New York Yankee sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.  

In 1965, Alexander embarked on an eight-year run as the arranger and assistant conductor for The Dean Martin Show. Les Brown, was the show's musical director.

"Les still had his band and with the Vietnam War still going on, he would frequently travel a lot with Bob Hope to entertain the troops," Alexander said. "Every time Les would go out of town, I would conduct for the show."

Alexander's association with Martin proved to be a wonderful experience, he said.

"Dean was a pussy cat," he said.

By working on Martin's show, Alexander got to meet many big stars that he was able to conduct for which eventually led to future work on The Dom DeLouise Show and several NBC specials including The Wacky World Of Jonathan Winters, The Gold Diggers Chevy Show and Gene Kelly's Wonderful World Of Girls, for which Alexander was nominated three times for Emmy Awards.

"I guess the industry liked my work since they nominated me," Alexander said.

When The Dean Martin Show ended in 1974, Alexander went into semi-retirement to spend more time with family and to improve on his golf game. Today, he remains active doing occasional freelance work if the project appeals to him, he said.

Earlier this year, Alexander did some arrangements for Les Brown's latest CD, Session 55: The New Les Brown CD (Jake/Doc Hollywood Records).  Released this past August, the 21-track disc features updated and freshly recorded versions of standards from Brown's library as well as Brown signature tunes of Leap Frog and Bizet Has His Day. Singer Lou Rawls guests on the project singing I Only Have Eyes For You and They Can't Take That Away From Me.

"Les is a dear friend and when he asked me to do some arrangements for his new CD, I gladly did it," Alexander said.

Alexander is a member and past-president in the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers (ASMAC), and a serves as vice-president of the Big Band Academy of America. In 1997, the BBAA presented him with its coveted Golden Bandstand Award. He was also honored for a Lifetime Achievement in Jazz by the Los Angeles Jazz Society, and in 1996, he received the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters' prestigious Diamond Circle Award. Both he and trumpeter/arranger/bandleader Billy May were inducted into the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) Hall of Fame.

With over 65 years invested in the music business, Alexander admitted that arranging has been more personally fulfilling for him than leading a band.

"Arranging went into composing and the life of these things that I've done goes on and on," Alexander said. "Some of things I've done for television are still being shown around the world."

Despite all the different musical entities that he has arranged for, writing for any particular style of music has always come pretty easy for him, Alexander said..

"I prided myself even to this day, as being able to write for whatever anyone wanted," he said.

And Alexander knows better than anyone else that a good arrangement is crucial to a song's success and that arrangers are often under-recognized for their contributions.

"A good arrangement can make a song or let it die," he said. "It's the most important element, I think. It's important first of all to the songwriter to have his song arranged properly, and of course, to the record company for its sales. Arrangers are still not given their dues for a song. Frank Sinatra did a lot for arrangers. He never performed any place or recorded anything without giving the arranger credit."

Even in semi-retirement, Alexander keeps his ear close to today's music scene and admittedly, he likes some of the contemporary sounds.

"I don't like distortion of any kind," he said. "Some of the contemporary things I can dig except rappers and real heavy metal."

This past September, Alexander and his wife, Beth, celebrated 62 years of marriage.

"As Henny Youngman used to say, 'I've been in love with the same woman for 62 years and if my wife ever finds out, she'd kill me!'" Alexander quipped.

The Alexander's have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Despite his vast successes in the music industry, Alexander remains somewhat modest about the legacy that he has given to American popular music.

"Outside of A-Tisket, A-Tasket, some of the recordings I made with people like Gordon MacRae and some of the jazz things I did may endure," he said. "I have a well-rounded musical background and the variety of music that I've done will count a little bit, I think."

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