Dancing and singing and drumming and bass playing in the rain: Part II
[nOTE: Part I can be found here.]
Singing while doing much dancing is rare for several reasons. The first is that unless the dance is very simple and slow, the dancer gets out of breath (that also can be a problem for drummers, by the way, according to what I’ve read). In a dance you can hide being out of breath somewhat, but if you have to sing you can’t hide it. What’s more, though, there is a similar problem to that which some drummers face, especially when learning: it can be hard to do both simultaneously. You won’t see it much except for very simple dancing.
As far as Gene Kelly and “Dancin’ in the Rain” goes, his singing occurs when he is basically walking slowly down the street. There’s a little singing as the dance picks up, and then there’s a long pure dance part with no singing at all, which constitutes the bulk of the number. A person’s memory – and the lyrics “I’m singin and dancin in the rain” – might make it seem as though he’s doing both quite furiously at the same time, but he is not.
Plus I’m almost positive that at that point musical numbers like that were pre-recorded and lip-synced.
Astaire used to sing – and then he would dance. He could do both, but I don’t recall him doing them together. Here’s a typical dance number. Fred starts singing while they dance very very slowly and sedately (akin to Gene Kelly’s walking at the beginning of “Dancin’ in the Rain”). Then he stops and then they really start to dance. But no more singing.
Cagney could sing and dance, too. But again, not much together. Watch him in “Yankee Doodle Dandy”:
So much fun.
But Astaire could dance and drum at the same time. And what he does with both here doesn’t seem very simple to me at all. But hey, he’s not singing at the same time:
Remarkable.
In the 1951 Tales of Hoffman, Moira Shearer dances to the Doll Song, while ostensibly singing coloratura. Too bad it’s not on YouTube.
Astaire and Rogers… dancing, prancing, and vixen.
Old English *fyxen (implied in adjective fyxan), fem. of fox (see fox (n.) and cognate with Middle High German vühsinne, German füchsin). Solitary English survival of the Germanic feminine suffix -en, -in (also in Old English gyden “goddess;” mynecen “nun,” from munuc “monk;” wlyfen “she-wolf,” etc.). The figurative sense “ill-tempered woman” is attested from 1570s. The spelling shift from -f- to -v- began late 1500s (see V).
– etymonline.com
Traditional sense and sensibility.
Actually watched this within the last month, however they did it it’s quite a masterpiece.
I have never seen the Astair clip, that was as you said remarkable. Such rhythm in the dance and in the drum playing. He looked like we was really enjoying himself too.
People forget that Cagney was a Hoofer. And Hope too.
Fred a few years later:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LVyuVuWNa2M
My first time seeing that Astaire performance as well. I know he practiced his routines to perfection but no amount of practice can yield that level of perfection without an astonishing amount of control of their body. That is without a doubt the most amazing performance I’ve ever seen.
Well, not quite Inna-ga-vida
Oh such a fool, please take my hand in forgiveness, “in a ga da vida” Baby.
You know a musician is important when other musicians give him a shout out in their work
The following lines are from “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” by Maschwitz and Sherwin (1939)
Our homeward step was just as light
As the tap dancing feet of Astaire
And like an echo far away
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
I know ’cause I was there
That night in Berkeley Square
Here is Vera Lynn performing the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7AtkiJ3wA
If you do not know who Vera Lynn was, you should read her obituary.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/18/dame-vera-lynn-obituary
She died last year at the age of 103. During WWII her songs such as “We’ll Meet Again”, “The White Cliffs of Dover”, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “There’ll Always Be an England” were an important support of the morale of the British people and its armed forces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Lynn
From a more mundane, technical point of view. Putting a microphone on a moving dancer was close to impossible and a sound studio with a hard dance floor typically had nasty acoustics. It made a lot of sense to pre-record a vocal component. Also, the video was typically shot in shot segments so merging a lot of vocal segments performed in a changing environment would have been virtually impossible. Plus the stage hands are always making noise.
The realism is all fake.
I’m a big Astaire fan. He was a truly remarkable performer and human being in my opinion. He was always his own person, refusing to allow his “life story” to be made by Hollywood because he knew it would be inadequate and/or just wrong. At an advanced age he learned to ride a skateboard and was an inductee into US Skateboard Hall of Fame. He broke his wrist skateboarding in his driveway.
Whether you’re a fan or not (and I’m not, particularly, although I have plenty of respect for the man’s abilities), it seems that the absolute master of simultaneous live singing and dancing was Michael Jackson. Part of the shock of his early death was that most people probably assumed his cardiovascular fitness was at Olympic-athlete-level.
Most folks are not aware that that iconic Irish tough guy / gangster, James Cagney, started his performing career as a hoofer.
He is most famous for his gangster roles in “Public Enemy,” “Angels With Dirty Faces,” “The Roaring Twenties” and “White Heat,” among his many other non-gangster / bad guy roles.
It was in “Public Enemy,” where he shoved a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face.
I saw all these films on TV when I was a kid, plus several other of his films.
His gangster flicks inspired all his fans to imitate him and say, “you dirty rat.”
Speaking of dancing and singing at the same time;
One would be hard pressed to find a more difficult and exhausting dance/singing routine than “Whipped Into Shape,” from the Broadway musical “Legally Blonde.”
The actors on stage are not lip synching; they are actually jumping rope/exercising – real hard – while singing.
I can’t imagine the preparation and fitness needed to perform this routine.
Gene Kelly was suffering from a very bad cold/flu when the “singing in the rain” scene was shot; he had a 100+ degree fever.
John Tyler:
I watched that number from Legally Blonde on YouTube. What I think is happening is that the lead singer/dancer is obviously very fit, but is mostly yelling rather than singing, and there are long pauses where she rests. She’s also mainly exercising rather than dancing, and although that’s hard it’s not really dancing. As far as the group chorus dancers are concerned, my guess is that, as with many dancing choruses in musicals, the dancers are augmented by singers (in the wings; sometimes they are standing onstage without dancing, although in this case not on stage) ) so that the other dancers are more or less lip-syncing. I don ‘t know for sure, of course.