Big band salutes prolific composers.

Byline: FRED CRAFTS The Register-Guard

EMERALD CITY Jazz Kings bandleader Steve Stone says the Big Band Era of the 1940s was shaped by three powerful elements:

An ongoing battle for supremacy between the venerable American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which represented established songwriters such as Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers, and the upstart Broadcast Music Inc., a division of the National Association of Broadcasters, which controlled the airwaves and sought new writers in the country-western, Latin American, rhythm & blues and jazz fields.

A two-year recording ban (1942-44) by the American Federation of Musicians, which kept big bands out of the studios but allowed nonunion singers - such as Frank Sinatra - to record as solo acts, thereby shifting consumer tastes from bands to singers. That hastened the demise of the big bands.

The establishment in 1941 of Capitol Records, whose owners took a chance on offbeat material by upstarts such as the Nat "King" Cole Trio, Ella Mae Morse, Betty Hutton, Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, the Pied Pipers, Tex Ritter and Johnny Mercer.

Out of those turbulent times emerged two gifted singer-songwriter-pianists, Bobby Troup and Matt Dennis, whose songs were so popular that many of them are still being performed today - particularly Troup's "Route 66' and Dennis' "Angel Eyes."

Troup and Dennis are particular favorites of Stone. As a musicologist, Stone has worked with both of them over the past decade in cataloging their output and writing about their achievements. Not surprisingly, both composers figure prominently in the program Stone has selected for Oregon Festival of American Music's Emerald City Jazz Kings concert on May 17 in Eugene.

Dennis, now 88 and living in Los Angeles, came to prominence as the staff composer for the Tommy Dorsey Band. Among his compositions for the band were "Everything Happens to Me," "Violets for Your Furs," "Free for All," "Will You Still Be Mine?" and "Let's Get Away From It All."

Over the years, Dennis turned out a number of popular songs: "The Night We Called It a Day," "Angel Eyes," "Compared to You," "Tired Routine Called Love," "It Wasn't in the Stars," "Junior and Julie," "Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World," "Love Turns Winter to Spring," "Blues for Breakfast," "We Belong Together," "Little Man With a Candy Cigar" and "Who's Yehoodi?"

Stone says he fell under Dennis' spell in 1953 when he bought the "Matt Dennis Sings Matt Dennis" album.

"He did all these songs as sort of an Irish tenor jazzer," Stone says. "The album's always been one in my collection that I've gone back to a lot. From the start, I thought it was something particularly good."

Troup, who died in 1999, also wrote for the Tommy Dorsey Band at one time. Among his songs are "Daddy," "Snootie Little Cutie," "Baby, Baby All the Time," "Lonely Girl," "February Brings the Rain," "Route 66," "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring," "It's Good to Want You Bad," "Please Remember," "Saipan," "Lonely Night in Paris," "It Happened Once Before," "You're Lookin' at Me," "Julie Is Her Name," "This October," "The Show Must Go On," "One October Morning," "Altar in the Pines," "Sleep Well, My Love," "The Meaning of the Blues" and "Girl Talk."

Besides playing in nightclubs, Troup was an actor who was featured in such films as "The Great Man," "Rock Pretty Baby," "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" "M*A*S*H," "The Five Pennies," "The Gene Krupa Story" and "River's Edge."

He's probably best known for portraying Dr. Joe Early on the "Emergency" TV series. He also won an Emmy Award for his 1957 "Stars of Jazz" TV series.

In dedicating the concert to the two songwriters, Stone will have his band play a number of songs by each of them: Troup's "Daddy," "Won't Someone Please Belong to Me," "You're Lookin' at Me," "The Meaning of the Blues," "Route 66' and "Baby, Baby, All the Time"; and Dennis' "Let's Get Away From It All," "Everything Happens to Me," "The Night We Called It a Day" and "Will You Still Be Mine?"

Stone explains the difference between the two songwriters this way: "Matt probably writes more carefully crafted, lyrical songs. Bobby tends to write more from a blues orientation. There's a little bit more hip in them. He was very clever.

`Bobby's tunes are probably heard more, particularly `Route 66'; Matt's are more the kind of things that would be done by cabaret singers."

To acknowledge the roles played by the ASCAP-BMI feud, the recording ban and rise of solo singers, and the emergence of Capitol Records, the band will do such tunes as "Hit That Jive, Jack," "Jersey Bounce," "Six Flats Unfinished," "Lover's Leap," "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe," "Moonlight in Vermont," "Rivette," "Four Brothers," "The G.I. Jive," "Clarinade," "The Man With a Horn," "Leave Us Leap," "Java Jive," "Harlem Nocturne" and "Caldonia."

Thinking back over the list of tunes, Stone says nostalgically, "It was quite an era."

HIT THAT JIVE, JACK

WHAT: OFAM's Emerald City Jazz Kings play songs by Matt Dennis, Bobby Troup and others; directed by Steve Stone

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. May 17

WHERE: South Eugene High School, 400 E. 19th Ave.

HOW MUCH: $14.50 to $22.50 through the OFAM box office, 687-6526

GUARDLINE: To hear examples of the concert's songs, call GuardLine at 485-2000 from a touch-tone phone and request category 3733

CAPTION(S):

Clockwise from left: The horn section of the Emerald City Jazz Kings (from left, Dave Bender, Tim Clarke and Caleb Standafer) will play songs written by Matt Dennis and Bobby Troup next Friday at South Eugene High School. HIT THAT JIVE, JACK WHAT: OFAM's Emerald City Jazz Kings play songs by Matt Dennis, Bobby Troup and others; directed by Steve Stone WHEN: 7:30 p.m. May 17 WHERE: South Eugene High School, 400 E. 19th Ave. HOW MUCH: $14.50 to $22.50 through the OFAM box office, 687-6526 GUARDLINE: To hear examples of the concert's songs, call GuardLine at 485-2000 from a touch-tone phone and request category 3733 Emerald City Jazz Kings