I Like to Sing Hot [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 353-368]

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JOSEF SKVORECKY
remarkable Allan Sisters, a singing quartet which modelled its style on
the Andrews Sisters, and, last but not least, the foremost intellectual of
Czech jazz, Jan Rychlfk, who primarily sang in the Dvorsky band, and
played the timpani as well. He was also the composer of not only swing
pieces but of distinguished modem "serious" music (e.g. African Cycle),
and eventually came to write the first sophisticated Czech book on jazz.
Next in time came Jaroslav Jezek, another educated musician who
graduated from Prague Conservatory of Music with a piano concerto in
three parts based on foxtrot, tango, and charleston rhythms. Before he
became familiar with Ellington, Henderson, the Casa Loma Band and the
blues-his eventual major influences-he had been fascinated by Paul
Hindemith's Boston from Piano Suite, 1922, which he played at his entrance
exam at the Conservatory, and by Milhaud, Satie and, above all, by
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In other words, his way to jazz led not so
much through night clubs as through the early attempts at a fusion of jazz
with symphonic music. His band was never a dance orchestra, but was the
house band of the Liberated Theatre (Osvobozene divadlo) where the
excellent musicals by Jini Voskovec and Jan Werich were produced. So
far as this reflects on the jazz quality of the music, the theatrical function
was both good and bad for the band. They were the first to play not for
dancing but for listening only; on the other hand, the requirements of
the many musicals staged by the theatre between 1928 and 1938 made
the repertoire rather eclectic: the band played anything from hot foxtrots
to parodies of schmaltzy waltzes and tangos. Jezek's own songs, composed
to the lyrics by Voskovec and Werich, became incredibly popular and
proved as durable in Czechoslovakia as, say, Alexander's Ragtime Band
in the U.S.A. The antifascist nature of the musicals displeased the Nazis
in neighboring Germany so much that the German ambassador to Prague
demanded that the Czech government close the theatre. The President,
T. G. Masaryk, naturally did not comply. But when the Nazis came, all
three friends, Voskovec, Werich and Jezek, had to flee for their lives. They
went to the United States where Jezek died in 1942 and Voskovec and
Werich appeared on Broadway in a production of Shakespeare's Tempest
and in the popular wartime broadcasts into occupied Czechoslovakia on the
Voice of America. After the war Voskovec returned to Prague only to leave
it again for the States after the communist coup in 1948. He stayed in
America until the end of his life a few years ago, and became a distinguished,
though little known actor on Broadway and in Hollywood. Werich also
returned home after the war, and there he waged a life-long struggle with
the Communist establishment, to become the living symbol of what is best
in the Czech spirit: wit and sarcasm. Among many other things, in late
life he wrote the lyrics of what may very well be the best anti-totalitarian
jazz tune ever written, called The Good Pup (Hodne stene) which he recorded with Karel Vlach's swing band in the late Sixties.