Don Raye

• Born: March 16, 1909, Washington, D.C.
• Died: January 29, 1985, Encino, CA
• Genres: Vocal Music
• Instrument: Vocals, Arranger, Composer

Biography

Most songwriters of the 1930s never figured -- or even planned on figuring -- in the history of rock & roll. A few bluesmen got lucky (and Big Joe Williams and Willie Dixon got really lucky, as performers and composers); and every so often Irving Berlin's or Cole Porter's publishers would luck out when some rock or country artist decided to try their hand at something more sophisticated, but generally there wasn't a huge amount of cross-fertilization between the decades. Then there's the case of Don Raye.

Never a figure ranked anywhere near Berlin or Porter, or the Gershwins, he was, nonetheless, a working songwriter whose music helped define jive and boogie-woogie at the end of the 1930s and the dawn of the '40s; and lived to see some of those same songs covered by the likes of Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, and Foghat some 30 years later. He was born Donald MacRae Wilhoite Jr., and his father was the composer of the sentimental old chestnut "Mother." The boy was a natural talent as a dancer, winning awards for his foot work; he entered vaudeville in his teens as a song-and-dance man under the name Don Raye. After starting to write songs to liven up his act, Raye realized that his work was not only good enough to sell to others, but that this might constitute a better living than the vaudeville stage; especially as he reached his 20s, the peak decade for any dancer's ability. In the mid-'30s, he was collaborating with Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, as well as bandleader Jimmie Lunceford, and had developed a swinging style as a songwriter. Among his early hits was "Down the Road a Piece," a neat little amalgam of bluesy rhythm and vivid, catchy lyrics that was picked up by Freddie Slack and Will Bradley, and covered by everyone from Glenn Miller to Count Basie. Among the artists who enjoyed hits with Raye's songs were the Andrews Sisters, who had a particularly striking approach to "Well All Right! (Tonight's the Night)," their three voices and Vic Schoen's arrangement straddling pop and swing. In 1940, Raye went to Hollywood to work on the trio's first feature film, Argentine Nights. The movie wasn't much, but Raye, collaborating with Hughie Prince and Vic Schoen, came up with "Rhumboogie," a song that formally opened up a new phase in the Andrews Sisters' work: through it and the hits that followed, co-authored by Raye, they became the singing representatives of boogie-woogie.

Raye had a special knack for adapting slang expressions and alliterative words to catchy musical hooks: "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," for example, used the words "clink" and "clank" more musically (and memorably, and coyly, in the hands of the trio) than anyone could have thought possible. Picked up by the Andrews Sisters' three voices around Schoen's band arrangements, the results were irresistible to pop and swing audiences alike, cutting a wide swathe across the popular culture of the era. Raye was a fully integrated member of Schoen's orchestra for a time as well, going out on the road during their first tour as their leader while Schoen played trumpet and trombone with the band. His second film project with the Andrews Sisters, Buck Privates, yielded a pair of bouncy, slang-oriented classics that were among the defining songs of the 1940s: "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (which was nominated for an Oscar) and "Bounce Me Brother, With a Solid Four." Also present in the score and co-authored by Raye was an exquisite period-patriotic number, "You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith," which Frank Sinatra thought enough of to record during the 1960s, remembering the era of the '40s. Raye can also be glimpsed in the movie, playing Dick Burnette and dancing with the Andrews Sisters at one point.

Throughout the early '40s, Raye supplied a steady stream of songs to the Andrews Sisters and to dozens of films from Universal, including Hellzapoppin, In the Navy, Keep 'Em Flying, Ride 'Em Cowboy, Crazy House, and Reveille With Beverly, usually in partnership with Gene DePaul. Every so often, he would break away from the boogie-woogie and rhythm-style numbers for which was known, as with the big Western ballad "Bring Me My Saddle" in Ride 'Em Cowboy, or "I'll Remember April" from the same movie. The latter was predicted as a huge hit, but it took a lot of work from Raye just to get it into the movie -- the producers had expected boogie-woogie from him -- and from Jack Kapp at Decca Records to get it out as a pop standard, recorded by Kitty Carlisle and Bing Crosby. By 1949, when he retired from movie work and most of his songwriting activities, Raye's music had been recorded by every big-name performer in the business, including Harry James, Woody Herman, Jimmy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington.

Strangely enough, even during his retirement, Raye's music didn't disappear; instead, his songs proved among the more enduring of '40s tunes. The Andrews Sisters helped by reprising their work on Capitol Records in the mid-'50s (even enjoying a new run at the charts late in the decade with "Well All Right! (Tonight's the Night)"). What's more, a few of Raye's late-'30s and mid-'40s numbers found new life in the new generation of performers: Merrill Moore grabbed on to "House of Blue Lights" (a number Raye had co-authored with Freddie Slack) and "Down the Road a Piece," which were also picked up by Chuck Berry; and in 1964, the Rolling Stones featured "Down the Road a Piece" (probably learned from the Berry recording) on Rolling Stones Now. Acts like Foghat subsequently picked up the song, and even during the 1970s, the Flamin' Groovies and Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen were keeping Raye's work before the public with fresh readings of "House of Blue Lights"; thus making him one of the more ubiquitous '30s-'40s songwriting talents of the 1970s. In 1972, Raye received perhaps the most unexpected tribute to his career when Bette Midler took her recording of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (based on Schoen's original arrangement) back to the Top Ten on the charts, 31 years after its last appearance among bestselling songs; in the process spearheading a revival of interest in the Andrews Sisters. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

• Born: Mar 16, 1909 in Washington, D.C.
• Died: Jan 29, 1985 in Encino, California
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '40s-'50s
• Major Genres: Comedy, Musical
• Career Highlights: They Live by Night, Love at Large, The Killers
• First Major Screen Credit: Argentine Nights (1940)

Biography

Don Raye only ever made one acting appearance onscreen, though that was in the movie that put him on the map as a major Hollywood composer. It was as a songwriter that the ex-dancer made an indelible impression on American popular culture across several generations of filmgoers, all from a four-year stretch of films that he helped score during the early '40s. He was born Donald MacRae Wilhoite Jr.; his father was the author of that classic sentimental song "Mother." He was a natural talent as a dancer, winning awards as a boy, and he entered vaudeville in his teens, using the name Don Raye, as a singer and dancer. Raye first began writing songs for his own act and he later realized that his work was not only good enough to sell to others, but that this might constitute a better living than the vaudeville stage. By 1935, at age 26, he entered the forward rank of young composers, collaborating with the likes of Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin, and Jimmie Lunceford. By the end of the decade, he was under contract as a songwriter and saw early success with the song "Down the Road a Piece," which became a pop and jazz standard, covered by Freddie Slack, Glenn Miller, and a host of other stars of the period. As early as 1939, the Andrews Sisters were cutting his music, beginning with "Well All Right! (Tonight's the Night)" in early 1939, which charted as a single. Raye's words seemed to fit in perfectly with a new, bold, brash side of the trio's sound, and in 1940, he was brought out to Hollywood to work on their first feature film, Argentine Nights. Collaborating with Hughie Prince and Vic Schoen, he came up with a song called "Rhumboogie," which opened up a new phase in the trio's work: the Andrews Sisters, in their film appearances as well as on their records, became the singing representatives of boogie-woogie. Raye had a special knack for adapting slang expressions and alliterative words to catchy musical hooks which, when put in the hands of Schoen as music arranger and the Andrews Sisters as singers, made them irresistible to pop and swing audiences alike. "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" became the first in a string of seemingly ready-made hits for the trio, similar to "Down the Road a Piece" but more directly suited to the persona of the trio. It also helped to turn Argentine Nights -- hardly a groundbreaking piece of cinema -- into a hit, as people bought tickets for the songs as much as for the Andrews Sisters. Raye's early work directly with the Andrews Sisters and Schoen went beyond writing songs. He became the conductor of Vic Schoen and His Orchestra on-stage when the group made its first tour, while Schoen stayed seated in the back row, playing trumpet and trombone. This combo toured the country, both with and without the Andrews Sisters as headliners (and sometimes with Henny Youngman on the bill as well), and it got excellent reviews. For his second film project with the Andrews Sisters, Buck Privates -- which was also a starring vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello -- Raye provided the group with a pair of bouncy, slang-oriented classics that were among the defining songs of the 1940s, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (which was nominated for an Oscar) and "Bounce Me Brother, With a Solid Four." Also present in the score and co-authored by Raye was an exquisite period patriotic number, "You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith." And Raye appeared in the movie, playing the small role of Dick Burnette, and he can be seen dancing with the trio in one scene. Thus, Buck Privates had everything, excellent slapstick humor, good singing, a pumping beat on the rhythm numbers, highly topical patriotism, and a sense of humor which was embodied in the songs. It was Universal's biggest hit of 1941, and the jokes, comedy routines, and the songs even generated repeat business, which was relatively rare in those days. The studio was sold on everyone involved, including Don Raye. Throughout the early '40s, Raye supplied a steady stream of songs to the Andrews Sisters, as well as to the films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and to other Universal productions, including Hellzapoppin' and Murder in the Blue Room. Beginning later in 1941, he partnered at Universal with Gene de Paul (who later achieved fame for his collaboration with Johnny Mercer on the Broadway musical Li'l Abner) on such movies as In the Navy, San Antonio Rose, Keep 'Em Flying, Ride 'Em Cowboy, Reveille With Beverly, and Crazy House. One of Raye's biggest successes was also one of his most difficult jobs of selling a song, "I'll Remember April" -- Raye had written it after meeting a woman named Pat Johnson and falling in love with her, and she had helped him with the words; the ballad ran counter to his reputation for boogie-woogie numbers, however, and it took a lot of politicking to get it into the Abbott and Costello movie Ride 'Em Cowboy. Even then, it only caught on slowly, through a lot of help from Jack Kapp of Decca Records, a subsequent single by Kitty Carlisle, and then a recording by Bing Crosby, before it finally broke through, three years later than anyone predicted. During the mid- to late '40s, Raye and de Paul wrote the original numbers used in such movies as Samuel Goldwyn's production of A Song Is Born and Walt Disney's So Dear to My Heart and Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Raye retired from full-time movie work and most of his songwriting activities in 1949, though his songs continued to get used in movies into the 1960s, including Disney's Alice in Wonderland, José Ferrer's The Great Man, Arthur Ripley's Thunder Road, and Don Siegel's The Killers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Buck Privates Buy this Movie	Love at Large Buy this Movie	The Killers Buy this Movie	Thunder Road Buy this Movie
Alice in Wonderland Buy this Movie	The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad Buy this Movie	Ride 'Em Cowboy Buy this Movie

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