Jan Savitt

Jan Savitt and His Top Hat­ters emerged as one of the coun­try’s lead­ing or­ches­tras dur­ing the late 1930s. Savitt, who was clas­si­cally trained, had no back­ground in jazz, but his use of a mu­si­cal de­vice called “shuf­fle rhythm” al­lowed his group to swing with the best of them. This de­vice, which fea­tured a piano play­ing dou­ble time, gave the or­ches­tra a rel­a­tively fresh sound in com­par­i­son to many of the ded­i­cated swing out­fits and earned them en­gage­ments at some of the coun­try’s top spots.

Born in Rus­sia, where his fa­ther had been a drum­mer in the Im­pe­r­ial Reg­i­men­tal Band of Tsar Nicholas II, Savitt’s fam­ily im­mi­grated to the United States while he was a tod­dler. Hailed as a child prodigy on the vi­o­lin, he won sev­eral schol­ar­ships to the Cur­tis In­sti­tute in Philadel­phia, and at age 16 he be­came the youngest per­son to per­form with the Philadel­phia Sym­phony Or­ches­tra.

Early Band

In 1936, Savitt or­ga­nized his own string quar­tet, which earned a spot on a na­tional radio se­ries and won the Phil­har­monic So­ci­ety’s Gold Medal Award. These achieve­ments caught the at­ten­tion of local Philadel­phia radio sta­tion KYW, where Savitt was of­fered em­ploy­ment as mu­si­cal di­rec­tor. There he formed the Top Hat­ters and began to focus on jazz, which he called “the finest mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion we have ever per­fected in this na­tion.” The or­ches­tra later moved to WCAU and was broad­cast across the coun­try on CBS.^[1]

As vo­cal­ists, Savitt brought in CBS radio singer Car­lotta Dale and local African-​American singer Bon Bon, who had been a mem­ber of the pop­u­lar Three Keys ear­lier in the decade. Harry Roberts also sang. Dur­ing one show in 1937, Dale sang on the band’s pro­gram from her hos­pi­tal room while the or­ches­tra cir­cled over­head in an air­plane. The or­ches­tra recorded first on the Va­ri­ety label in 1936 be­fore mov­ing to Blue­bird in 1937.

In early 1938, Savitt de­cided to take his band on the road. Most of his mu­si­cians re­fused to travel, and Savitt was forced to put to­gether an al­most com­pletely new or­ches­tra. Al­ready well-​known from his radio show and record­ings, Savitt quickly began to draw crowds on the the­ater and ball­room cir­cuit. The group’s most pop­u­lar early hit, writ­ten by Savitt and sang by Bon Bon, was the highly swing­ing “720 in the Books,” so named be­cause that was the song’s num­ber in the band’s cat­a­logue.

As one of the first black vo­cal­ists to tour with a white band, Bon Bon faced much dis­crim­i­na­tion on the road. He often pre­tended to be the band man­ager’s valet in order to stay in the same hotel as the oth­ers. He re­fused to go much fur­ther, how­ever, and didn’t tol­er­ate the racism he came up against. Dur­ing a per­for­mance in Ken­tucky, after he was re­fused ser­vice by the ball­room’s soda stand, he boy­cotted the show, only ap­pear­ing on stage to sing dur­ing the thirty min­utes of the band’s na­tional radio broad­cast.

Along with Bon Bon and Dale, vo­cal­ist Dorsey An­der­son also sang with the band in early and mid-​1938. The vo­cal­ists com­bined to­gether on some num­bers as The Three Top­pers. When Dale fell ill in late Au­gust 1939, Savitt’s per­sonal sec­re­tary, Bar­bara Still­well, vol­un­teered to fill in for her with the band. Savitt was so sur­prised at how well Still­well could sing that he con­sid­ered keep­ing her on as co-​vocalist when Dale re­turned. That may or may not have had any bear­ing on Dale’s de­ci­sion to leave the or­ches­tra in Sep­tem­ber.^[2] Peggy Mc­Call briefly sang after Dale de­parted. Savitt’s vo­cal­ist de­part­ment be­came a re­volv­ing door start­ing in late 1939, with many dif­fer­ent singers com­ing and going. The or­ches­tra often had three or even four vo­cal­ists at one time, some of them mu­si­cians out of the band.^[3]

1940 to 1942

In 1939, Savitt left Blue­bird and signed with Decca, aban­don­ing his shuf­fle rhythm gim­mick. He began to pick up top jazz mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing, in early 1940, for­mer Artie Shaw sax­o­phon­ist Georgie Auld along with arrangers Dean Kin­caide and Paul We­ston. He also hired African-​American arrangers Eddie Durham and William Moore Jr. Auld left in early July after an al­ter­ca­tion with Savitt, in which Savitt ac­cused him of “blow­ing too damned loud in the sec­tion”.

Savitt was dis­liked by many of his mu­si­cians and vo­cal­ists, which led to the Top Hat­ters hav­ing a high turnover. Bon Bon be­came in­fa­mous for quit­ting and re­join­ing Savitt’s or­ches­tra nu­mer­ous times. Singer Allan De­Witt subbed for Bon Bon in early 1940, when the singer took leave due to “he­m­or­rhoid trou­ble.” De­Witt stayed only shortly, how­ever, be­fore join­ing Vic Schoen’s or­ches­tra in April, leav­ing Savitt with­out a male singer until Bon Bon re­turned. De­Witt had re­joined Savitt by June, how­ever, where he shared vocal du­ties with Bon Bon for the next few months. The Quin­tones sang with the band in early 1940 but did not record. Savitt had no fe­male vo­cal­ist at that time.

The Top Hat­ters were at the height of their pop­u­lar­ity in 1940, with Savitt mak­ing the cover of Bill­board on Sep­tem­ber 21 of that year. That same month, Bon Bon left, along with Durham.^[4] When Savitt’s Decca con­tract ex­pired in late 1940, he signed with Vic­tor, mak­ing his first sides for the label in March 1941. In early 1941, Savitt fea­tured a vocal quar­tet called The Top­pers. In July, the quar­tet’s girl singer, Jane Ward, slipped and fell, break­ing her ankle while get­ting on a horse.^[5]

Savitt re­turned to his shuf­fle rhythm gim­mick in mid-​1941. Jack Palmer was vo­cal­ist from at least April to June of that year. Gui­tarist Dick Whar­ton also sang at some point be­fore Au­gust 1941. De­Witt left in Oc­to­ber. Bon Bon then re­turned, stay­ing only a few months be­fore leav­ing in Feb­ru­ary 1942. Joe Mar­tin was vo­cal­ist by April. Dancer turned chirper Jeanne Blanche sang in early 1942, leav­ing in April to re­turn to danc­ing.

Later Bands

Savitt re­or­ga­nized in mid-​1942 and added a string sec­tion to his band. The changed earned him an­other Bill­board cover on June 27. Mar­tin, also a vi­o­lin­ist, re­mained on male vo­cals and some­times played with the band. Ac­tress Glo­ria De­Haven, then an un­known, sang in July 1942. Lor­raine Ben­son joined Savitt in No­vem­ber 1942 but quickly left, re­placed by Eu­ge­nie Baird, who stayed until early 1943. Betty Bon­ney took her place, leav­ing in May. Sax player Buddy Wel­come also sang. Mar­tin re­mained as male vo­cal­ist until at least March. Elisse Cooper re­placed Bon­ney. Shortly after she ar­rived, Cooper an­nounced her plans to marry and re­tire as soon as Savitt found a suit­able re­place­ment. Her husband-​to-be, how­ever, ended up in the army, and she put off her plans, say­ing she would stay with Savitt for six months and then go solo. Jerry Perkins was male vo­cal­ist in Sep­tem­ber.

In Oc­to­ber 1943, Savitt dis­banded in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a USO over­seas tour, with ex­pec­ta­tion that he would set­tle into a mu­si­cal di­rec­tor’s po­si­tion at CBS on his re­turn. When he dis­cov­ered that the USO would only al­lowed him an eight-​piece band on the trip, he called it off and re­or­ga­nized his or­ches­tra. Vo­cal­ists in mid-​1944 in­cluded Wel­come, drum­mer Harry Fer­raro, bal­ladeer Bob Lyons and fe­male singer Kath­leen Rea­gan. Two of Savitt’s vi­o­lin­ists were fe­male. In Sep­tem­ber 1945, Jo Ann Ryan re­placed Helen War­ren as fe­male vo­cal­ist and Harry War­ren be­came male vo­cal­ist.

Savitt con­tin­ued lead­ing or­ches­tras into the late 1940s, though his pop­u­lar­ity dropped off after 1943. When the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Mu­si­cian’s record­ing ban, which had begun in Au­gust 1942, ended in No­vem­ber 1944, Savitt’s band did not have a record­ing con­tract, and they didn’t enter the stu­dio again until 1946, when they signed to the ARA label. Vo­cal­ist at that time was Bob D’An­drea. In 1947, the band was fea­tured on the Old Gold radio pro­gram.

In 1948, Savitt found him­self in debt to the IRS. In need of money to pay off his taxes, he cut his band to eight mem­bers, call­ing it a “swing cham­ber music” unit, and went on a se­ries of one-​night per­for­mances on the lu­cra­tive hotel cir­cuit. Diane Richards was vo­cal­ist. Un­for­tu­nately, Savitt’s life was cut short dur­ing that tour when he suf­fered a cere­bral he­m­or­rhage in Oc­to­ber while trav­el­ing to a show in Sacra­mento. He was said to be 39 years old.^[6] Down Beat re­ported that Savitt’s es­tate was worth $4,500 at the time of his death.

Notes