Providing an inspiration for active retirement, the ex-Harlem Renaissance chorus girls profiled in Been Rich All My Life are still shaking booty while most of their contemporaries can only shuffle their walkers.” — Dennis Harvey (Variety)

Been Rich All My Life

“The Silver Belles are bold, brash, and gorgeously awake, and their willingness to live large is thrilling.” —Melissa Levine (Village Voice, City Pages)

A lot has already been written about Heather Lyn MacDonald’s uplifting documentary, Been Rich All My Life (2006, First Run Features), which opens in Minneapolis this week at the Riverview Theater. Briefly, the film tells of the resurgence of five Harlem showgirls— Berte Lou Wood, Cleo Hayes, Marion Coles, Fay Ray and Elaine Ellis — who danced on the famed stages of the Apollo Theater, the Cotton Club, Small's Paradise and Connie's Inn to the beats of the legendary bands of Cab Calloway, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington and more. In 1985, this quintet of tappers (now in their 80s and 90s) reunited as the Silver Belles, and MacDonald’s film follows their trials and thrills, as well as performances at venues from nursing homes to Carnegie Hall. Along the way, the film reveals some inside views of Harlem history, show business and the dancers’ strike that led to the birth of the American Guild of Variety Artists, the first integrated performers' union. Sort of a Rocky on Forty-Second Street meets Norma Rae?

Pete Whitman © Andrea Canter

What has not been mentioned in the press is the film score by Minneapolis saxophonist/ composer Pete Whitman and music production by local pianist and arranger Benny Weinbeck. In fact it is likely that many will not even be aware that the soundtrack to the film is not all music of the era big bands, but that about 25 minutes of the 80-minute film's score is in fact music composed in the 21^st century! Such is the success of Pete Whitman in recreating the big band sound through careful analysis of the original period scores and modern-day recording wizardry that allows a small ensemble to become a full orchestra.

Pete Whitman’s experience working with the orchestras of Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey and Woody Herman as well as his well-established chops in composition and arranging made him ideally suited to the task of creating a score that would work well with the live clips from the 30s and 40s. A graduate of jazz studies at North Texas State University, his other credits on tenor, alto, soprano, and flute include performing with Randy Brecker and Jack McDuff as well as with numerous touring artists at Twin Cities venues. In addition to leading his 10-piece X-Tet, sextet “Departure Point,” Quintet, and Quartet in the Twin Cities, Pete is a member of the JazzMN Big Band, Wolverines Classic Jazz Orchestra, Laura Caviani Sextet, the sax quartet JazzAx and a new trio, Blue Chi (with local aces Dean Magraw and Jay Epstein). A dedicated educator, Whitman heads the Woodwind and Brass Department at St. Paul’s McNally Smith College where he teaches saxophone, improvisation, and arranging.

Due to the expense involved in including the actual recordings of the big bands of Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington and others, producer Heather MacDonald turned to old friend Pete Whitman to write original music that would recreate the sound and feel of the big band era, the music that supported the careers of the Silver Belles. Notes Whitman, former Twin Citian MacDonald is “an old friend of my family. I had been sending her my CDs over the years and she was aware that I had performed with such swing era ensembles as The Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Minneapolis-based version of the Wolverines… The cost for using actual period recordings by the likes of Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong et al. is extremely high. Since this project is a labor of love, produced on a very small budget, Heather found that it would be cheaper to hire someone to compose melodies and arrange for ensembles that sounded like they were from the twenties, thirties and forties. And I did use pubic domain tunes when it seemed suitable as well.”

But Pete felt he did not have the production experience needed for film scoring such a project. “Since my background was primarily as a composer/ arranger and I had almost no technical experience with film scoring, I discussed the project with Benny Weinbeck. Benny had experience scoring for videos and he encouraged me to take on the project.” The result was a true collaboration among music partners. Notes Whitman, “I wrote or arranged about 90% of the music, worked out the time code to fit the music to the film, contracted the musicians involved, etc. Benny coordinated the recording, mixing and generally oversaw the technical aspects of transfering the music to the film. He also composed a couple of the pieces employed in the film. We recorded the project in the recording studio that Benny manages—Fur Seal Studio.”

In particular, the music of the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra served as the model from which Whitman developed his score. He notes, “As I researched music for the film, I realized that one of the important bands to the dancers was the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra. Sy Oliver, one of Lunceford's primary writers, wrote a tune for the chorus line dancers at the Apollo Theater called “For Dancers Only.” Being a big Lunceford fan myself, I decided to model many of my tunes after some of the Lunceford recordings of the late 30s. “Le Jazz Lunceford,” “Hittin’ the Bottle,” “Flaming Reeds” and “Screaming Brass” were some of my favorites. I had transcribed the Lunceford version of “Blues in the Night” for the Wolverines to play when I first moved back to the Twin Cities in the late eighties.” Other sources of inspiration included Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Earl “Fatha” Hines, early Count Basie, John Kirby (“one of the best combos of it’s time with very little recognition”), and Glenn Miller. “My arrangement of Bizet’s “Farandole” was definitely a copy of the “Volga Boatman” arrangement Glenn Miller used to perform,” notes Whitman. And he also used “a cut from one of Laura Caviani’s CDs, As One. For each scene, MacDonald provided examples of music, and “we often modeled our compositions or arrangements off of those examples.”

So how did a small band become a full orchestra on the sound track? “The studio ‘orchestra’ was made up of all local players. We overdubbed players to simulate a big band. We also recorded in such a way as to simulate the sound of the old recordings of the 1930s.” For this project, Whitman brought in a stellar band of Twin Cities veterans--Dave Karr (tenor, bari and clarinet), Dave Graf (trombone),Dave Jensen (trumpet), Kent Saunders (guitar), Gordon Johnson (bass) and Phil Hey (drums and percussion), along with Whitman (soprano, alto, tenor, bari and clarinet) and Weinbeck (piano).

And when you listen to the music of Been Rich All My Life, you will quickly forget that you are not listening to Lunceford, Basie and Ellington. Had he been around in the 30s, undoubtedly we now would be looking back and listening fondly to the sounds of the Pete Whitman Orchestra. From our 2006 perspective, we can at least sit back and let the Silver Belles kick up their heels while we enjoy the best swing era soundtrack to come out of the 30s, 40s, and, oh yes, the 21^st century.

”I’m going to dance, dance, dance ‘til I can’t dance no more, and I’m going to live, live, live ‘til I die!” –Bertye Lou Wood, age 96

Been Rich All My Life will be shown at the Riverside Theater at 3800 42^nd Avenue South in Minneapolis, September 14-21. Showtimes: September 14 at 7:15/9:15 pm; September 15-20 at 5:30 pm. 612-729-7369.

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