Birth of the Blues

presents the Screen Guild Players. The Screen Guild Player Tonight, Birth of the Blues. The Starring Players, this is Bing Crosby. This is Jenny Sim. And this is Johnny Mercer. Tonight, Lady Esther presents the Screen Guild Players in a radio presentation of Buddy De Silva's famous

Paramount Picture, Birth of the Blues. It stars Bing Crosby as Jeff Lambert, Jenny Sims as Betty Luke Cobb, and Johnny Mercer as Memphis. Tonight's story is dedicated to the musical pioneers of Memphis and New Orleans, who favored the hot over the sweet.

Those early jazz men who took American music out of the rut and put it in the groove. Jeff Lambert, who was one of those pioneers, tells our story. Hear that tune? It was a favorite with the colored folks down along the New Orleans levees when I was a kid about ten or eleven.

I used to take my clarinet and sneak out of the house to join him. My dad had fallen me and dragged me home because jazz wasn't respectable in those days. In fact, it wasn't respectable until a good many years later.

It was a long, tough struggle to get it accepted. And a good hunk of the struggle was finding musicians. I tried to organize a band at play Dixie Land style, but we couldn't get a hot cornet player until Memphis hit town and landed in jail.

When I heard about him, I rounded up the rest of the band. We went down to the local pokey. Anybody in that jail from Memphis? What part of Memphis? I'm looking for a man. He just got in this morning from Memphis. He plays low down corner. That's it brother. Oh boy Jeff, that's the man.