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Rudy Vallée
Hubert Prior Vallée (July 28, 1901 – July 3, 1986), known professionally as Rudy Vallée, was an American singer, saxophonist, bandleader, actor, and entertainer. He was the first male singer to rise from local radio broadcasts in New York City to national popularity as a crooner.
Vallée was born in Island Pond, Vermont on July 28, 1901, the son of Catherine Lynch and Charles Alphonse Vallée. His maternal grandparents were English and Irish, while his paternal grandparents were French Canadians from Quebec. He grew up in Westbrook, Maine. On March 29, 1917, he enlisted in the US Navy in Portland, Maine to fight in World War I, but authorities discovered he was only 15 and had given the false birth date of July 28, 1899. He was discharged at the Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island on May 17, 1917, after 41 days of active service.[citation needed]
After playing drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in bands around New England as a teenager. The popularity of the saxophone and an unexpected reply from his idol Rudy Wiedoeft prompted Vallée to perfect his technique. He paid Columbia Records to make four "personal records", which he used for audition purposes with a number of bands. From 1924 to 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where band members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist. He returned to the United States, briefly attending the University of Maine. He was initiated into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity there on December 5, 1921. He transferred to Yale University in 1924, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1927. As a Yale student he led the football band and was the lead saxophonist in the Yale Collegians with Peter Arno, who became a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine.
In 1928, following his graduation from Yale, Vallée formed the band Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. With this band, which included two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo, and drums, he began singing as a member of a trio and as a soloist. He had a thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz songs. But his singing, saxophone playing, and the innovative arrangements he wrote for his band attracted attention from a rapidly increasing number of listeners, especially young women. In 1928 he started performing on the radio, first at New York station WABC, leading his Yale Collegians Orchestra, and then on WEAF and the NBC Red Network beginning in February 1929.
He became one of the first crooners. Singers needed strong voices to fill theaters in the days before microphones. Crooners had soft voices that were suited to the intimacy of radio; the microphones, in this case, promoted direct access to "a vulnerable and sensuous interior," or in other words, "a conjured intimacy". Vallée was one of the first celebrity radio vocalists. Flappers pursued him wherever he went. His live appearances were usually sold out. Contrary to popular belief, he did not have screaming girls at his appearances. However, his voice still failed to project in venues without microphones and amplification, so he often sang through a megaphone, a device he had used when leading the Yale football band. A caricature of him singing this way was depicted in the Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella (1934). Another caricature is in Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee, which parodies him, Bing Crosby, and Russ Columbo.
In the words of a magazine writer in 1929,
At the microphone he is truly a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours softly into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody. He appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned.
Vallée had his share of detractors as well as fans when his popularity was at its height. Radio Revue, a radio fan magazine, held a contest in which people wrote letters explaining his success. The winning letter, written by a man who disliked Vallée's music, said, "Rudy Vallee is reaping the harvest of a seed that is seldom sown this day and age: LOVE. The good-looking little son-of-a-gun really and honestly LOVES his audience and his art. He LOVES to please listeners—LOVES it more than he does his name in the big lights, his mug in the papers. He loved all those unseen women as passionately as a voice can love, long before they began to purr and to caress him with two-cent stamps."
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Rudy Vallée
Hubert Prior Vallée (July 28, 1901 – July 3, 1986), known professionally as Rudy Vallée, was an American singer, saxophonist, bandleader, actor, and entertainer. He was the first male singer to rise from local radio broadcasts in New York City to national popularity as a crooner.
Vallée was born in Island Pond, Vermont on July 28, 1901, the son of Catherine Lynch and Charles Alphonse Vallée. His maternal grandparents were English and Irish, while his paternal grandparents were French Canadians from Quebec. He grew up in Westbrook, Maine. On March 29, 1917, he enlisted in the US Navy in Portland, Maine to fight in World War I, but authorities discovered he was only 15 and had given the false birth date of July 28, 1899. He was discharged at the Naval Training Station in Newport, Rhode Island on May 17, 1917, after 41 days of active service.[citation needed]
After playing drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in bands around New England as a teenager. The popularity of the saxophone and an unexpected reply from his idol Rudy Wiedoeft prompted Vallée to perfect his technique. He paid Columbia Records to make four "personal records", which he used for audition purposes with a number of bands. From 1924 to 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where band members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist. He returned to the United States, briefly attending the University of Maine. He was initiated into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity there on December 5, 1921. He transferred to Yale University in 1924, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1927. As a Yale student he led the football band and was the lead saxophonist in the Yale Collegians with Peter Arno, who became a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine.
In 1928, following his graduation from Yale, Vallée formed the band Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. With this band, which included two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo, and drums, he began singing as a member of a trio and as a soloist. He had a thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz songs. But his singing, saxophone playing, and the innovative arrangements he wrote for his band attracted attention from a rapidly increasing number of listeners, especially young women. In 1928 he started performing on the radio, first at New York station WABC, leading his Yale Collegians Orchestra, and then on WEAF and the NBC Red Network beginning in February 1929.
He became one of the first crooners. Singers needed strong voices to fill theaters in the days before microphones. Crooners had soft voices that were suited to the intimacy of radio; the microphones, in this case, promoted direct access to "a vulnerable and sensuous interior," or in other words, "a conjured intimacy". Vallée was one of the first celebrity radio vocalists. Flappers pursued him wherever he went. His live appearances were usually sold out. Contrary to popular belief, he did not have screaming girls at his appearances. However, his voice still failed to project in venues without microphones and amplification, so he often sang through a megaphone, a device he had used when leading the Yale football band. A caricature of him singing this way was depicted in the Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella (1934). Another caricature is in Crosby, Columbo, and Vallee, which parodies him, Bing Crosby, and Russ Columbo.
In the words of a magazine writer in 1929,
At the microphone he is truly a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours softly into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody. He appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned.
Vallée had his share of detractors as well as fans when his popularity was at its height. Radio Revue, a radio fan magazine, held a contest in which people wrote letters explaining his success. The winning letter, written by a man who disliked Vallée's music, said, "Rudy Vallee is reaping the harvest of a seed that is seldom sown this day and age: LOVE. The good-looking little son-of-a-gun really and honestly LOVES his audience and his art. He LOVES to please listeners—LOVES it more than he does his name in the big lights, his mug in the papers. He loved all those unseen women as passionately as a voice can love, long before they began to purr and to caress him with two-cent stamps."
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