Film archivist Dennis Nyback began collecting short music films to show Seattle audiences at the Rosebud Movie Palace in 1979. He fell in love with what he saw: celluloid 16mm time capsules of forgotten performers playing forgotten hits by forgotten composers. On Jan 8, 2012 at 5th Avenue Cinema, he takes off his film archivist hat and puts on his pop music historian hat to present a program inspired by Oregon Historical Society’s wonderful Oregon Rocks exhibit.

The Oregon Rocks exhibit comes down on March 4, 2012.

Before that happens, Dennis Nyback will present a supplementary program about Oregon’s first generation of pop musicians.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When George Olsen was discovered in 1922 by Fanny Brice in Portland, his hometown, he was leading his band – George Olsen and His Music – in the Multnomah Hotel. Fanny brought him to New York. His peppy, infectious arrangements supplied the soundtrack of the Jazz Age. A huge national recording star, he also made it into the movies – on the soundtracks to some of the most lavish early musicals.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Del Porter followed George Olsen to Broadway, appearing in Girl Crazy in 1930 and, as one of “The Foursome” in Anything Goes in 1934.  The above clip shows The Foursome (at  4:53 – 6:18) singing and playing their trademark ocarinas. Porter is the one who plays multiple instruments.

But Porter’s real contribution to American pop culture began in 1941 when Spike Jones, the drummer for Porter’s band The Feather Merchants, took over and renamed the group Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Porter remained with the City Slickers, as composer, arranger, performer and lead vocalist. Porter was from Newburg, Oregon.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of the three Oregon musicians Dennis Nyback will profile, Lee Morse is the most forgotten. She is also, paradoxically, the most prescient. Her sound, a unique amalgam of country and blues, was 40-50 years ahead of its time. Dennis Nyback, the first music historian to investigate Lee Morse as a jazz vocalist, will present a condensed version of the paper he presented on Morse at the 2010 Pacific Northwest History Conference. Lee Morse was born in Union County, Oregon.

Bottom line: If you want to learn about the musicians who pre-date Oregon Rocks, you can get a crash course on Jan. 8 at 2:00 PM at 5th Avenue Cinema

Come and get it!

Oregon Pop Machine is free and open to the public.

The Portland That Was is a public history/public art project which uses 12 films from Dennis Nyback’s archive to engage the ghosts of collective memory in site specific ways. Mack McFarland and Dennis Nyback collaborated to create twelve short videos, drawing on Dennis’ films. Damon Eckhoff designed an interface which embedded YouTubes in a Google Map, and I produced.

Probably the most satisfying part of the project was the All Night Caravan which had audiences trooping around after Dennis and Mack as they went from site to site in downtown Portland. Shift 2 Bikes’ Ken Southerland helped with this, moving Dennis’ 16mm projector and equipment from place to place sans automobile, as Dennis screened his archival films against buildings, or, in one instance, a moving Max train.

Executed guerrilla style, without permits, and with crowd sizes from 20 to 100, the All Night Caravan was a one time event, which will likely never be repeated.

For the record, it was the college interns who worked on The Portland That Was who insisted on the All Night Caravan. They were adamant, so we complied. Security guards showed up at #4, and cops at #5, but the show went on.

1. Lincoln High School, now Lincoln Hall
Address: Across from 1620 SW Park
Film: THE SCREWDRIVER, 1941
7 minutes, black & white

Mel Blanc invented the voice of Woody Woodpecker while attending Lincoln High School. Blanc provides all the character voices in this early Woody Woodpecker cartoon, which features an unusually psychotic version of the much beloved cartoon character.

2. Keller Fountain
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WE ARE THE CITY, 1972
15 minutes, color

Portland filmmaker Tom Chamberlin made this educational film for use in classrooms across the country. Two Portland mayors, Terry Shrunk and Neil Goldschmidt, have cameos, as does the Forecourt Fountain, now known as Keller Fountain.

3. Keller Auditorium
Address: across from 222 SW Clay
Film: WILKIE & McNARY KNOW THEIR FARMING, 1940
10 minute, black & white

The Republican Party chose Oregon Senator Charles McNary as the running mate to their 1940 Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie. A campaign rally was held at the Public Auditorium (the building which preceded the Keller Auditorium). That audience very likely saw this film.

4. Quest Fountain at The Standard
Address: outside 900 SW 5th
Film: THIS IS PORTLAND, 1971
8 minutes, black & white

Portland filmmaker Tim Smith was 15 when he sent up a locally produced television travelogue show “Don & Bettina” in this spoof starring his brother Duncan Smith and future Oregonian columnist Elinor Markgraf.

5. Pioneer Courthouse Square, site of the old Portland Hotel
Address: SW 6th between Yamhill & Taylor
Film: GEORGE OLSEN, 1940’s
10 minutes; black & white
Jazz age superstar George Olsen was born in Portland and played at the Portland Hotel before he was discovered and brought to New York.

6. Former Headquarters of PGE (in the Electric Building)
Address: outside 621 SW Alder
Film: IT CAN BE DONE, 1937
20 minutes, black & white

The employees of Portland General Electric made this short film to encourage Depression Era farmers to electrify.

7. Site of Northwestern, Inc., recording studio
Address: outside 415 SW 13th
Film: WHERE THE ACTION IS, 1965
8 minutes, black & white

Paul Revere and The Raiders recorded “Louie Louie” at Northwestern, Inc. in the spring of 1963. Two years later they were hosts of a daily half hour television show on ABC.

8. Low Brow lounge
Address: outside 1036 NW Hoyt
Film: BLITZ ME!, 1960’s
14 minutes, color and b & w

What may not  be apparent to people visiting The Portland That Was today: Damon Eckhoff designed the YouTube/Google Maps interface from scratch. Google followed suit a month later, making this option available to Everyman. But Damon’s mashup was his own.

Filmmaker Rose Bond helped create this “making of” featurette by serving as the off camera interviewer. Howard Brotine edited it together. Both early, and wonderfully loyal, supporters of the Oregon Cartoon Institute!

Thanks, Howard!

Thanks, Rose!

If you happen to be in LA: On Nov. 13, 2010, Dennis Nyback and I will be giving a talk about The Portland That Was at the Reimagining The Archive conference at UCLA.

Miss Lee Morse (born Lena Corrine Taylor) pioneered a wildly popular fusion of country and blues. Because her voice was so low, many people hearing her records assumed she was a man — hence the name Miss Lee Morse. Her style was so bluesy that many assumed she was African American. Whether or not her fans could correctly identify her race and gender, they loved her sound. She became one of the top selling recording artists of the 1920’s.

Born in 1897 in Portland, Lena/Lee moved with her family  to Cove, Oregon in Union County and then, in 1908, to Idaho. Between ages 11 and 22, she lived in Kooskia, a tiny (current pop. 654) isolated rural town within the boundaries of the Nez Perce Reservation.

Dennis Nyback tells me at least one historian puts the Taylor family’s move to Idaho much earlier, in 1903.

Q: How did Lee Morse get so hip way out in Kooskia?

A: Dennis and I are giving a talk on this topic at the Pacific Northwest History Conference in early November.

Here’s Lee Morse “Swinging In A Hammock”

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the way the same song was done by The Maestro Singers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Who else came out of Idaho to climb American pop charts? No, not Ezra Pound. It was Mark Lindsay who succinctly described his sound as lead singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders: “We were just a bunch of white kids trying to sound black”.

I hereby claim A Million Me’s as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon birth of its star, Miss Lee Morse.

Portland’s track record backs up Vursatyl’s statements in that feature article.  Lee Morse and Johnnie Ray both were thought by radio listeners to be be black singers. Paul Revere and the Raiders‘ big hit Louie Louie is a reggae song.

Here’s an excerpt:

Yet Portland hip-hop’s conflicts about race and identity have their flip side. One of the city’s most popular hip-hop crews, Lifesavas, includes a white DJ, Rev. Shines.

“We’ve traveled with Shines into places like Houston, where we play all-black audiences,” says Vursatyl, one of the group’s two MCs.

“People are like, ‘Whoa, you got a white DJ?’ They’re not seeing it as often as we do. It’s not accepted.”

In Portland, it’s not a big deal. “We all genuinely have in common a love for what we do,” Vursatyl says. “Race never played an issue with us getting down with Shines. … Maybe that’s because we were born and raised in Portland. We weren’t raised with the same inhibitions or apprehensions.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Portland has never been as remote – geographically, socially and spiritually – from the rest of the country, as it would like to believe.

In 1923, a young Ernest Haycox was living in Greenwich Village, writing his first western.

In 1923, a young George Olsen was appearing on Broadway in Kid Boots, with Eddie Cantor.

In 1923, a young Mayo Methot was appearing The Song & Dance Man on Broadway, opposite George M. Cohan.

In 1923, a young Lee Morse was startling audiences with her deep bluesy voice in the Artists & Models, a musical review on Broadway.

In 1923, a young Mark Rothko moved to the Upper West Side to study painting, after being upstaged in a Portland acting class by the future King of Hollywood.

I have no idea if Mark Rothko liked jazz.

If he did, whenever he felt homesick he could have taken a quick stroll down Broadway to see his fellow Portlanders George Olsen, Lee Morse, and Meyo Methot performing onstage.