Special to the AmNews
Few African-American classically trained musicians are as obscure as Will Vodery. But this composer, arranger, conductor and orchestrator wasn’t unknown to the great impresario Florenz Ziegfeld of Ziegfeld Follies fame or the pre-eminent composers George Gershwin and Jerome Kern, to mention but two.
Vodery was an indispensable collaborator to these giants and to several others who relished his musical genius and his way of making their compositions all the more brilliant and significant. In the world of music, the role of the arranger is a behind-the-scenes job, and Vodery personified this invisibility.
Other than the fact he was born William Henry Bennett Vodery in Philadelphia Oct. 8, 1884, very little is known about Vodery’s early years and where he obtained his vast musical knowledge. We do know that by the time he was 10 years old, he was playing the organ at his church. Later, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a student, he was the orchestra’s pianist.
Headlining entertainers, including singer and comedian Bert Williams and George Walker and vocalist Aida Overton, often acquired material from Vodery. During World War I, he served with the 807th Pioneer Infantry Regiment, which was not a combat unit, but an engineering outfit that went to the front and built bridges.
Some of his earliest musical ventures occurred in Harlem at the Lafayette Theater in 1923, where he worked in tandem with such future stars as Leigh Whipper and Florence Mills in shows that were mainly presented to raise funds for the struggling artists.
The vocal and choral arrangements he contributed to Jerome Kern’s “Show Boat” are perhaps his most memorable works, though musicologists are full of praise for his craftsmanship with the Ziegfeld Follies and with Gershwin, particularly on “Blue Monday” and “Concerto in F.” “Blue Monday,” according to music historian David Schiff in his book “Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue,” was a one-act jazz opera that Vodery orchestrated. It was a “disaster,” Schiff reported, and had only a single performance in the “Scandals of 1922.” While the music was fairly pleasant, the scenario was a ball of confusion, and it “was hard to tell if it was meant to be taken straight, or as a parody,” Schiff concluded.
Vodery was far more successful with Gershwin on the concerto. The composer proudly proclaimed the orchestrations were his, although, according to several experts, it was clear he had the assistance of Vodery and other orchestrators.
Although he was primarily a highly sought after arranger and orchestrator, Vodery was also a talented composer, and the music he wrote for a show called “From Dixie to Broadway” in 1924 is exemplary of his ability. Not only were the vocal and choral arrangements for Kern’s “Show Boat” developed by Vodery—and this must have included his work with Paul Robeson during his unforgettable rendition of “Old Man River”—he devised the overall stage production for the show. His ingenuity was showcased again when the show appeared on the London stage in 1927, as well as in the revival in 1932.
When the movie version of the show reached the screen, Vodery’s trademark was once more evident, even if it was embellished by other arrangers. Nonetheless, he received no screen credit. During much of this creative period, he had an office at the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square, which made his services easily accessible for Broadway producers. Meanwhile, with Will Marion Cook, another notable musician of his day, Vodery wrote “Swing Along” in 1929.
At a time when there were a number of independent Black film companies hoping to cash in on the latest technology, Vodery, along with Robeson, Noble Sissle and others, founded the Tono Film Company. However, it didn’t last long and left little record of achievement.
When the incomparable James P. Johnson, the stride pianist of Harlem who had such a tremendous influence on Gershwin, composed his musical comedy “Keep Shufflin’,” he hired Vodery to orchestrate it for him. In many respects, it was a sequel to Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s groundbreaking “Shuffle Along” that is deemed the musical that inaugurated the famed Harlem Renaissance.
According to James Weldon Johnson in his standard-bearer study of Harlem in “Black Manhattan,” Vodery’s jazz arrangements for the Ziegfeld productions were virtuosic as they were for many other Broadway musicals. “In this field,” Johnson wrote, “Mr. Vodery stands among the foremost. He is at present on the staff of arrangers of the Fox Film Company.” This was written in the mid-1930s.
A noted authority on the Harlem Renaissance, Bruce Kellner observed that Vodery arranged the music for Lew Leslie’s musical revues “Blackbirds” from 1926 to 1939. Earlier in his career, Vodery joined Leslie in the “Plantation Revue,” featuring Florence Mills, along with her husband, U.S. Thompson, Edith Wilson and Shelton Brooks, himself a prolific composer.
On Nov. 18, 1951, Vodery died in Farmingdale, N.Y., only a few months before Metro-Goldwyn Mayer released the Technicolor film version of “Show Boat.” To be sure, watching the film would have probably only brought back memories of what might have been at another time in another place.