Charlie Ventura: I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

Charlie Ventura's late-1940s "Bop for the People" campaign featured smooth unisons blending tenor sax and trombone with the voices of Jackie Cain and Roy Kral. Here a relic waltzed by World War I doughboys with gals who loyally waited for them is bopped in the aftermath of World War II. "I'm forever blowing," sing Charlie's angels Jackie & Roy, "be-de apa-da boo-ba-da bub-bles." If this sounds like Porky Pig's "That's all, folks!" so it was. In 1949 Variety reported that "Bop is a flop." To regain an audience, 1950s jazz vocal groups would have to scrap the scat and revert to, of all things, words.