Van Alexander

Lore & Background

Van Alexander was born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman in Harlem. His mother, a classical pianist, taught him to play the piano, and he studied music at Columbia University. He led bands and arranged music beginning in high school. In the mid-1930s, he landed a job selling arrangements to Chick Webb. "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a hit for Webb and Ella Fitzgerald, and Alexander arranged other nursery rhymes for jazz, such as "Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" and "Got a Pebble in My Shoe."

In 1938, Alexander formed his own band and played in theaters into the 1940s. After his group disbanded, he and two others joined Larry Clinton's orchestra. By June 1942, he had formed another band of his own. Later in the 1940s, he was hired by Bob Crosby to work in Hollywood, where he worked extensively as a composer, arranger, and conductor for film scores. He wrote a textbook on film arrangement in 1946 called *First Arrangement*.

Alexander's film scores included several Mickey Rooney films such as *The Atomic Kid* (1954), *The Twinkle in God's Eye* (1955), *Baby Face Nelson* (1957), *The Last Mile* (1959), and *The Big Operator* (1959), as well as *13 Frightened Girls* (1963), *Strait-Jacket* (1964), and *I Saw What You Did* (1965). He provided music for television shows including *Hazel*, *The Farmer's Daughter*, *Bewitched*, *I Dream of Jeannie*, *Dennis the Menace*, and *The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters*. He arranged and conducted for variety shows starring Dean Martin, Gordon MacRae, Mickey Rooney, and James Stewart, and was involved in recording sessions with Doris Day, Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee, Dinah Shore, Kay Starr, Dakota Staton, and Paul Whiteman.

Reader's Guide

Van Alexander's significance lies in his versatile career spanning big band jazz, film scoring, and television music. His arrangement of "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" for Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald became a defining hit of the swing era and a lasting standard. His work in Hollywood included scores for numerous films and television series, demonstrating his adaptability across genres. He also contributed to music education with his textbook *First Arrangement* and mentored future arranger Johnny Mandel. Alexander's longevity—he lived to 100—and his nominations for two Emmy Awards for music direction underscore his sustained impact on American popular music and entertainment.

Did You Know?

• Van Alexander was born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman in Harlem.
• He wrote a textbook on film arrangement called *First Arrangement* in 1946.
• He was nominated for two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction.
• He died of heart failure on July 19, 2015, in Los Angeles.

Pioneering a Path in Dutch Jazz

Clara de Vries was born on 31 December 1915 in Schoonhoven, South Holland, into a Jewish family where music was woven into daily life. Her father, Arend, a textile dealer, was also an amateur trumpeter who gave Clara her first lessons. Her brothers Louis and Jack both went on to play trumpet and trombone in jazz orchestras. Louis Armstrong, after visiting the Netherlands, recalled with admiration that Clara "could play that horn."

By 1929, the teenager had won a major national soloist competition in Zandvoort, establishing her among the earliest professional female trumpet players in the country. At sixteen, she joined Russian bandleader Leo Selinsky's all-women group, the Blue Jazz Ladies, touring across Europe. She then moved to the Schirmann Jazz Girls, debuting in Rotterdam in May 1933 and touring Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. The trade paper Jazz World, in a February 1934 review, praised her improvisations as "completely pure and virtuoso," noting her solo commanded admiration from all who heard it.

By 1935, Clara had taken the bandleader's chair. On 1 August, her ensemble, Clara de Vries and the Jazz Ladies, debuted in The Hague, with Annie van 't Zelfde, Elly Marel, and Tilly Busch in the lineup.

The Alcazar Raid and the Birth of the Ghetto

After the outbreak of World War II, performing as a Jewish musician in occupied Holland became increasingly dangerous. Yet Clara de Vries continued to play, appearing with the Plus Fours in Groningen. On 9 February 1941, she took the stage at the café-cabaret Alcazar on Thorbeckeplein, a venue situated just outside Amsterdam's Jewish Quarter. She was playing in direct defiance of new Nazi-imposed regulations that barred Jewish people from public performance.

The defiance did not go unnoticed. Members of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland, the Dutch Nazi party, learned that Jewish jazz musicians were performing and stormed the venue. Assisted by German soldiers, they beat up the customers, leaving twenty-three people wounded. The violence sparked a riot in the surrounding area two nights later, during which Dutch collaborator Hendrik Koot lost his life.

In the aftermath, German authorities sealed off the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, effectively creating the city's ghetto, and installed a Judenrat to administer it. A single night of jazz at a cabaret on Thorbeckeplein had become the catalyst for one of the most devastating chapters of the occupation.

Refusal to Disappear

In the final months of her life, Clara de Vries made a choice that defined her last days. She refused to go into hiding. Instead, in August 1942, she continued to play at the Amstel Cabaret, a venue inside Amsterdam's Jewish quarter, performing music in a space that was increasingly a prison.

Her parents, Arend and Betje, were with her in those final weeks. On 16 October 1942, all three were transported to the Westerbork transit camp. Three days later, on 19 October, they were loaded onto a train bound for Auschwitz Birkenau. Clara de Vries was murdered there on 22 October 1942, at the age of twenty-six. Her parents, who had lived and died alongside her, also perished in 1942.

She had married fellow trumpeter Willy Schobben from Limburg on 20 May 1936, and the couple had no children. From 1938 until her death, she led The Rosian Ladies, an all-women jazz band that included Annie van 't Zelfde and Juultje Cambré, and she also performed with The Swinging Rascals. A 1938 radio recording of her and Cambré on the VARA station remains, a small echo of a voice silenced at twenty-six.

Echoes in Music and Memory

More than half a century after her murder, Clara de Vries's story began to find its way back into public consciousness. In 1989, Dutch filmmaker Netty van Hoorn produced the television documentary Sweet and hot music – Nederlandse damesorkesten uit de jaren '30, in which de Vries was featured among the musicians whose work the film explored. The documentary helped reintroduce her artistry to a generation that had never heard her trumpet.

In 2013, she was included in the compilation 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis, a collection of biographies celebrating Dutch women throughout history. Her inclusion alongside figures from politics, science, and the arts affirmed that her contributions to Dutch music belonged in the national narrative.

A street in Rotterdam now bears her name, a quiet but permanent reminder in a city where she first debuted with the Schirmann Jazz Girls in 1933. The surviving 1938 VARA radio clip of her performing with Juultje Cambré remains a rare auditory window into her playing, a fragment of the "hot solo" that once amazed listeners in 1934.

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