Donald Matthew Redman (1900-64) was a bandleader, singer, songwriter and musical arranger for performers including Count Basie and Pearl Bailey.
Redman has been described as “one of the first great jazz arrangers and…a pivotal figure in the development of Swing and the Big Band style Jazz”. Which makes his one link with the MGM musical even funnier.
One of Redman’s most successful songs was ‘How’m I Doin’?’, written in 1926 and recorded by a number of artists, including Redman himself. But in MGM Stage Mother it is given a twelve-second rendition by ten-year-old Mary Ann Jackson that is arguably (certainly) the most memorable sequence in the film. She shakes her head, slaps her thigh, rotates her hips and bawls out the inappropriate lyrics in a way that only a true stage mother could love. It’s probably not what Don Redman had in mind.
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