“Would Ja”
The Buffalodians
(Columbia 723-D mx 142553) August 20, 1926
“She’s Still My Baby”
The Buffalodians
(Columbia 723-D mx 142554) August 20, 1926
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two sides from the final recording session of a jazzy band based out of Buffalo, New York.
On “Would Ja,” an incredibly catchy tune, one can hear two brief “scat” vocals by the band’s pianist, the yet-to-be-famous Harold Arlen, then known as Harold Arluck.
According to this brief article, courtesy of The Syncopated Times, the band also performed under the names The Yankee Six and The Yankee Ten. Be advised, however, that according to discographer Brian Rust, the name Yankee Ten was also used as a recording pseudonym for recordings by various band leaders such as Fred Rich, Lou Gold and others.
The only Yankee Ten recordings I can find listed that were, in fact, made by the Buffalodians/Yankee Six are “Baby Face” and “How Many Times.” Those two recordings were issued on various dime store and small independent labels. Some are credited to The Yankee Ten, others to the Yankee Six, and others to pseudonyms such as Six Black Dominos, Master Melody Makers, Lou Connor’s Dance Orchestra, and others.
I recall seeing in Eddie’s collection records by either the Yankee Six or Yankee Ten. Once I come across them again, I will definitely check to see if they were among those recorded by this band.
I enjoy coming across recordings by obscure, local bands. According to one source, in 1924 alone, there were over 900 professional jazz and dance bands in the United States. That number, of course, was constantly changing as bands came into and out of existence. Some of these bands were local to a particular city. Others were so-called “territory bands” that traveled regionally – which, for the musicians, was an often grueling existence requiring them to travel hundreds of miles a day on the era’s still-primitive highways between “one-night stand” type engagements.
Only a tiny fraction of these bands had the opportunity to make records. A few were able to make at least one or two recordings thanks to the major labels’ periodic field trips with their portable recording equipment to various regions of the country. And the quality of the regional bands captured by such field recordings is often amazing. But, for most of them, the only reminders of their existence are old newspaper and trade publication mentions and, on occasion, local radio station program schedules.
One can only imagine what truly outstanding performances must have taken place – enjoyed by the fortunate few who were among whatever audience was on hand before immediately and forever vanishing into the ether.
“I Never Knew What The Moonlight Could Do”
George Olsen And His Music; Bob Borger, Fran Frey, Bob Rice, vocal
(Victor 20337-A) November 12, 1926
“I Don’t Mind Being All Alone”
Art Landry And His Orchestra; Al Marineau, vocal
(Victor 20337-B) November 1, 1926
Here is a record from the Edward Mitchell collection featuring two dance bands that are largely forgotten today but were quite popular and made a lot of records during the 1920s.
I think both of these recordings are pleasant. The arrangement of “I Don’t Mind Being All Alone” takes a sudden shift in direction about 2:15 into the recording, which I think makes it interesting. It also includes a sudden, brief “hot” passage that pops up from out of nowhere.
George Olsen’s band was, by far, the most successful of the two. It remained popular and made records throughout the early 1930s thanks to prominent radio broadcasts.
In 1936, bandleader Orville Knapp was killed in a plane crash. Knapp’s band played “sweet” music with odd, though sometimes pleasant, arrangements and musical gimmicks. Though only recently formed, the band was attracting public notice and making records for Decca. Knapp had previously been a member of Olsen’s band, and Olsen was a fan of the Knapp band’s arrangements.
With the help of Knapp’s widow, Olsen took over the band, kept its unusual style, and eventually branded it as “George Olsen and his Music of Tomorrow.” He kept that band going until 1951, but it never achieved the level of success of his 1920s band.
After Olsen retired from the music business, he operated his own restaurant in Parmaus, New Jersey for many years where his recordings from the 1920s and 1930s were played as the background music. I don’t know what the food was like, but it certainly would have been fun to visit.
“I’ve Got The Girl” (Played at 78 rpm)
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 18, 1926
“I’ve Got The Girl” (Played at approximately 75 rpm)
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 18, 1926
“Idolizing”
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Betty Patrick, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 15, 1926
Neither Crosby nor Rinker were credited on the record’s label.
The recording also plays back at the incorrect speed – when played at the standard 78 rpm, the performance is faster than it was in real life. For that reason, I have also included a copy of the recording slowed down to approximately 75 rpm, the speed that, in my opinion, seems to be the most accurate.
The record did not sell well and almost immediately fell into obscurity – as did bandleader Don Clark. It wasn’t until the early 1950s that even the most expert Bing Crosby fans and record collectors became aware that Crosby had made the recording.
Crosby and Rinker began performing together in their hometown of Spokane, Washington, in the early 1920s. In 1925, they traveled to Los Angeles in search of greater opportunities. Through the contacts of Al Rinker’s sister, Mildred Bailey, they obtained work and, eventually, a contract with the vaudeville circuit. Mildred Bailey would go on to become a famous and legendary jazz vocalist in her own right.
In October 1926, Crosby and Rinker were performing at the Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles when they were brought to the attention of bandleader Paul Whiteman, who was performing nearby at the Million Dollar Theater. Whiteman offered them a contract at $150 a week each – equivalent to approximately $2,662 in today’s currency, an enormous sum for a couple of young, unknown, and relatively inexperienced vocalists. The job with Whiteman was to begin a few weeks later once their contract with the vaudeville circuit expired.
While they were waiting for their current contract to run out, Columbia Records was in Los Angeles on a field trip with its mobile recording equipment. Among the artists scheduled to record was bandleader Don Clark, a former saxophone player with the Paul Whiteman orchestra, whose band had succeded Earl Burtnett’s as the house band of the prestigious Biltmore Hotel. Clark invited Crosby and Rinker to participate in the recording session.
While it would be the first recording session of Bing Crosby’s lengthy recording career, it turned out to be the very last recording session of Don Clark’s brief recording career. Earl Burtnett soon reclaimed his position at the Biltmore, and Clark quickly faded from the music scene.
Crosby recorded another song during the recording session, “Don’t Somebody Need Somebody?” But that recording was never issued.
At the time, it was very common for band vocalists not to receive credit on a record’s label and merely be acknowledged with the phrase “with vocal refrain,” though interestingly enough, Clark’s vocalist Betty Patrick did receive credit for her vocal on “Idolizing” on the record’s flip side.
The recording of “Idolizing” does not seem to have the issue of being recorded at an incorrect speed. But it does have a certain harsh sound quality that I have observed on a number of early electrical recordings that Victor made in 1925 and into 1926. Victor and Columbia both used Western Electric’s system for their electrical recordings. I rarely hear similar harshness on Columbia’s electrical recordings from that period. I am not sure what caused such harshness on Victor, but whatever it was, their engineers were able to correct it as I have never heard it on their recordings after 1926. Had I not seen this record before I heard it, I would have immediately guessed it to be on an early electric Victor.
After joining Whiteman’s band, Crosby and Rinker were teamed up with Harry Barris to form the highly successful Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys. The trio performed on a number of the band’s records and appeared in the 1930 film King of Jazz.
In 1930, the Rhythm Boys left Whiteman and went out on their own before joining the Gus Arnheim Orchestra, which had regular radio broadcasts from the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. As a result of the radio exposure, Crosby became increasingly popular and left the Rhythm Boys to pursue a radio, film, recording, and, eventually, television career that endured for decades.
An article in the March 25, 1953 issue of Variety announced the discovery of Crosby’s rare first recording. The article explained that, in 1950, Edward J Mello and Tom McBride published a 100-page discography, Crosby On Record, with a complete listing of all of Crosby’s recordings. Mello had a copy sent to Crosby and received a letter of acknowledgment from Bing’s brother, Larry Crosby, which indicated that it had omitted Crosby’s first recording. Bing had recalled making a record for Columbia with Don Clark’s band just before he joined Whiteman, but Larry Crosby did not provide any information about the recording’s title.
It took three years of searching by Mello and several record collectors to finally come across a copy of Don Clark’s recording of “I’ve Got A Girl” and confirm that Crosby was on the vocal. Mello subsequently received a letter from Larry Crosby further confirming that Bing was, indeed, on the recording.
It makes sense that the recording would have fallen into such obscurity. Crosby and Rinker were unknown and were not credited on the label. Nor would they likely have had much interest in drawing attention to a record they made on Columbia after penning a contract with Paul Whiteman, whose recording affiliation, and by extension, that of Crosby and Rinker, was with Victor. Compared with their later recordings, this one comes across as almost amateurish. Furthermore, Don Clark’s band was not well known beyond the West Coast and disappeared soon after this recording session.
My effort to research background information about this record highlights some of the pitfalls of writing about history.
Some sources say these recording sessions occurred in a temporary studio set up in a converted warehouse at Sixth and Bixel in Los Angeles, while others say it took place in the Biltmore Hotel ballroom. Reputable discographies I consulted merely state the location as Los Angeles. I did a few quick Google searches on some of the other artists who also made records during Columbia’s October 1926 Los Angeles field trip to see if there was any mention of the recording sessions, but nothing immediately came up.
Some sources suggest that the incorrect speed on “I’ve Got A Girl” was intentional on the part of Columbia. Others suggest that it was simply a recording session error.
The February 1953 issue of Record Changer announced the discovery of the record but incorrectly stated that it was Harry Barris who accompanied Crosby and that the song they performed was “Idolizing,” which, in fact, was performed by Betty Patrick.
I came across several sources, including some who are recent, that describe the “Idolizing” side of the record as being an instrumental.
Clearly, none of those writers had actually listened to the record itself. In their defense, however, listening to the record in the 1950s was not something a person could do quickly or easily if they or any record collectors they were acquainted with did not personally have a copy.
I came across various playback speeds for the record being offered as correct, ranging from 70 rpm to 75 rpm. Based on my experimentation, I think 75 rpm, plus or minus some fraction, is most likely correct.
However, the incorrect speed required me to decide what speed to use for the copy I will add to Radio Dismuke’s playlist. While I personally think it sounds better played at 75 rpm, I have decided to use the standard 78 rpm. While 78 rpm clearly was not the accurate speed of the actual performance, it is the speed that those who purchased the record and who owned a copy during the next couple of decades would have listened to it at. The average record buyer would not have been skilled in determining a record’s correct speed by pitch and would not have had any particular reason to question the standard playback speed.
What I find interesting about records like this is how, over time, thanks to advances in technology, they have become increasingly less obscure and more accessible than they were even in the years immediately following their release.
The advent of the LP record and, later, the CD made it much more economical for vintage recordings – at least the ones that various gatekeepers thought there might be sufficient demand for – to be reissued. And, of course, the advent of the Internet has made it possible for collectors such as myself and organizations such as Early 1900s Music Preservation to make them available without worrying about whether any gatekeepers are concerned if there is any pre-existing demographic or market for them. It is now possible to make vintage recordings available for no other reason than the belief that a recording deserves to be available.
“Stop Time”
George Hamilton Green, xylophone with orchestral accompaniment
(Operaphone 51126-B) January, 1920
George Hamilton Green was one of the foremost xylophone artists of the early 20th century. He had a large output of records, recording on his own and in conjunction with his equally famous xylophone-playing brothers.
Green was also a ragtime composer and the author of the song he performs here.
Recorded in January 1920, this is probably the oldest recording in Radio Dismuke’s playlist. While the overwhelming majority of the station’s selections were recorded between 1925 and 1935, I do include recordings from as early as January 1920 and as late as December 1939 to the degree I feel they are a good fit. So, this one came close to being on the wrong side of the hard cutoff point.
I was actually on the fence about whether this recording was a good fit for the station, as it has much more of a 1910s style and sound than a 1920s one. But I also know that there are people in the audience who share my enthusiasm for xylophone performances.
The record itself is on a relatively rare label. While Operaphone dates back to 1916, they only made records of this variety from 1919 to 1920.
The grooves on this record are a 45-degree “universal cut” that is a hybrid between the lateral groove format of standard 78 rpms and the vertical groove format used on Edison, as well as early Pathe, Vocalion, Gennett, and OKeh discs.
Universal groove records were first introduced by Emerson in 1916 with the intent that they could be played on any phonograph, regardless of whether it was designed to play lateral or vertical records.
While such records technically play vertically and laterally, they usually don’t do so very well. The volume tends to be low when played vertically, and the sound quality is often fuzzy. They tend to sound better when played laterally, but they still sound less than optimal when played on vintage machines.
The secret to successfully playing and transferring such records is to play them laterally on a modern turntable with a stereo cartridge through the right channel only. In most cases, the left side of the groove on such records is noisy and has significantly lower sound quality than the right side of the groove.
In 1919, the patents for the lateral recording process controlled by Victor and Columbia expired. Soon afterward, all the record labels that had been issuing vertical and universal cut records began issuing lateral records, with the sole exception of Edison, which only began making them in the final months of its existence in 1929.
At this period, Operaphone did not have its own recording studios but rather purchased rights to reissue material from Pathe. The same year this record was made, Pathe introduced its own line of lateral records branded as Pathe Actuelle. For the next couple of years, new Pathe recordings were issued in both vertical and lateral formats.
This same recording by George Hamilton Green on universal cut Operaphone can also be heard on Pathe on both vertical disc number 22276 and on Pathe Actuelle lateral disc number 022276. It can also be heard on Empire 51126. Empire was a small label that purchased pressings from Operaphone and issued them under its own name.
The technical challenge of issuing the same recording on different types of disc formats is that a master disc recorded in one format cannot be used to press records of a different format. But, by this time, Pathe had long since found a way to overcome that challenge in Europe, where it had been issuing copies of the same recording in both disc and multiple-cylinder formats.
Pathe’s solution was to record all of its material onto an oversized, rapidly spinning cylinder. The cylinder’s large size and fast speed increased fidelity. Pathe then used a specially designed pantograph device to dub a copy of the cylinder recording to new masters in whatever groove format was desired.
Some sources suggest that universal cut recordings on Operaphone were not dubbed directly from Pathe’s master cylinder but rather from the vertically cut master that had been dubbed from the master cylinder.
If this were indeed the case, then issues of this recording on Operaphone and Empire would be third-generation copies as opposed to second-generation copies on both vertical and lateral Pathe discs.
On the other hand, based on the Operaphone records I have in my collection, their discs seem to have been made of high-quality material and have extremely quiet surfaces compared to Pathe Actuelle records of that same period, which are often quite noisy.
“You Know Why”
Harold Leonard And His Red Jackets
(Gennett 5026-A mx 11261) December 11, 1922
“Red Jacket Blues”
Harold Leonard And His Red Jackets
(Gennett 5026-B mx 11259) December 11, 1922
Here is a pre-microphone era record from the Edward Mitchell collection featuring a band with an interesting and rather unique sound. The ensemble consisted of a violin, a sax section, a piano, a banjo, and drums.
“You Know Why” is a charming dance number with an arrangement that comes across well through the primitive recording technology. Indeed, I think the piano solo passage sounds quite nice for a recording of that era, given that it was an instrument that was often difficult to record.
“Red Jacket Blues” is an interesting composition that makes me wish this could have been recorded three years later after microphones began to be used in recording sessions.
The arrangement heavily features Harold Leonard playing the violin and reminds me of something one might hear from some of the later country music bands. Violins did not record well at all with the old technology. Very often, for recording sessions, they would instead use a Stroh violin, a variation of the instrument featuring a horn to amplify the sound. I don’t know whether or not one was used for this recording session.
Harold Leonard’s band is best remembered as the house band of the Hotel Windsor in Montreal in the mid-1920s and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel from 1926-1927 when it was still at its original location where the Empire State Building would be constructed a few years later. During periods when the band wasn’t associated with the hotels, it went by the name of Harold Leonard and his Red Jackets.
Both of these recordings were made at the Gennett studios in Richmond, Indiana as part of the band’s very first recording session.
Other than his association with the famous hotels, I was not able to quickly find in any single source much information about Harold Leonard or his band.
Based mostly on various publications from the era, prior to its extended engagement at the Hotel Windsor, the band was based in Chicago and was a unit of the Benson Organization, a band booking agency founded by cellist Edgar Benson, that dominated the procurement of live music for that city’s hotels and night spots during the 1920s. The organization’s flagship band is well-known to record collectors and fans of the era’s music as the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, which made many records on Victor.
Famous recording bandleaders whose bands were also units of the Benson Organization included Isham Jones, Charlie Straight, Don Bestor and Jack Chapman.
For hotels and other venues, the agency eliminated the hassle of recruiting and negotiating with individual bands. For bands, the trade-off was between their independence and a steady supply of gigs.
The band’s last records were made during its association with the Waldorf-Astoria. I was not able to find much about what became of Harold Leonard after his band’s engagement at that hotel. The latest mention I found in my limited research was in a June 1929 issue of Variety, which mentioned Leonard had become an orchestra booking executive at the Benson Organization and still had a band, now billed as Harold Leonard and his All Americans, with a current engagement at Chicago’s Palmer House.
“The Flapper Wife”
Harry Reser’s Syncopators
(Columbia 393-D mx 140622) May 25, 1925
“Craving”
Harry Reser’s Syncopators
(Columbia 393-D mx 140612) May 26, 1925
Here’s a record from the Edward Mitchell collection that impressed me. In my opinion, it ranks among the best of the “hot dance” records from the mid-1920s Charleston craze.
On this blog’s January 17 update, I featured an excellent recording of “The Flapper Wife” by Harry Raderman’s Jazz Orchestra that I had been looking for ever since I first heard it on a YouTube video. That recording of the song was made the same month as the Harry Reser version of it here. But Reser’s version was made the month after Columbia started using the new electric recording technology that utilized microphones rather than acoustic recording horns.
The arrangement for the first 55 seconds of the Reser recording is similar to Raderman’s. The biggest difference is the vastly improved fidelity of the new technology. But that is followed by the first of two very nice extended Harry Reser banjo solos of the same “sparkling” style that he brought to his radio band, the Clicquot Club Eskimos.
“Craving” starts out up-tempo but laid-back. The primary term I would use to describe the first portion of this recording is “charming.” But, a little over halfway through, the arrangement abruptly changes direction and becomes quite “hot.” If one ever needs to find a musical passage that exemplifies the “Roaring ’20s,” the latter portion of this recording would certainly fit the bill.
“Craving” was composed by bandleader Ben Bernie and Kenneth Casey. Ben Bernie’s band made a recording of the song in January 1925, which was issued on Vocalion 14965. I was able to find a copy of it on YouTube. (Note: the person who uploaded the record to YouTube mismatched the audio and video on both sides; thus the audio for “Craving” was uploaded under “Keep Smiling At Trouble” while the audio for the latter song was uploaded under the information for “Craving.”)
The Ben Bernie version of the song is not as “hot” as Reser’s, and, of course, in January 1925, Vocalion was not yet recording electrically. But it is still quite nice. If I can find a copy of it in Eddie’s collection, I will definitely add it to Radio Dismuke as well.
We are so fortunate that both of these Reser recordings were made just in time to be captured electrically. If you compare Reser’s “The Flapper Wife” with the Harry Raderman version I posted in January and linked to above, you can immediately hear the radical improvement over the old technology. But, while Victor and Columbia began recording and releasing records with the new technology in the spring of 1925, neither company made public announcements about it until much later in the year so that they could have time to build up a new catalog and provide dealers a chance to sell off their existing inventory of records that would soon be perceived as obsolete.
“Song Of Shanghai”
Jack Denny And His Orchestra
(Brunswick 3400-B) December 15, 1926
One of the cultural fads in the West during the 1910s and 1920s was a fascination with things perceived as foreign and exotic, especially with regard to ancient and traditional cultures of the Middle East and Asia. This had a big influence on the era’s architecture, design, and fashion.
In the world of popular music, Tin Pan Alley music publishers happily fed and further fueled the fad with countless “Oriental fox trot” and “Indian intermezzo” compositions. Probably the best-remembered song of this genre is the 1921 hit “The Shiek of Araby,” which was written in response to the enormous success of the Rudolf Valentino film The Sheik.
“Song of Shanghai” is a 1926 composition by Raymond B Egan, Vincent Rose, and Richard A. Whiting. Other recordings of it besides Jack Denny’s were made by the Ben Selvin Orchestra (as the Radiolites), Ernie Golden’s Hotel McAlpin Orchestra (as the WMCA Broadcasters), and the Duke Yellman Orchestra.
American-born Jack Denny’s band was based out of Canada during the 1920s and became known to American audiences through radio broadcasts from Montreal’s Mount Royal Hotel over CBS. In 1931, the band relocated to New York City to accept a high-profile job as the resident house band at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. During this period, the band had a unique sound as it included no brass instruments.
Unfortunately for Denny, jealousy got the best of him and resulted in a career setback. When the hotel brought in Xavier Cugat’s rumba band as an opening act, the audience’s response to its hot Latin rhythms was so enthusiastic that Denny delivered an ultimatum to hotel management: they must get rid of Cugat or else he would quit. Management took him up on his offer to quit, and the Xavier Cugat Orchestra became the Waldorf-Astoria’s house band for the next sixteen years.
The recording on the flip side of this record, also by Jack Denny’s band, “I Love The Moonlight,” has been in Radio Dismuke’s playlist for quite a while. I am not sure how and why I somehow omitted “Song of Shanghai,” as I think it is the most interesting and unusual of the two. It is a rather pretty song, and Denny’s version sounds more like something one would expect to hear from a popular concert orchestra rather than a typical 1926 dance band.
“Jimbo Jambo”
Margaret Young, vocal
Brunswick 2359-B circa October/November 1922
“Tomorrow”
Margaret Young, vocal
Brunswick 2359-A circa October/November 1922
“The Bad Little Boys Aren’t Goody-Good”
Margaret Young, vocal
Brunswick 2386-B circa December 1922/January 1923
“Counterfeit Bill”
Margaret Young, vocal
Brunswick 2386-A circa December 1922/January 1923
Here are four recordings from the Edward Mitchell collection by Margaret Young, a jazz singer who was popular in vaudeville and on phonograph records during the early 1920s.
If the song “Jimbo Jambo” sounds familiar, it might be because it was featured on the television series Boardwalk Empire, where it was performed by Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks with Rufus Wainwright providing the vocal. You can them perform it on YouTube at this link. (If you enjoy the music of the 1920s and 1930s and find yourself in New York City, you owe it to yourself to see where and when Vince Giordano’s band is performing.)
Margaret Young made her last records in 1925 and subsequently faded away as an entertainer. She came out of retirement in 1949 and made a few records for the Capitol label.
There is no mention on the records’ labels or in discographies of whose band accompanied Young on these recordings. But it is very jazzy and sounds great. For pre-microphone recordings, I think the production quality of these is quite nice, and Young’s voice and singing style are well-suited for the technology.
Apparently, no documentation exists for the exact date that these selections were recorded. I obtained the estimated dates from two sources: Brian Rust’sAmerican Dance Band Discography and the Discography of American Historical Recordings, both of which differ by a month in their estimation. In all instances here, the source of the earlier estimated date is Brian Rust and the later date is the DAHR.
“Jumping Jack”
Zez Confrey And His Orchestra
(Victor 21845-A) December 07, 1928
“Jack In The Box”
Zez Confrey And His Orchestra
(Victor 21845-B) January 3, 1929
Here are two excellent examples of novelty ragtime, a subgenre of ragtime that emerged in the United States just as ragtime began to fade away in favor of jazz. One of the originators of the genre was composer and pianist Zez Confrey.
Despite the artist’s credit on the label, the actual band was a Victor in-house studio ensemble most likely directed by Nat Shilkret but possibly Leonard Joy. Confrey does not perform on either of these recordings, and it is not known whether he was even present when they were made.
The genre is sometimes referred to as novelty piano, as most of its compositions were written for that instrument. It differed from earlier forms of ragtime by its musical complexity. Because the sale of music during the ragtime era was mostly in the form of sheet music for use on home pianos, for a composition to be financially successful, published arrangements needed to be simple enough to be successfully performed by the average amateur pianist.
The advent of automated player pianos enabled people to enjoy exact replicas of performances by the world’s best pianists in their own homes, and novelty ragtime piano compositions were perfect for showcasing their technical virtuosity.
The genre was not limited to the piano. Arrangements were published to be performed by dance bands and salon orchestras – and this is my favorite form of the genre.
Novelty rags were occasionally performed and recorded by American dance bands throughout the 1920s. But it was in, of all places, mid-1930s Germany that the orchestral variety of the genre reached its greatest popularity and where the best-recorded examples were made. It wasn’t merely another American musical import – many really nice novelty rags were written by German composers. The best and most frequently found German examples were recorded by Otto Dobrindt and His Piano Symphonists and Hans Bund And His Bravour Dance Band (issued in England as Jack Bund).
Of the two compositions featured here, “Jack In The Box” is the most famous and was composed by Zez Confrey.
If you enjoyed these recordings, I try to feature as many recordings of orchestral novelty ragtime as I can obtain in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.
You can also find the following examples I have previously featured elsewhere on this blog.
“Elube Chango”
Sacasas Royal Havana Orchestra; Doroteo Santiago, vocal
(Decca 3377-B mx 67988) August 19, 1940
“The Breeze And I”
Sacasas Royal Havana Orchestra
(Decca 3377-A mx 67986) August 19, 1940
Here are two rumba recordings from 1940, too recent for Radio Dismuke’s 1920s & 1930s format. But I was sufficiently impressed by the sound of this band that I cannot resist sharing them.
Cuban dance bands were very popular in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, particularly on the East Coast and in New York City, where, for many years, the Xavier Cugat Orchestra was the house band at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Anselmo Sacasas was a Cuban pianist who, in 1937, founded the Casino de la Playa Orchestra which became one of Cuba’s most highly regarded bands. While the band was successful, it was organized as a cooperative and Sacasas did not feel he was being appropriately compensated and left to form a new band in the United States in 1940.
When this recording was made, the band had an extended engagement at the Colony Club in Chicago, an upscale mobster-owned nightclub where patrons could also engage in illegal gambling. The club was raided and closed the following spring. Sacasas continued to lead Latin bands throughout the 1940s and 1950s.
“The Breeze and I” is an adaptation of a 1927 piano piece called “Andaluza,” which was part of the “Andalucia Suite” by Cuban composer/musician Ernesto Lecuona. In 1940, Salvador “Toots” Camarata, a trumpet player and arranger for the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, reworked the song with lyrics by Al Stillman as “The Breeze And I.” Dorsey’s recording of the song was very successful, rising up to the number 2 position on the Billboard charts. Xavier Cugat also had a successful recording of the song.
