Len Fillis Novelty Quartet – 1929

Posted on October 1, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Deep Night”
Len Fillis Novelty Quartet
circa July 4, 1929  (Columbia 5538 mx WA 9239)
“I’ll Never Ask For More”
Len Fillis Novelty Quartet
circa July 4, 1929  (Columbia 5538 mx WA 9238)

 

Here are two recordings by a jazz quartet led by South African-born Len Fillis, who was widely regarded as Britain’s top banjoist and guitarist at the time.  Fillis was very prolific in the recording studios and made a large number of recordings, either playing with small combos such as the one on this recording or as a sideman with some of the era’s top British dance bands.

The quartet features piano, violin, tenor guitar, and Fillis on Hawaiian guitar. The tenor guitar player is believed to be another South African, Al Bowlly, who, in the 1930s, was Britain’s most famous vocalist and whose recordings continue to enjoy a large fan base.

Leonard Milford Fillis was born in 1903 in Cape Town, South Africa.  A genealogy website states that he was born with the last name Harris and that he and several family members changed their surname to Fillis.

Some sources say that Fillis moved to London in 1923.  Others say 1925.  I couldn’t quickly find any period sources to settle the matter one way or another. The earliest mention of him listed in Brian Rust’s British Dance Bands On Record is for a 1925 recording session. But that does not rule out the possibility that he had been in the country earlier.

In 1922-1923, Fillis and Bowlly were both members of a South African dance band led by pianist Edgar Adeler.  Multiple sources say that when Fillis came to London in either 1923 or 1925, Edgar Adeler accompanied him.

In 1928, Fillis was working for British bandleader Fred Elizalde while Al Bowlly was working in Germany.  When a vacancy for a vocalist opened up in the Elizalde band, Fillis recommended Bowlly for the position and notified Bowlly by letter. Bowlly sent Elizalde one of the records he had made in Germany and was subsequently hired.

I was unable to find these recordings listed in any of the discographies that I have access to.  While the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) does include some British recordings, they are mostly recordings for which there was a corresponding American pressing, which was not the case for either of these recordings.

In the second paragraph of this posting, I intentionally stated that the tenor guitar player on these recordings is “believed to be” Al Bowlly because my only source for that and the July 4th recording date is this listing on an Al Bowlly fan site for the Len Fillis Novelty Quartet’s recording of “Carolina Moon,” which has the next sequential matrix number following WA 9239 for “Deep Night.”

The author of the page clearly states:

the Quartet is described as Hawaiian Guitar, Tenor Guitar, Violin and Piano so suggested personnel is Fillis, Bowlly, [violinist] unknown, [pianist Sid] Bright.

The sequential matrix numbers suggest that both sides were made during the same recording session or, if not, then during a continuation of the session on the following day.  The recording on the flip side of “Carolina Moon,” “The Heart of the Sunset,” is not listed on that site, as it was by the Len Fillis Novelty Trio, which omitted the tenor guitar.

The key words here are “suggested personnel,” which I appreciate that site for using.  Even if the July 4th date is not correct, given the matrix numbers involved, it is close.

As for the “suggested personnel,” I think it is highly likely to be correct given the number of similar recordings that Fillis, Bowlly, and Sid Bright (in English via Google Translate) appeared on.

As for the unknown violinist, one possible guess is Ted Edbrooke, who frequently joined the other three on recordings.

One of the things that sometimes frustrates me enormously when I research background information for these postings is that it is not uncommon for me to turn up wildly contradictory information.  And sometimes I will come across patently false information that is unwittingly picked up by multiple other websites.  I, too, have passed along information that I assumed was correct but later proved not to be. To some degree, it is unavoidable; even highly respected and authoritative sources and discographies make errors.  But researching relatively obscure subjects, where much, if not all, of one’s sources are labor-of-love-type websites, would be much easier if more people followed the example of the Al Bowlly site and identified reasonable assumptions as such, rather than presenting them as assertions of fact.

“Deep Night” is a well-known 1929 song composed by Charles E. Henderson with lyrics by Rudy Vallée, who recorded it on February 6 of that year during his first recording session after signing with Victor.

“I’ll Never Ask For More” was composed by Fred E. Ahlert with lyrics by Roy Turk.  The song was published in 1928, but the majority of recordings of it from that era were made in early 1929.

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The Nite Owls – 1938

Posted on September 28, 2026 by dismuke

Click on the image above for a larger view.
Colorized photo of a family-owned gas station in North Texas. The man and the woman are pointing to the high-water mark from the May 18, 1935, flood.  The original image can be found here.  Based on clues provided by descriptions of other photos in the same collection, as well as 1938 aerial photographs, it is highly likely that the station was located here (opens in Google Street View), just north of Ponder, Texas.  Assuming that is the correct location, the underpass to which the station’s name refers can be seen in the Google Street View and in this photo, which was most likely taken by the same photographer. The Traffic brand gasoline advertised on the pumps was a lower-grade gasoline made by Gulf Oil, which sold for 2 to 3 cents less than Gulf’s next-highest-grade.  It was popular with cash-strapped Depression-era motorists, especially those driving older cars that did not require the increased performance of higher-grade gasoline. However, to prevent it from cannibalizing sales of its higher-grade products, Gulf only distributed it to certain regions.

 

“Beale Street Blues”
The Nite Owls; Luke Owens, vocal
May 12, 1938  (Vocalion 05203 mx DAL 507)
“Who’s Sorry Now”
The Nite Owls; Bob Burgess, vocal
December 2, 1938  (Vocalion 05203 mx DAL 676)

 

Here are two Western Swing recordings that will be part of Radio Dismuke’s next playlist update, which I think are especially nice.

Western Swing is a musical genre widely credited as originating with Milton Brown and Bob Wills in Fort Worth, Texas, around 1930.

During the early 20th century, Texas was a cultural and musical melting pot.  Before 1836, Texas was part of Mexico, and that country has had a significant cultural influence on the state ever since.  During the early 1900s, there were still regions of Texas where German and Czech were the dominant local languages due to 19th-century immigration.

Those immigrants not only brought their languages with them but also their rich musical heritage, which profoundly influenced the music of Northern Mexico. The music that emerged in Northern Mexico, in turn, traveled northward and influenced the homegrown music of the descendants of those immigrants.

One way to describe Western Swing is as a fusion of the local music of Texas and Northern Mexico with traditional Appalachian-style country music, Southern blues, jazz, jazz-influenced American dance band music, and the Hawaiian-style guitar music that was popular during the 1920s.

Western Swing was especially popular in the Southwest and southern Plains states during the 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Texas and Oklahoma as well as parts of Arkansas.

The Nite Owls were a Western Swing ensemble based in San Antonio, Texas, during the late 1930s.  It was smaller than a typical Western Swing band and had no more than three or four members at any given time.  In addition to Luke Owens and Bob Burgess, who provide vocals on the recordings here, its membership also included guitarist Bob Symons and bassist Jack True.

The group’s fame and activities seem to have been limited to the San Antonio area. No references to the group have been found in archived 1930s newspapers from Austin, Dallas, or Fort Worth.

San Antonio newspapers indicated that the band had its own regular program on station KONO between May 1937 and January 1940. That station had an extremely weak signal and would have been difficult to pick up beyond the immediate San Antonio area.  This is most likely why there are no mentions of the group even in Austin newspapers, despite the city being only about 75 straight-line miles from San Antonio.

The group performed primarily at smaller venues, such as restaurants, bars, and local dance halls. This is probably why even the San Antonio newspapers contain only a few mentions of the group’s in-person appearances.  Newspaper advertising was expensive and often not economically viable for very small venues, especially if they were already at or near capacity without it.

In my opinion, this recording of “Beale Street Blues” is one of the best renditions I have come across.  The song was composed in 1917 by W. C. Handy and is named after Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, which, during the early decades of the 20th century, was the principal entertainment district for the city’s black population.  The song has been recorded countless times and continues to be performed, especially by traditional jazz and Dixieland groups.

“Who’s Sorry Now?” was also an “oldie” when the recording here was made.  Published in 1923, the song was composed by Ted Snyder with lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.  Several artists recorded it in 1923; the biggest-selling version was most likely that of the   Isham Jones Orchestra on Brunswick. The song enjoyed a significant revival when a late 1957 recording by Connie Francis became a major hit in 1958, selling over a million copies.

Both recordings were made during separate Brunswick/Vocalion field trips and recorded in a makeshift studio constructed out of Beaver Board on the third floor of the Warner Film Exchange Building at 508 Park Avenue in Dallas.

Built in 1929, the building served as the distribution hub of Warner Brothers films for movie theaters in North Texas.  When Warner Brothers purchased Brunswick and its subsidiary label Vocalion in 1930, the Brunswick regional office relocated to the building’s third floor, where it also had warehouse space.

By 1931, record sales were in freefall because of the Great Depression, and Warner Brothers wanted out of the record industry.  Because of the difficulties of realizing a good price for a record company in such an environment, Warner Brothers leased the company’s trademarks and back catalog to the American Record Corporation (ARC), which, up to this time, had focused on inexpensive “dime store” records. In exchange,  ARC paid Warner Brothers a set royalty for every Brunswick, Vocalion, and Melotone record sold.  Thus, while Warner Brothers no longer operated Brunswick/Vocalion, they still had a financial interest in the labels’ success.

For decades, the 508 Park building sat abandoned and was targeted by vandals. At one point, it was in danger of demolition.  Fortunately, the building was purchased, preserved, and is now part of the broader Encore Park project. One of the long-term plans is for the building to once again house recording studio space on the same third floor where these recordings were made.

From March 25, 1934, San Antonio Light. 

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Jack Shilkret And His Orchestra & Chick Bullock – 1936

Posted on September 24, 2026 by dismuke

“I’m A Fool For Loving You”
Jack Shilkret and His Orchestra; Chick Bullock, vocal
April 9, 1936  (Romeo 6-06-07 mx 18973)
“A Melody From The Sky”
Jack Shilkret and His Orchestra; Chick Bullock, vocal
April 9, 1936  (Romeo 6-06-07 mx 18972)

 

Here are two recordings featuring vocals by Chick Bullock, who, in the 1930s, was the go-to in-house vocalist on the various low-priced “dime-store” records produced by American Record Corporation (ARC).

The pressing here is on the Romeo label, which was sold through the S. H. Kress dime store chain. Other pressings of the same record were also issued on ARC’s Banner, Oriole, Perfect and Melotone labels.

“I’m A Fool For Loving You” is a 1936 composition with music by Pete Wendling and lyrics by Sam M. Lewis.  The best-remembered recording of the song was made that same year by Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra for Victor.

“A Melody From The Sky” is from the 1936 film The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.  Louis Alter composed the music, and Sidney D. Mitchell wrote the lyrics.

Bullock began making recordings for ARC in early 1930.  For a period in 1931 and into 1932, he also recorded with Victor.

Over the next decade, Bullock recorded over 500 sides, sometimes accompanying name bands and, more often, the ARC in-house studio band.

In some instances, Bullock also appeared on ARC’s flagship label, Brunswick, which it had operated since late 1931 under a licensing agreement with Warner Brothers Pictures, which had acquired the label in 1930.

For some of his appearances on Brunswick, Bullock was chosen to provide English-language vocal accompaniment for the well-known Cuban band, Antobal’s Cubans.  On the label, he was credited as “vocal chorus by Chiquito Bullo,” a pseudonym that I regard as utterly cringeworthy, to the point of being hilarious.

At one point in the early 1930s, while he was under consideration for a film role with Paramount Pictures, Bullock suddenly developed a disfiguring and irreversible eye condition that put an end to his film career before it had even started.  It was believed that the eye condition was the result of him having worn the chemically harsh face makeup that was widely used when Bullock worked in vaudeville during the 1920s.

For this reason, the remainder of Bullock’s musical career was limited to radio appearances and records, and the very few publicity photographs in which he appeared are profile shots.

After ARC discontinued its line of dime-store labels in early 1938, most of Bullock’s recordings appeared on its remaining low-priced label, Vocalion.  The use of that label had been part of the same Warner Brothers licensing arrangement that allowed it to use the Brunswick name.

Bullock remained after the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) purchased ARC in late 1938 and revived the Columbia label as its flagship.  CBS took its name from the fact that for part of 1927 its owner was Columbia Records.  ARC acquired Columbia in 1934 after its owner was forced into bankruptcy and subsequently kept the label mostly, though not completely, dormant.

CBS soon phased out the Brunswick label in favor of Columbia and Vocalion in favor of the newly revived OKeh.  Thus, Bullock’s last recordings in the early 1940s were issued on the Columbia and OKeh labels, as well as on Conqueror, an in-house label for Sears & Roebuck whose contract CBS had inherited from ARC.

Bullock made his last recording in 1941. The musicians’ union strike of 1942, combined with wartime shortages of shellac used to manufacture 78 rpm records, effectively put an end to Bullock’s recording career. He relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he operated a real-estate business for many years.

Jack Shilkret was the younger brother of the more famous bandleader, Nat Shilkret, who was the long-time director of Victor’s in-house band.

Jack Shilkret made records for Victor in 1924 and 1925, prior to his brother Nat joining the company in 1926. Jack returned to Victor in 1935 and recorded about a dozen sides for its lower-priced Bluebird label.

In 1936, Shilkret recorded another couple of dozen or so sides for the various ARC labels, including the two featured here.  However, according to Brian Rust, on his ARC recordings he merely led a band of ARC studio musicians, not the band that he was leading at the time for his radio broadcasts.

For whatever reason, neither of these sides appear in either Rust’s American Dance Band Discography or the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR).   However, I was able to derive the April 9, 1936, recording date from the fact that the two matrix numbers immediately following those used on these recordings were for a Chick Bullock recording session on that date.

The DAHR listing credits the band on the sides for those other matrix numbers to Chick Bullock and His Levee Loungers.  But Bullock never had his own band, and the Levee Loungers were merely a pseudonym sometimes used for various bands that backed him on his recordings and radio broadcasts.  The logical conclusion is that Shilkret also led the band on the two sides that Bullock recorded immediately afterward which were credited to the Levee Loungers.

Shilkret’s 1936 records for ARC were his last recordings, at least as far as dance band records are concerned.  A series of low-priced long-playing records that were widely advertised during the 1950s included one featuring Strauss waltzes conducted by Jack Shilkret.  But I am not sure when it was made or whether the recordings were specifically made for release on LP or merely transfers of previously issued 78 rpm recordings.

The latest date on which I was able to confirm Shilkret leading a musical ensemble, through a very quick search, was a 1952 radio broadcast. There are also several 1957 mentions of Shilkret appearing in different venues as a solo pianist. He died in June 1964.

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Milton Paisant – 1929

Posted on September 22, 2026 by dismuke

 

“I Want My Rib”
Milton Paisant, vocal & guitar
March 5, 1929  (Brunswick 4295)
“It’s Tight Like That”
Milton Paisant, vocal & guitar
March 5, 1929  (Brunswick 4295)

 

 

Here are the only two recordings made by a now-obscure New Orleans-based performer, Milton Paisant, during his career as a vocalist in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On both recordings, he accompanies himself on the guitar.

“I Want My Rib” is Paisant’s own composition and has lyrics that were most likely regarded as mildly risqué at the time.

“It’s Tight Like That” is a 1928 composition by Hudson Whittaker (a.k.a. “Tampa Red”) and Thomas A. Dorsey (a.k.a. “Georgia Tom”).  Both men recorded the song for Vocalion in 1928.  The record was very successful and, by 1929, a good many recordings of it had been made by both jazz and blues artists.

Born in 1897, Milton Paisant was a native of New Orleans and had served in World War I.  A March 1923 news article included him among those who had received auto mechanics certificates from a free evening school sponsored by the local Knights of Columbus.

The earliest mention of him that I could find as an entertainer was in the December 22, 1925, New Orleans Times-Picayune, which indicated that Paisant and H. Pat Crane, billing themselves as the Jazz Pair, had appeared in a vaudeville-style performance at the Maurice Theater as part of a fundraiser for the Doll and Toy Fund, which distributed toys to children in poor families.  The article mentioned that because of torrential rain on the evening of the performance, attendance was low. It also noted that the entertainers had volunteered their services.

The next mention was in the March 31, 1927, New Orleans State, which promoted a radio broadcast, the New Orleans State Hour, sponsored by the newspaper on radio station WJBO, featuring the Jazzie Pair, which consisted of Pat Crane and Milton Paisant.

In March of 1928, he landed his own weekly Friday evening program on station WSMB and was billed as “The Singing Banjoist.”  After just a few episodes, however, that had changed to “The Singing Guitarist.”

These March 5, 1929 recordings were made as part of Brunswick’s regular field trips to record local talent in various regions of the country.  The record began appearing in stores in April 1929. That same month, his program had moved to WJBO.

On June 11, 1929, his program moved again, this time to 9:00 PM Tuesday evenings on WWL.  This was a significant move because WWL broadcast over a clear channel frequency, with a nighttime signal that could be picked up throughout the South and into the Upper Midwest, reaching audiences well beyond the New Orleans area.

After his move to WWL, Paisant’s program began to receive positive mentions by newspaper radio columnists as far away as Ohio, as well as a few mentions in the entertainment trade industry publication Billboard.

The increased exposure undoubtedly led to what may or may not have been an attempt by Paisant to take his musical career to the next level.

On April 27, 1930, it was announced that: “Milton Paisant, singing guitarist, has joined the staff [of St. Louis station] KMOX and will be heard nightly on the Sun Dodgers program, from 12:30 to 1:30 o’clock, and at intervals daily.”

(“Sun dodgers” was Jazz Age slang for people who stayed out dancing, drinking, and socializing in nightclubs and speakeasies and went to bed at dawn, thereby “dodging” the sunlight.)

KMOX was a highly regarded station which also had a large nighttime reach over a clear channel frequency in a city that was 79 percent larger than New Orleans.  The wording of the announcement suggests that Paisant was likely hired as a permanent member of the staff, not a short-term guest.

Nevertheless, after radio listings throughout May showing Paisant on the KMOX broadcast schedule, beginning June 1, the listings suddenly show him appearing regularly on station WLW in Cincinnati.

While Cincinnati was smaller than New Orleans, and while Paisant did not broadcast as many days of the week as he had in St. Louis, in many respects a move to WLW could have been considered a step upward.  Owned by Powel Crosley Jr., who also manufactured Crosley radios, WLW was one of the most highly regarded stations in the United States. Not only did it operate on a clear channel frequency, since 1928 it had been authorized to operate at 50,000 watts, the highest legal limit in the US.  It wasn’t until later in 1930 that KMOX began operating at 50,000 watts.

WLW operated at the lower end of the radio dial at 700 kHz. AM radio signals from stations at the low end of the dial travel farther than those from stations of equal power at higher points on the dial. This, plus operating at 50,000 watts, made WLW one of the most powerful stations in the United States in terms of its geographic reach, with a nighttime signal that could be picked up along the entire East Coast down to Cuba and westward to the Rocky Mountains, earning it the nickname “The Nation’s Station.”

In the early 1930s, a position at WLW was widely perceived as a stepping stone towards a job with one of the national networks.

If this was Paisant’s intention, it did not work out. By the end of July, he was back in New Orleans at WWL, which a local paper described as his return “from a tour of various stations.”

While technically correct, such a description was most likely a way of putting a positive spin on the situation.  It has never been the norm for radio personalities to embark on a “tour” of stations the way that entertainers once toured the vaudeville circuits.

Radio programs in those days frequently had a single sponsor, and if that sponsor dropped out and a new one could not be found who was interested, the program would be replaced by one that potential sponsors felt was a better fit for their product.  And audience size, of course, mattered.  The qualities that endeared a performer to radio audiences in one city might have been met with indifference by audiences in a different city.

It is also possible that Paisant’s return to New Orleans was entirely voluntary.  As a married man with two children, moving from one city to another so quickly might have had an impact on his family.  It is likely that the income Paisant earned from his weekly radio program in New Orleans and occasional live appearances was not sufficient to support a family, and he had an additional source of income, perhaps from his certification as an auto mechanic.  It is entirely conceivable that an inability to replace income from such a sideline activity while in another city led him to conclude that he simply couldn’t afford to chase a longshot dream of breaking into entertainment on a big-time basis.

Regardless, Paisant continued to appear regularly on various New Orleans stations and make local live appearances for the next several years.  At the time of his return to New Orleans, his on-air billing had changed from “The Singing Guitarist” to “The Lonely Troubadour.”

Paisant also composed at least one additional song besides “I Want My Rib.”  Federal Copyright records show a January 24, 1934 registration listing him as the composer of the words and lyrics of a song called “Everything You Do.”  The registration indicates that the song had not yet been published.  Most likely, it was a song that he wrote for his own performance on the radio.

The latest published mention I could find of Paisant’s career as a vocalist was a June 22, 1936 radio listing.  After that date, all mentions of him are in the context of piloting airplanes as part of local flying club activities and as the co-owner of Triangle Flying Service, which operated out of Shushan Airport (now known as Lakefront Airport). The company provided flight instruction and perhaps additional services.

November 1948 announcements in New Orleans newspapers of the upcoming marriage of Paisant’s son Kenneth describe him as “the son of Mr. and Mrs. Milton Paisant of New Orleans and Phoenix, Arizona.”  The couple seems to have completed their move to Phoenix at some point in the latter half of 1949.

A January 5, 1950 article in the Arizona Republic shows Paisant returning to what I suppose could be considered part of the entertainment world in a very different capacity.  The article announced an upcoming square dance sponsored by the Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department and the Sun Square Dancers.  Among the “callers” that were expected to participate was Milton Paisant.

This was at the height of the mid-century square dance craze when an explosion of interest made it a popular social pastime throughout the United States.  For the next four years, there were frequent announcements of local square dancing events for which Paisant was listed as one of the callers.

During the early 1950s, Paisant also returned to the recording studio to appear as the caller on at least three square dancing records for a small Phoenix-based label, Old Timer Records.

At some point no later than 1955, Paisant purchased an existing dry cleaning business called Encanto Cleaners.  While I am not certain, the fact that the business was listed as being up for sale in February 1948 leads me to speculate that it is highly likely that the November 1948 marriage announcements describing Mr. and Mrs. Paisant as being from New Orleans and Phoenix were the result of them preparing to take over the business.

Paisant continued to operate the cleaning business until his retirement in 1966.  At the time of his death in 1970, he resided in Metairie, Louisiana.

Part of my reason for providing such granular detail about Paisant is that I was unable to find any sort of general overview of his life and career.   To obtain that, one would need to do what I did: dig through mentions in period publications.  Thus, I have saved time and effort for anyone else who might be curious to learn more about him, as well as provided a starting point for anyone who might wish to dig deeper.

But another reason is that many aspects of his career were not at all uncommon at the time in the music and entertainment world.

Breaking into the entertainment business has always been difficult.  The number of perfectly talented people desperately eager to break into it has always vastly exceeded the number of available paying jobs.

Had Paisant, for some reason, been unable to attend when Brunswick came to New Orleans with its portable recording equipment, he would be completely forgotten today, even in New Orleans, where he was clearly well-known and popular.  1920s and 1930s newspaper entertainment sections and radio listings are filled with once well-known names that now mean nothing to even hard-core fans of the era’s music.

The vast majority of the era’s professional musicians and singers, even those who achieved regional fame and were able to remain active for decades, never saw the inside of a recording studio.

Paisant’s career started gaining traction during an especially difficult period when the economy was sinking ever deeper into the Great Depression.  Just as significant was the fact that the advent of radio and even more so, talking pictures, completely killed off the vaudeville circuits in just a handful of years.

A decade earlier, many thousands of entertainers were able to earn a living traveling from town to town performing in theaters that were part of such circuits.   The pay was usually not great, and it could be a very hard life, especially on the less prestigious circuits, but it did provide performers lots of opportunity to hone their skills and refine their acts.

Paisant began appearing on the radio at a time when thousands of talented vaudevillians with years of experience under their belt were losing their jobs and seeking new ones.  A handful were able to successfully transition and went on to become big names in network radio and, later on, television.  The vast majority had no choice but to seek opportunities in other fields.

Paisant’s musical career was more successful than many other talented performers in that he was able to achieve regional fame as a solo act and maintain it for several years. My suspicion is that he eventually shifted his focus because his aviation endeavors offered a more reliable or lucrative use of his time.  The fact that he later emerged as a caller for local square dance events, which likely paid very little, if anything at all, clearly suggests that he enjoyed performing and being in the spotlight.

The performances that we today enjoy through old 78 rpm records are only a small tip of the iceberg of the era’s talent and musical offerings.

 

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Die Kardosh-Singers & Miss Louise Gordan – 1932

Posted on September 16, 2026 by dismuke

 

 

“Dir möcht’ ich mich gerne anvertrau’n”
Miss Louise Gordan und die Kardosh-Singers
October 8, 1932  (Telefunken A 1230 mx 18703)
“Irgendwo auf der Welt gibt’s ein kleines bisschen Glück”
Die Kardosh-Singers
October 8, 1932  (Telefunken A 1230 mx 18702)

 

Note: Some of the links below are to non-English language websites. Most modern browsers provide a built-in translation feature that will either automatically offer a translation or can be activated through the browser’s settings menu. If you are unable to get the translation feature to work, you can always paste the website’s URL into the Google Translate service. 

Here are two recordings from the closing months of the Weimar Republic by a vocal harmony group, the Kardosh-Singers, that was regarded as the closest rival to the better-remembered Comedian Harmonists.  After the Nazis came to power, despite their enormous popularity, both groups were ultimately forced to dissolve because some of their members were Jewish.

Joining the group on one of the recordings is a jazz and scat singer credited as Miss Louise Gordan, who has long been a source of mystery for fans of the era’s music. On other recordings, she was credited as Louise Jordan.  Some sources suggest that she was American.  Others suggest she was British.  Other than the fact that she performed and made several recordings in Germany and appeared in engagements in other European countries during the early 1930s, little is known about her, including her real name.

Note: A reader has advised that Miss Louise Gordan appeared in a 1934 Danish film called 7 19 13. That film is available in its entirety on YouTube, and you can see her appearance in which she sings in English, scats, and starts to tap dance by scrolling to 35 minutes 30 seconds into the film:

https://youtu.be/wW79HJDNMOw?si=FBJiVi_hP0KIDo7c&t=2130

The reader also notes that she provides the vocal, here, too, in English, for a 1932 waltz recording by Jack Presburg’s orchestra on the Pallas label, credited as F. Gordon, which can also be heard on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/3-vAFOEDn0c?si=Bz98R2gOOZp4yY38

The Kardosh-Singers were founded in May 1932 by Hungarian pianist, arranger, and composer István Kardos, who, for his work in Germany, used the Germanized spelling of his name, Stephen Kardosh.

Kardos had already been working in Germany for a few years when he took over as the musical director for the Abel-Quartett, a successful vocal harmony group, after the 1929 departure of its founder, Pál Ábel.  Like the Comedian Harmonists, the Abel-Quartett based its style on the American harmony group, The Revelers, whose recordings were popular in Europe.  Under Kardos, the group remained successful under the name The 5 Songs.

By 1932, Kardos determined that leading his own group offered greater potential career and financial rewards than leading the 5 Songs as a mere employee.  Once he formed the Kardosh-Singers, he was quickly able to line up stage performances, recording sessions, and even a film appearance.

By 1935 the group had made around 80 recordings, toured Europe, appeared in several films, and was regularly heard on radio broadcasts.

What the German public and even the other members of his group were not aware of, however, was that István Kardos and his wife Olga were both born to Jewish parents.

After the Nazis came to power in late January 1933, it quickly became difficult for Jewish entertainers to find work, as venues that hired them were at risk of disruption and even violence by Brownshirt thugs. In September, all musical activities in Germany were brought under state control through the creation of the Reich Chamber of Music.  All professional musicians, composers, and teachers were required to join the chamber in order to legally work. To join, one had to prove “Aryan” lineage.  Members whose works and performances strayed from what the Nazis considered to be “good German music” risked having their membership revoked, thus rendering them unemployable.

Because he was a Hungarian, not a German citizen, Kardos was initially able to avoid the difficulties faced by German Jews by simply not disclosing his or his wife’s Jewish lineage.  Over time, however, keeping this secret became increasingly difficult and stressful.

Ironically, the Kardosh-Singers’ performances received positive reviews in official Nazi publications, and the group was engaged to perform at official Party events.  While such performances must have been extremely uncomfortable for Kardos, to turn down such an engagement would have been extremely risky.

By 1935, the regime had become increasingly zealous about sniffing out and targeting “disguised Jews,” those in mainstream German society who had successfully hidden their Jewish ancestry.  This was one of the motives for the notorious Nuremberg Laws, which required people to provide documentation of the racial background of their grandparents in order to maintain their jobs in various professions, enroll in high school or college, or marry.

While the Nuremberg Laws did not come into effect until after Kardos left Germany, they shed light on the atmosphere he faced during his final months in the country.  Because venue operators and booking agents were coming under scrutiny by Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda for being lax in verifying membership status with the Reich Chamber of Music, his situation became increasingly precarious.

In autumn 1935, Kardos was summoned to a police station in Berlin and informed that if he failed to produce documentation of his ancestry within 30 days, his residency permit would be revoked and he and his wife would be deported back to Hungary.

Deportation, however, was the least of his worries.  Kardos feared the summons was the result of someone already discovering his lineage and reporting him, which, if true, would likely mean he would be arrested before the 30-day deadline. Thus, he and his wife quickly and secretly fled back to Hungary.

During a failed effort in the 1950s to obtain reparations payments from the German government, Kardos explained:

“…the revelation of my ancestry after I had been publicly active for about 3 years on stage, on the concert podium, in film, on the radio and even in party events would have been dangerous, even life-threatening for me, I was forced to flee the Reich; even my singing partners only found out later, when I wrote to them from Hungary.”

The group’s bass vocalist Paul von Nyiri was also eventually forced to flee back to his native Hungary because of his wife’s Jewish ancestry.

Unfortunately, in 1935, Hungary was ruled by a highly authoritarian and deeply anti-Semitic regime.  Kardos was able to resume his career in Hungary, but was not able to replicate the success he had enjoyed in Germany. In 1938, the government implemented the first of a series of anti-Semitic laws and, by 1939, he was unable to find employment and his only source of income was providing semi-illegal private music lessons.

While Hungary entered World War II on the side of Germany, its government did resist German pressure to deport Hungarian Jews to the concentration camps.  However, the situation became dire in 1944 when Germany invaded after learning of Hungarian efforts to broker a separate peace agreement with the Allies.

Like all Jews in Budapest, Kardos and his wife were forced to wear a yellow star, expelled from their home, and forced to relocate to a single room inside a so-called “yellow star house,” one of about 2,000 apartment buildings throughout Budapest where Jews were concentrated as a temporary way station before deportation to the death camps.

Fortunately, they were both able to escape from the yellow star house and, with the aid of forged documents, successfully went into hiding for the remainder of the German occupation.  While Kardos and his wife both survived, 23 members of his family lost their lives in the Holocaust.

After the war, he was at least able to earn a living in music, working as a pianist for Hungarian radio, a music teacher, and a music journalist.  He died in Budapest in 1975.

For more information about the Kardosh-Singers, I highly recommend Kardosch-Saenger.de, which provides a wealth of information about the group and its members. For a detailed biography of István Kardos, visit this page on the website.

Both songs are from 1932 German films and feature what I think are very captivating and memorable melodies.

“Dir möcht’ ich mich gerne anvertrau’n” (“I’d Like To Entrust Myself With You”), written by Bert Reisfeld, Rolf Marbot, and Curt Lewinnek, is from the film Kiki.

“Irgendwo auf der Welt gibt’s ein kleines bisschen Glück” (“Somewhere In The World There Is A Little Bit of Happiness”), composed by Werner R. Heymann with lyrics by Robert Gilbert, is from the film Der blonde Traum (The Blonde Dream).

While the German electronics company and radio pioneer Telefunken dates back to 1903, its record label had been in existence for only a few months when this record was made.

Both sides were recorded in the concert hall of the Sing-Akademie, a choral group founded in 1791. The concert hall was built in 1827 and was world-renowned for its outstanding acoustics.  During the 1920s, the hall was occasionally used for recording sessions by the Electrola label.

The facilities used for the recordings here were installed by Ultraphon, a multinational record label that appeared in Germany in 1929 and was known for its sound quality.  By 1932, after economic conditions forced the company into liquidation, all of its German assets, including its matrices, manufacturing plants, and the recording facilities in the Sing-Akademie, were acquired by Telefunken and used to create its namesake label.

Telefunken continued to record at the Sing-Akademie until 1943, when the building was gutted by an incendiary bomb.  After the war, East German authorities restored the building’s burned-out shell to its 19th-century appearance and constructed a new building inside its walls that has, since 1952, functioned as the Maxim Gorky Theater.

One of the things that has always haunted me about German recordings from this period is the contrast between the music, which is so often beautiful, joyous, benevolent, and incredibly life-affirming, and the unimaginably horrific events unfolding outside the studio walls, events that would later affect and, in some cases, claim the lives of the performers and composers.

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Ted Lewis And His Band – 1930

Posted on September 13, 2026 by dismuke


Colfax Theater, South Bend, Indiana. Opened in 1928. Destroyed in 1994.

 

“The Yellow Dog Blues”
Ted Lewis And His Band
April 18, 1930  (Columbia 2217-D mx 150482)
“Sobbin Blues”
Ted Lewis And His Band
April 24, 1930  (Columbia 2217-D mx 150490)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two jazzy instrumental recordings by Ted Lewis and His Band that will be included in Radio Dismuke’s next playlist update. Both songs were already several years old and well on their way to becoming jazz standards when Lewis recorded them.

The record features a special picture label that Columbia used on all Ted Lewis pressings between 1929 and 1933.  Columbia had previously provided a special picture label for Paul Whiteman’s recordings as part of its effort to lure Whiteman after his contract with Victor expired in 1928.  Ted Lewis was one of the highest-paid bandleaders of the 1920s and one of Columbia’s best-selling artists. I suspect that offering Ted Lewis his own picture label was part of Columbia’s negotiations to retain him when his contract came up for renewal in 1929.

The Ted Lewis label was not as elaborate or colorful as the Paul Whiteman label (an example of which can be seen and heard in this blog’s July 14 posting) and featured a gray background with descriptive text and a silhouette of Lewis in black.

Unfortunately, the quality of the ink, the paper, or perhaps both used in the label was not as high as that used for the Whiteman label or for Columbia’s standard labels. More often than not, even when the playing surface of such records is in great condition, the ink is faded and, in some spots, worn off. The paper is also more prone to being soiled from routine handling.

Columbia also introduced picture labels for Rudy Vallée and Harry Richman.  However, they were much more minimalistic, featuring an etching-like line drawing of the artist and his signature in place of the “Magic Notes” at the top of the label.  By 1933, the Ted Lewis picture label had also been simplified to this design.  Ted Lewis picture labels with this later style, as well as the Harry Richman picture label, are rare, as they were made during the worst period of the Great Depression for the record industry, and pressing numbers tended to be extremely low.

“Yellow Dog Blues,” originally published in 1914 as “Yellow Dog Rag,” was a W. C. Handy composition inspired by Shelton Brooks’s 1913 song “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider’s Gone?”  Yellow Dog refers to a local nickname used in the early 20th century for the Yazoo Delta Railroad in Mississippi.

“Sobbin’ Blues” dates back to 1923 and was composed by Art Kassel (link via Google Translate) and Vic Berton.

While Lewis was as much a showman as he was a musician, his band was always staffed with top-tier talent.  According to Brian Rust, at the time of these recordings, the band’s roster included Muggsy Spanier, Harry Raderman, and Jimmy Dorsey.

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Bidgood’s Broadcasters – 1928

Posted on September 11, 2026 by dismuke

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“I Think Of What You Used To Think Of Me”
Bidgood’s Broadcasters with Stoll Theatre Organ; Tom Barratt, vocal
November 14, 1928  (Broadcast 315-B)
“All By Yourself In The Moonlight”
Bidgood’s Broadcasters, John Thorne, vocal
November 15, 1928  (Broadcast 315-A)

 

Here are two very different recordings by British bandleader Harry Bidgood’s orchestra from an eight-inch Broadcast record.  The record’s label describes it as “The Long Playing Record.”  In this context, long-playing meant that, although it was only an eight-inch record, it provided the same playing time as a standard ten-inch record.

I have been a fan of the song “I Think Of What You Used To Think Of Me” ever since I added the version recorded on Brunswick by Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra to Radio Dismuke’s playlist in 2012.

James F. Hanley composed the song and Roy Turk wrote the lyrics.  Abe Lyman was also credited as a co-composer, but I do not know what his contribution was.  In those days, it was common for bandleaders to be given composer credit (which made them eligible for a share of a song’s composer royalties) in exchange for performing and promoting the song.

Apparently, the song enjoyed more popularity in the United Kingdom than it did in the United States, where it originated.

What made Abe Lyman’s recording stand out to me, beyond the song’s catchy melody, was that the band was accompanied by a pipe organ operated by well-known theater organist Eddie Dunstedter (link opens to .pdf file) from the auditorium of Chicago’s Temple of Labor, a venue that Brunswick occasionally used for recording sessions.  The organ gave the peppy and upbeat recording a certain haunting quality. (The building where the recording was made still stands and remains in use as a union hall at 328 S Marshfield Ave in Chicago, though apparently the organ is no longer there).

Harry Bidgood’s version of the song was clearly inspired by the Abe Lyman recording, as it also features a theater organ, which was located in the Stoll Picture Theatre on Kingsway in London’s West End.

The theater opened in 1911 as the London Opera House and was built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I as a home for his own productions.  The lavish and massive theater had a seating capacity of 2,660 and was one of the grandest in the city.

In 1916, it was purchased by Oswald Stoll and renamed the Stoll Picture Theatre, functioning as a grand movie palace until 1941, when it was once again used for live performances.

The organ heard in the recording was a 3-manual, 27-stop tubular pneumatic orchestra organ built by Jardine & Co. that was installed in 1922.  Initially, it accompanied silent films.  The organ was updated and rebuilt in 1930.  Even after the advent of talking pictures, daily organ recitals remained a popular feature.

Tragically, this grand and spectacular theater was demolished in 1958 and replaced by a dreary-looking rectangular office building with a much smaller theater in its basement.  Rather than finding a new home for the organ, it was scrapped for parts.

Fortunately, the theater and the organ were used for several recording sessions by the Broadcast label, so we have at least some approximation of what it might have sounded like in person.

“All By Yourself In The Moonlight” is a 1928 novelty song with words and music credited to Jay Wallis, a pen name for British songwriter Ralph Butler.  The song was well-known and widely recorded on both sides of the Atlantic.

Harry Bidgood was the music director for the Vocalion Gramophone Co., which became independent shortly after its American parent, the Aeolian Company, had sold the American Vocalion label to Brunswick in 1924.

Vocalion introduced the Broadcast label in 1927.  The eight-inch records had somewhat narrower grooves and a much smaller label area than standard records, enabling them to provide the same playing time as competing ten-inch records.

The label was so successful that Vocalion discontinued its namesake label, as well as its budget-priced ten-inch Aco label, to focus on Broadcast.  In 1928, the company introduced a companion label, Broadcast Twelve, a ten-inch record with a playing time comparable to standard twelve-inch records.

In 1926, in response to the HMV and Columbia labels obtaining licenses through their respective American affiliates to use the electrical recording system developed by Western Electric, Vocalion licensed a rival electrical recording system developed by the Marconi Company. The letter M inside a circle, which appears on the label of Broadcast records, indicates that it was recorded using the Marconi system.

The vast majority of dance records issued on Broadcast featured Bidgood leading the company’s in-house band. Some, like the record featured here, were issued under his name.  Others were issued under a wide array of pseudonyms, including The New York Nightbirds, Ciro’s Club Band, The Manhattan Melody Makers, Al Benny’s Broadway Boys, and Nat Lewis and his Dance Band to mask the fact that they were, in fact, by the same band. Many of these recordings can be regularly heard on Radio Dismuke.

In 1932, Vocalion went into liquidation and was acquired by rival record manufacturer Crystalate, which produced the low-priced Imperial label as well as its own eight-inch record label, Eclipse, which was sold exclusively through the British branch of the F. W. Woolworth company.  The Broadcast label was discontinued in 1934.

Harry Bidgood stayed on in a similar capacity under Crystalate.  During this period, the accordion experienced an explosion of popularity in the United Kingdom, with thousands of people taking accordion lessons through correspondence schools.  This, in turn, led to popular interest in accordion bands, which Crystalate eagerly capitalized on with records by accordion-enhanced studio orchestras under Bidgood’s direction, disguised by pseudonyms such as Don Porto and His Novelty Accordion Band, and Rossini’s Accordions.

You can hear three recordings that Bidgood made for the Eclipse label as Don Porto and His Novelty Accordion Band in this blog’s October 29, 2023 posting.

One of the accordion band pseudonyms that Bidgood began to use during his years with Crystalate would largely define the rest of his career: Primo Scala and his Accordion Band, which evolved from being a made-up name used to market low-priced records into a top-name musical act in its own right, with live appearances, regular radio broadcasts, and recordings for Decca (which acquired Crystalate in 1937) well into the 1950s.

While some of his records are better than others, and, of course, individual musical tastes vary, for those who enjoy happy and cheerful 1920s and 1930s dance band recordings and aren’t frightened away by certain types of critics who denounce them as “commercial” or as “not real jazz,” it’s generally hard to go wrong with a Harry Bidgood recording whenever one is available at an affordable price.

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Joe Samuels And His Orchestra – 1922

Posted on September 4, 2026 by dismuke

 

 

“November Rose”
Joe Samuels and His Orchestra; Arthur Fields, vocal
circa December 1922   (Banner 1150-B mx 5027)

 

Here’s a recording I recently came across while auditioning records in the Edward Mitchell collection for digitization and inclusion in Radio Dismuke’s playlist. I thought the tune was incredibly catchy and was immediately charmed by it.

What struck me most was the fact that, in many respects, it sounds more like a recording from the World War I era than from late 1922, when the Jazz Age was well underway.

Popular music styles evolved at such a rapid pace throughout the 1920s that recordings from just a very few years earlier were perceived as dated – and that’s not counting the decade’s rapid advances in recording technology.

Indeed, there are passages of this recording that very much remind me of a ragtime-influenced World War I song from 1918, “Oui Oui Marie,” which happens to be among my favorite tunes from that era (which you can hear performed by the same vocalist who appears on the recording here, Arthur Fields, in a YouTube upload at this link).

“November Rose” was composed and published in 1922 by Jack Snyder, who should not be confused with Ted Snyder, who wrote well-remembered hits such as “The Sheik of Araby’ and “Who’s Sorry Now.”

Several recordings of the song were made in late 1922 and early 1923.  Most, however, were performed either as a ballad or a waltz.  While the few that I have been able to find and listen to online are certainly pleasant, I personally think its delightful melody is much better suited to the sort of happy, peppy dance-tempo arrangement heard on this recording.

Jack Snyder was the son of Herman Snyder, treasurer of the Crown Music Company, a major Tin Pan Alley music publishing firm that had previously been one of Scott Joplin’s publishers (and had no connection to the 1950s-era music publishing company of the same name).

A 1921 trade publication announced that Jack Snyder was forming his own music publishing company, the Jack Snyder Music Company, and that its general manager would be May Waterson, sister of music publisher Henry Waterson, who, at one point, had been one of Herman Snyder’s partners at the Crown Music Company.

Based on mentions in period publications, the Jack Snyder Music Company seems to have enjoyed modest success throughout the rest of the 1920s.  But I was not able to determine what became of it or of Jack Snyder afterwards.

Nor was I able to find the answer to whether Herman and Jack Snyder were relatives of the much more famous and previously mentioned Ted Snyder.

Herman Snyder’s partner in the Crown Music Company, Henry Waterson, was also a partner with Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin in the prominent music publishing firm Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.

Because none of the information I found on Ted Snyder suggested a family connection, my strong hunch is that the shared last name and mutual business partner were merely coincidental.

Between 1919 and 1926,  Joseph Wilson Samuels’ band was one of the era’s most prolific in the recording studios, with over 400 sides.

For the OKeh label, the band made a number of jazz recordings under its own name and under the pseudonym Tampa Blue Jazz Band.  The band also accompanied early black blues vocalists such as Maimie Smith and Lucille Hegamin.  It was one of the first, if not the first, white bands to record with black vocalists.

Samuels also recorded for Pathé, Edison, Emerson, Grey Gull, and Gennett.  However, the majority of his recordings were with Banner and other affiliated low-priced “dime store” labels, credited under his own name or under a multitude of recording pseudonyms.  After 1925, however, his recordings suddenly stopped, and he abruptly disappeared from the public spotlight.

A contributor to Samuels’ Wikipedia entry writes that, per data from Ancestry.com, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, into the 1940s and, in the 1930 census, described his occupation as “musician in a band.”  He was described in the 1940 census as an employee of the Kollsman Instrument Co., which made aviation instruments, not musical instruments.  He died on July 19, 1953.

The vocal on the recording is provided by Arthur Fields, who was also extremely prolific, recording on over 800 sides between 1914 and the early 1930s.  He was also the co-composer of the very charming, and still occasionally performed, 1914 ragtime-era composition “The Aba Daba Honeymoon” (which you can hear performed by Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan on YouTube at this link).

As with Joseph Samuels, Arthur Fields also died in 1953.  Fields suffered a stroke in March 1953 and, soon after, moved into the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida. Early in the morning of March 29, the poorly built and highly combustible building caught fire, resulting in 33 deaths, including Fields.

In addition to Banner 1150, this recording was also issued on Regal 9419 and credited to Joseph Samuels.  In Canada, it was issued on the Apex label under the pseudonym The Music Masters.

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Max Fisher And His California Orchestra – 1927

Posted on September 1, 2026 by dismuke

“Lullaby”
Max Fisher And His California Orchestra; Johnny Murray, vocal
December 9, 1927   (Columbia 1226-D mx 145290)
“Maybe I’ll Baby You”
Max Fisher And His California Orchestra
Leonard Layson, Johnny Murray, Richard Newlin, vocal
December 6, 1927 (Columbia 1226 D mx 145277)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two songs from the 1927 musical Take the Air, composed by David Stamper with lyrics by Gene Buck, who produced and directed the show. Buck was a friend and neighbor of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Some historians have suggested that Buck’s lifestyle and lavish parties may have inspired certain elements of Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby.

Bandleader Max Fisher is largely forgotten, even among enthusiasts of 1920s popular music, it seems.   When I started writing this post, I knew little about him and was unable to find any online summary of his life or career.  After I began going through old news articles and trade journals, I was surprised to learn that his band was highly prominent during the 1920s, performing at elite venues, catering to wealthy audiences on both coasts.

Max E. Fisher was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado, on May 26, 1894, to Hyman and Matilda Fisherson and raised in Los Angeles, where he learned to play violin.

A February 28, 1914, article in Goodwin’s Weekly mentions a “ragtime violinist” named Max Fisher appearing at the Pantages Theater (now called the Arcade Theater) in Los Angeles.  I was not able to confirm that this was the same Max Fisher, but the chances are good that it was.

At some point during the 1910s, Fisher was recruited by famed film director Cecil B. DeMille to become his on-set violinist/music director at the Famous Players-Lasky studio.  That might seem like a rather strange job, given that all films in those days were silent.  But silent film sets could be noisy and chaotic. DeMille wanted Fisher to provide “mood music” while a scene was being filmed to help put the cast in the proper emotional state.

During World War I, Fisher served as director of the band at the Liberty Theater, located within the Camp Lewis military base near Tacoma, Washington.

1921 provided Fisher with two significant career breaks, which came in rapid succession.

On New Year’s Day, the legendary Ambassador Hotel (which I discussed in my last blog post) opened in Los Angeles with Max Fisher leading the hotel’s first resident band.  The band performed at the Ambassador’s high-priced restaurant/nightclub, the Zinnia Grill. The venue was so successful that hotel management converted the hotel’s huge ballroom into a nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, which would remain one of the nation’s premier celebrity hotspots for decades.

The Cocoanut Grove opened on April 21, 1921, a little over four and a half months after the hotel’s opening.  Max Fisher’s band, however, would not be part of that opening, as it had been invited to New York by Florenz Ziegfeld to perform at Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, a rooftop nightclub atop the New Amsterdam Theatre that Ziegfeld established to capture the money that patrons would have spent elsewhere after the performance of his Follies downstairs had concluded.

Even though the band had only been at the Ambassador for a few months,  it must have been highly regarded by the hotel, as a farewell party was held at the Zinnia Grill, and the hotel’s manager presented each member of the band with a Morocco leather and gold-bound billfold with his name stamped on it.

Art Hickman’s band, which had appeared at the Zirgfield Follies the year before, as well as previously, replaced Fisher’s in time for the opening of the Cocoanut Grove.   Fisher’s band would once again become the Ambassador’s house band in 1924 when Hickman’s successor, Abe Lyman, stepped down to take his band on a national tour with the Orpheum Circuit.

After concluding its run at the Midnight Frolic, the band was booked at the recently opened Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City.  The band then returned to Los Angeles for an engagement at the Alexandria Hotel, owned by the same company that owned the Ambassador, billed as “Max Fisher and his Midnight Frolics Orchestra from the Ziegfeld Roof” followed by another engagement at Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater, billed as “Max Fisher’s Ziegfeld Follies Orchestra.”

In October 1922, Fisher started his own high-end nightclub, which some referred to as a speakeasy, the Club Royale, on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, a street with multiple nightspots known to attract “gamblers, prostitutes and members of the movie crowd.”  Because Culver City was, at the time, relatively remote, though still close to Hollywood and Beverly Hills, enforcement of Prohibition laws was a bit more lax.

A June 1925 hotel trade publication reported that Fisher had “signed a contract to appear for six months at the new Prince of Wales Club, the most exclusive supper cafe in London’s West End.”  I don’t know whether this engagement actually took place, as this was the only reference to it that I could find.

In April 1926, the band had another high-profile engagement when it followed the Paul Whiteman and Jan Garber bands for a thirteen-week engagement at the Coral Gables Golf and Country Club near Miami at the tail end of Florida’s frenzied 1920s real estate boom, which was brought to an abrupt end a few months later by the devastating 1926 Miami hurricane.

In 1928, the band appeared in and was the subject of a ten-minute single-reel Fox Movietone musical short feature titled Max Fisher and His California Orchestra. I have not been able to determine if copies of the film still exist or if, like many other films from the 1920s, it has been lost.

Among Fisher’s sidemen who went on to lead their own bands was Earl Burtnett, Fisher’s pianist, who eventually led the house band at the Ambassador Hotel’s archrival, the Los Angeles Biltmore.  Harry Owens, whose band at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki became famous for Hawaiian-themed dance music, played trumpet with the Fisher band.  In 1925, Fisher’s trombone player, Glenn Miller, came to the attention of highly regarded bandleader Ben Pollack, who offered Miller his next opportunity on his road to eventual international celebrity.

All of the above information comes from period source material I located through quick online searches and likely only scratches the surface of Fisher’s 1920s accomplishments.   So why has so little been written about him since then, and why has he become relatively obscure even among record collectors and 1920s enthusiasts?

My theory is that much of it has to do with the fact that his band did not make very many records.  It recorded a single side in 1921 for Vocalion while in New York, appearing at Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic.  In October 1922, it recorded two sides for Gennett Records at their studio in Richmond, Indiana, neither of which were issued.

The band did not record again until April 1927, when it made two sides for Columbia in New York.  It recorded an additional side for Columbia in New York the following month.

The recordings here come from a New York Columbia session held on December 6 and December 9, 1927, during which they also recorded a third side, “Is She My Girlfriend.”

The band recorded its final two sides in Chicago at the end of March 1928, also for Columbia.

Given how well-known and well-received the band was in various parts of the country, why did it only have a one-off side with Vocalion in 1921 and just eight sides for Columbia in 1927 – 1928?

I suspect we will never know for sure.  But my speculation is that much of it has to do with the fact that the band spent most of its time either in the Los Angeles area or on tour.  Prior to Brunswick setting up a recording studio in Los Angeles in December 1927, the only label with a permanent studio in California was Victor.   Prior to that, Brunswick and Columbia relied on occasional field trips to record West Coast talent.

The most prolific West Coast band of the era in terms of recordings was Abe Lyman’s band, which recorded for Brunswick.  But the majority of his 1920s sides were recorded either in New York or Chicago, where Brunswick was headquartered.

My guess is that all of Fisher’s recorded sides coincided with the band’s touring schedule.  If the band was elsewhere when the labels were in Los Angeles, then its only option for recording was to travel elsewhere.  Even if the record label was willing to pay for the band’s travel expenses, it still might not have made sense for a band to do so.  Then, as now, most musicians earned their living through live performances, not through record sales.  The cost of a couple of days’ worth of gigs to record in a distant city might very well have exceeded what they would have earned from the recording session.

Sadly, no matter how prominent a band might have been on radio and at various nightspots around the country, to the degree that it did not make records, it was doomed to be forgotten, as all that remains to remember it by are references in old newspapers and trade publications.

As for what became of Max Fisher after his last recording session with Columbia and his Movietone musical short feature in 1928,  period media mentions become less frequent. And, unfortunately,  research on what bands were up to after 1930 becomes more difficult, as many archives are reluctant to make copies of publications less than 95 years old available online due to fears of copyright infringement.

I was able to find brief references to his band performing at various venues through about 1933.

The May 8, 1943, issue of Billboard included a brief mention stating:

“Max Fisher, a big name in coast music circles 20 years ago, is rehearsing a crew in Hollywood, with GAC [General Amusements Corporation] set to book…”

This suggests that Fisher had become significantly less prominent by 1943, but it doesn’t indicate whether he had previously retired from leading a band and, if so, how long ago it was.   And it is questionable whether that band ever got off the ground, as Fisher died that same year on October 12 at the Veterans’ Hospital in Sawtelle, California. His obituary stated that he had been ill for six months with a heart ailment.

Both of the songs featured here are from the musical Take the Air, which opened at the Waldorf Theater on November 22, 1927.   The show’s plot had an aviation theme, in an attempt to capitalize on the aviation craze that followed Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight.

Gene Buck, a longtime collaborator with Florenz Ziegfeld, decided to create his own production and, as a result, wrote, produced, and directed Take the Air. He even went so far as to purchase the Waldorf Theater, which had opened in 1926, and renamed it the Gene Buck Waldorf Theater.  The show enjoyed a 206-performance run before closing the following May.

The Waldorf Theater, located at 116 West 50th Street, was ultimately not successful and closed as a live theater in 1933 when its ground floor was converted into retail shops.  The theater’s balcony was extended and converted into a cinema.  After struggling to compete with the larger, grander Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy Theater, both of which were nearby, the cinema closed in 1941, and the entire building was used as retail space until it was demolished in 1968.

 

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Jimmie Grier And His Orchestra – 1937

Posted on August 28, 2026 by dismuke

1937 image of the 801 N. La Brea Avenue location of the Chili Bowl restaurant, one of several that existed in the Los Angeles area in the 1930s.

 

“You’re My Dish”
Jimmie Grier And His Orchestra; Julie Gibson, vocal
October 1, 1937   (Decca 1486-A mx DLA 973)

Here’s a recording by a Los Angeles-based band that enjoyed national fame in the 1930s.

“You’re My Dish,” composed by Jimmy McHugh with lyrics by Harold Adamson, comes from the 1937 Universal Pictures film Merry-Go-Round of 1938. The film was not successful at the box office and proved to be a big financial setback for Universal.

The song is best remembered for Thomas “Fats” Waller’s September 7, 1937 recording of it on Victor, deservedly so, in my opinion.  Waller had a special talent for making even trite lyrics sound anything but.

As for this song’s lyrics being trite, in fairness, they are far from being the era’s worst offenders.  However,  they have always struck me as a not-so-subtle knock-off of Cole Porter’s lyrics for his 1934 composition “You’re the Top,” which I do not consider to be at all trite.

Regardless of the lyrics, I personally think this is a very nice recording.  Not only is the tune very catchy, the arrangement and the band’s execution possess a wonderfully opulent, symphonic grandeur.

Julie Gibson, the vocalist on the recording, eventually became Mrs. Jimmie Grier after marrying him in March 1939.   The marriage was short-lived, and she filed for divorce in October 1940.  She went on to become a film actress with Paramount Pictures, as well as a voice and dialogue coach.  She died in 2019 at the age of 106.

During the same session, the band also recorded the very haunting “Everything You Said Came True,” which ranks among my favorite late 1930s dance band recordings.  That recording has long been in Radio Dismuke’s playlist, and you can also hear it on demand on YouTube at this link.

Unlike many bands that struggled in obscurity before finding fame, Jimmie Grier’s band debuted in 1932 at one of the West Coast’s most renowned venues,  the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  A talented musician proficient with multiple instruments, Grier had been a member of both the Abe Lyman and Gus Arnheim bands during their residency at the Cocoanut Grove.

While with the Arnheim band,  Grier also served as its principal arranger and crafted the band’s unique sound. Over time, however, he felt that Arnheim was not compensating him commensurately with his contribution to the band’s success and began to contemplate forming his own band.

That opportunity came in 1932 when Arnheim decided to take advantage of the national fame his band had earned as the featured band on the weekly NBC radio program The Lucky Strike Dance Hour and embarked on a lucrative nationwide tour.

Leveraging close connections he had built over the years, Grier convinced Ambassador Hotel management that he could form his own band to provide the same sound and format that had been so successful under Arnheim.  Several of Arnheim’s featured vocalists remained at the Cocoanut Grove and joined Grier’s band, helping provide additional continuity.

As a result of his arrangements, his amiable demeanor, and high-profile radio broadcasts,  Grier was soon billed as “The Musical Host of the Coast,” which appears under Grier’s name on this record’s label credits.

In 1933, Grier’s band had moved to the Cocoanut Grove’s archrival, the Biltmore Bowl, where it remained, performing six nights per week until 1937.   The Biltmore Bowl was a nightclub with a massive ballroom located in the basement of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel.  Both venues fiercely competed for the same elite, celebrity-studded clientele.

In addition to its own recordings,  Jimmy Grier’s band also provided the uncredited musical accompaniment on several recordings by Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, and Russ Columbo.  He also wrote arrangements for motion pictures and, for a while, starred in two different radio programs.

Grier’s biggest hit was his October 1934 Brunswick recording of “The Object of My Affection” with Pinkie Tomlin on vocal, which, by the end of the year, had risen to number 1 on the sales charts.  Grier and Tomlin shared composer credit for the song with Coy Poe.  That recording enjoyed renewed visibility decades later when it was featured in the soundtrack of the 1973 film Paper Moon.

Two months later, the band made a second recording of the song, this time with a vocal by the Boswell Sisters.  That recording made its way to the top of the sales charts in early 1935.

Another highly successful Jimmie Grier recording featured in Paper Moon came from the band’s first recording session in March 1932 for Victor.  “One Hour With You” was the title song of the 1932 pre-code film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  Donald Novis, who was a vocalist with the Grier band, performed the song in the film.  A few days after the film was released, Novis provided the vocal for Jimmie Grier’s recording of the song, which eventually climbed to the number 2 position on the sales charts.

Paper Moon and One Hour With You are films that I highly recommend for fans of 1930s era recordings and popular culture.

Though the Grier band made its last recordings in 1938, it remained active until 1942, when the wartime military draft made it difficult for bands to find staff.  Grier himself enlisted in the Coast Guard and served as assistant director to Rudy Vallee, who had also volunteered for the Coast Guard and led the 11th Naval District Coast Guard Band.  When Vallee transitioned back to civilian life in 1944, Grier assumed leadership of the band throughout the remainder of the war.

After the war, Grier formed a new band in 1946 which enjoyed a one-year residency at his old haunt, the Biltmore Bowl.  By that time, however, large dance bands and the number of venues willing to book them were in rapid decline.  For a period, Grier had a small Hollywood-based musical combo.  By the 1950s, after a stint as a radio disc jockey, Grier retired from the music industry and transitioned to a career in real estate.

Sadly, in 2005, despite being a highly significant historical and cultural landmark and organized efforts to save it, the entire Ambassador Hotel complex was destroyed by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Happily, the Los Angeles Biltmore remains standing with much of its ornate 1920s interior still intact.  The Biltmore Bowl, however, did not fare so well and was destroyed by a fire in the 1950s.  The space that it occupied in the hotel’s basement was subsequently reconfigured and “modernized.”

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