Jean Goldkette And His Orchestra/George Olsen And His Music – 1927

Victor 20472 B label image "Look At The World And Smile" Jean Goldkette And His OrchestraBackground information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“Look At The World And Smile”
Jean Goldkette And His Orchestra
February 1, 1927    (Victor 20472-B)
“Somebody Else”
George Olsen And His Music; Fran Frey, Bob Borger, Bob Rice, vocal
February 4, 1927    (Victor 20472-A)

 

Here is a nice record from the Edward Mitchell collection featuring two songs from the 1927 Broadway production, Yours Truly.

Jean Goldkette was a Detroit-based dance band impresario whose organization secured bookings throughout the Midwest for dozens of bands he owned or managed.  He also owned venues such as Detroit’s legendary Greystone Ballroom.

Goldkette’s band on this recording features an all-star lineup of the era’s top white jazz talent, including Bix Beiderbecke on cornet, Tommy Dorsey on trombone.
Frank Trumbauer, on C-melody saxophone, Eddie Lang on guitar, and
Joe Venuti on violin.  All of the men mentioned were subsequently hired away by Paul Whiteman later on in 1927.

While it was largely forgotten by the middle part of the century, during the 1920s, George Olsen’s band was a strong rival to Paul Whiteman’s and Fred Waring’s in terms of popularity and remained very prominent on network radio into the early 1930s.  I think this recording of “Somebody Else” is very pleasant and rather charming. 

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Savoy Orpheans 1926-1927

(Image courtesy the British Library archive HS.74/1064)

 

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“I’d Rather Charleston”
Savoy Orpheans; Ramon Newton, Estelle Brody, vocal
June 11, 1926   (HMV-B 5085 mx Bb 8528)
“He Left Her Behind Before”
Savoy Orpheans; Ramon Newton, vocal
June 11, 1926   (HMV-B 5085 mx Bb 8530)
“There’s Always A Way Into Trouble”
Savoy Orpheans; Ramon Newton, vocal
August 16, 1927   (HMV B-5338 mx Bb 11188)

 

The Savoy Orpheans were one of two well-known bands, the other being the Savoy Havana Band, based out of London’s Savoy Hotel during the early and mid-1920s.

Debroy Somers was the founder and original leader of the Savoy Orpheans.  After Somers left the band, its vocalist and violinist, Ramon Newton, and pianist Carroll Gibbons took on the leadership role.  Newton can be heard on the vocals of all three recordings featured here.

“I’d Rather Charleston” is a George Gershwin composition from the 1926 London production of the musical comedy Lady, Be Good!, the original version of which opened in New York City in 1924.  Lady, Be Good! was Gershwin’s first Broadway collaboration with his brother, Ira Gershwin.

“I’d Rather Charleston” was added to the 1926 British production and was not featured in the 1924 New York version.  Fred and Adele Astaire, who also appeared in the New York production, performed the song in the London production.

On the recording here, Ramon Newton is joined on vocals by Estelle Brody, a little-known American vaudeville dancer who had recently moved to England, where she quickly achieved celebrity status from her roles in British silent films.  Her career entered an equally rapid decline due to the transition to talking pictures and an unsuccessful attempt to establish herself in Hollywood.

“He Left Her Behind Before” was composed by Abner Silver with lyrics by Alfred Bryan and film actor Bert Hanlon.

“There’s Always A Way Into Trouble” was composed by Savoy Orpheans pianist Carroll Gibbons, who also directed the recording session, with lyrics by James Dyrenforth.  The song was featured in the 1927 production Up With The Lark at London’s Adelphi Theatre.

In 2022, the Savoy Hotel revived the Savoy Orpheans under the leadership of bandleader Alex Mendham.

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California Ramblers – 1925

Columbia 527-D label image. "Dreaming Of A Castle In The Air" California Ramblers

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“Dreaming Of A Castle In The Air”
California Ramblers
December 4, 1925    (Columbia 527 D mx 141352)
“Smile A Little Bit”
California Ramblers
December 4, 1925    (Columbia 527 D mx 141351)

 

From the Edward Mitchell Collection, here are two instrumental recordings by the California Ramblers.

I find “Dreaming Of A Castle In The Air” extremely charming.   The song’s composer is Eddie Ward.   My understanding is that another recording of the song, by the Ray Miller Orchestra, should also be in Eddie’s collection.  Once I locate it, I will digitize it for inclusion in Radio Dismuke as well, and possibly include it in a future blog posting.

“Smile A Little Bit” was composed by Bob Morton and Peggy Shevlin.  I find the arrangement here to be rather haunting.

As was often the case with popular songs during the era, most record labels issued at least one version of these songs.  “Dreaming Of A Castle In The Air”  seems to have been especially well-received in Germany, where it was recorded by multiple artists under the title “Mein Schloß im Mond” – including a very nice vocal version by the Austrian tenor Richard Tauber.

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Frank Black And His Orchestra – 1927

Brunswick 3619-B label image "A Million Miles (To Be A Little Bit Nearer To You)" Frank Black And His Orchestra

 

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“I’d Walk A Million Miles (To Be A Little Bit Nearer To You)”
Frank Black And His Orchestra; Scrappy Lambert, vocal
August 10, 1927    (Brunswick 3619-B)
“Highways Are Happy Ways”
Frank Black And His Orchestra; Scrappy Lambert, vocal
August 10, 1927    (Brunswick 3619-A)

 

Here is a record from the Edward Mitchell Collection of two songs that were well-known and recorded by several bands in 1927 but quickly forgotten.

“I’d Walk A Million Miles (To Be A Little Bit Nearer To You)”, composed by Gerald Marks with lyrics by Al Lewis, is my favorite of the two.

“Highways Are Happy Ways,” composed by Larry Shay with lyrics by Harry Harris and Tommie Malie, was likely inspired by a “Highways Are Happy Ways” slogan used by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana on advertisements for its Red Crown gasoline and on the road maps distributed by its gas stations.

The vocals on both recordings are provide by Scrappy Lambert.

Frank Black and His Orchestra recorded a couple of dozen or so sides for Brunswick between 1926 and 1928. Black himself was also prominent behind the scenes without label credit on many other recordings and on radio.

Beginning in 1926, he replaced Ed Smalle as the pianist accompanying the popular vocal group the Revelers.

He also directed the Victor recording sessions for the Arden Ohman Orchestra while its stars, the piano duo of Victor Arden and Phil Ohman, were busy playing the prominently featured piano passages.

During the 1930s, Black was music director for the NBC radio network, where he conducted everything from classical music with ensembles such as the  NBC String Symphony to popular music with the house bands of several NBC radio programs.

Vintage Red Crown gasoline advertisement from 1927(From 1927 advertisement. Click here to view larger image)

 

 

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Flanigan And Allen – 1937

Columbia FB 1781 label image "Free (Isn;t It The Way It Ought To Be?" Flanigan and Allen

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

 

“Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)”
Flanagan And Allen, vocal
1937    (Columbia FB 1781 mx CA 16606)
“Home Town”
Flanagan And Allen, vocal
1937    (Columbia FB 1781 mx CA 16605)

 

Here are two recordings by the British comedy duo Bud Flanigan and Chesney Allen, who were immensely popular in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s for their stand-alone comedy act and for being members of the Crazy Gang comedy troupe.

Flanigan and Allen performed both of these songs in musicals featuring the Crazy Gang produced by George Black at the London Palladium.

“Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)” was performed by Flanigan and Allen in the Crazy Gang’s 1936 London Palladium production O-Kay For Sound, which was subsequently made into a 1937 film of the same name in which they also performed the song.

The song’s reference to LSD, by the way, has nothing to do with the drug, which was not invented until a year later, but rather to £sd, a popular name for Britain’s old pounds, shillings, and pence currency which existed until 1971 when it switched to its current decimal currency.

I think this recording is incredibly catchy and charming.  When I first came across it in my collection, I immediately played it back several times.

The film version of O-Kay For Sound can be watched in its entirety on YouTube at this link. You can see Flanigan and Allen perform “Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)” by scrolling to 10 minutes and 10 seconds into the film.

“Home Town” comes from the Crazy Gang’s 1937 London Palladium production, London Rhapsody.

Both recordings are accompanied by a studio band directed by George Scott Wood.

 

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Ted Lewis And His Band – 1928

Columbia 1525-D label image. "Jungle Blues" Ted Lewis And His Band

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“Jungle Blues”
Ted Lewis And His Band
April 3, 1928     (Columbia 1525-D mx 145954)
“A Jazz Holiday”
Ted Lewis And His Band; Ted Lewis, vocal
April 3, 1928  (Columbia 1525-D mx 145953)

 

I have had a copy of this Ted Lewis record in my collection for many years.  In 2021, I added the “A Jazz Holiday” side to Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

But, somehow, I have no recollection of ever having listened to the “Jungle Blues” side until a few months ago, as I was looking for records to play on the station’s annual New Year’s broadcast.

How that could happen is beyond me because I think “Jungle Blues,” a Jelly Roll Morton composition, is, by far, the best of the two sides.   I prefer Jelly Roll Morton’s recording of the song over Ted Lewis’s.  But that does not diminish the fact that I think the Ted Lewis version is also very good.

I do not believe I have a copy of Jelly Roll Morton’s version in my collection.   But I have come across a few Jelly Roll Morton records in the Edward Mitchell collection.  As I continue to digitize Eddie’s collection for inclusion on Radio Dismuke, I will keep my eye out for a possible copy.

Speaking of Eddie, I acquired the particular copy from which I digitized the two recordings here from him.

In November 2022, I drove to Waco and met up with Eddie to digitize the records he planned on presenting in the upcoming New Year’s broadcast.   We recorded the broadcast virtually that year, rather than in person, which required me to digitize everybody’s records before the broadcast.

Before I returned to Fort Worth, Eddie placed several piles of records on a table.  They were either duplicates of what he already had or records outside the scope of his collecting interests.  He said he didn’t feel like going through the hassle of listing them for sale on eBay.  He told me to look through the records for any I might be interested in, and he would let me have them for $1 each.

The record here was one of a boxful that I picked out.   When I came across it, I knew I already had a copy of “A Jazz Holiday” in my collection.  But I couldn’t recall off the top of my head what sort of condition it was in.  But this copy was in beautiful condition.  So I went ahead and got it as a possible upgrade copy.

That visit turned out to be the last time I would see Eddie, as he passed away the following August.

So I am now, at long last, correcting whatever oversight caused me to overlook “Jungle Blues” when I added “A Jazz Holiday” to the station in 2021.  And I will compare my digitization of “A Jazz Holiday” here with the one I did in 2021 and keep the better of the two in the station.

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Arcadia Peacock Orchestra of St. Louis – 1924

OKeh 40254-A label image "Let Me Be The First To Kiss You Good Morning" Arcadia Peacock Orchestra of St. Louis

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“Where’s My Sweetie Hiding?”
Arcadia Peacock Orchestra of St Louis; Chic Harvey, vocal
(OKeh 40254-B   mx 8764-A)                                November 29, 1924

 

“Let Me Be The First To Kiss You Good Morning”
Arcadia Peacock Orchestra of St Louis
(OKeh 40254-A   mx8767-B)                                November 29, 1924

 

 

From the Edward Mitchell Collection, here are two sides by an excellent St. Louis jazz band, directed by violinist Jack Ford, which took its name from the city’s long-since-demolished Arcadia Ballroom.

This band had a rather distinctive, and I think very nice, style.  It’s unfortunate that its entire recorded output of twelve sides, made for OKeh between January 1924 and March 1925, was produced with the soon-to-be-obsolete pre-microphone era acoustic recording technology.  (The British Parlophone label issued a 1927 electrical recording credited to the Arcadia Peacock Orchestra of St. Louis, but the band on it is the Sol S. Wagner Orchestra.)

In my opinion, both of these recordings are outstanding. “Where’s My Sweetie Hiding?” is by far the jazziest of the two, but I think the band’s arrangement of “Let Me Be the First to Kiss You Good Morning” is incredibly charming, making it my favorite.

While digging around online for information about the band, I came across this interesting article on the Syncopated Times’ website about its banjo player, Porter Brown.

I know that at least one additional record by this band exists in Eddie’s collection.  But I am not sure where within the collection it is located.  Once I come across it, I will definitely prioritize it for digitization.

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Phil Spitalny’s Music – 1931

Hit of the Week A-2-3 label image "Now's The Time To Fall In Love" & "After The Ball:" Phil Spitalny's Music

Background information about the recording can be found below the audio selection.

 

“Now’s The Time To Fall in Love” & “After The Ball
Phil Spitalny’s Music; Paul Small, Eton Boys vocal
(Hit of the Week A-2-3 mx 1188)                   December 1931

 

Here’s a Depression-era “cheer up” song made popular by Eddie Cantor, who introduced it in the 1931 film Palmy Days and sang it as the theme song on his weekly network radio program.

The recording is from a single-sided cardboard Hit of the Week record and is followed by a shorter “bonus track” featuring a waltz that was a big hit in the 1890s.

Hit of the Week was an attempt to market inexpensive records, sold at retailers such as newsstands and drugstores, featuring the popular songs of the moment during the early years of the Depression.

A few months before this record was released, Hit of the Week expanded the playing time of its discs from approximately three minutes, the standard for 10-inch records of the era, to around five minutes.   Sometimes the company would take advantage of the extra playing time by adding a second track. To avoid paying extra royalties, the second track always consisted of a song that was either in the public domain or otherwise not copyrighted.

Phil Spitlany, whose photo appears on the blank back side of the record, was one of the better-known bandleaders who recorded with Hit of the Week regularly.  In the band, you can hear xylophonist Sammy Herman, who is prominently featured throughout “Now’s The Time To Fall In Love.”  If the “let’s pretend the economy is wonderful” lyrics don’t cheer one up, the xylophone passages will likely do so.

Paul Small worked as a freelance studio vocalist and can be heard on countless popular recordings by most of the major early 1930s record labels.  Here he is joined, without any credit given on the label, by the Eton Boys, a male quartet that had become famous through vaudeville and on network radio.

The second track features the 1891 waltz composition “After The Ball.”   I find it an interesting pairing with a “cheer-up” song, given that its full lyrics, though not included in the recording, were well-known at the time and are about a tear-jerking tragedy.  It is a pretty song, but quite the opposite of cheerful.

 

Image of Phil Spitalny on reverse side of a Hit of the Week record

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Colonial Club Orchestra – 1928

Brunswick 3891-A label image. "I'd Love To Go Around With You" Colonial Club Orchestra

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“I’d Love To Go Around With You”
Colonial Club Orchestra; Scrappy Lambert, vocal
(Brunswick 3891-A)                                 March 23, 1928

 

“I’m Always Smiling”
Colonial Club Orchestra; Scrappy Lambert, vocal
(Brunswick 3891-B)                                 March 23, 1928

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are a couple of catchy tunes with a pleasant, happy dance band arrangement of style that is uniquely 1920s.

The Colonial Club Orchestra was a recording pseudonym used by Brunswick Records between 1926 and 1931 for dance records of popular songs.

For years, many collectors – including myself – equated the Colonial Club Orchestra with the Bob Haring Orchestra. Some websites, including Bob Haring’s Wikipedia page, continue to do so.

This is entirely understandable because Brian Rust’s American Dance Band Discography credits the vast majority of Colonial Club Orchestra recordings, including the two featured here, to Bob Haring’s band.

However, according to Brunswick’s recording ledgers,  the vast majority of Colonial Club Orchestra recording sessions were led by Brunswick’s in-house music director Louis Katzman.  Bob Haring led some Colonial Club Orchestra recording sessions in 1929 after he became the music director at Brunswick.  But, according to the ledgers and as documented in the Discography of American Historical Recordings (D.A.H.R.), the recording sessions between 1926 and 1928 were led by Katzman.

Harold “Scrappy” Lambert worked as a freelance studio vocalist for most of the major record labels of the 1920s and 1930s.  He, and similar studio vocalists such as Irving Kaufman, Smith Ballew, Elmer Feldkamp, and others, made themselves available whenever record labels needed a vocalist to accompany either their in-house bands or even well-known name bands for a recording session.

The recorded output of the studio vocalists mentioned was enormously prolific.   D.A.H.R. lists well over 800 sides that Lambert recorded between 1927 and 1931 alone, and he continued to make records well into the 1940s.

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The Midway Dance Orchestra – 1923

Columbia 33-D label image. "Lots O' Mama" The Midway Dance Orchestra Early 1900s Music Preservation/Radio Dismuke

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.

 

“Lots O’ Mamma”
The Midway Dance Orchestra
(Columbia 33-D mx 81311)                                       October 18, 1923|

 

“The Black Sheep Blues”
The Midway Dance Orchestra
(Columbia 33-D mx 81312)                                   October 18, 1923

 

From the Edward Mitchell Collection, here are two 1923 sides by an early Chicago hot jazz band named after a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed indoor/outdoor entertainment complex that was demolished only 15 years after it opened.

The short-lived band, led by Elmer Schoebel, took its name from Midway Gardens, a large entertainment complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright where the band performed.  Earlier in 1923, the band had made recordings for Gennett as the Original Memphis Melody Boys and for Columbia as the Chicago Blues Dance Orchestra. 

Elmer Schoebel was a pianist and composer who also worked as an arranger for Isham Jones and music publishing houses, including Warner Brothers. He is best remembered as the composer of jazz standards such as “Bugle Call Rag, ” “Stomp Off! Let’s Go!” “Farewell Blues” and “Prince of Wails.”

Both of these recordings were made during a Columbia field trip to Chicago. Schoebel was also the composer of “Lots O’ Mamma.” “The Black Sheep Blues” was composed by Phil Baker.

Built in 1914, the massive and utterly unique Midway Gardens complex featured both indoor and outdoor dining and entertainment venues. As he did with other projects, Wright designed not only the interior and exterior but also associated items such as furniture, vases, linens, and china.   But the endeavor struggled financially, and the arrival of prohibition impacted attendance and cut off a much-needed source of revenue. Sadly, the entire complex was demolished in 1929, just 15 years after it was built.

You can read more about Midway Gardens on this website, which also features interesting galleries of photos from the year it opened, as well as photos taken after an expansion and alterations that took place the same month the recordings here were made, along with some additional photos.

 

Drawing of Midway Gardens with Frank Llloyd Wright desinged font spelling out "Midway Gardens"(Image courtesy University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf2-05121], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.)

 

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