Billy Hayes And His Orchestra – 1928

Posted on July 23, 2026 by dismuke

“I’m Always Smiling”
Billy Hays And His Orchestra; Irving Kaufman, vocal
February 15, 1928            (OKeh 40996 mx 400085)
“My Miami Moon”
Billy Hays And His Orchestra; Irving Kaufman, vocal
February 15, 1928           (OKeh 40996 mx 400084)

Billy Hays was a well-known composer who led a Philadelphia-based band that became popular in the mid-1920s through radio broadcasts and was regularly featured at prominent local Chinese restaurants offering dining and dancing.

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two out of a total of four recordings made by OKeh between December 1927 and August 1928 that were credited on the label to Billy Hays and His Orchestra but which were actually recorded by Sam Lanin’s band.  A fifth recording from this period credited to Hays was recorded by Harry Reser’s band.

The actual Billy Hays band did record four sides for OKeh in October 1928 and January 1929, which were credited on the label as Billy Hays’ Cathay Orchestra.  Subsequently, the band recorded ten sides for Victor issued under the band’s own name.  In 1931, the band also recorded some sides for the American Record Corporation, which were issued on the company’s various dime-store labels and credited to the band.  However, some sources suggest that some or all of these releases were actually remakes recorded by other bands but credited to Hays’ orchestra.

What all of the OKeh recordings by the Sam Lanin and Harry Reser bands credited to the Billy Hays band have in common is that they are of songs for which Billy Hays was either composer or lyricist.

Hays wrote the lyrics for “I’m Always Smiling,” which was composed by Joe Darcy and Lou Herscher, who, like Hays, was also from Philadelphia.

This version of the song will join a recording by the Colonial Club Orchestra, which is already in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

For “My Miami Moon,” Hays and Herscher supplied the music. The lyrics were selected through a special Philadelphia Daily News contest that attracted more than 3,000 submissions from the public. The winner was Katherine Wexler.  Arrangements had already been made in advance for the song to be published, and Ms. Wexler became eligible for a share of its royalty earnings.

I have not been able to find any information explaining why OKeh initially used other bands for records issued under Hays’ name rather than recording the actual Hays orchestra, as it eventually began doing in October 1928.

If I were to venture a guess, logistics and economics may have played a role. Then, as now, live performances, not records, were the primary source of most musicians’ income.  For a regional band to make a recording for OKeh meant either traveling to its  New York City recording studios or waiting for the company to make a field trip with its portable recording equipment to a city within reasonable travel distance.

OKeh did make a field trip to Philadelphia in March 1927, but apparently none were made after that date.

Travel by automobile between Philadelphia and New York City in 1928 took approximately four to six hours each way – which would have made for either a very grueling, lengthy day or an overnight stay.  Either way would have been incompatible with an evening gig in the Philadelphia area.

The same trip could have been made by an express train in about two hours each way. Factoring in travel between the station and the recording studio, along with the length of the recording session itself, a round trip might still have been compatible with an evening engagement in Philadelphia.  But tickets for around a dozen musicians would have been a not-insignificant expense that would have had to have been picked up either by OKeh or the band.

The February 15, 1928 recording session these two sides are from coincides with the approximate time period that Katherine Wexler’s lyrics for “My Miami Moon” were selected as the winner of the Philadelphia Daily News contest.

Given Hays’ popularity in the Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey region and the massive publicity that the Philadelphia Daily News undoubtedly gave to its own lyrics contest, issuing the record under Billy Hays’ name would have helped sales in that region. It also would have expanded Hays’ name recognition beyond his home market.

The website linked above quotes a 1964 Record Research article by Jack Montez, who wrote:

I have heard MARIANETTE, MY MIAMI MOON, and SWEETHEART LANE, and they certainly have all the ear marks [sic] of the group that Billy had at the Cathay Tea Garden, and later on at the Golden Dragon in Philadelphia, and I knew that band pretty well. The above tunes were Hays or sidemen compositions, and Billy’s voice is unmistakable.

Montez was definitely mistaken in his recollection of Hays’s voice on “My Miami Moon.” The vocalist is clearly Irving Kaufman, who is also credited in the DAHR. (On British Parlophone pressings of both sides, Kaufman’s vocals were credited under the pseudonym Noel Taylor.)

You can hear Hays’ voice on this recording via YouTube from one of the later OKeh recording sessions that used the actual Hays band.

However, it is entirely conceivable that the Sam Lanin Orchestra was playing from the same arrangements used by the Hays band, in which case, it would have sounded similar.

 

(From The Billboard, February 11, 1928)

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Midway Dance Orchestra – 1923 (Part 2)

Posted on July 21, 2026 by dismuke


(Drawing and logo courtesy University of Chicago Photographic Archive, [apf2-05121], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.)

 

“Buddy’s Habits”
The Midway Dance Orchestra
December 5, 1923            (Columbia 51-D mx 81383)
“Cotton Pickers’ Ball”
The Midway Dance Orchestra
October 18, 1923             (Columbia 51-D mx 81313)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two pre-microphone-era recordings by a short-lived Chicago-area hot jazz band that took its name from Midway Gardens, a large garden resort entertainment complex designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Unfortunately, the entire complex was demolished in 1929, only 15 years after it opened in 1914.

The band, led by pianist and arranger Elmer Schoebel, performed under multiple names.

A total of four recordings were made under the name Midway Dance Orchestra during Columbia field-trip recording sessions in Chicago on October 18 and December 5, 1923. The two recordings not featured in this posting, “Lots O’ Mamma” and “The Black Sheep Blues,” were previously presented in this blog’s April 25, 2025 posting.

One day after the October 18 recording session, the band recorded three sides for Paramount Records under the slightly different name Midway Garden Orchestra: “Sobbin’ Blues,” and remakes of “Lots O’ Mamma” and “The Black Sheep Blues,” which had been recorded for Columbia the previous day.

Earlier in the year, on April 2, the band recorded four sides in Richmond, Indiana, for Gennett Records as the Original Memphis Melody Boys, and on May 30, two sides in Chicago for Columbia as the Chicago Blues Dance Orchestra.

By 1925, the band had broken up, and Schoebel went to work for prominent Chicago bandleader Isham Jones.   However, in 1929 Schoebel led a studio band that recorded four sides for Brunswick as Friar’s Society Orchestra,  taking its name from a band he worked for in 1922-1923 that soon changed its name to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings.

As mentioned in this blog’s earlier posting, 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.

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.

 

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Johnny Hamp’s Kentucky Serenaders & Gus C. Edwards And His Orchestra – 1926

Posted on July 16, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Who Wouldn’t”
Johnny Hamp’s Kentucky Serenaders
Charles Buckwalter, Edward Groff, Frank Masterson, vocal
July 7, 1926 (Victor 20117-A)
“Cryin’ For The Moon”
Gus C Edwards And His Orchestra
August 31, 1926 (Victor 20167-B)

 

Here are two selections from the Edward Mitchell collection that will be among those included in this week’s Radio Dismuke playlist update.

“Who Wouldn’t” is a Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson composition.   This particular recording turned 100 years old a little over a week ago – though it was not released for sale until the following November.   The Ben Selvin Orchestra’s recording of the song is already part of Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

About a week and a half before this recording was made, Johnny Hamp’s Kentucky Serenaders recorded what would become by far the band’s biggest and most famous hit, “Black Bottom,” named after the dance craze that eventually overtook the Charleston in popularity.

Larry Conley, Jack Stern, and Jules Roos were the composers of “Cryin’ For The Moon.”  This recording, made at Victor’s headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, rather than at its main studios in New York City,  joins an existing recording of the song by Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra already featured in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

Gus C. Edwards’ band was one of many Chicago-area bands managed by the Benson Organization, an early band-booking agency owned by impresario Edgar A. Benson that, during the early 1920s, dominated much of the live music market in Chicago and the surrounding region.

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Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra – 1928

Posted on July 14, 2026 by dismuke

 

“I’m On The Crest Of A Wave”
Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra; Bing Crosby & trio vocal
June 17, 1928  (Columbia 1465-D mx 146541)
“What D’ya Say?”
Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra; Irving Kaufman, vocal
July 2, 1928  (Columbia 1465-D mx 146611)

 

Here are two selections from a 1928 Columbia so-called “potato head” record.  These records featured a colorful picture label with a potato-shaped caricature of bandleader Paul Whiteman (seen above in a colorized photograph from 1929, posing with his new Cord L-29 automobile in front of the MacDonald-Dodson Tire Co. in Los Angeles), whom Columbia had successfully wooed from its larger arch-rival Victor earlier that year.   This was considered a major coup for Columbia, as Whiteman was by far the best-known bandleader in the United States and Victor’s top-selling artist.

The special label was part of a major publicity campaign that Columbia launched to announce Whiteman’s defection, and continued to be used until he returned to Victor in September 1930.

Columbia also issued picture labels for other artists such as Ted Lewis and Rudy Vallee, but none were as colorful or elaborate as the Paul Whiteman label.

What buyers of the record featured here, Columbia 1465-D, would not have been aware of was that, despite the label credits, the actual Paul Whiteman orchestra only appeared on one of the sides, “I’m On The Crest of a Wave.”

Both songs were introduced by Harry Richman in the 1928 edition of George White’s Scandals.   The Whiteman record of the songs outsold Harry Richman’s own recordings, which were issued on Brunswick 4008, with his Scandals co-star Francis Williams joining him on the “What D’ya Say?” side.

Though he was not credited on the label, a young Bing Crosby provides the vocal on “I’m On The Crest of a Wave.” At the time, Crosby worked for Paul Whiteman as part of  The Rhythm Boys, a vocal trio that also included Al Rinker and Harry Barris.  The vocal trio that accompanied Crosby on this recording was composed of Jack Fulton, Charles Gaylord, and Austin Young.

This recording of “What D’ya Say?,” while credited to Whiteman, was, in fact, a Columbia studio band led by its music director, Ben Selvin.  Because the recording was made using the Whiteman band’s own arrangement, which had been provided for the occasion, record buyers were none the wiser.

Selvin substituted for the Whiteman band on three other recordings, “Pickin’ Cotton” from the same July 2 recording session as “What D’ya Say?,” as well as “If You Don’t Love Me” and “Sorry For Me” recorded during a July 20 session.

The “Sorry For Me” recording was not issued. The other two, as with “What D’ya Say?,” were issued coupled with recordings by the actual Paul Whiteman band on the flip side.

I was not able to learn the exact reason for the substitution.  However, the Whiteman band had a fairly heavy out-of-town touring schedule during the summer of 1928, so my guess is they either ran out of time to record them during the three days of Whiteman recording sessions held between June 17-19, or Columbia made a last-minute decision to issue Whiteman recordings of those songs.   The Whiteman band did not return to the recording studio until September 4.

 

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Salt And Pepper – 1924

Posted on July 10, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Holdin’ The Sack”
Salt And Pepper
September 18, 1924  (Cameo 609 mx 1151)
“Doodle Doo Doo”
Salt And Pepper
September 18, 1924  (Cameo 609 mx 1156)

 

One of the many fads of American popular culture in the 1920s was the ukulele craze.  The Hawaiian instrument captured public attention through performances of Hawaiian bands at the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

By 1925, over four million ukuleles had been sold in the United States.  On college campuses, the ukulele had become an important accessory and symbol of Jazz Age popular culture.

The 1920s celebrity most associated with the craze was Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, whose recordings are well-represented in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.   Those less familiar with 1920s and 1930s popular music may know him as the voice of Jiminy Cricket, who famously sang “When You Wish Upon a Star” in Walt Disney’s 1940 film Pinocchio.

Here are two pre-microphone-era recordings by a lesser-known duo associated with the instrument’s popularity.  Frank Kurtz (Salt) and Jack Pepper were famous on the vaudeville circuits and in Broadway musical revues for their comedic song and dance act, which featured singing and ukulele playing in a style similar to that of Cliff Edwards.  They also appeared on radio and recorded about ten sides on the low-priced Cameo label.

After the duo broke up,  Jack Pepper formed a new vaudeville act, Ginger and Pepper, with a young, then-unknown Texas dancer named Ginger Rogers. The two married in 1929 and divorced in 1931.

On both of these recordings, you can hear the duo perform the high-pitched style of scat singing popularized by Cliff Edwards, which sounds reminiscent of a kazoo. The term for this vocal effect is eefing (also spelled eephing).

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Busse’s Buzzards

Posted on July 9, 2026 by dismuke

“Milenberg Joys”
Busse’s Buzzards
September 14, 1925  (Victor 19782-B)
“Red Hot Henry Brown”
Busse’s Buzzards
September 14, 1925  (Victor 19782-A)

Here is a Victor record featuring two songs that have long since been regarded as traditional jazz standards.

Busse’s Buzzards was a hot jazz ensemble composed of musicians from the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, under the nominal leadership of trumpeter Henry Busse.  Busse had been an important member of the Whiteman band since its founding in 1918.  In 1928, Busse formed his own band, which enjoyed success into the early 1940s.

“Milenberg Joys” is a Jelly Roll Morton composition published in 1923.  Milenberg was a town on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, around which a resort area of fishing camps and dance halls began to emerge in the late 19th century.  It is regarded as one of the birthplaces of jazz, where people of all races would gather to play and listen to music.  The resort ceased to exist after the shortline was extended due to dredging operations, and the area is now part of New Orleans.

“Red Hot Henry Brown,” composed by Fred Rose, was published the same year as this recording.  Other recordings of the song made in 1925 included those by the Georgia Melodians, The Charleston Chasers, Ray Miller and his Orchestra, Jimmy Joy’s St. Anthony Hotel Orchestra, Margaret Young, and others.

These recordings were made a few months after Victor began recording with microphones rather than the old acoustic recording horns.  There was no indication of this, however, on the record’s label.  To allow for a transition period and sell off existing stocks of records and phonographs before they were viewed as obsolete, no public announcement of the new technology or the upcoming improved phonographs capable of reproducing its expanded frequency range was made until late in the year.

 

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Vincent Rose And His Montmartre Orchestra / Henry Halstead And His Orchestra – 1924

Posted on July 8, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Sadie (You Are The Lady For Me)”
Vincent Rose And His Montmartre Orchestra; Buddy Burns, vocal
June 12, 1924  (Victor 19511-B)
“Bull Frog Serenade”
Henry Halstead And His Orchestra
June 19, 1924    (Victor 19511-A)

From the Edward Mitchell Collection, here is a pre-microphone-era Victor record featuring jazzy selections by two bands prominent on the West Coast during the early and mid-1920s.  Both sides were recorded in June 1924, but the record did not appear in stores until February 1925.

Vincent Rose is best remembered today as a prolific composer of famous early 1920s songs such as “Whispering, ” “Avalon,” “Stumbling,” and a personal favorite of mine, “Love Tales.”   He also co-composed the song “Blueberry Hill” in 1940, a rock-and-roll version of which by Fats Domino became a big hit in 1956.

Rose’s career as a bandleader dated back to around 1906, when after serving as a music director for hotels in Chicago, he formed his own band in southern California.  Thus, his band dated back well before jazz and before the early 1910s dance craze that led to the rise of dance bands, which would dominate and largely define popular music in the United States and beyond into the early 1940s.

As the label credit suggests, when the selection here was recorded, Rose’s band had a long-term engagement at Hollywood’s Café Montmartre, a nightclub famous worldwide as a gathering spot for top Hollywood celebrities.  The club’s popularity began to wane at the end of the decade, and it eventually closed in the early 1930s.  However, the building in which it was located (on the second floor) still stands at 6763 Hollywood Boulevard, with its original exterior mostly intact.

Rose co-wrote “Sadie (You Are The Lady For Me)” with his band’s trumpet player, Harry Owens, who also wrote the lyrics for Rose’s well-known compositions “Linger Awhile” and “Love Tales.”  Owens later formed his own band, which, after securing an engagement at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki, became nationally famous as Harry Owens and his Royal Hawaiians, featuring Hawaiian-themed arrangements.

This recording of the song was made in Los Angeles.

The Henry Halstead Orchestra became famous as the house band of San Francisco’s posh St. Francis Hotel (which had famously survived that city’s devastating 1906 earthquake) from 1922 to 1925 and through its frequent broadcasts on radio station KGO.

“Bull Frog Serenade” is a rather unusual recording, featuring musical notes that imitate the sound of a bullfrog.  While the performance here is definitely jazz, the composition itself is ragtime.

I was only able to find limited information about the song’s composer, Charles F. Caldwell.  A June 11, 1919, copyright filing for “Bull Frog Serenade” lists Caldwell as its composer with an arrangement by Ed. R. Wagner.  The filing indicates that the work was self-published and that Caldwell was based in Los Angeles at the time of the filing.

There was a second copyright filing for “Bull Frog Serenade” in 1924.  Most likely, this was related to the Halstead band’s recording, either on the arrangement used in the recording or, perhaps, in anticipation of potential publication in sheet music form if the recording proved successful.

I was able to identify nine additional songs copyrighted by Caldwell between his 1919 copyright for “Bull Frog Serenade” and 1927.   But I could only locate additional information on two of them: “Plinka Plunk” from 1923, co-composed with Mike Pingitore, who was best known as a banjo player for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and “In the Shadow of the Palm Trees,” for which he shared composer credit with Paul Whiteman, and with lyrics by Dolly Morse.   That song’s copyright was renewed in 1954, but I have not been able to find any mention of it being published or of Whiteman ever recording it.

“Bull Frog Serenade” was recorded in Oakland, California, where, a few months earlier, Victor had opened a new West Coast pressing facility.

February 17, 1925 Washington Times advertisement for Woodward & Lothrop department store in Washington D.C.

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Bennie Krueger’s Orchestra – 1926

Posted on July 7, 2026 by dismuke

“No One But You Knows How To Love”
Bennie Krueger’s Orchestra (Vocal possibly by Walter Scanlan)
September 11, 1926     (Brunswick 3323-B)
“Gone Again Gal”
Bennie Krueger’s Orchestra (Vocal possibly by Walter Scanlan)
September 11, 1926      (Brunswick 3323-A)

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two “hot dance” recordings from 1926 that exemplify the decade’s exuberant spirit, which, in part, led people to refer to the era as the “Roaring Twenties.”

Benny Krueger was a noted saxophone player whose band was based in Chicago during most of the 1920s, where these sides were recorded.

The addition of these recordings to Radio Dismuke’s playlist will mark the debut of both songs on the station.

“No One But You Knows How To Love” was composed by May Singhi Breen and Peter De Rose, with lyrics by Joe Trent and Allan Frazer.

“Gone Again Gal” was composed by bandleader Isham Jones and features lyrics by Gus Kahn. However, I was unable to find any evidence that the song was ever recorded by Isham Jones’s own band.

As was common at the time, vocal credit was not provided on the label beyond the phrase “with vocal chorus.”  One online source identifies the vocals on both sides as those of Walter Scanlan, but none of my other usual sources for such information make mention of it.

Unfortunately, these recordings were made during the period when Brunswick was using its less-than-optimal “Light Ray” electrical recording process.

After rivals Victor and Columbia licensed the far superior Western Electric system,  Brunswick turned to General Electric and licensed a modified version of that company’s experimental sound-on-film system called the Pallophotophone.

Unlike the Western Electric system, which used microphones and amplification to power the cutting head,  Brunswick’s system utilized a recording horn that directed sound to a diaphragm, causing a tiny mirror – smaller than a pinhead – to vibrate. A constant beam of light was focused on the mirror.  As the mirror vibrated, reflected flickers of light reached a photoelectric cell, which converted the fluctuations in light into an electrical signal that was then amplified to power the cutting head.

Unfortunately, Brunswick was never able to get the system to work well.   Early recordings often had so much distortion that artists had to be called back to the recording studio to record new takes.   Brunswick’s engineers continually attempted to make tweaks.  However, once a distortion issue in a particular frequency range was resolved, a new distortion would often emerge in another.

Some recordings made by the process turned out better than others.  I notice its shortcomings most on recordings such as these, where very loud passages of the entire band can come across as harsh or distorted.   I have several records with really excellent performances by the Abe Lyman and Ben Bernie bands that were unfortunately impacted by it.

Despite heavy advertising promoting the alleged superiority of its “Light Ray” system, which it described as “Music By Photography,” Brunswick finally threw in the towel on it in 1927 and reached a confidential licensing agreement with Western Electric.

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Vintage 4th of July “Concert” 1918 – 1921

Posted on July 3, 2026 by dismuke

Independence Day in the United States is one of the rare occasions when it is still common for people of all ages to gather and enjoy – often at live performances – festive music from the late 19th and very early 20th centuries. Such performances are often followed by a fireworks display. And the music invariably includes one or more compositions by John Philip Sousa.

The virtual “concert” presented here is anything but live. All of the recordings are over 100 years old and were made before the advent of the microphone. But the instruments used by concert-style military bands reproduced well enough through the old acoustic recording horns to yield performances that are still enjoyable over a century later.

Two of the recordings featured here are especially historic because, out of the many hundreds of Sousa’s Band recordings that Victor issued between 1900 and 1929, they are among only a very small handful in which John Philip Sousa was personally present in the recording studio, conducting the band.

Below you will find an option to listen to all of the featured recordings, played back-to-back in “concert-style.” Below that, you will find options to listen to each recording individually.

Brief background information about the recordings is provided at the end of this posting.

If you enjoy the recordings here, you will also enjoy the Vintage Fourth of July Concert posting from 2021.

To listen to all recordings play through “concert style”

To listen to the recordings individually

“Sabre and Spurs March”
Sousa’s Band
September 6, 1918  (Victor 18504-A)
“Solid Men To The Front”
Sousa’s Band
September 6, 1918     (Victor 18504-B)
“Bullets and Bayonets”
Sousa’s Band
October 2, 1919  (Victor 18752-B)
“On The Campus”
Sousa’s Band
April 5, 1921    (Victor 18752-A)

John Philip Sousa is best remembered as a highly prolific composer of military marches, such as “Stars and Stripes Forever,” though he also wrote other types of music, including 15 full-length operettas.

Less well-remembered is Sousa’s enormously successful career as a bandleader.  He rose to prominence as the director of the United States Marine Band from 1880 to 1892, during which time he conducted the inaugural balls for presidents James Garfield and Benjamin Harrison.

Sousa left the Marines in 1892 to form his own, much more financially lucrative, civilian band.  The band toured extensively throughout the world and, by 1931, had performed 15,623 concerts.  Before the advent of radio and the popularity of Jazz Age dance bands, Sousa was by far the world’s most famous bandleader.

Unsurprisingly, the very early record labels were extremely eager to add recordings of Sousa’s band to their offerings.   But Sousa’s opinion of recorded music was nothing short of outright hatred and hostility – going so far as to write a 1906 essay titled The Menace of Mechanical Music.

Sousa felt that recorded music would lead to cultural decay and the destruction of amateur music-making, as people would no longer be as inclined to make music and sing together at home.  He also deeply resented the fact that early record labels were under no obligation to compensate him for the considerable amount of money they made off his compositions, and he was one of the artists who publicly lobbied for the Copyright Act of 1909, which required record labels to obtain mechanical licenses for any copyrighted compositions they recorded.

Even though Sousa did not approve of phonograph records, he nevertheless very much approved of the money he was able to earn from phonograph records featuring his band.  Thus, he gave his consent for his band to record and pocketed the money, but, for decades, famously refused to personally enter a recording studio.

Thus, with only six exceptions, all recordings credited to Sousa’s Band were conducted by someone other than Sousa.  And, on some issues, the band described as Sousa’s was, in fact, Victor’s in-house studio orchestra.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Sousa became heavily active in events promoting sales of Liberty Bonds, sold by the U.S. government to help fund the war. For this effort, he composed “The Liberty Loan March” and, for the first time in his decades-long career, personally conducted his band performing that song, along with “The U. S. Field Artillery March,” in a December 21, 1917 Victor recording session.

The following year, Sousa personally conducted a recording session for a second time in the September 6, 1918 session which produced two of the selections here, “Sabre and Spurs March” and “Solid Men to the Front.”

Despite the label credits,  the October 2, 1919 recording of “Bullets and Bayonets” and the April 5, 1921 recording of “On the Campus” do not feature Sousa’s actual band but rather Victor’s in-house ensemble conducted by Josef Pasternack.

All of the songs presented here were first published in 1918 with the exception of “On The Campus” which was published in 1920.

Happy Independence Day!

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The New York Twelve – 1930

Posted on July 2, 2026 by dismuke

“You’re Driving Me Crazy”
The New York Twelve; Frank Luther, vocal
December 29, 1930   (Hit of the Week 1121)

Here’s a recording from a Depression-era Hit of the Week record.  These were single-sided, resin-coated paperboard discs that, unlike conventional records, were sold at drugstores, magazine counters, and newsstands.

Hit of the Week was an attempt by the Durium Products Corporation (named after the synthetic resin on the records’ playing surface) to market records to a cash-strapped public at a time when sales were in free-fall, and labels were either merging or going out of business.

The company based its business model on the magazine industry, with weekly one-time production runs featuring currently popular songs.  The records were distributed through the same channels as magazines, and a new issue appeared every Thursday.  At 15 cents, they were the least expensive records on the market.

The company opened subsidiaries in the UK and several European countries, which issued paperboard records under either the Durium or Sefono labels.

In terms of the number of copies sold, Hit of the Week vastly exceeded the output of any other American record label.   But it was never able to reach the average volume of one million copies per week that the company projected would be necessary to sustain profitability, and it quickly ran into financial difficulty.

After falling into receivership, the label was reorganized under new ownership, which tried to revive its prospects by renegotiating royalty rates with music publishers, extending the records’ playing time to a full five minutes, and raising the price to 20 cents.

Unfortunately, with the economy sinking deeper into the Depression, the attempt was unsuccessful, and the last Hit of the Week issue in the United States appeared on newsstands on April 23, 1932.

The company’s British and several of its European subsidiaries outlasted their U.S. parent label, in some cases issuing paperboard records until 1935.  In fact, the Durium label in Italy successfully transformed itself into a conventional record label that survived until 1989.

“You’re Driving Me Crazy” is a Walter Donaldson composition that has endured as a standard, having been recorded by countless artists over the decades.

This Hit of the Week issue, recorded in December 1930, appeared at newsstands on January 29, 1931.  The New York Twelve was a recording pseudonym used on a handful of issues by different bands.  In this instance, it is Harry Reser’s band.

During the same session at which this recording was made, the band also recorded “Sweet Jenny Lee,” which appeared on newsstands the following week, credited as Reser’s Radio Band.  That recording of “Sweet Jenny Lee” was added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist a few weeks ago.

 

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