“Home”
Buddy Lane & His Orchestra; Buddy Lane, vocal
(Crown 3232 B mx 1553 3) January 1932
“Masquerade”
Adrian Schubert And His Orchestra; Harold Van Emburgh, vocal
(Crown 3335 A mx 1759) June 1932
Here are two songs I only recently learned were featured in The Shining, a film I have yet to see but began hearing about back when I first started sharing vintage recordings online.
Over the years, I have heard from a number of people who have told me that hearing the 1934 British recording of “Midnight The Stars And You,” sung by Al Bowlly with Ray Noble And His Orchestra, in The Shining was what sparked their interest in 1930s era dance bands and vocalists such as Bowlly. (You can hear that recording on this YouTube upload). The late Rich Conaty used to say that the Ray Noble/Al Bowlly recording was the most requested song on his weekly radio program, The Big Broadcast.
Since its appearance in The Shining, the song has been featured in several other films and is now regarded as a classic – deservedly so, in my opinion. And it is the song people mention when discussing The Shining.
However, during the 1930s, at least as far as the United States is concerned, “Midnight The Stars And You” was not as well-known as the songs presented here, “Home” and “Masquerade,” which were also featured in The Shining.
A few other recordings of “Midnight The Stars And You” were made in England by Roy Fox, Harry Leader, Maurice Elwin and Fred Hartley. But the only version I can find any mention of being issued in the United States during the 1930s was a pressing of the Ray Noble/Al Bowlly recording on Victor. The only mention I can find of any 1930s American recordings of the song is one that Hal Kemp’s band made on a radio transcription disc that was not commercially issued until decades later during the LP era.
By contrast, “Home,” composed by Harry Clarkson, Geoffrey Clarkson and Peter van Steeden, was one of the top hits of 1932 and has been recorded by a long list of artists ever since. The version here will be the third that I have added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist and I have a few more that I have not yet digitized.
“Masquerade,” composed by Paul Francis Webster and John Jacob Loeb in 1932, was not among that year’s top hits, but the list of artists who have recorded it is also lengthy. The version here will be the fourth I have added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist.
I should emphasize that the recordings featured here are not the same as those featured in the film. The version of “Home” in the film was by Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band, while the version of “Masquerade” was by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra. I don’t recall having either version in my collection but will keep my eye out for them in case I do.
Nor do I regard the versions presented here as more significant than any others. They were simply in a stack of records on the Depression-era Crown label that I had picked out to digitize and I remembered recently learning about the songs’ inclusion in the film.
Unfortunately, discographical information about Crown is not as complete as it is for other labels. Buddy Lane and His Orchestra is credited on several Crown releases but I was not able to find any information as to whether he was an actual bandleader/vocalist or merely a made-up recording pseudonym. My strong guess is it is a pseudonym as the only mention of a Buddy Lane I could find with regard to music other than recordings on Crown was a country artist in the late 1960s. Usually, one can find at least some mention of even the more obscure bands of the era as their engagements and/or broadcasts were often mentioned in the press. Smith Ballew made recordings for Crown under the pseudonym of Buddy Blue and His Texans due to a contract that gave another label an exclusive on issuing records under his actual name. But the Buddy Lane credited on the vocal sounds nothing like Smith Ballew.
Adrian Schubert was Crown’s in-house music director, and if “Buddy Lane” was, in fact, a pseudonym, there is a good chance that the band on some or all of the recordings issued under it was Schubert’s.
On “Masquerade” Schubert’s band is joined by Harold Van Emburgh on the vocal. Van Emburgh was mostly known as a vocalist who performed with several bands and also sometimes performed under the name of Harold Richards. A handful of sides on Crown are credited to Harold Van Emburgh and His Orchestra and, according to the biographical information that I linked to, he did have his own band around that same time. But it is conceivable that, even on those recordings, the band was the in-house group led by Schubert.