“Any Way The Wind Blows”
Waring’s Pennsylvanians
(Victor 19422-B) August 12, 1924
“Dreary Weather”
Waring’s Pennsylvanians; Tom Waring, vocal
(Victor 19422-A) August 12, 1924
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two somewhat unusual but fun recordings by Waring’s Pennsylvanians.
The arrangements on both recordings are loaded with various musical gimmicks and even some sound effects. Among them, you will hear a few “doo wacka doo” passages on both recordings – a big fad during this period that quickly faded away once the novelty soon wore off and came to be regarded as cliched and, to some, even corny.
The arrangement for “Any Way The Wind Blows” is quite jazzy, as are the closing passages of “Dreary Weather.”
Waring’s Pennsylvanians was formed in 1918 by Fred and Tom Waring and a few University of Pennsylvania students. The band played up its college background and was popular on college campuses. The year after these recordings were made, the band had its first hit recording, “Collegiate.” The 1920s-era stereotype of partying, raccoon coat-wearing undergrads carrying hip flasks of bootleg beverages was something the band leaned into and helped perpetuate.
These recordings were made several months before Victor began recording with microphones in the spring of 1925. The band’s style evolved as the 1920s progressed; in my opinion, their recordings from the late 1920s and early 1930s are the best.
As a musical group, Waring’s Pennsylvanians existed into the 1980s, though in very different form.
Between 1932 and 1942 the band refused to make records. At the time, playing records over the radio was a legal gray area and record companies began putting statements on their labels expressly prohibiting it. Nevertheless, certain smaller, non-network affiliated stations would play records by the more popular bands over the air – sometimes with misleading announcements attempting to convince the audience they were hearing a live broadcast.
Waring’s network radio broadcasts enjoyed large audiences and were a much bigger source of revenue for the band than records, sales of which were at all-time lows during the early Depression. Waring felt that such fake broadcasts using his records were unfair competition and diverted audiences away from his broadcasts. Therefore, he decided to deprive such stations of future recordings by simply not making any.
By the time Waring’s Pennsylvanians resumed recording in 1942, the group was no longer a dance band and had adopted a glee club/choral format, which it maintained until Fred Waring died in 1984. Unless one happens to be a fan of choral music, the Waring’s Pennsylvanians records one often finds from the 1940s and the LP era will be of little interest to fans of the group’s Jazz Age recordings.
A bit of trivia: Fred Waring was also the inventor of the Waring Blender – a product which is still being made.