Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.
“Sign Of The Rose”
Ray Miller And His Orchestra
(Brunswick 3132-B) March 9, 1926
“Stomp Your Stuff”
Ray Miller And His Orchestra
(Brunswick 3132-A) March 9, 1926
Here is a record by Ray Miller and His Orchestra I came across in the Edward Mitchell Collection that immediately brought back a flood of memories for me. This was not the first time that I handled this particular record. Back in early 2006, I made a transfer of the “Sign Of The Rose” side.
In those days, Eddie was one of the guest contributors to a long-since-discontinued vintage recordings blog that I published.
I vividly remember how impressed I was with the recording while transferring it. It has a certain quality that I find to be very haunting.
After Eddie’s posted about it in the blog, I added the recording to Radio Dismuke’s playlist, where it has remained ever since. Whenever I hear it in the rotation, I automatically think of Eddie.
What I had forgotten over the years was just how fond Eddie was of the recording.
The other day, I came across the following comment Eddie made about it in 2014 in an online conversation:
If I had to name one tune that I like better than any other, it would be this one…I want it played at my funeral.
It is too bad that the people in charge of planning Eddie’s actual funeral in 2023 were as unaware of this comment as I was; otherwise, it absolutely would have been played at his funeral. At the laying of his headstone, however, several of his friends gathered and played on a portable wind-up phonograph another of Eddie’s favorite records, “Excelsior” by the Los Castilians on Brunswick 40250, another very haunting and also hard-to-find recording.
Here is what Eddie wrote about the song in his 2006 blog posting:
“Sign Of The Rose” was recorded about halfway through Miller’s recording career in May, 1926. This is one of those records that I absolutely think of as an all-time favorite and wouldn’t part with for anything. It’s a rather obscure song and was not, as far as I can determine, recorded on any other label. It also served as Ray Miller’s radio theme song according to my long-time collector friend Mr. Gottlieb. There is also some mystery as to the composer as I’ve been fortunate in getting the sheet music for it. The composer credit on the record is Edwards (Gus?), but the sheet music credits words by Sammy Lerner and Billy Rose, music by Buddy Fields and Richard Whiting–it’s absolutely the same song. I’m not a music major, but I think the style of the song is in what’s called question/answer–one phrase will pose a “question”, then the next will resolve it with an “answer” – and I may be all wet about that, too. My favorite section has always been towards the end where the chorus is played by the soprano saxophones. Mr. Gottlieb only had one copy of it, so it was not for sale–I had to come up with a really good trade to obtain it. One day, I found a record by Tony Parenti’s New Orleanians ” In the Dungeon”/”When you and I were Pals.” One listen and Mr. Gottlieb traded it to me, but not before he kissed it good-bye!
Mr. Gottleib, of whom Eddie spoke frequently and fondly, was R.E.M. (Bob) Gottlieb, a Waco record collector who began collecting 78 rpms when they were still brand new in the 1920s and, by the time Eddie met him in the late 1950s, had amassed a large and significant collection. Based on a comment he made elsewhere, it was sometime around 1967 when Eddie fell for the recording after hearing Mr. Gottleib play it and began plotting a trade for it that Gottlieb couldn’t resit.
The recording on the flip side, “Stomp Your Stuff,” is one that I had not heard until I recently came across the record in Eddie’s collection. It is also an excellent recording, and much jazzier than “Sign Of The Rose.”
Even though my 2006 transfer of “Sign Of The Rose” is already in Radio Dismuke’s playlist, since I had the record in front of me, I decided to make a new transfer, as the audio restoration tools I have available to me today are better than what I had in 2006.
And the new audio restoration presented here is definitely an improvement. I was able to remove some remaining crackle that I had no way to address in 2006 without introducing distortions that would have been worse than the crackle itself. Plus, some instruments, particularly the banjo, can be heard more vividly than on my original restoration. Thus, on the next Radio Dismuke playlist update, I will upgrade the 2006 transfer with this new one.
One of the things I always enjoyed about Eddie, and that many listeners who heard him on various Radio Dismuke special broadcasts have mentioned enjoying, was that he frequently had an anecdote about his records – things like whose collection it had previously been part of, how he happened to come across it, etc. So this particular copy of Brunswick 3132 is one that Eddie and I both have fond anecdotes about. And, perhaps, Mr. Gotlieb had one as well that has since been lost to time.