Busse’s Buzzards

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.