Harry Reser & Meyer Davis Orchestras On British Duophone – 1928

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are three sides from the British Duophone label’s D-4000 catalog series.  Eddie enjoyed collecting and specifically sought out records from that catalog series.

Duophone was the name of an early 1920s phonograph with a special double soundbox that increased volume.  The company began issuing Duophone records in 1925.

In 1926, Duophone introduced a flexible, “unbreakable” record format that supposedly could be rolled up into a tube without damaging the grooves.  These records are now rare, and I have yet to run across one. Ironically, the examples that survive today tend to be fragile and brittle.

In 1928, Duophone acquired the British branch of Brunswick Records.  The new corporate ties with American Brunswick resulted in the Duophone D-4000 series, which was launched in November 1928.  The series was devoted to recordings made by American Brunswick artists specifically for release under Duophone pseudonyms.

American recordings being issued under pseudonyms on foreign labels was an extremely common practice at the time.  Leasing masters to foreign labels was an additional source of revenue for record labels or, in some cases, a way of obtaining foreign masters for release in the United States.   However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, such recordings had already been issued in the United States or consisted of takes that, for one reason or another, the label chose not to issue domestically.

Recordings in the Duophone D-4000 series are unusual in that they were recorded by well-known Brunswick artists, specifically commissioned for foreign release under pseudonyms and never issued in the United States.

There were two reasons for this:  First, many of the recordings the artists made for American Brunswick were also issued on British Brunswick, which, by this time, was owned by Duophone.  Second, records in the Duophone D-4000 series sold for half the price of a British Brunswick record.  Issuing the recordings under the artists’ actual names would have cannibalized sales of recordings by those same artists on the company’s higher-priced label.

Duotone D-4000 series records were available in both the new flexible disc format and as conventional shellac discs.  All of the Duophone records in Eddie’s collection are shellac.

Another unusual aspect of the D-4000 series was that several catalog numbers were issued with different couplings.

For example, the recording here of “Buy Buy For Baby” by Meyer Davis and His Swanee Syncopators, credited to the Cross Roads Inn Orchestra, from the Duophone D-4044 in Eddie’s collection has, on its flip side, a waltz called “Bon Soir Cherie (Goodnight),” also by Meyer Davis’s orchestra but credited as the Newport Tuxedo Inn Orchestra.   However, other copies of Duophone D-4044 pair “Buy Buy For Baby” with “That’s How I Feel About You, Sweetheart” by Arnold Johnson and His Orchestra, credited as Donald’s Yankee Club Orchestra.

The very jazzy and jubilant recording here of “I Don’t Care,” credited to the Victorian Syncopators, was, in fact, Harry Reser’s band playing in the same novelty style he used on the recordings he made for Brunswick as The Six Jumping Jacks.  The uncredited vocalist is Jack Parker, a stage name frequently used on radio and records by Harace A. Ruwe.  At the opening of the recording, you can hear the unmistakable voice of Tom Stacks, who usually provided the vocal on Six Jumping Jacks recordings, ask the question, “Why should I care?” For more information about Tom Stacks, see this blog’s post from a few days ago.

The recordings of “Buy Buy For Baby,” credited as the Cross Roads Inn Orchestra, and “It’s Wonderful,” credited as Tex Brewster’s Orchestra, were, in fact, recorded by Meyer Davis’s Swanee Syncopators.  Smith Ballew provides the vocal on both selections.

The “Tex Brewster” pseudonym wasn’t entirely made up: Tex Brewster was a real person and a musician in the Meyer Davis band.