Bidgood’s Broadcasters – 1928

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Here are two very different recordings by British bandleader Harry Bidgood’s orchestra from an eight-inch Broadcast record.  The record’s label describes it as “The Long Playing Record.”  In this context, long-playing meant that, although it was only an eight-inch record, it provided the same playing time as a standard ten-inch record.

I have been a fan of the song “I Think Of What You Used To Think Of Me” ever since I added the version recorded on Brunswick by Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra to Radio Dismuke’s playlist in 2012.

James F. Hanley composed the song and Roy Turk wrote the lyrics.  Abe Lyman was also credited as a co-composer, but I do not know what his contribution was.  In those days, it was common for bandleaders to be given composer credit (which made them eligible for a share of a song’s composer royalties) in exchange for performing and promoting the song.

Apparently, the song enjoyed more popularity in the United Kingdom than it did in the United States, where it originated.

What made Abe Lyman’s recording stand out to me, beyond the song’s catchy melody, was that the band was accompanied by a pipe organ operated by well-known theater organist Eddie Dunstedter (link opens to .pdf file) from the auditorium of Chicago’s Temple of Labor, a venue that Brunswick occasionally used for recording sessions.  The organ gave the peppy and upbeat recording a certain haunting quality. (The building where the recording was made still stands and remains in use as a union hall at 328 S Marshfield Ave in Chicago, though apparently the organ is no longer there).

Harry Bidgood’s version of the song was clearly inspired by the Abe Lyman recording, as it also features a theater organ, which was located in the Stoll Picture Theatre on Kingsway in London’s West End.

The theater opened in 1911 as the London Opera House and was built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I as a home for his own productions.  The lavish and massive theater had a seating capacity of 2,660 and was one of the grandest in the city.

In 1916, it was purchased by Oswald Stoll and renamed the Stoll Picture Theatre, functioning as a grand movie palace until 1941, when it was once again used for live performances.

The organ heard in the recording was a 3-manual, 27-stop tubular pneumatic orchestra organ built by Jardine & Co. that was installed in 1922.  Initially, it accompanied silent films.  The organ was updated and rebuilt in 1930.  Even after the advent of talking pictures, daily organ recitals remained a popular feature.

Tragically, this grand and spectacular theater was demolished in 1958 and replaced by a dreary-looking rectangular office building with a much smaller theater in its basement.  Rather than finding a new home for the organ, it was scrapped for parts.

Fortunately, the theater and the organ were used for several recording sessions by the Broadcast label, so we have at least some approximation of what it might have sounded like in person.

“All By Yourself In The Moonlight” is a 1928 novelty song with words and music credited to Jay Wallis, a pen name for British songwriter Ralph Butler.  The song was well-known and widely recorded on both sides of the Atlantic.

Harry Bidgood was the music director for the Vocalion Gramophone Co., which became independent shortly after its American parent, the Aeolian Company, had sold the American Vocalion label to Brunswick in 1924.

Vocalion introduced the Broadcast label in 1927.  The eight-inch records had somewhat narrower grooves and a much smaller label area than standard records, enabling them to provide the same playing time as competing ten-inch records.

The label was so successful that Vocalion discontinued its namesake label, as well as its budget-priced ten-inch Aco label, to focus on Broadcast.  In 1928, the company introduced a companion label, Broadcast Twelve, a ten-inch record with a playing time comparable to standard twelve-inch records.

In 1926, in response to the HMV and Columbia labels obtaining licenses through their respective American affiliates to use the electrical recording system developed by Western Electric, Vocalion licensed a rival electrical recording system developed by the Marconi Company. The letter M inside a circle, which appears on the label of Broadcast records, indicates that it was recorded using the Marconi system.

The vast majority of dance records issued on Broadcast featured Bidgood leading the company’s in-house band. Some, like the record featured here, were issued under his name.  Others were issued under a wide array of pseudonyms, including The New York Nightbirds, Ciro’s Club Band, The Manhattan Melody Makers, Al Benny’s Broadway Boys, and Nat Lewis and his Dance Band to mask the fact that they were, in fact, by the same band. Many of these recordings can be regularly heard on Radio Dismuke.

In 1932, Vocalion went into liquidation and was acquired by rival record manufacturer Crystalate, which produced the low-priced Imperial label as well as its own eight-inch record label, Eclipse, which was sold exclusively through the British branch of the F. W. Woolworth company.  The Broadcast label was discontinued in 1934.

Harry Bidgood stayed on in a similar capacity under Crystalate.  During this period, the accordion experienced an explosion of popularity in the United Kingdom, with thousands of people taking accordion lessons through correspondence schools.  This, in turn, led to popular interest in accordion bands, which Crystalate eagerly capitalized on with records by accordion-enhanced studio orchestras under Bidgood’s direction, disguised by pseudonyms such as Don Porto and His Novelty Accordion Band, and Rossini’s Accordions.

You can hear three recordings that Bidgood made for the Eclipse label as Don Porto and His Novelty Accordion Band in this blog’s October 29, 2023 posting.

One of the accordion band pseudonyms that Bidgood began to use during his years with Crystalate would largely define the rest of his career: Primo Scala and his Accordion Band, which evolved from being a made-up name used to market low-priced records into a top-name musical act in its own right, with live appearances, regular radio broadcasts, and recordings for Decca (which acquired Crystalate in 1937) well into the 1950s.

While some of his records are better than others, and, of course, individual musical tastes vary, for those who enjoy happy and cheerful 1920s and 1930s dance band recordings and aren’t frightened away by certain types of critics who denounce them as “commercial” or as “not real jazz,” it’s generally hard to go wrong with a Harry Bidgood recording whenever one is available at an affordable price.