Musical Notes

“The Right Somebody To Love”
Willie Bryant And His Orchestra; Jack Butler, vocal
(Bluebird B 6361 B)       April 9, 1936

“All My Life”
Willie Bryant And His Orchestra; Taft Jordan, vocal
(Bluebird B 6361 A)       April 9, 1936

Here’s a record I came across while browsing through a box of previously unlistened-to records in my personal collection looking for interesting selections to present on Radio Dismuke’s recent New Year’s broadcast.

Somehow, in all my years of collecting and being a fan of the era’s music, this was the first time I had come across a Willie Bryant record – and I was particularly impressed with the “The Right Somebody To Love” side.

Sadly, that side of the record has an edge flake about 7/8 of an inch wide and that goes about a quarter of an inch into the record impacting the first dozen or so grooves.  The other side of the record is not impacted by it at all.

I decided to play the damaged side during the broadcast beginning just past where the damage ended as I knew that there was a strong possibility that I might not be able to include it in the station’s regular playlist.  But after the broadcast I was, to my surprise, able to get a needle to track through the damaged portion.  This resulted in some loud pops when I played back my transfer.  But, because of the speed at which the record travels, the pops were short enough in duration that my software was easily able to repair them and interpolate the missing audio.

What I did not realize when I introduced the recording during the broadcast was that the song was first introduced by, of all people, Shirley Temple in the film mentioned on the label Captain January – which explains its rather odd lyrics.  Thanks to the talents of vocalist Jack Butler, the band and whoever its arranger was, this recording is what I would consider to be the diametric opposite of how the song was presented in the film, which you can see on this YouTube clip.  Nothing against Shirley Temple as she was certainly very talented,  but let’s just say that, in my personal opinion, Bryant’s recording has aged far better than the scene from the film.

“All My Life” was introduced by Phil Regan in the film Laughing Irish Eyes.  Several bands at the time recorded the song and I think Fats Waller had an especially good version.

– Dismuke

“The Flapper Wife”
The Red Hotters
(Okeh 40382-A mx 73370-B)      May 1925

“Love Light Lane”
The Yellow Jackets
(Okeh 40382-B mx 73152-B)     February 4, 1925

Here is a record from the Edward Mitchell collection that has on my want list for inclusion in Radio Dismuke ever since I stumbled across a recording of this version of “The Flapper Wife” that had been uploaded to YouTube.

This recording is a jazzy instrumental by Harry Raderman’s Jazz Orchestra issued under the pseudonym of The Red Hotters.  But other versions feature lyrics by Beatrice Burton, a popular romance fiction writer whose 1925 novel, The Flapper Wife, The Story Of A Jazz Bride, and subsequent sequels included lots of references to the era’s popular culture and slang.

You can find the upload to YouTube I mentioned at this link.  I think the channel owner did an outstanding job of matching period film footage to the music.  I recommend the channel as it provides a lot of nice vintage recordings from various decades and genres.

However, when you listen to the YouTube upload of the recording, you will notice that it sounds somewhat different than the copy here.  Both are of the exact same recording (though the YouTube version is from a German pressing on the Lindstrom label).

The difference is that the version here was transferred at 80 rpm, which is what the Okeh label published as the correct playback speed for its records during that period.  The YouTube version was transferred at a slower speed, around 78 rpm.

I actually prefer how it sounds at the slower playback, perhaps because it is how I was used to hearing the recording.

My policy is to transfer recordings at the speed recommended by the label that first produced the record.   But I am not prepared to say that whoever transferred the YouTube upload was incorrect.  Perhaps the person wasn’t aware of the correct speed. However, during that period, it wasn’t uncommon for records to have been recorded at speeds somewhat different than their officially published speeds.  Some people are able to determine the exact recording speed based on pitch.  Given the high quality of the YouTube version, I am open to the possibility that the slower speed might have been intentional.  But, since I do not have the skillset needed to match pitch to speed, I transfer at the recommended speed and guess only in cases where information about that speed is unavailable.

I regard either approach as historically accurate in the sense that the official speed is the speed that record buyers who followed the manufacturer’s instructions would have heard them at, even if, on occasion, it varied slightly from what was heard in the recording studio.

The recording on the flip side, performed by an Okeh in-house band led by Justin Ring under the pseudonym of The Yellow Jackets, is not particularly jazzy. But I find the tune and the arrangement to be both charming and haunting.

– Dismuke

“Felix The Cat”
Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra; Austin Young, vocal
(Columbia 1478 D mx 146334)          May 25, 1928

Here’s a cute recording that I had been wanting to add to Radio Dismuke’s playlist for a while and found in the late Eddie Mitchell’s record collection.  The song was inspired by the Felix The Cat animated cartoons that were played before the main feature in 1920s-era movie theaters.

This was recorded the same month that Paul Whiteman switched his recording affiliation from Victor to Columbia.  Luring away one of arch-rival Victor’s top artists was a big coup for Columbia which went all-out in terms of publicity.  This included creating a colorful new label specifically for Paul Whiteman’s records.  Collectors refer to this label as the “potato head label,” a reference to its caricature of Whiteman’s face.

At 1:36 into the recording, you can hear the first of two solo passages by cornetist Bix Beiderbecke.  Immediately after the vocal, you can hear a solo by Frankie Trumbauer playing the C-melody saxophone.  During this period the Whiteman band had about 26 musicians, not counting its vocal artists – large even for the era.

“My Charleston Dancing Man”
Six Black Diamonds
(Domino 3632 B mx 6315-3)       November 28, 1925

“Spanish Shawl”
Missouri Jazz Band
(Domino 3632 A mx 6312-5)    December 14, 1925

Here are two selections from one of the records in the late Edward Mitchell’s collection.  Both are excellent examples of sort of “hot” dance recordings that were popular during the mid-1920s Charleston craze.   Eddie had a lot of hot dance records from this period in his collection which will be added to the Radio Dismuke playlist in the weeks and months ahead.

The artist credits behind both of these selections illustrate the convoluted and sometimes confusing world of 1920s and 1930s recording pseudonyms.

The selections here were transferred from a Domino record.  Domino was a budget-priced record label produced by the Plaza Music Company which also made the budget-priced Regal, Banner and Oriole labels.

In addition to Domino, both of these selections were also issued on other Plaza labels, sometimes with completely different artist credits.

On Domino, “My Charleston Dancing Man” is credited to the Six Black Diamonds.  There was no such actual band – it was merely a recording pseudonym, in this case, for the Nathan Glantz Orchestra.  But Nathan Glantz wasn’t the only bandleader to record under that pseudonym.  Other records credited to the Six Black Diamonds were recorded by the Joseph Samuels, Adrian Schubert and Sam Lanin bands, among others.

The recording was also credited to the Six Black Diamonds on the Banner label.  But on the Regal label, the artist’s credit was listed as The Missouri Jazz Band.  On the Oriole label, it was credited to the Dixie Jazz Band.

The recording on the flip side, “Spanish Shawl,” was credited on this Domino disc as well as on the Banner label to the Missouri Jazz Band which was, in this instance, Ben Selvin and His Orchestra.  But on the Regal label, it was credited to the Imperial Dance Orchestra. On Canadian pressings, it was credited to Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra, an actual band headed up by one of the major talents in American jazz history but which did not participate in the recording session.

There were several reasons why such recording pseudonyms were used.  In the case of companies such as Plaza, sometimes a label was pressed specifically for sale through a particular retail chain and they wanted to differentiate one chain’s offerings from another. Sometimes a major artist, such as Duke Ellington, might have been under an exclusive contract with one record label but was allowed to record for other labels so long he didn’t do so under his real name.  In most cases, the labels had their own in-house studio orchestras whose recordings were often issued under a pseudonym.

What this meant, however, was that many a 78 rpm record buyer, both then and now, excited over discovering a different version of a favorite song, purchased a record only to discover upon playing it at home that it is an exact copy of a record they already had.  That has happened to me more than once.

– Dismuke

Many Radio Dismuke listeners are already aware that Edward Mitchell (known as “Eddie The Collector” when appearing on the station’s New Year’s and other special broadcasts) passed away this past August.  Eddie was generous in making 78 rpm records from his collection, some of them quite rare,  available for me to digitize for the station.  On any given day’s playlist, one will hear a number of his records.

I can now announce that Eddie’s collection will remain intact (as opposed to being sold off piecemeal) and will be fully available to Early 1900s Music Preservation for use on Radio Dismuke.  In that sense, even though he is gone, Eddie will continue to contribute recordings to the station for several years to come.

I say “several years” because, due to his collection’s size, it will realistically take me that long to digitize and clean up all of the records in it that are a good fit for the station – which is likely to be a significant percentage of the collection.

Eddie started collecting records in the 1950s and my rough guess is that over 90 percent of his collection consists of 1920s jazz and dance band recordings.  I have noticed a few excellent records from the 1930s mixed in.  But, for most of his life, Eddie’s collecting focus was on the 1920s.  It was only in his later years that he started developing more of an appreciation for the music of the early 1930s and sometimes expressed regret at having, for years, passed over opportunities to acquire outstanding and hard-to-find 1930s records.

While Eddie made a lot of records available for me to digitize, until now I had little idea of the size and scope of his collection.  Whenever we got together for me to digitize, Eddie already had a big pile of records that he knew I would regard as a good fit for the station picked out for me.  What I didn’t realize until now was that the vast majority of his collection was of similar caliber as the records he had picked out from it.

As I work through digitizing the records for the station, from time to time I will pick out a few to share here on this blog.  The recordings below come from a more or less random handful of records I pulled out to listen to.   Almost all of them were worthy of digitizing for the station – but here are a few sides that I thought were particularly enjoyable or interesting.

– Dismuke

“The Keyboard Express”
Clarence Williams’ Jazz Kings
(Columbia 14348-D mx 146825)          August 1, 1928

“Walk That Broad”
Clarence Williams’ Jazz Kings
(Columbia 14348-D mx 146826)           August 1, 1928

“Starlight And Tulips”
Thelma Terry And Her Play Boys
(Columbia 1532-D mx 145855)       March 29, 1928

“Lonesome Mama Blues”
Mamie Smith And Her Jazz Hounds
(Okeh 4630-A)                                  May 1922

“Wonder If She’s Lonely Too”
Bennie Krueger’s Orchestra
(Brunswick 2485-B)                       September 21, 1923

“Satanic Blues”
Lanin’s Southern Serenaders
(Regal 9191 mx 42163)                January 24, 1922

Image from 1906 cover of Sunday Magazine of the Minneapolis Journal

“Skeleton Jangle”
Original Dixieland Jazz Band
(Victor 18472-A)  March 25, 1918

“Swamp Ghosts”
Wayne King and his Orchestra; Burke Bivens, vocal
(Victor 22600-A)  November 5, 1930

Since it is Halloween, here are recordings of a couple of songs with Halloween-appropriate titles in which the composer appears on the record.

Today it is commonplace for popular recordings to be performed by their composers. It was not as common in the days when the Tin Pan Alley publishers dominated the music industry and every record label would issue one or more versions of successful songs.

“Skeleton Jangle” is an early jazz recording from the pre-microphone era performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. The band’s first record from a little over a year earlier, featuring “Dixieland Jass Band” and “Livery Stable Blues,” is regarded as the very first commercially issued jazz record. It was so early that the band was credited as the “Original Dixieland ‘Jass’ Band” as the correct spelling of the new musical genre had not yet been settled.

The group’s leader was cornetist Nick LaRocca who was also the composer of “Skeleton Jangle.” I don’t know the story behind why he chose “Skelton Jangle” as the song’s title or whether it had anything to do with Halloween. But Halloween offers a good excuse to share a really nice early jazz recording that pre-dates the January 1920 cut-off for inclusion in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

The Wayne King orchestra’s recording of “Swamp Ghosts” has a definite Halloween feel to it. The vocalist on the recording is Burke Bivens who also composed the song. A few years later he composed the song “Josephine,” which became one of Wayne King’s best-selling recordings.

“Swamp Ghosts” was also recorded by “Snooks” Friedman and His Memphis Ramblers and issued on the short-lived Depression-era Timely Tunes label under the pseudonym of the “Paramount Hotel Orchestra.” Unfortunately, that record is extremely hard to find, as are most Timely Tunes issues.

Wayne King’s “Swamp Ghosts” has been in Radio Dismuke’s playlist for a number of years. But Halloween was a good excuse for me to upgrade it with a new audio restoration made from a copy in better condition than the one the previous restoration was from, which was not in particularly good condition when I acquired it years ago. But that beat-up copy was how I first stumbled across the song.

And if you happen to be someone who actively welcomes trick-or-treaters, consider having Radio Dismuke playing in the background. Not only will it expose them to really cool music they aren’t likely to have heard before – you can spook them by truthfully telling them that the music they are hearing is being performed by dead people!

“Lonely Lane”
Roy Fox And His Band; Peggy Dell, vocal
(Decca F 3880 mx GB6520)   February 4, 1934

One of the more popular British dance bands during the 1930s was led by an American, Roy Fox. Also known as “The Whispering Cornetist,” Fox worked in the US during the 1920s with the Abe Lyman, Art Hickman and Gus Arnheim bands.  For a period he had his own band which recorded sides for Brunswick as Roy Fox and His Montmartre Orchestra. Fox also worked in motion pictures supervising the musical production department of the coincidentally named Fox Studios.

In 1929 his band was invited to London where it remained through late 1930 when the band members returned to America while Fox remained and started a new band with British musicians. Fox’s British bands included some of that country’s top musicians of the era and, for a while, included vocalist Al Bowlly.

The vocal on this recording is by Irish singer Peggy Dell, credited on the label merely as “with vocal refrain” as was common during this period. Decades later, in the 1970s, Dell’s career enjoyed a revival as a result of her own successful series on Irish television.

“Lonely Lane” is a Sammy Fein/Irving Kahel composition introduced by Dick Powell in the 1933 Warner Brothers film College Coach which also starred Ann Dvorak. The film was distributed in the United Kingdom under the title Football Coach, which is credited accordingly on the record’s label.

The label also makes note of the fact that, at the time of the record’s release, Fox and his band were enjoying an extended engagement at London’s famous Kit-Cat Restaurant.

“Spread Yo’ Stuff”
Joseph Samuels’ Jazz Band
(Okeh 4260 B mx S 7728 C)  January 1921

Here is a pre-microphone era 80 rpm recording that will be part of this week’s Radio Dismuke playlist update.

Joseph Samuels’ band recorded several hundred jazz and dance band sides between 1919 and 1925 for most of the American record labels in existence at the time, some of which were issued under various pseudonyms. He was one of the first white bandleaders to include black vocalists on recordings.

Other bands recorded “Spread Yo’ Stuff” and the Joseph Samuels band made two additional recordings of the song for Edison, one of which was released on a Blue Amberol cylinder record. The recording made for release in disc format was never issued but a test pressing still exists at the Edison National Historic Park.

Among the band members on this recording for Okeh (and most likely the Edison recordings as well) was one of the song’s co-composers, Jules Levy Jr., the son of the world-renowned late-19th century cornetist, Jules Levy Sr., who, among many other accomplishments, assisted Thomas Edison in demonstrating his newly-invented tinfoil phonograph. Levy Jr’s half-brother through one of his father’s previous relationships was actor Conway Tearle who was prominent on stage and screen from the turn of the century through the 1930s.

“Velma”
Rudy Wiedoeft
(Pathe 022492)   October, 1920

“Puppe und Kobold” (“The Doll and the Goblin”)
Bravour Tanz-Orchester
(Odeon O 11878 mx Be 10379)  June, 1933

By the end of the 1910s decade, ragtime started dying out in favor of jazz. But there were composers and artists who ran contrary to that trend.

One was composer and saxophone virtuoso Rudy Wiedoeft. Starting in 1917 with “Valse Erica,” he made solo recordings, many of which were of his own compositions that, even into the 1920s, were more ragtime than they were jazz.

His recording of “Velma” featured here, which he made for the Pathe label in October 1920, was among the first 78 rpm records I acquired as a child (though, as was the case with many records from the pre-microphone era, it was, in fact, recorded at 80 rpm). Wiedoeft made records for most of the American record labels in existence during that period and, besides Pathe, he recorded “Velma” for both Edison and Brunswick.

Though he was largely forgotten by the time of his death in 1940, from the late 1910s into the 1920s he enjoyed enormous celebrity through his appearances in vaudeville, on records and on radio. He was largely responsible for introducing the public to and popularizing the previously somewhat obscure saxophone which had a major impact on the popular music of the Jazz Age and beyond.

One aspiring teenage musician, whose first name was Hubert, was so impressed upon hearing one of Wiedoeft’s recordings that he switched instruments to the saxophone and sent off multiple fan letters before finally receiving a reply. He was so infatuated that he changed his professional name to “Rudy.” By the end of the 1920s, that teenager had become a big celebrity in his own right: bandleader, crooner and radio star Rudy Vallee.

Wiedoeft’s brother, Herb Wiedoeft, was also a musician and had an excellent dance band on the West Coast until he died in a traffic accident in 1928. A number of recordings by the Herb Wideoeft Orchestra are in Radio Dismuke’s playlist. But, somehow, this recording of “Velma” will only be the station’s third Rudy Wiedoeft recording – an oversight I will be correcting as I do have additional Wiedoeft records and have a standing order to myself to set them aside as I come across them.

The second recording featured here is an example of novelty ragtime, a new genre that Zes Confrey’s “Kitten on the Keys” helped popularize in the early 1920s. Unlike earlier ragtime compositions, which were primarily sold through sheet music intended for amateur musicians to play on parlor pianos, novelty rag compositions often had complex arrangements intended for professional musicians and were sold to the general public in the form of performances on piano rolls and phonograph records.

While the genre is sometimes referred to as “novelty piano,” full orchestra arrangements were occasionally performed by American dance bands throughout the 1920s. But novelty ragtime’s greatest popularity and where, in my opinion, the very best performances by dance bands were recorded, was in, of all places, Germany during the early and mid-1930s.

The two German bands that most prominently recorded it were Hans Bund’s Bravour Dance Orchestra (issued in England under the name Jack Bund) and Otto Dobrindt’s Piano Symphonists, although there were recordings by other bands as well. A number of novelty ragtime songs were written during that period by German composers, as was the selection featured here “Puppe und Kobold” (“The Doll and the Goblin”) by Jose Armandola, a pen name for German composer Wilhelm August Lautenschläger.

You can also hear two novelty ragtime recordings by Otto Dobrindt’s Piano Symphonists in this posting from August 2018.