Musical Notes

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections. 

“Coon-Tail”
Francis Craig And His Orchestra
(Columbia 1544-D mx 146099)                                              April 16, 1928

“Red Rose”
Francis Craig And His Orchestra; Billy Scott
(Columbia 1544-D mx 146098)                                              April 16, 1928

This record, from the Edward Mitchell Collection, is among the strangest jazz/dance band records I have come across.

I’m not the only one with that opinion.  Here is how the November 1928 edition of The Phonograph Monthly Review described it while reviewing Columbia’s latest dance records:

“…an odd record by Francis Craig, Coon-Tail and Red Rose (1544-D).  The latter glorifies in jazz MacDowell’s celebrated wild rose, which, needless to say, grows somewhat wilder still in dance form.  Coon-Tail is an exceedingly strange piece with many changes of pace, a veritably lovely smooth middle section, and peculiar ending.”

The Francis Craig Orchestra was based in Nashville, Tennessee.  1925 was a particularly auspicious year for Craig and his band, as they began an engagement at the Hermitage Hotel, an association that would last over 20 years.

That same year, the band also made the first of four trips to Atlanta for a date with Columbia’s mobile recording equipment as part of the company’s regular field trips to record regional talent.

On October 5, 1925, Craig’s band performed on the initial broadcast of radio station WSM, which was owned by two of his uncles and managed by a cousin.  WSM’s powerful signal and the band’s regular broadcasts from the Hermitage Hotel made Craig regionally famous, eventually becoming known as the “Dean of Southern Maestros”.

Several entertainers who went on to become famous had early jobs with Craig’s band, including James Melton, Irene Beasley, Kenny Sargent, Phil Harris, Snooke Lanson, Kitty Kallen, and Dinah Shore.

The record featured here was the last Craig would make for almost 20 years.  Then, in 1947, when the dance band industry was in steep, irreversible decline and Craig was preparing to wrap up his career, he recorded two sides for an obscure local record label.  To everybody’s surprise, it became a huge hit and spent an unprecedented 17 weeks at the top of the music charts, a record that stood for over 50 years. It not only resulted in sudden national fame for Craig, it also helped put Nashville, which today is widely known as “Music City,” on the musical map.

The Phonograph Monthly Review’s description of “Coon-Tail” as “exceedingly strange” is, in my opinion, spot on.

The strangeness begins the moment one looks at the record label, which describes the song as “Fox Trot – Vocal Refrain.”   Yet nowhere during the recording is there any sort of vocal.

Then there’s the unusual title “Coon-Tail.”  I did quite a bit of digging to find the title’s intended meaning, and came up empty.

A websearch for the terms “coon tail” and “coontail” turned up a few possibilities, including one that is rather unpleasant.  But none of them strike me as strong enough to form the basis of a good guess.

The song was composed by J. Bradford Smith, who worked for Craig as a trombonist and arranger in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

A column in the April 28, 1928 issue of The Billboard referred to the recording session this record is from and provided a listing of the band’s roster at the time:

Francis Craig and his orchestra have just finished recording four sides for Columbia. In the Craig lineup are Francis Craig, piano and director; Charles Nagy Jr., violin; Herbert Guy, Rolly Thatcher and Cecil Bailey, reeds; Billy Scott and Malcolm Crain, trumpets; Bradford Smith, trombone and arranger; Powell Adams, drums; Max Hart, banjo and guitar; and Jack Hamilton, bass.

In 1930, when Francis Craig contracted tuberculosis and spent a year recuperating in a Denver sanitarium, J Bradford Smith filled in as the band’s leader.   He left the band sometime around August 1931.

Smith’s November 2, 1928 copyright registration for “Coon-Tail” describes it as “melody with pianoforte accompaniment” and lists Nashville as his location.  It also indicates that the song was unpublished, which, since there was no US federal copyright protection for sound recordings at the time, means that it was not printed and made available for public purchase in sheet music form.   The copyright listing makes no mention of any lyrics that might provide a clue to the title’s meaning – and given the nature of the song, I don’t know how anyone could set lyrics to it.

Among the possible sources of inspiration for the song’s title is a species of aquatic plants that is sometimes referred to as “coontail” or “coon’s tail.”  But period and cultural references to the plant are sparse, which suggests to me that it’s an unlikely guess.

The western diamondback rattlesnake is sometimes referred to as a “coontail rattlesnake.”  But the snake’s natural range is nowhere close to Nashville, so it’s difficult to imagine the band’s core audience being familiar with such a reference.

A more likely possibility is that it is a reference to the tail of a raccoon, particularly in the context of the tail hanging from a coonskin cap, which is traditionally associated with Tennessee and surrounding states.

Another possibility is the then-widely advertised “Ball Band Coon-Tail” boot, made by Red Ball, a company that manufactured rubber boots.  Their “Coon-Tail” boots featured a knit wool upper portion which, based on drawings in period advertisements, was striped and resembled the markings on a raccoon’s tail.

Finally, given the cultural attitudes of the time, one can’t rule out the possibility that it might be a reference to an extremely disparaging ethnic slur against black people.  During the 1900s and into the 1910s,  countless recordings of “coon songs” ridiculing blacks were issued.  By 1928, however, while racism was still pervasive and deeply institutionalized, the popularity of “coon songs” had mostly died out and new recordings of that genre had become rare.

What gives some credence to this being a possibility is the label’s Spanish translation of the title as Rabo Negro – which translates to “black tail.”  Such translations were often provided on records that US-based labels intended to market in various Latin American countries.   I was not able to find any reference through online translation tools to Spanish words that in any way equated “black” with either “coon” or “raccoon.”  That suggests, to me, that whoever made the translation likely did intend for the word “coon” to refer to the racist slur.

But, even if so, I don’t think it necessarily reflects what J. Bradford Smith or Francis Craig intended for it to mean.  It is highly doubtful that either Smith or Craig would have been asked to provide a Spanish translation for the titles of the songs they recorded.   Most likely, such translations were the responsibility of someone in whatever department prepared the label text for a given release.  Perhaps it was an older, long-time employee who had been with Columbia since the days when “coon song” records were still being widely issued and reflexively assumed that same context when he saw the song’s title. Or perhaps it was just the same genius who placed “vocal refrain” on the label when the recording, in fact, has no vocal.

Regardless, when it comes to instrumental songs, titles don’t matter all that much.  What counts most is the music itself.  And that’s where the record becomes even stranger.

The song consists of a hodgepodge series of seemingly unrelated musical passages and, to use The Phonograph Monthly Review’s words, “with many changes of pace… and peculiar ending.”

It also contains multiple snippets of musical quotes referencing other well-known compositions.  I counted four such compositions, and there may be others that I did not pick up on.

Between 1:17 and 1:25, one can hear passages that sound very similar to those in Rube Bloom’s 1927 composition “Soliloquy.”

Beginning at 1:31, one can hear brief snippets that are clear references to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and another one at 2:03.

Starting at 2:15, one can hear “Tiger Rag” and, at 2:30, the jazz standard “Copenhagen.”

The recording is, in no way, unpleasant to listen to – but it is….strange.

To add a further mystery to the record, I came across a mention in a local Nashville newspaper about the recording session it is from.

During that recording session, the Francis Craig band recorded two additional selections, “Dream River” and “All Day Long,” both of which were issued on Columbia 1440-D.

The following appeared in the April 15, 1928 Nashville Tennessean:

Francis Craig and his recording orchestra has just returned from a trip to Atlanta where they made four records, the selections recorded being “All Day Long,” “Green River [sic],” “Dinah” and “Red Rose”….

That this was in the April 15 edition of the paper is interesting, as both Brian Rust’s American Dance Band Discography and the Discography of American Historical Recordings (D.A.H.R.) list the recording session as taking place on April 16.

Moreover, neither discography makes any mention of an unissued take of “Dinah” having been made – something they usually do.  And the newspaper makes no mention of “Coon-Tail” having been recorded.

D.A.H.R also, by the way,  incorrectly lists the recordings as having been made in New York City.  But that is incorrect, based not just on the evidence already covered here, but also on its own listings of the matrix numbers of the recordings immediately before and after Craig’s April 16 titles, which state that they were recorded in Atlanta on the same day.  An entirely different block of matrix numbers would have been used for recordings made that day in Columbia’s New York studios.

If I were to venture a guess about the recording’s strangeness, it would be based on the fact that Craig’s band did not just perform popular music and jazz during this period.  It also performed concerts of classical music and accompanied local theatrical productions.  During that period, popular bands would sometimes perform “concert-style” jazz arrangements intended for “highbrow” audiences in venues where one might typically hear classical music, rather than audiences looking for jazzy music they could also dance to.  Paul Whiteman’s band, in particular, was well-known for recordings of that genre. “Coon-Tail” strikes me as an attempt in that direction.

But, if so,  what is odd here is that “concert” style recordings were usually marketed and clearly labeled as such, and were often issued on 12-inch rather than 10-inch records, and frequently sold for a higher price.   But this recording was labeled as a “fox trot” and was offered as part of the same catalog number series as any other Columbia dance band release.  Any buyer looking for a typical dance record was definitely in for a surprise when they returned home and placed it on their phonograph.

One possible explanation that occurs to me is that the original intent of both the band and Columbia was for the recording of “Dinah,” mentioned in the newspaper article, to be included with the other three songs recorded that were eventually issued.  Perhaps “Coon-Tail” was something recorded to either humor the band or maybe as a de facto audition for Columbia executives in New York for possible future recordings of that ilk. This record was issued about three months after the other record from that recording session.  Maybe there was some concern in New York about the recording made of “Dinah,” or maybe someone really liked “Coon-Tail” and a decision was made to issue it instead.

Should I come across any additional information about the intended meaning of the “Coon-Tail” title or the recording of “Dinah” that is not mentioned anywhere else, I will update this posting accordingly.

“Red Rose, ” based on Edward MacDowell’s 1896 “To A Wild Rose,” was composed by Francis Craig in 1928 and dedicated to his wife.   Craig used “Red Rose” as the theme song on his band’s WSM broadcasts, and thus it became well-known in Nashville and throughout the South.

In 1947,  when the popularity of dance bands was rapidly fading, Craig was preparing to retire from his many years at the Hermitage Hotel.  He was approached by the owner of a small, local label, Bullet Records, to make another recording of “Red Rose.”  Craig agreed to do so but needed to find a song for the record’s B-side.

The particular choice of song for the B-side was not regarded as extremely important, as the marketing of the record was to be strictly based on the fame of “Red Rose.”  Craig chose a tune that he had written called “Near You.” Previously, during a visit to Nashville, lyricist Kermit Goell met up with Craig at the Hermitage Hotel’s restaurant. Craig sounded the tune out on a piano and mentioned he needed lyrics for it, which Goell jotted down on one of the restaurant’s menus.  Neither Craig nor Goell had a particularly high opinion of the song, and neither thought it had much potential.

When the record was initially released, sales were slow, as expected.  But when a disc jockey in Griffin, Georgia decided to check out the B-side and began playing it, a surge of orders for the record came in.  Eventually, the song was picked up by disc jockeys in Atlanta and then, one by one, other large radio markets.  Ultimately, two and a half million copies of the record would be sold, and “Near You”  would top Billboard’s radio airplay chart for a record 17 weeks.   The record’s success is credited by many as helping put Nashville on the musical map and helping it become what is now known as “Music City.”

You can hear Craig’s recording of “Near You” via YouTube at this link.  And you can listen to an uploader’s British pressing of Craig’s 1947 version of “Red Rose” at this link, also via YouTube.   Reflecting its time, it has an arrangement very different from the one used for the 1928 recording.

From May 4, 1929 Nashville Tennesean

Background information about the recording can be found below the audio selection.

“Charley My Boy”
N.M.L. Dance Orchestra
(National Music Lovers 1097-B)                                    circa July 1924

Here’s a recording from the Edward Mitchell Collection, credited under the generic-sounding N.M.L. Dance Orchestra, but which is actually by Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra.

National Music Lovers was an early 1920s endeavor to market inexpensive phonograph records by selling directly to consumers by mail.  The company offered different series of records based on musical genre, with each series having a different label color.  The one here comes from the Dance Series, which had a red label.

The records were extensively marketed in newspapers and magazines.  They were sold in sets of eight double-sided records – 16 musical selections – for $2.98 C.O.D plus delivery, a little over 37 cents per record, with a ten-day satisfaction guarantee. In today’s currency, $2.98 in 1924 is worth approximately $55.73, or a little under $7 per record.  When National Music Lovers made its debut, records from major labels like Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick sold for 75 cents, while those from lower-priced labels typically sold for 50 cents.

Every few months, a new series of 16 song titles was advertised, and the previous series was discontinued.

As the 1920s progressed, other low-priced records began to appear on the market that could be purchased individually at retail stores at prices comparable to or less than those of National Music Lovers – and without requiring a minimum purchase of eight records with pre-selected musical content, bundled as a set.  This significantly undercut the National Music Lover’s value proposition, and by the end of 1927, the label was out of business.

The business partners who owned the company, Harry Scherman and Maxwell Sackheim, had previously founded the Little Leather Library series of inexpensive, bundled sets of small-sized reprints of classic books. The individual books from this series are still relatively easy to find in antique shops and secondhand stores.  Scherman left National Music Lovers in 1926 to found a new mail-order service, Book of the Month Club, which is still in business today.

National Music Lovers did not have any recording facilities, but instead leased masters from other record labels.  Thus, in most cases, content on National Music Lovers records is duplicated with recordings issued under different artist credits on other labels.

Fletcher Henderson recorded “Charley, My Boy” sometime in July 1924 for release on the Plaza Music Company’s Banner and Regal labels, with artist credit to Henderson.  Plaza also issued it on its lower-priced Domino label, under the pseudonym of the Club Alabam’ Orchestra.   It also leased the recording for release on other labels besides National Music Lovers under different pseudonyms.

Several bands and vocalists recorded “Charley My Boy” when the song was published in 1924, with Eddie Cantor’s version on Columbia being among the most popular.

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.

Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections. 

“Stolen Kisses”
Casino Dance Orchestra
(Pathe 020579-B)                        circa May 1921

“Julienne”
Bennie Krueger And His Orchestra
(Pathe 020579)                          June 8, 1921

Here are two rather charming recordings from a 1921 Pathe Actuelle disc.

“Stolen Kisses” is a Ted Snyder composition.  Snyder was a highly successful songwriter and music publisher, best remembered today for songs such as “The Sheik of Araby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” which remain well-known.

The identity of the band on this recording is not known, as Pathe’s recording logs have long been lost.  The Casino Dance Orchestra was a pseudonym that Pathe assigned to recordings made by several bands for the label.  Discographer Brian Rust speculates that the band on this might have been either the Nathan Glantz Orchestra or Joseph Knecht’s Waldorf-Astoria Dance Orchestra.   Whoever the band might have been, its saxophone player provides some nice Rudy Wiedoeft-style passages.

“Julienne” is a Roy Turk – J. Russell Robinson composition, billed on the record’s label as a “Franco-American Foxtrot.”  While both Turk and Robinson were well-known composers, this particular song seems to have been rather obscure as I was not able to find much information or even very many references to it during my online research.

Prominent on this recording is the Bennie Krueger Orchestra’s banjo player Bill Arenburg.  The banjo was an essential part of the rhythm section of the early jazz and dance bands in the era before the advent of electrical amplification.  Banjos are loud and could cut through and be heard over the ensemble of the various brass instruments.  They also reproduced well under the constraints of the limited frequency response of pre-microphone era acoustic recording technology.

Pathe records during this period were made through an unusual and utterly unique process.  I previously wrote about it in some detail in this May 4, 2024 posting.

Here are a few recordings recently added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist.  You can find brief background information about them below the audio links. 

“Talkin’ To Myself”
Rex Gordon’s Aces; Norman Wallace, vocal
(Champion 15576 A)                                         September 17, 1928

“If It Aint Love”
The Nitecaps, vocal
(Columbia 2648 D mx 152170)                      April 11, 1932

“Down Georgia Way”
Jack Purvis And His Orchestra
(Parlophone R698 mx 403893)                      April 4, 1930

“With You”
Sam Browne, vocal
(Edison Bell Radio 1357 mx 89792)              July 1930

“Just One More Chance”
Hit of the Week Orchestra; Scrappy Lambert, vocal
(Hit of the Week 1158)                               July 1931

Here are a few of the recordings recently added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist that particularly impressed me for one reason or another.

“Talkin’ To Myself” is a catchy and infectiously happy recording with a very nice archetypal late 1920s “hot dance” arrangement.   Rex Gordon’s Aces was a recording pseudonym for another pseudonymous band, the Carl Fenton Orchestra.

Carl Fenton was initially a pseudonym used on a prolific output of recordings by the in-house Brunswick studio band led by the company’s music director Gus Haenschen.  The widespread distribution of the records resulted in a demand for in-person appearances by the non-existent band.  The job of fronting the “Carl Fenton” band in public was assigned to Ruby Greenberg, who was a violinist for Harry Reser’s band and had participated in the ensemble used for Carl Fenton recordings.   When Gus Haenschen left Brunswick in 1927, Greenberg purchased the rights to the Carl Fenton name.

This version of the Carl Fenton Orchestra recorded many dozens of sides between 1927 and early 1930, including the one here,  under a variety of pseudonyms for Gennett and its subsidiary label Champion.  In 1932, Greenberg legally changed his name to Carl Fenton, which he kept for the rest of his life.

“If It Aint Love” comes courtesy of the collection of Matt From College Station, on what I suspect is a rather rare record.

The Nitecaps (sometimes billed as the 3 Nitecaps) were a vocal trio consisting of Ray Kulz, George MacDonald, and Jimmy Noel.  The group, which had previously worked for Ted Lewis’ band, joined up with the Paul Whiteman orchestra in early 1932 to replace the King’s Jesters vocal quartet that had recently left the Whiteman organization.   Whiteman subsequently renamed the Nitecaps to the Rhythm Boys,  the same name as the band’s earlier and most famous vocal trio, which consisted of Harry Barris, Al Rinker, and Bing Crosby.

“Down Georgia Way” also comes from Matt From College Station’s collection on a British pressing of a multi-racial recording session that trumpet player Jack Purvis led for the American OKeh label.   While there had been previous multi-racial recording sessions, in 1930, they were still rare occurrences.  You can read about Jack Purvis’s erratic and troubled life at this link.

“With You” is an Irving Berlin composition introduced by Harry Richman and Joan Bennett in the 1930 film Puttin’ On The Ritz.   This version, with the song’s full lyrics, is performed by Sam Browne, one of the top British vocalists of the 1930s.  He recorded over two thousand sides and accompanied most of the prominent British dance bands of the era.

“Just One More Chance” is a Sam Coslow/Arthur Johnston composition that was first recorded by the Abe Lyman orchestra but made famous by Bing Crosby, who performed in a 1931 musical short feature, One More Chance.

The recording here is from a single-sided cardboard Hit of the Week disc I played during Radio Dismuke’s New Year’s broadcast a few months ago.

Hit of the Week was an attempt to revive Depression-era record sales by basing its business model on the magazine industry.  Like magazines, the records were sold at outlets such as newsstands and drug stores.  They offered popular songs of the day at a low price, with a new release hitting the newsstands every Thursday.  The records were paperboard laminated with a resin material called Durium, which the label’s parent company, Durium Products, was named after.

Other than a tendency to curl, Hit of the Week records have managed to hold up surprisingly well over the decades.   While their fidelity did not match the improvements that Victor and Columbia were making during the same period,  Hit of the Week records, with their laminated surface, usually play back very nicely with far less surface noise than conventional shellac records of the period.

On this recording, you will hear an opening announcer touting another of the label’s technological achievements –  a longer playing time of up to five minutes, compared with approximately three minutes per side for a conventional 78 rpm record.

“Charleston”
The Blues Chasers
(Perfect 14432)                                    May 1925

“What A Smile Can Do”
The Blues Chasers
(Perfect 14432-B)                                    May 1925

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings on a fun record that will turn 100 years old a few months from now.

For many years, it was widely believed that the actual band behind the pseudonyms these recordings were issued under was Nathan Glantz’s band due to it being listed as such in Brian Rust’s American Dance Band Discography and his Jazz Records 1897-1942.

Because I consulted Rust’s discographies when preparing my show notes, this was the information that I passed along when I played the “Charleston” side on Radio Dismuke’s recent New Year’s broadcast.

However, when putting this update together, I discovered that, in recent years, a number of discographers have come to believe that the band was, in fact, William Polla’s Clover Garden Orchestra.

This copy of the record is on the Perfect label, which was a lower-priced subsidiary label of the American branch of the French-based Pathe Records.  Unfortunately, most of Pathe’s recording session ledgers are presumed to have been destroyed.  Brian Rust did not provide information as to his source for believing that the band was Nathan Glantz’s.

The author of the Polla discography, The Recordings of William Conrad Polla’s Clover Gardens Orchestra, provides several pieces of evidence in support of the view that the band was Polla’s.  The most convincing to me was the fact Pathe’s parent company imported the master of “Charleston” and made it available for release in France on the Salabert label, which credited the band as the Clover Garden Orchestra.   It was common practice for Pathe to issue recordings from its American subsidiary for the French market using a band’s actual name rather than the pseudonyms that were frequently used on American issues. For more information, you can read the Polla discography via the Internet Archive at this link – scroll to page 6 for details about these recordings.

“Charleston” is the song that is still most widely associated with the 1920s decade and helped popularize the wildly popular dance of the same name.   The song was introduced in the 1923 Broadway production Runnin’ Wild, which had an all-black cast.

The first recording of “Charleston” was embedded within an October 3, 1923 Vocalion recording by the Ambassadors of “Old Fashioned Love,” another famous song from the production.  That recording is in Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

The first standalone recording of the song was made one week later by Arthur Gibbs and his Gang on Victor.

The recording presented here will be the eighth version of the song to be added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist.  In a previous blog posting, I featured an April 1925 Edison Diamond Disc recording of the song by the California Ramblers under the pseudonym of the Golden Gate Orchestra, which you can listen to at this link.

Both of the recordings in this posting were issued on Perfect under the pseudonym of “The Blues Chasers.”  But on parent label Pathe, they were credited to the “Westchester Biltmore Orchestra”

Pathe supplemented the revenues it received from sales of its own Pathe and Perfect discs by leasing out its master recordings to other record labels.  This recording of Charleston was one such recording – and it was issued on several labels under an array of pseudonyms.

On the Bell label, the recording was credited to the “Hollywood Ramblers.”  On Oriole, it was credited to the “Dixie Jazz Band.” On Banner, Regal and Domino, it was credited to the “Six Black Diamonds.” The National Music Lovers label credited it to the “Manhattan Musicians.” And, rather bizarrely, on Silvertone, a label sold through Sears & Roebuck, it was credited as Lanin’s Roseland Orchestra – which was the name of an actual band that had no part in this recording session.

No doubt that many record buyers over the past ten decades have purchased one of these releases believing that they have come across a different version of “Charleston” for their collection – only to discover upon playing it that it was the exact same recording they already had on some other label under a different pseudonym.

“What A Smile Can Do” is a largely forgotten song –  but I think the version on this record is quite charming.

While Victor and Columbia were increasingly using microphones in their recording sessions by May 1925,  Pathe/Perfect still used acoustical recording horns.