Musical Notes

“Won’t You Tell Me Hon (When We’re Gonna Be One)”
Abe Lyman And His California Orchestra;  Paul Neely, vocal
(Brunswick 4175)                                November 26, 1928

“Give Your Little Baby Lots of Lovin'”
Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra;  unknown vocalist
(Brunswick 4175)                               December 22, 1928

Here are two sides from a 1928 Abe Lyman record from the Edward Mitchell collection.

First (though probably not most important!), the discrepancy between the band’s name on one side of the record versus the other rests with someone at Brunswick and not me (I make enough typos to be eager to point out when they are not mine!). I will speculate on why such a discrepancy might have occurred later in the posting.

Abe Lyman led one of the more nationally famous West Coast bands and was among Brunswick’s top-selling artists in the 1920s and early 1930s.  For much of the 1920s, it was the house band at the legendary Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

These and all of Lyman’s 1928 recordings were made in his hometown of Chicago, where the band provided the music for that city’s very successful stage production of Good News, which ran from February through November.  During that period, the band also recorded a few songs from the production, including a 12-inch two-part medley record.  Lyman and the band also appeared in the 1930 film version of Good News.

During the same recording sessions that produced the sides here, the band also recorded an instrumental version of each song for release in the German and possibly other foreign language markets.

Lyman’s band made records from 1923 to 1942. Musical styles evolved at an extremely rapid pace during that period, and bands had to change along with them to remain popular. Thus, Abe Lyman’s records from one period will have a very different sound than those of another. But my experience is that, regardless of the era, most of them are worth looking into.

As for the discrepancy in the band’s name on the opposite sides of this record, at some point around the time these recordings were made, there was a transition of the band’s name (whether the name the band itself went by or merely how it was listed on its Brunswick recordings, I am not sure) from “Abe Lyman and His California Orchestra” to “Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra. ”

Looking at the labels of various issues, recordings from the same November 26, 1928 recording session as “Won’t You Tell Me Hon” were issued under both names.

“Give Your Little Baby Lots of Lovin'” was the only song the band recorded in its December 22, 1928 recording session.

Most recordings from the band’s early 1929 sessions seem to have been issued under “Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra.” However, I found one example still listed as “Abe Lyman And His California Orchestra.”

It occurs to me that it is possible that when later pressings of the band’s previous recordings were made, the name on the label was updated, which would explain why recordings from the same session might appear under both. But seeing such a discrepancy on opposite sides of the same disc is a bit unusual.

“Snakes Hips”
The Georgians
(Columbia A-3864 mx 80900)          March 14, 1923

“Farewell Blues”
The Georgians
(Columbia A-3864 mx 80887)           March 6, 1923

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here is a record featuring The Georgians, an excellent jazz ensemble led by Frank Guarente that was a sub-unit of the larger Paul Specht Orchestra.

The Georgians were the first “band within a band,” something that became common with the more famous bands during the swing era of the late 1930s and early 1940s (for example, Paul Whiteman and His Swing Wing, Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven, Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five, etc.).

“Snakes Hips” was composed by Spencer Williams, who wrote several compositions that continue to be performed by various jazz groups.

The Georgians were the first to record the song, though the Original Memphis Five made a recording for Brunswick three days later, issued under the pseudonym The Cotton Pickers, and a recording for Victor eight days later, issued under their own name.

I’ve seen mention online that “Snakes Hips” refers to belly dancing, but I could not find further information to confirm the accuracy of that.

However, the song came out in an era when there was a fascination in the West with ancient and/or traditional cultures perceived as “exotic,” which had a big influence on everything from architecture to fashion and on music in the form of popular “Oriental foxtrot” compositions.

A few months before this recording, the excavation of the tomb of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun made international headlines and sparked a widespread interest in ancient Egyptian aesthetics, which soon spread through popular culture.  The pseudo-Egyptianesque theme of the song and this recording are both consistent with that trend.

“Farewell Blues,” a 1922 composition by Paul Mares, Leon Roppolo, and Elmer Schoebel, was recorded by dozens of groups in the 1920s and 1930s and continues to be performed.

Click on image for larger view.

“Niemand fragt uns” (“Nobody Asked Us”)
Paul Godwin Tanz Orchester;  Paul Dorn, vocal
(Grammophon 24508 B)          January 15, 1932

Here is a beautiful and very haunting tango composed by Allan Gray for the 1932 comedy film Die Gräfin von Monte-Christo/The Countess of Monte Cristo. The German lyrics are by Walter Reisch, who also wrote the film’s screenplay.

Several other bands in Germany also made recordings of the song, a few of which you can hear by doing a YouTube search for the song’s title. All are very nice, but I think this Paul Godwin/Paul Dorn version is, by far, the best. Paul Dorn’s vocal has a poignant quality that makes the already haunting melody even more so.

As much as I enjoy and am a huge fan of German popular music and dance bands from this era, I do not speak the language.  This is one of those instances where, on the one hand, I am curious to hear a translation of the lyrics but, on the other, am reluctant to do so out of fear that they might end up being utterly banal and trite and thus break the mood that Dorn’s rendition of them seems to convey.

The film’s premise must have been compelling as it was remade three times: A 1934 version was made in the USA starring Fay Wray, and another American version was made in 1948 starring Sonja Henie.  In 1957 a German remake was released under the title
Einmal eine große Dame sein/Just Once a Great Lady.  The film’s title is identical to that of another German film from 1934, but the storyline is a remake of The Countess of Monte Cristo.

The IMDB page for the film’s 1934 American remake indicates that its soundtrack featured a song, “No One Worries, No One Cares,” composed by Allan Gray with English lyrics by Harry Tobias. I have not been able to find any clips from that film to determine whether its tune is the same as “Niemand fragt uns.”  Nor can I find mention of any American recordings having been made of a song by that title.

One year and fifteen days after this recording was made, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, an event that would significantly alter the trajectory of the lives of all of the principals associated with the song and the recording.

Within months, it became impossible for Allan Gray, Walter Reisch, and Paul Godwin to work in Germany, forcing them to flee the country.

Walter Reisch successfully resumed his career as a film writer in Hollywood, first at MGM and later at 20th Century Fox.  Allan Gray spent the war years as a composer for the British film industry and became a British citizen in 1947.

Paul Godwin was able to resume his career in the Netherlands until that country came under German occupation in 1940.  Early in the occupation, he performed in concerts at the Hollandsche Schouwburg (Dutch Theater) in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter until the theater was converted into a deportation center where Jews were detained for transit to the concentration camps where most would perish.

Because Paul Godwin’s wife was considered to be an “Aryan,” he was able to avoid being sent to the concentration camps, though he was subjected to forced labor. Godwin lost three brothers and a sister who were murdered in the gas chambers.  After the war he became a Dutch citizen and worked performing classical music for the Dutch Broadcasting Corporation.

Paul Dorn was not Jewish and was thus not restricted from continuing to work in Germany.  As a studio vocalist for most of the major German record labels,  Dorn performed on hundreds of recordings by various dance bands throughout the 1930s, in most cases without any label credit, as was common practice at the time. Within a few months of the outbreak of World War II, Dorn was drafted into the Wehrmacht.   

While on leave in Berlin in June 1942, he made his last recordings with Belgian bandleader Fud Candrix, who formed a band in Berlin after his country came under occupation.  This would also be the last time Dorn would see his family as he was subsequently sent to the Eastern front. 

Based on a letter a Polish priest sent to his widow after the war, Paul Dorn is believed to have died near Danzig sometime around March 29, 1945. His family was never able to learn of his place of burial. 

“You Told Me To Go”
The Knickerbockers
(Columbia 482-D mx 141140)                   October 16, 1925

“Don’t Wait Too Long”
Eddie Elkings And His Orchestra
(Columbia 482-D mx 14114)                    October 7, 1925

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here is what I think is a fun record – particularly the “You Told Me To Go” side, which is reflective of the mid-1920s Charleston craze that was at its height when this record was made.

For anyone needing recordings that exemplify the 1920s decade’s “Roaring ’20s” spirit, this version of “You Told Me To Go” is definitely one to add to the list.

“The Knickerbockers” was one of many recording pseudonyms for Columbia’s in-house band led by Ben Selvin.

Interestingly enough, the Knickerbocker name had previously been used on Columbia records in 1921 and 1922 for certain recordings by Eddie Elkin’s Orchestra, who perform on the flip side of this record.  Those recordings were issued as “The Knickerbocker Orchestra (under the direction of Eddie Elkins). ”

When those 1920 – 1921 recordings were made, Elkins’s band regularly appeared at the Knickerbocker Grill at Times Square, located in the basement of the former Knickerbocker Hotel. The 1906 Beaux-Arts-style hotel closed in 1920 and was converted into an office building. But the hotel’s basement grill, a popular night spot, remained open despite a few attempts to close it for alleged violation of Prohibition laws. (The building was converted back into a luxury hotel in 2015.)

Elkins was a classically trained violinist, and most of his band members during the period it performed at the Knickerbocker Grill had previously worked as musicians for the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra.   Some of his Columbia recordings while his band was at the Knickerbocker were issued as The Knickerbocker Orchestra and others as Eddie Elkin’s Orchestra.

“Don’t Wait Too Long” comes from Elkin’s second-to-last recording session with Columbia.  His final recording session was held later that same month.

Elkins and his band appeared in several musical short feature films, one in 1929 for Paramount, which starred Eddie Cantor, and four more for Pathe in 1930, one of which starred a not-yet-famous Ginger Rogers.

Elkins’ only other recording session after leaving Columbia in 1925 occurred in 1934, and produced four sides, all of which were issued on the Perfect label.

I do not know what, if any, connection to Elkins or the Knickerbocker Grill Columbia personnel had in mind when they came up with The Knickerbockers as one of the pseudonyms for its in-house band. It was used on many issues into the early 1930s.   The term Knickerbocker had long been associated with New York City,  so its use might have been entirely coincidental.

“The Cat’s Whiskers”
Savoy Havana Band;  Ramon Newton, vocal
(Columbia 3340 mx A 350)                            October 17, 1923

“Panamericana”
Savoy Havana Band
(Columbia 3340 mx A 349)                           October 17, 1923

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here is a 1923 record by the Savoy Havana Band. The band was famous in Britain during the 1920s and took its name from London’s Savoy Hotel, where it was the hotel’s house band from 1921 to 1927.

“The Cat’s Whiskers” was also recorded in the USA by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago on Victor and by the Jazz-O-Harmonists on Edison.  But neither of those two American recordings included a vocal, which is provided on the recording here by Ramon Newton. In addition to being a vocalist, Cyril Ramon Newton was a violinist and composer and led his own band.  In the late 1920s, he made several vocal recordings for the Broadcast label, for which he was given solo credit.

What caught my eye about this particular record was the foxtrot version of “Panamericana” on the flip side. I have always enjoyed this Victor Herbert composition, which is usually performed by a concert orchestra, not a dance band.

The song was written for and was the official theme of the Pan-American Exposition, the 1901 World’s Fair, held in Buffalo, New York.  Sadly, the fair is best remembered as the site of the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley, to whom Herbert had dedicated the song.

Victor Herbert described the song as:

“…a morceau characteristique of the more popular order. The first part is supposed to be ‘Indian,’ the second part ‘ragtime’ (modern America), and the third ‘Cuban’ or of Spanish character.”

I don’t know why the Savoy Havana Band decided to revive a song that was already a couple of decades old with a dance-tempo arrangement but, at the time, Victor Herbert was still alive (he died the following year) and was still widely known.

I discovered the song when I came across a copy of a 1984 LP Victor Herbert: Sovenir by the Eastman-Dryden Orchestra, directed by Donald Hunsberger.  I thoroughly enjoyed the entire LP, but my favorite selection was, by far, “Panamericana” and I loved the way they performed it.  Happily, a copy of that recording has been made available on YouTube at this link.

If you enjoyed the Savoy Havana Band version, definitely check out the YouTube link.  Not only is it without the limitations of 1923’s pre-microphone recording technology,  the arrangement is likely similar to that heard by those attending the 1901 World Fair.

“Just A Sweetheart”
The Black Pirates; Frank Wells, vocal
(Broadway 1218-A mx 20870)                      circa October 1928

“Some Of These Days”
The Black Pirates; Diana Dell, vocal
(Broadway 1218-B mx 20822)                    circa August 1928

Here’s a hard-to-find record from the Edward Mitchell collection that I thought was interesting despite the sub-par homegrown electrical recording system used by the company that made it.

Broadway was a low-priced label whose largest retailer was the Mongomery Ward mail-order company, which, by this time, was also rapidly opening retail stores throughout the USA.  The label had multiple owners during its existence from the early 1920s to mid-1930s.

When this record was made, Broadway was owned by the New York Recording Laboratories, based not in New York but in Port Washington, Wisconsin, and owned by the Wisconsin Chair Company, which also manufactured Paramount records.

Most recordings on Broadway also appear on other labels. Many of its recordings during this period were leased from the manufacturer of the Banner and Regal labels.  But, others, such as the two on this record, were made for an issued by Paramount.

Paramount was an important label because it recorded many obscure and famous jazz and blues artists. However, the fidelity of its recordings was usually below that of other labels, which continued to be true after it switched to electrical recording.  Like Paramount, issues on Broadway that were pressed in-house were made of poor-quality materials that tended to make them noisy and wear out quickly.

Though the recording pseudonym The Black Pirates suggests (perhaps intentionally) that it might be an all-black band,  it was, in fact, a Chicago-based studio ensemble of white musicians led by Bill Haid, who was also the banjo player with the Coon-Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra.

Diana Dell and Frank Wells, who provide the vocals on these sides, were apparently the performers’ real names and not recording pseudonyms.  However, I was not able to quickly locate any information about either of them beyond references to these and other 1928 recordings they made for Paramount.

What I enjoy most about this record is the peppy arrangement of “Just A Sweetheart” immediately following Frank Wells’ vocal featuring Harry Reser/Clicquot Club Eskimos style banjo playing by Bill Haid and a brief whistling passage.

Despite the less-than-optimal recording equipment/audio engineering, I think the performances on these recordings are excellent.   Too bad they couldn’t have been recorded by Columbia or OKeh whose late 1920s recordings were on the opposite end of the quality spectrum.

“Too Busy”
Benny Meroff And His Orchestra; Dick Robertson, Ed Smalle, vocal
(OKeh 41079 mx 400820)                              June 25, 1927

“Darling”
Sam Lanin & His Famous Players;  Ed Smalle, vocal
(OKeh 41079 mx 400821)                              June 25, 1927

Both sides of this record from the Edward Mitchell collection feature Sam Lanin and His Famous Players.  However, the “Too Busy” side is credited as Benny Meroff And His Orchestra.

Benny Meroff was an actual bandleader who recorded with OKeh during this period and was not one of the many made-up pseudonyms that record labels commonly used during the 1920s and 1930s to mask the identity of the artists performing.

Why would OKeh have credited one of Sam Lanin’s recordings to another of its recording artists?

Here is some speculation on my part – and I stress that speculation is all it is.

Benny Meroff’s band was physically present for two recording sessions with OKeh, both of which were part of field trips OKeh made with its mobile recording equipment to Chicago.  The first occurred on May 14, 1927, and the last on December 9, 1927.

Between those two recording sessions, OKeh made two additional field trips to Chicago: June 7 – 24 and September 1 – 6.

During Meroff’s May 14 recording session in Chicago, his band recorded two songs, one of which, “That’s Dolly,” was not issued.

The record here of “Too Busy” by Sam Lanin’s band, but credited to Meroff, was made in OKeh’s New York City studio on June 25, the day after the company’s June field trip to Chicago ended.

Three days earlier in New York, on June 23,  Justin Ring’s Orchestra recorded “That’s Dolly.”   When that recording was issued, it was also credited to Benny Meroff and appeared on the flip side of the recording of “There’s A Trick In Pickin’ A Chick-Chick-Chicken” that the actual Meroff band made in its May 14 Chicago session.

Presumably, concern with the band’s June 23 take of “That’s Dolly” prevented it from being issued.  Was the band scheduled to record another take of it during OKeh’s return trip to Chicago in June and perhaps to record “Too Busy” as well?  If so, were there circumstances that prevented the band from attending?  Or perhaps the band did arrive at its appointed time and could not record due to either equipment issues or recording sessions scheduled earlier in the day going long?

Under either circumstance, I can see OKeh having other bands record the selections on behalf of Meroff so that they could be brought to market under Merhoff’s name.

There were other instances in 1927 where OKeh issued sides recorded by other bands but issued them under Merhoff’s name.

Both sides of OKeh 40912, “Just An Hour Of Love” and “I’m Wonderin’ Who,” were credited as Benny Meroff And His Orchestra but were, in fact,  recorded by Frankie Trumbaur’s band on September 30, 1927.   That date happens to be at the end of the same month that OKeh made its September 1 – 6 field trip to Chicago.

Was the original plan for Meroff to record the two songs during OKeh’s September visit to Chicago and, for some reason, was unable to?

Here, too, I can see reasons why OKeh would have still wanted the songs to be issued under Merhoff’s name.

Finally, there was another instance of two Sam Lanin recordings being issued under Merhoff’s name: “Lonely Melody,” recorded on November 29, 1927, and “When You’re With Somebody Else,” recorded on December 5, 1927.

Both were recorded slightly before or during another OKeh field trip to Chicago from December 2 – 19, where Meroff recorded “Smiling Skies” and “Me And The Man In The Moon on December 15, which were issued on OKeh 41171.

Were there plans for Meroff to record two additional sides during the December Chicago recording session that fell through?

Again, I can see why OKeh would have wanted to bring the originally planned number of Merhoff records to market, even if it meant using substitute recordings.

One reason OKeh made field trips across the country was because many local bands, while not well-known nationally, had strong regional followings, particularly if they broadcast over radio stations with strong signals that could be picked up across multiple states.

OKeh would certainly not have wanted to miss out on potential sales such an artist would generate – especially if they were highly anticipated by local OKeh retailers, whom the company had every motive to keep happy.

It is also conceivable that Merhoff’s contract with OKeh required them to issue a certain number of recordings under his name.

Regardless, both are nice, enjoyable recordings.

“Any Way The Wind Blows”
Waring’s Pennsylvanians
(Victor 19422-B)                               August 12, 1924

“Dreary Weather”
Waring’s Pennsylvanians; Tom Waring, vocal
(Victor 19422-A)                               August 12, 1924

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two somewhat unusual but fun recordings by Waring’s Pennsylvanians.

The arrangements on both recordings are loaded with various musical gimmicks and even some sound effects.  Among them, you will hear a few “doo wacka doo” passages on both recordings – a big fad during this period that quickly faded away once the novelty soon wore off and came to be regarded as cliched and, to some, even corny.

The arrangement for “Any Way The Wind Blows” is quite jazzy, as are the closing passages of “Dreary Weather.”

Waring’s Pennsylvanians was formed in 1918 by Fred and Tom Waring and a few University of Pennsylvania students. The band played up its college background and was popular on college campuses. The year after these recordings were made, the band had its first hit recording, “Collegiate.” The 1920s-era stereotype of partying, raccoon coat-wearing undergrads carrying hip flasks of bootleg beverages was something the band leaned into and helped perpetuate.

These recordings were made several months before Victor began recording with microphones in the spring of 1925.  The band’s style evolved as the 1920s progressed; in my opinion, their recordings from the late 1920s and early 1930s are the best.

As a musical group, Waring’s Pennsylvanians existed into the 1980s, though in very different form.

Between 1932 and 1942 the band refused to make records.  At the time, playing records over the radio was a legal gray area and record companies began putting statements on their labels expressly prohibiting it.  Nevertheless, certain smaller, non-network affiliated stations would play records by the more popular bands over the air – sometimes with misleading announcements attempting to convince the audience they were hearing a live broadcast.

Waring’s network radio broadcasts enjoyed large audiences and were a much bigger source of revenue for the band than records, sales of which were at all-time lows during the early Depression.  Waring felt that such fake broadcasts using his records were unfair competition and diverted audiences away from his broadcasts. Therefore, he decided to deprive such stations of future recordings by simply not making any.

By the time Waring’s Pennsylvanians resumed recording in 1942, the group was no longer a dance band and had adopted a glee club/choral format, which it maintained until Fred Waring died in 1984.  Unless one happens to be a fan of choral music, the Waring’s Pennsylvanians records one often finds from the 1940s and the LP era will be of little interest to fans of the group’s Jazz Age recordings.

A bit of trivia:  Fred Waring was also the inventor of the Waring Blender – a product which is still being made.

“Foolin’ Time”
Leo Reisman And His Orchestra; Lew Conrad, vocal
(Columbia 1416 D mx 145983)                 April 9, 1928

“When The Moon Comes Peeping Thru”
Leo Reisman And His Orchestra; Don Howard, vocal
(Columbia 1416 D mx 144017)               April 10, 1927

From the Edward Mitchell collection are two recordings by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra made almost a year to the day apart but issued on the same record.

I don’t know why Columbia held on to “When The Moon Comes Peeping Thru” for an entire year before deciding to issue it with “Foolin’ Time,” despite multiple other recording sessions with the Reisman band taking place during that period.

While Reisman and his band made many excellent recordings for Victor between 1929 and 1933, I have always been particularly fond of the electrically recorded sides the band previously made for Columbia.  While the band was the same, its style and sound were quite different during their Columbia years, and I find many of those recordings to be quite charming.

Coming across this record in Eddie’s collection made me recall a conversation with Eddie in which the subject of Leo Reisman came up—and it turned out that he, too, had always felt the same way about Reisman’s Columbia recordings compared to later Victor recordings.

I speculate that the change in styles with the switch of recording affiliations was possibly due to both occurring at approximately the same time the band moved from Reisman’s hometown of Boston to New York City, where it opened and became the resident band of the exclusive and upscale Central Park Casino nightclub.   Perhaps the change was due to New York’s high society crowd having somewhat different musical tastes than Boston’s.

Before the 1929 move to New York, the band regularly performed at the Egyptian Room of Boston’s Hotel Brunswick on Copley Square. Reisman’s band was so popular that he operated multiple satellite bands in the city, including one at the nearby Hotel Lenox.  During this period, both hotels had common ownership.

(As an aside, Hotel Brunswick, built in 1874, was one of Boston’s most prestigious hotels in the 1870s-1890s and remained fashionable into the 1930s.  When the hotel was demolished in 1957, this haunting and almost certainly staged photograph was taken of four elderly people drinking tea and taking in one last musical performance amidst the rubble surrounding the hotel’s tea room.)

The vocal on “Foolin’ Time” is provided by violinist Lew Conrad, who I think was an excellent vocalist and deserves to be better remembered.   He made records with the Reisman band until June 1930.

After leaving Reisman’s band, Conrad formed his own band, Lew Conrad & His Musketeers, and, at some point before March 1932, was appointed Music Director of Boston’s Hotel Statler, one of a chain of prominent hotels founded by Ellsworth M. Statler, who died in 1928.  Conrad named his band after three fans from the University of Chicago who listened to his radio broadcasts and sent fan letters signed “Conrad’s Three Musketeers.”  The band recorded four sides for Victor in May 1932.

While looking up background information for this posting, I stumbled across mention of Lew Conrrad’s possible involvement in events leading up to the mysterious death and perhaps murder of a young socialite and heiress of the Statler Hotels fortune.  The circumstances of her death made national headlines at the time and, to this day, remains unsolved.

In a 2010 book Death of a Pinehurst Princess: The 1935 Elva Statler Davidson Mystery, author Steve Bouser presents circumstantial evidence that, between the time he became Music Director of the Boston Statler and the end of 1934, Conrad had been in a romantic relationship with Elva Idesta Statler, the wealthy socialite adopted daughter and heiress of the late Ellsworth M Statler who had founded the hotel.

On February 27, 1935, Elva’s partially clothed body was found in the garage of her home in the affluent resort town of Pinehurst, North Carolina, after arguing the evening before with her husband of two months, Henry Bradley Davidson Jr.  Shortly before her death, she had traveled to Boston from Pinehurst to change her will naming her husband, whose family had lost its fortune, as the recipient of her estate.

Whether her death was suicide, an accident, or murder has yet to be solved.  Her husband was suspected of murdering her, but charges were never filed.

In a 1936 deposition, attorney Bart Leach testified that, before Elva Statler’s marriage, he had been employed by her “to handle legal angles growing out of a love affair between her and a Bostonian named Conrad, described by counsel as an orchestra member or a band leader.”

The same month as Elva Statler’s death, Lew Conrad filed bankruptcy, listing $8,000 in debts (about $182,400 in 2024 dollars).

Bowser speculates as to whether Lew Conrad might have been after Elva’s money, whether the “legal angels” might have been Conrad receiving a loan from her that he could not repay, or perhaps a financially desperate Conrad making an attempt at blackmail.

Bowser concludes that if her death was thought to be murder and had there been knowledge of a romantic relationship, then “given the timing, if nothing else, police at the time certainly would have considered [Conrad] a ‘person of interest.'”

After his bankruptcy, Conrad continued to lead bands in the Boston area until at least the early 1940s.

“If I Had A Talking Picture Of You”
Earl Burtnett And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra
(Brunswick 4501)                                                 August 9, 1929

“Sunnyside Up”
Earl Burtnett And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra
(Brunswick 4501)                                                 August 9, 1929

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings of songs from the very successful 1929 musical film Sunny Side Up. It was one of the early big-budget movie musicals and came out when not all theaters had converted to showing the new talking pictures.

Note that on the label image above,  Brunswick misspelled the name of the film in both its listing of the film credit and its title song as “Sunnyside Up.”   I have preserved that misspelling here and on the title/artist information displayed when it plays on Radio Dismuke to accurately reflect what is on the record’s label.

Both of the songs here were popular and widely recorded.

Some might recognize the song “Sunny Side Up” from the recording made by Johnny Hamp and His Kentucky Serenaders played during the closing credits of the classic 1973 film Paper Moon, the story of which was set in Depression-era Kansas and Missouri.  The lyrics on this version are different from those on Johnny Hamp’s and most other recordings of the song.

The lyrics on “If I Had A Talking Picture of You” are enjoyable in that they are topical to a period when sound films were the latest technology that people marveled over.

Other highly successful songs from the film, which you can hear multiple versions of in Radio Dismuke’s playlist, are “Turn On The Heat” and “I’m A Dreamer, Aren’t We All.”

I could not find any information on who provided the uncredited vocals on these recordings.  Paul Gibbons was one of the vocalists with Earl Burnett’s band during this period, and, after listening to a few other Burnett recordings where Gibbons provided the vocal,  I suspect he was probably the vocalist on these as well.  But my ears aren’t the best at making such comparisons, and I am reluctant to state definitively that it was, indeed, Gibbons.