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.
“To-Wa-Bac-A-Wa”
Louis Dumaine’s Jazzola Eight
(HMV B-5385 mx A-37978) March 7, 1927
“Pretty Audrey ”
Louis Dumaine’s Jazzola Eight
(HMV-B 5385 mx A-37977) March 5, 1927
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here is a British pressing of a record made by the Victor Talking Machine Company during a March 1927 field trip to New Orleans. The royalty stamp on the label suggests it was likely exported for sale in France.
Both sides are excellent examples of New Orleans-style jazz, which saw renewed interest and revival in the 1940s and 1950s as “Dixieland” jazz.
Louis Dumaine, a well-regarded cornet player and bandleader in New Orleans, cut four sides for Victor on March 5 and 7, constituting his band’s entire recorded output under its own name. On March 5, the band provided uncredited accompaniment for two sides by blues vocalist Genevieve Davis, and on March 7, a smaller ensemble of its musicians accompanied two blues selections by Ann Cook.
The American issue of this record was on Victor 20723, with “To-Wa-Bac-A-Wa” described as Creole Blues. The British issue, however, describes it as Yale Blues, likely because Yale Blues was both a song title and the name of a popular dance in Britain at the time. “To-Wa-Bac-A-Wa” later became famous as “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It,” recorded by various artists and becoming a hit for Hank Williams.
Ralph Sylvester Peer, the session supervisor for the March 1927 New Orleans recordings, was a record producer and talent scout for “race” and “hillbilly” records at the OKeh and Victor labels. In that capacity, he was responsible for discovering many important jazz, blues, and country artists. You can find an interesting article about his career at this link.
“I’m Thirsty For Kisses Hungry For Love”
Nat Shilkret And The Victor Orchestra; Dick Robertson, vocal
(Victor 21908-A) February 7, 1929
Here is one of many recordings recently added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist. I think it has a rather catchy tune.
The song was introduced in the 1929 filmWhy Be Good?, which was released during the industry’s transition from silent films to full sound. Wiring and equipping theaters for sound was expensive, and many, particularly in smaller cities and towns, had not yet been converted.
To ensure the widest possible distribution, the film was produced in a hybrid format. The story was filmed as a silent movie with no spoken dialogue, allowing it to be shown as a conventional silent film in locations still without sound. However, for audiences in theaters equipped with the latest Vitaphone sound-on-disc technology, the storyline was accompanied by a musical score, and there were song and dance scenes where the sound and film were fully synchronized.
For many years, until a copy was discovered in Italy in the 1990s, the film was believed to be lost, with only its soundtrack surviving on the much more durable Vitaphone discs.
Nathaniel Shilkret was the director of the Victor Talking Machine Company’s in-house studio band. He made recordings across a number of musical genres from jazz and dance band music to classical, salon and Latin American music.
Dick Robertson was one of several highly prolific freelance studio vocalists of the era who were not exclusive to any particular label and appeared on recordings with both name bands and various labels’ in-house bands.
“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’sAmerican 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.
“My Old Love – Tango”
Max Dolin’s Orchestra
(Victor 19076-B) November 13, 1922
Here is a recording that I stumbled across online while researching a different record. I thought the song was very charming – and to my pleasant surprise, I was able to find a copy in my collection.
Unfortunately, my copy has some condition issues that proved to be a bit time-consuming for my software to clean up. But that’s the way it goes with vintage records – you might or might not eventually come across another copy in better condition. I was happy to discover I even had a copy at all, despite its condition.
Born in what is now Odesa, Ukraine, Max Dolin was an accomplished violinist and prominent conductor in San Francisco. He is best remembered as the West Coast music director for the NBC radio network.
Victor’s recording ledgers indicate that the conductor for this New York City recording session was their in-house conductor, Nathaniel Shilkret, not Max Dolin. There is no mention of whether Dolin himself was present or whether the musicians were members of Dolin’s orchestra or in-house studio musicians. At the time, it was not uncommon for in-house staff to fill in for conductors or even entire bands who, for various reasons, might not have been able to attend a recording session.
Van Dyke was one of several subsidiary labels of Boston-based Grey Gull Records. The various Grey Gull labels were among the least expensive records of the 1920s and are notorious for being made out of poor-quality material, which caused them to have noisy playing surfaces and to wear out quickly. Starting in 1926, the company’s releases tended to have a rather quirky sound quality as a result of poor audio engineering and Grey Gull’s homegrown electrical recording system.
The identity of the band on this recording of “In Harlem’s Araby,” which I played on Radio Dismuke’s recent New Year’s broadcast, has been the subject of speculation among discographers and record collectors for many years. It is a very haunting recording and much jazzier than most Grey Gull sides.
This copy on the Van Dyke label credits the band under the pseudonym of the “Dixie Devils.” However, on Grey Gull and its subsidiary labels Radiex and Supreme, the pseudonym used is the “Memphis Jazzers.” Unlike Radiex and Supreme, Van Dyke’s labels and promotional material never made mention of its association with Grey Gull, which likely accounts for its release being assigned a different pseudonym. The pseudonyms used on the Grey Gull labels usually do not correspond with any particular band. They were used on recordings by Grey Gull’s in-house studio band as well as other bands that occasionally recorded for them.
It is believed by some that the band on “In Harlem’s Araby” was a mixed-race ensemble consisting of members of Grey Gull’s in-house band as well as black musicians, including Porter Grainger on piano. Grainger was one of the composers of “In Harlem’s Araby” and of the other songs recorded during that same recording session.
For many years, into the early 1960s, it was widely believed that the band was King Oliver’s – indeed, circa 1950, a British jazz label reissued the side and credited it to “King Oliver’s Memphis Jazzers.” However, shortly before he died, Andy Sannella, who participated in most Grey Gull recording sessions after 1926, denied that King Oliver was present. Because Grey Gull recording ledgers are believed to be lost, the identity of the musicians on this recording is mostly a matter of speculation. You can read more about this recording and the speculation surrounding it at this link.
I need to correct a comment I made about this recording during the New Year’s broadcast.
One of the things that Grey Gull frequently (but not always) did to reduce costs was to feature a popular song of the day that would appeal to buyers on a record’s A-side while using non-copyrighted songs, often written by Grey Gull’s in-house musicians, on the B-side in order to avoid paying the 2 cents per song composers’ royalty on the second side. Because the wholesale cost of Grey Gull’s records was as low as 11 cents apiece, that extra 2 cents royalty was a significant percentage of the company’s costs.
During the broadcast, I incorrectly stated that “In Harlem’s Araby” was an example of such a B-side. The song was, in fact, copyrighted in 1924 with Fats Waller as one of Percy Grainger’s co-composers. Percy Grainger also performed it on a 1924 recording on the Ajax label.
In January 1930, Adrian Schubert’s Salon Orchestra made a recording of the song that was issued on several American Record Corporation labels under different pseudonyms. That recording session featured many musicians who regularly performed with the Grey Gull house band, some of whom might or might not have participated in the recording featured here. You can hear the Adrian Schubert version, which includes the song’s lyrics, on YouTube at this link.
The song on the flip side of the record, “Turn On The Heat,” comes from the 1929 movie musical Sunny Side Up. Credited to the “Collegiate Jazzers” on Van Dyke, the recording was issued under the pseudonym of the “University Syncopators” on the Grey Gull, Radiex and Supreme labels.
Grey Gull’s house band made a lot of interesting and entertaining records. While most of its output was intended to appeal to a mass-market audience seeking records they could dance to that featured the popular songs of the moment at the lowest possible price, the band included some of the era’s top New York City jazz musicians. However, as is the case with “Turn On The Heat,” the company’s poor audio engineering and recording equipment often gave the recordings a certain quirky and even harsh sound.
Those who tuned in to the New Year’s broadcast might recall Connor playing a recording of “Turn On The Heat.” But that version was by Horace Heidt and His Californians.
“I’m Simply Crazy Over You”
Harry Macdonough, vocal
(Victor 17912 B) September 15, 1915
“The Georgia Grind”
Signor “Grinderino,” barrel piano
(Victor 17884 A) October 11, 1915
“Nobody Home” – Medley One Step
Victor Military Band
(Victor 35457 A) May 5, 1915
Here are three of the four recordings I recently played on Radio Dismuke’s annual New Year’s broadcast to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the year 1915. Since they are too old for inclusion in Radio Dismuke’s 1920s and 1930s popular music and jazz format, I thought I would post them here. (The fourth recording is of historical interest more than musical interest and will likely be featured separately in a future posting.)
“I’m Simply Crazy Over You” is from the 1915 Broadway production Hands Up. Among the cast was vaudevillian Will Rogers, just a few months before he achieved Broadway star status in Zigfeld’s Midnight Frolic. Harry Macdonough was one of the early vocal artists to gain fame through phonograph records and appeared on hundreds of cylinder and disc recordings between 1899 and 1920.
“The Georgia Grind” is an interesting recording in that it is performed not by musicians but by a machine known as a barrel piano, credited tongue-in-cheek as Signor “Grinderino.” Like barrel organs, the barrel pianos were commonplace on city streets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were operated by turning a crank, often by Italian immigrants, in exchange for tips. You can view a brief YouTube video explaining how the machines work at this link.
This recording has two interesting connections to the recording of “I’m Simply Crazy Over You.” Victor’s recording ledgers state that four takes of “Georgia Grind” were made. On takes 1 and 2, recorded October 5, 1915, the ledgers indicate that the machine was cranked by Harry Macdonough, who performed the vocal on “I’m Simply Crazy Over You,” and Victor music director Edward King. Takes 3 and 4 were recorded six days later on October 11, with take 4 being the one that was ultimately issued. The ledgers do not indicate who cranked the machine during the October 11 recording session. Still, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess that Macdonough or King might have been asked to crank it again during that second occasion.
The other connection, albeit an indirect one, is through the composer of “The Georgia Grind,” Ford T Dabney, an accomplished and important ragtime-era black composer, pianist, bandleader, and entrepreneur. From 1915 to 1921, he was the music director of Florenz Zigfeld’s Midnight Frolics at the Roof Garden Club atop Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre, where Ziegfeld’s flagship production, The Ziegfeld Follies, was held. Dabney appeared at the Midnight Frolics with his band, Ford Dabney’s Syncopated Orchestra, which made it the first black band to regularly appear in a Broadway theater. As previously mentioned, the Midnight Frolics was where, shortly after appearing in Hands Up, Will Rogers achieved his first taste of fame and was soon promoted downstairs to the Follies.
The Midnight Frolics and the Roof Garden Club were forced to close due to Prohibition, and most of the space where it was located was gutted out over the decades. However, some elements of the old rooftop theater/club survived and were retained as part of Disney’s restoration of the New Amsterdam Theatre in the 1990s. You can view a few of those remnants at this link.
“Nobody Home” is a medley recording of Jerome Kern compositions from another 1915 Broadway production, Nobody Home, which was based on the libretto of a 1905 British musical production, Mr. Popple (of Ippleton). The songs featured in the medley are “Any Old Night,” “You Know and I Know,” and “Another Little Girl.”
While “Victor Military Band” might suggest marching music, much of the group’s output consisted of popular ragtime-era songs performed in dance tempo. It wasn’t until jazz began to catch the public’s attention, starting in 1917, that bands exclusively devoted to providing dance music became prominent, with their leaders achieving celebrity status. When the dance craze of the early 1910s through the early 1940s first took off, the record labels initially turned to in-house bands, such as the Victor Military Band and Charles A Prince’s band at Columbia, to supply the new popular demand for dance records. Happily, most of their records sold in such quantities that they are not extremely difficult to find today. While both bands recorded other genres, such as light classical and traditional marching band music, their records bearing the description “for dancing” have a good chance of delighting those who are fans of instrumental ragtime.
“Dallas Blues”
Ted Lewis And His Band; Thomas “Fats” Waller, vocal & piano
(Columbia 2527 D mx 151397) March 6, 1931
“Royal Garden Blues”
Ted Lewis And His Band; Thomas “Fats” Waller, vocal & piano
(Columbia 2527 D mx 151398) March 6, 1931
From the Edward Michell collection, here are two recordings from a historic 1931 recording session that I played on the recent Radio Dismuke New Year’s broadcast, and which are being added to the station’s playlist.
This recording session with Ted Lewis and His Band is historic because it marked Thomas “Fats” Waller’s first appearance on records as a vocalist. The only mention of Waller on the record labels from that session was the description “fox trot vocal refrain” – a common practice for dance band recordings of that era.
This was by no means Waller’s first recording session. Since 1922, he had made dozens of records for OKeh, Victor, and Columbia as a piano and pipe organ soloist. In December 1929, Waller provided comedic dialogue while Clarence Williams sang the vocal on The Seven Gallon Jug Band’s recording of “Wipe ‘Em Off” for Columbia. And Waller was already internationally famous as the composer of songs such as “Ain’t Misbehavin” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”
With the onset of the Great Depression and slowing record sales, Waller became concerned as opportunities for recording sessions suddenly dried up, and he consulted his publisher and agent, Joe Davis. Pointing out that there was only a limited market for piano solo recordings, Davis suggested that Waller broaden their appeal by singing on such records. Waller scoffed at the idea, feeling that his voice was not good enough to be on records.
In late 1930, Waller accepted a job as the organist on a new 13-week pilot radio program on CBS, Paramount On Parade. On the radio, he was not able to incorporate the outrageous facial expressions that were a successful part of his in-person performances. To compensate, he began to sing in a manner intended to achieve the same comedic effect. It was an immediate success; the program became so popular its timeslot was expanded from 15 minutes to 30 minutes, and its contract was renewed for an additional 13 weeks.
Joe Davis seized upon the radio success of Waller’s vocals to secure some recording sessions for him. He first approached management at the top-selling label, Victor, who expressed no interest in having Fats Waller sing. He then persuaded the popular music director at the number two label, Columbia, to listen in on Paramount On Parade. Impressed with what he heard, the director saw that the next recording session on Columbia’s schedule was with the Ted Lewis band and successfully persuaded Lewis to include Waller.
The two-day recording session on March 5 and 6, 1931, resulted in four sides. Among the musicians in Lewis’s band were Benny Goodman on clarinet, Mugsy Spanier on trumpet, and Bud Freeman on tenor sax.
One of those sides, “Egyptian Ella,” recorded March 5, in which Waller did not participate, eventually became one of Lewis’ better-remembered recordings.
That same day, Waller performed piano and vocal on one of his own compositions, “I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby (And My Baby’s Crazy ‘Bout Me).” The following day, Waller performed on both of the recordings featured here.
Fats Waller’s son, Maurice, later wrote that Ted Lewis was somewhat annoyed at being asked to include Waller in the session, fearing he might be upstaged. During Waller’s piano solo in “Dallas Blues,” Lewis provides a bit of brief vocal patter followed by his trademark expressions “Is Everybody Happy?” and “Yes sir!” According to Maurice Waller, this was not planned and was entirely spontaneous on Lewis’s part. (To be fair, it should be pointed out that it was not uncommon for Lewis to provide similar comments during his own musician’s jazz solo passages.).
Columbia was sufficiently pleased that they invited Waller back a week later to make two additional vocal recordings, accompanying himself on piano.
Victor executives eventually changed their mind about having Fats Waller perform vocals as he later sang on well over 200 sides cut by Victor between 1934 and 1942.
Waller’s unique vocal recordings not only made him one of the top musical stars of the era but also helped him gain greater recognition as one of the great jazz pianists.
“The Mooche”
Duke Ellington And His Cotton Club Orchestra
(Brunswick 4122) October 17, 1928
Here is a haunting Duke Ellington recording I came across in the Edward Mitchell collection of one of Ellington’s more famous compositions.
In October 1928, Ellington’s band made four separate recordings of “The Mooche” for different record labels. At the time, his band was not under an exclusive contract with any particular label and was thus free to make recordings for multiple labels. Each of the four versions is a bit different from the others.
Ellington’s first recording of the song was for the OKeh label on October 1, 1928, credited as Duke Ellington And His Orchestra.
Shortly after that (the exact day in October is not known), the band recorded it again for Cameo Records, which had recently merged with Pathe Records. That version was issued on Cameo and its subsidiary Romeo and Lincoln labels credited under the pseudonym The Washingtonians, and on Pathe and its subsidiary label, Perfect, under the pseudonym of The Whoopee Makers.
The band made the recording featured here, credited as Duke Ellington And His Cotton Club Orchestra, for Brunswick on October 17, 1928.
Finally, the band made recorded a fourth version for Victor on October 30, 1928 which was also credited to Duke Ellington And His Cotton Club Orchestra.
All of the versions, besides the one recorded for Victor, feature the stylized trumpet playing of Bubber Miley that helped define the sound of the Ellington band for several years.
At 56 seconds into the recording here, Ellington himself performs a piano solo passage. That passage features other instruments on the OKeh and Victor recordings. The Cameo/Pathe recording also features the piano solo by Ellington, but he performs it a bit differently.
The OKeh version also features a scat passage by Ellington’s female vocalist Baby Cox and is my favorite of the four – though that does not diminish the excellence of the Brunswick version.
In 1938, a few years after the American Record Corporation had taken control of both the Brunswick and OKeh labels, the October 1, 1928 OKeh recording was reissued on Brunswick 8241. Thus, one can find two versions on Brunswick – the original Brunswick recording featured here and the 1938 reissue of the OKeh version.
I am pretty sure I have come across a copy of the Victor version of “The Mooche” in my personal collection – though, if so, I am not sure what condition it is in. And, it is entirely possible that, as I go through Eddie’s collection, I will come across one or more of the other versions. If so, I will prioritize them for digitization and inclusion in Radio Dismuke and, perhaps, another update on this blog.
In the meanwhile, the other versions have been happily uploaded by other collectors to YouTube and can be heard and compared at the following links:
“Mooche” is a slang term that can mean either a person who takes advantage of another person’s generosity without giving anything in return or to walk and go about slowly and aimlessly. Ellington indicated that the song’s title referred to the second meaning.
