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.
“Love Bird”
“Selvin’s Dance Orchestra”
(Aeolian-Vocalion-B 14155) Circa January-February 1921
Popular music styles and trends evolved at an amazingly rapid pace during the early decades of the 20th century. The late 1910s and early 1920s were a transition period between the ragtime era and the Jazz Age.
When the ballroom dance craze that would endure and dominate popular music in the West into the early 1940s burst upon the scene in the early 1910s, ragtime was the dominant inspiration behind the new dance music, which was then primarily performed by large military-style bands.
By 1917, the first jazz recordings were issued, and very early dance bands were starting to emerge. They were smaller than the old military bands and used a different range of instruments to provide a lighter, less formal sound.
Increasingly, the arrangements used by these dance bands drew their inspiration from the new jazz music – so much so that, in the 1920s, it became common for people to refer to all dance bands as “jazz bands.” While not accurate, there was an element of truth in that almost all jazz musicians and even the jazziest bands of the period earned their living primarily by performing before live audiences who expected to be able to get up and dance to the music.
Here’s an early 1921 dance band recording from the Edward Mitchell collection that I think is rather charming.
Compared to other dance band recordings of the period, its arrangement is conservative and there is a particularly noticeable holdover from the ragtime era. Observe that the recording essentially consists of the same musical passages being repeated until it is time for the record to end. Unlike many ragtime-era dance recordings by groups such as the Victor Military Band and Prince’s Orchestra, it does provide a different orchestration each time the music repeats – but it never strays very far.
By this time, dance band arrangements were already evolving to become more varied, creative, and willing to stray from the standard stock rendition issued by the music publishing houses. Arrangements would also begin to feature more solo passages, and bandleaders would allow their top musicians the freedom to improvise on such solo passages.
By the time the microphones started being used on the first electric recordings four and a half years later, the Charleston craze was underway, and arrangements like the one heard on this recording were already considered out-of-date. By the start of the 1930s decade, they were considered to be hopelessly old-fashioned.
Though these early dance band recordings quickly fell out of favor and are often overlooked even by many 78 rpm collectors, a lot of really nice records were made during this period, especially if one is willing to listen to the recordings on their own terms and not through the lens of where recording technology and music eventually evolved by the end of the decade.
What I like about the dance bands of the early 1920s is that many of their recordings – including this one to a degree – had a certain unique sound that lasted only for a brief period and that I can only describe as charming and/or haunting.
“Love Bird” was composed by bandleader Ted Fio Rito and Mary Earl, a pen name for male composer Robert A. King. The song was successful, and almost every record label at the time issued at least one version.
Ben Selvin holds the world’s record as the most prolific recording artist, having recorded over 9,000 sides between 1919 and 1934 (some estimate the number is closer to 20,000), both under his own name and under a staggering array of pseudonyms.
One cannot tell by looking at the label image, but the playing surface on Vocalion records during this period was reddish-brown due to dyes mixed into the shellac. The Aeolian Company, which manufactured Vocalion phonographs and records, billed them as “Vocalion Red Records.” The company’s promotions from that period often featured the slogan “Red Records Are Best.”
“At Sundown”
Jay’s Chelsea Orchestra; Vaughn DeLeath, vocal
(Vocalion A-15554) April 21, 1927
“My Idea of Heaven”
Jay’s Chelsea Orchestra; Vaughn DeLeath, vocal
(Vocalion B-15554) April 21, 1927
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two upbeat, happy recordings by the Harry Reser Orchestra, issued under the recording pseudonym of Jay’s Chelsea Orchestra.
Resers’s band made hundreds of recordings under its own name and a wide array of pseudonyms throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.
Some immediately stand out as having been made by Reser with their Tom Stacks vocals and Reser’s trademark banjo solos. Here is a link to a recent posting that features a recording with the unmistakable Reser sound.
But many recordings that his band made under a pseudonym, particularly on low-priced “dime store” labels, feature more or less standard dance band arrangements, and the only way most would know that they were by Reser’s band would be by looking the recording up in a discography.
These are good examples of such recordings. Vocalion was founded by the Aeolian Company, a major manufacturer of pianos and organs. Aeolian sold Vocalion to Brunswick in 1924, which converted it into a lower-priced subsidiary label. Sometimes, recordings by big-name groups, such as Ben Bernie And His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, that were issued on Brunswick were reissued on Vocalion under pseudonyms such as Al Goering’s Collegians. In other instances, such as this record, recordings were made specifically for release on Vocalion.
Other examples of more generic recordings that Reser made for Brunswick were issued under the pseudonyms of the Park Lane Orchestra and the Clevelanders. Many of these are wonderful in their own right – but one would not be able to identify them as being by Reser’s band simply by listening to them.
The Harry Reser band made another recording of “At Sundown” in the band’s trademark style for Columbia as the Clicquot Club Eskimos, named after an early network radio program the band starred in. You can hear that recording on YouTube at this link. Not only does it provide a great example of the Reser band at what I consider to be their best and a vocal by Tom Stacks, who sang on most such Reser recordings, it also demonstrates the superiority of the sound and fidelity of Columbia’s electrical recording process over Brunswick’s during this period.
I have a copy of the Clicquot Club Eskimo’s recording of “At Sundown” and was surprised to realize that I have never added it to Radio Dismuke’s playlist – an omission I plan to correct as soon as I can locate the record.
The uncredited vocal on both of these recordings is by Vaughn DeLeath, whose voice was very well-known in the 1920s through radio broadcasts, and on the over 300 sides she recorded for Edison, Columbia, Brunswick, OKeh, and Victor. She was the very first female vocalist to broadcast on an ongoing basis, starting in 1920 at Lee DeForest’s experimental station 2XG, before the first commercial radio broadcasting license was issued to KDKA in November of that year.
Some credit Vaughn DeLeath as the originator of “crooning,” the soft, intimate singing style that soon became standard for popular music vocals and made possible by the advent of the microphone, first for radio broadcasting and then for recordings. She was also the first female vocalist to perform on television through experimental broadcasts made during the late 1920s.
The “At Sundown” side of this record has some surface damage. Fortunately, most of its impact was at frequencies much higher than the music and could be removed. At frequencies closer to the music, I was able to minimize the volume of the defects, which shouldn’t be particularly noticeable on most speakers. But, on other speakers and for those who have artificially boosted the treble on their playback devices, they might be more noticeable.
Clarence Williams was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance music scene as a bandleader, pianist, composer, and music publisher.
Williams not only made records for OKeh, he was the label’s music director for its 8000 catalog series of so-called “race records,” of which this one is an example. OKeh was the first label to issue such records, made by black artists and marketed primarily to black record buyers. In doing so, they discovered that black audiences had buying power and would eagerly buy records that reflected their musical tastes and interests, for which there had been an enormous pent-up demand that had been ignored by the record industry. Other labels quickly followed and introduced their own catalogs of such records.
As music director for OKeh, Williams supervised recording sessions for the series and recruited its roster of various jazz, blues, and gospel artists, including Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Victoria Spivey, Lonnie Johnson, and others.
Clarence William’s wife was singer and actress Eva Taylor. Their grandson, Clarence Williams III, was an actor best known for his role as Linc Hayes in the late 1960s – early 1970s television series The Mod Squad.
“Spanish Mamma”
Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra
(Columbia 727-D mx 142417) July 10, 1926
“Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man”
Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra
(Columbia 727-D mx 142414) July 10, 1926
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings of an all-black jazz band based out of Chicago that I think are outstanding. “Spanish Mamma” is my favorite of the two because the tune is so wonderfully happy and catchy, but “Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man” is also excellent.
The band, led by Charles L. Cooke also made recordings under the name of Doc Cook and his 14 Doctors of Syncopation. A smaller sub-unit of the band made recordings under the name of Cookie’s Gingersnaps.
Dreamland refers to Paddy Harmon’s Dreamland Ballroom in Chicago, where the band had an extended engagement at the time of this recording session.
“Doc” was not just an empty nickname – Cooke had a doctoral degree in music from the Chicago College of Music and was one of the first black Americans to receive a doctorate in music.
Less than a month before these sides were recorded, a subset of the band recorded “Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man” for the OKeh label under the name of Cookie’s Gingersnaps. Unlike the Columbia recording here, which was made electrically, the OKeh version was recorded using the old pre-microphone acoustical technology.
At that time, OKeh was using its own homegrown “Truetone” electrical recording process to avoid the high cost of licensing the Western Electric technology used by Victor and Columbia. But the quality of those electrical recordings was so spotty that OKeh continued to use the old acoustical process for some of its recording sessions and even went so far as to rerecord acoustically certain sides that had previously been recorded electrically but were deemed to be of insufficient quality to release.
You can hear the acoustically recorded Okeh version of “Here Comes The Hot Tamale Man” on YouTube at this link.
OKeh’s electrical recording woes were solved in November 1926 when the label was purchased by Columbia which, until the Great Depression brought the record industry to its knees, allowed OKeh to operate as an independent subsidiary. This gave OKeh access to the same Western Electric process that Columbia used. In my opinion, the quality of the electrical recordings made by Columbia and OKeh once it was under Columbia’s ownership is usually superior to that of all other labels – especially when combined with the super-quiet laminated surface on Columbia pressings that, in part, explains why the two recordings here sound so great.
Cooke moved to New York City in 1930, where he worked as an arranger for Radio City Music Hall and RKO Pictures. He also provided arrangements for several Broadway productions into the 1950s, even after he was partially paralyzed by a stroke.
“Would Ja”
The Buffalodians
(Columbia 723-D mx 142553) August 20, 1926
“She’s Still My Baby”
The Buffalodians
(Columbia 723-D mx 142554) August 20, 1926
From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two sides from the final recording session of a jazzy band based out of Buffalo, New York.
On “Would Ja,” an incredibly catchy tune, one can hear two brief “scat” vocals by the band’s pianist, the yet-to-be-famous Harold Arlen, then known as Harold Arluck.
According to this brief article, courtesy of The Syncopated Times, the band also performed under the names The Yankee Six and The Yankee Ten. Be advised, however, that according to discographer Brian Rust, the name Yankee Ten was also used as a recording pseudonym for recordings by various band leaders such as Fred Rich, Lou Gold and others.
The only Yankee Ten recordings I can find listed that were, in fact, made by the Buffalodians/Yankee Six are “Baby Face” and “How Many Times.” Those two recordings were issued on various dime store and small independent labels. Some are credited to The Yankee Ten, others to the Yankee Six, and others to pseudonyms such as Six Black Dominos, Master Melody Makers, Lou Connor’s Dance Orchestra, and others.
I recall seeing in Eddie’s collection records by either the Yankee Six or Yankee Ten. Once I come across them again, I will definitely check to see if they were among those recorded by this band.
I enjoy coming across recordings by obscure, local bands. According to one source, in 1924 alone, there were over 900 professional jazz and dance bands in the United States. That number, of course, was constantly changing as bands came into and out of existence. Some of these bands were local to a particular city. Others were so-called “territory bands” that traveled regionally – which, for the musicians, was an often grueling existence requiring them to travel hundreds of miles a day on the era’s still-primitive highways between “one-night stand” type engagements.
Only a tiny fraction of these bands had the opportunity to make records. A few were able to make at least one or two recordings thanks to the major labels’ periodic field trips with their portable recording equipment to various regions of the country. And the quality of the regional bands captured by such field recordings is often amazing. But, for most of them, the only reminders of their existence are old newspaper and trade publication mentions and, on occasion, local radio station program schedules.
One can only imagine what truly outstanding performances must have taken place – enjoyed by the fortunate few who were among whatever audience was on hand before immediately and forever vanishing into the ether.
“I Never Knew What The Moonlight Could Do”
George Olsen And His Music; Bob Borger, Fran Frey, Bob Rice, vocal
(Victor 20337-A) November 12, 1926
“I Don’t Mind Being All Alone”
Art Landry And His Orchestra; Al Marineau, vocal
(Victor 20337-B) November 1, 1926
Here is a record from the Edward Mitchell collection featuring two dance bands that are largely forgotten today but were quite popular and made a lot of records during the 1920s.
I think both of these recordings are pleasant. The arrangement of “I Don’t Mind Being All Alone” takes a sudden shift in direction about 2:15 into the recording, which I think makes it interesting. It also includes a sudden, brief “hot” passage that pops up from out of nowhere.
George Olsen’s band was, by far, the most successful of the two. It remained popular and made records throughout the early 1930s thanks to prominent radio broadcasts.
In 1936, bandleader Orville Knapp was killed in a plane crash. Knapp’s band played “sweet” music with odd, though sometimes pleasant, arrangements and musical gimmicks. Though only recently formed, the band was attracting public notice and making records for Decca. Knapp had previously been a member of Olsen’s band, and Olsen was a fan of the Knapp band’s arrangements.
With the help of Knapp’s widow, Olsen took over the band, kept its unusual style, and eventually branded it as “George Olsen and his Music of Tomorrow.” He kept that band going until 1951, but it never achieved the level of success of his 1920s band.
After Olsen retired from the music business, he operated his own restaurant in Parmaus, New Jersey for many years where his recordings from the 1920s and 1930s were played as the background music. I don’t know what the food was like, but it certainly would have been fun to visit.
“I’ve Got The Girl” (Played at 78 rpm)
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 18, 1926
“I’ve Got The Girl” (Played at approximately 75 rpm)
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 18, 1926
“Idolizing”
Don Clark And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra; Betty Patrick, vocal
(Columbia 824-D mx 142785) October 15, 1926
Neither Crosby nor Rinker were credited on the record’s label.
The recording also plays back at the incorrect speed – when played at the standard 78 rpm, the performance is faster than it was in real life. For that reason, I have also included a copy of the recording slowed down to approximately 75 rpm, the speed that, in my opinion, seems to be the most accurate.
The record did not sell well and almost immediately fell into obscurity – as did bandleader Don Clark. It wasn’t until the early 1950s that even the most expert Bing Crosby fans and record collectors became aware that Crosby had made the recording.
Crosby and Rinker began performing together in their hometown of Spokane, Washington, in the early 1920s. In 1925, they traveled to Los Angeles in search of greater opportunities. Through the contacts of Al Rinker’s sister, Mildred Bailey, they obtained work and, eventually, a contract with the vaudeville circuit. Mildred Bailey would go on to become a famous and legendary jazz vocalist in her own right.
In October 1926, Crosby and Rinker were performing at the Metropolitan Theater in Los Angeles when they were brought to the attention of bandleader Paul Whiteman, who was performing nearby at the Million Dollar Theater. Whiteman offered them a contract at $150 a week each – equivalent to approximately $2,662 in today’s currency, an enormous sum for a couple of young, unknown, and relatively inexperienced vocalists. The job with Whiteman was to begin a few weeks later once their contract with the vaudeville circuit expired.
While they were waiting for their current contract to run out, Columbia Records was in Los Angeles on a field trip with its mobile recording equipment. Among the artists scheduled to record was bandleader Don Clark, a former saxophone player with the Paul Whiteman orchestra, whose band had succeded Earl Burtnett’s as the house band of the prestigious Biltmore Hotel. Clark invited Crosby and Rinker to participate in the recording session.
While it would be the first recording session of Bing Crosby’s lengthy recording career, it turned out to be the very last recording session of Don Clark’s brief recording career. Earl Burtnett soon reclaimed his position at the Biltmore, and Clark quickly faded from the music scene.
Crosby recorded another song during the recording session, “Don’t Somebody Need Somebody?” But that recording was never issued.
At the time, it was very common for band vocalists not to receive credit on a record’s label and merely be acknowledged with the phrase “with vocal refrain,” though interestingly enough, Clark’s vocalist Betty Patrick did receive credit for her vocal on “Idolizing” on the record’s flip side.
The recording of “Idolizing” does not seem to have the issue of being recorded at an incorrect speed. But it does have a certain harsh sound quality that I have observed on a number of early electrical recordings that Victor made in 1925 and into 1926. Victor and Columbia both used Western Electric’s system for their electrical recordings. I rarely hear similar harshness on Columbia’s electrical recordings from that period. I am not sure what caused such harshness on Victor, but whatever it was, their engineers were able to correct it as I have never heard it on their recordings after 1926. Had I not seen this record before I heard it, I would have immediately guessed it to be on an early electric Victor.
After joining Whiteman’s band, Crosby and Rinker were teamed up with Harry Barris to form the highly successful Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys. The trio performed on a number of the band’s records and appeared in the 1930 film King of Jazz.
In 1930, the Rhythm Boys left Whiteman and went out on their own before joining the Gus Arnheim Orchestra, which had regular radio broadcasts from the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. As a result of the radio exposure, Crosby became increasingly popular and left the Rhythm Boys to pursue a radio, film, recording, and, eventually, television career that endured for decades.
An article in the March 25, 1953 issue of Variety announced the discovery of Crosby’s rare first recording. The article explained that, in 1950, Edward J Mello and Tom McBride published a 100-page discography, Crosby On Record, with a complete listing of all of Crosby’s recordings. Mello had a copy sent to Crosby and received a letter of acknowledgment from Bing’s brother, Larry Crosby, which indicated that it had omitted Crosby’s first recording. Bing had recalled making a record for Columbia with Don Clark’s band just before he joined Whiteman, but Larry Crosby did not provide any information about the recording’s title.
It took three years of searching by Mello and several record collectors to finally come across a copy of Don Clark’s recording of “I’ve Got A Girl” and confirm that Crosby was on the vocal. Mello subsequently received a letter from Larry Crosby further confirming that Bing was, indeed, on the recording.
It makes sense that the recording would have fallen into such obscurity. Crosby and Rinker were unknown and were not credited on the label. Nor would they likely have had much interest in drawing attention to a record they made on Columbia after penning a contract with Paul Whiteman, whose recording affiliation, and by extension, that of Crosby and Rinker, was with Victor. Compared with their later recordings, this one comes across as almost amateurish. Furthermore, Don Clark’s band was not well known beyond the West Coast and disappeared soon after this recording session.
My effort to research background information about this record highlights some of the pitfalls of writing about history.
Some sources say these recording sessions occurred in a temporary studio set up in a converted warehouse at Sixth and Bixel in Los Angeles, while others say it took place in the Biltmore Hotel ballroom. Reputable discographies I consulted merely state the location as Los Angeles. I did a few quick Google searches on some of the other artists who also made records during Columbia’s October 1926 Los Angeles field trip to see if there was any mention of the recording sessions, but nothing immediately came up.
Some sources suggest that the incorrect speed on “I’ve Got A Girl” was intentional on the part of Columbia. Others suggest that it was simply a recording session error.
The February 1953 issue of Record Changer announced the discovery of the record but incorrectly stated that it was Harry Barris who accompanied Crosby and that the song they performed was “Idolizing,” which, in fact, was performed by Betty Patrick.
I came across several sources, including some who are recent, that describe the “Idolizing” side of the record as being an instrumental.
Clearly, none of those writers had actually listened to the record itself. In their defense, however, listening to the record in the 1950s was not something a person could do quickly or easily if they or any record collectors they were acquainted with did not personally have a copy.
I came across various playback speeds for the record being offered as correct, ranging from 70 rpm to 75 rpm. Based on my experimentation, I think 75 rpm, plus or minus some fraction, is most likely correct.
However, the incorrect speed required me to decide what speed to use for the copy I will add to Radio Dismuke’s playlist. While I personally think it sounds better played at 75 rpm, I have decided to use the standard 78 rpm. While 78 rpm clearly was not the accurate speed of the actual performance, it is the speed that those who purchased the record and who owned a copy during the next couple of decades would have listened to it at. The average record buyer would not have been skilled in determining a record’s correct speed by pitch and would not have had any particular reason to question the standard playback speed.
What I find interesting about records like this is how, over time, thanks to advances in technology, they have become increasingly less obscure and more accessible than they were even in the years immediately following their release.
The advent of the LP record and, later, the CD made it much more economical for vintage recordings – at least the ones that various gatekeepers thought there might be sufficient demand for – to be reissued. And, of course, the advent of the Internet has made it possible for collectors such as myself and organizations such as Early 1900s Music Preservation to make them available without worrying about whether any gatekeepers are concerned if there is any pre-existing demographic or market for them. It is now possible to make vintage recordings available for no other reason than the belief that a recording deserves to be available.
