{"id":1310,"date":"2024-05-02T14:14:53","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T19:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/?p=1310"},"modified":"2024-05-02T14:14:53","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T19:14:53","slug":"harry-resers-syncopators-1925","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/2024\/05\/02\/harry-resers-syncopators-1925\/","title":{"rendered":"Harry Reser’s Syncopators – 1925"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Columbia<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“The Flapper Wife”
\nHarry Reser’s Syncopators
\n(Columbia 393-D mx 140622)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 May 25, 1925<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Craving”
\nHarry Reser’s Syncopators
\n(Columbia 393-D mx 140612)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0May 26, 1925<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Harry-Resers-Syncopators-Craving.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s a record from the Edward Mitchell collection<\/a> that impressed me. In my opinion, it ranks among the best of the “hot dance” records from the mid-1920s Charleston craze.<\/p>\n

On this blog’s January 17 update<\/a>, I featured an excellent recording of “The Flapper Wife” by Harry Raderman’s<\/a> Jazz Orchestra that I had been looking for ever since I first heard it on a YouTube video.\u00a0 That recording of the song was made the same month as the Harry Reser<\/a> version of it here.\u00a0 But Reser’s version was made the month after Columbia started using the new electric recording technology that utilized microphones rather than acoustic recording horns.<\/p>\n

The arrangement for the first 55 seconds of the Reser recording is similar to Raderman’s. The biggest difference is the vastly improved fidelity of the new technology.\u00a0 But that is followed by the first of two very nice extended Harry Reser banjo solos of the same “sparkling” style that he brought to his radio band, the Clicquot Club Eskimos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Craving” starts out up-tempo but laid-back. The primary term I would use to describe the first portion of this recording is “charming.” But, a little over halfway through, the arrangement abruptly changes direction and becomes quite “hot.”\u00a0 If one ever needs to find a musical passage that exemplifies the “Roaring ’20s,”\u00a0 the latter portion of this recording would certainly fit the bill.<\/p>\n

“Craving” was composed by bandleader Ben Bernie<\/a> and Kenneth Casey<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0Ben Bernie’s band made a recording of the song in January\u00a0 1925, which was issued on Vocalion 14965.\u00a0 I was able to find a copy of it on YouTube<\/a>. (Note: the person who uploaded the record to YouTube mismatched the audio and video on both sides; thus the audio for “Craving” was uploaded under “Keep Smiling At Trouble” while the audio for the latter song was uploaded under the information for “Craving.”)<\/p>\n

The Ben Bernie version of the song is not as “hot” as Reser’s, and, of course, in January 1925, Vocalion was not yet recording electrically.\u00a0 But it is still quite nice.\u00a0 If I can find a copy of it in Eddie’s collection, I will definitely add it to Radio Dismuke as well.<\/p>\n

We are so fortunate that both of these Reser recordings were made just in time to be captured electrically.\u00a0 If you compare Reser’s “The Flapper Wife” with the Harry Raderman version I posted in January and linked to above, you can immediately hear the radical improvement over the old technology.\u00a0 But, while Victor and Columbia began recording and releasing records with the new technology in the spring of 1925, neither company made public announcements about it until much later in the year so that they could have time to build up a new catalog and provide dealers a chance to sell off their existing inventory of records that would soon be perceived as obsolete.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “The Flapper Wife” Harry Reser’s Syncopators (Columbia 393-D mx 140622)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 May 25, 1925   “Craving” Harry Reser’s Syncopators (Columbia 393-D mx 140612)\u00a0 \u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":103,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1317,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310\/revisions\/1317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}