{"id":1731,"date":"2025-01-12T19:34:45","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T00:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2025-01-12T19:34:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T00:34:45","slug":"3-recordings-with-upcoming-110th-anniversaries-1915","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/2025\/01\/12\/3-recordings-with-upcoming-110th-anniversaries-1915\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Recordings With Upcoming 110th Anniversaries – 1915"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Victor<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“I’m Simply Crazy Over You”
\nHarry Macdonough, vocal
\n(Victor 17912 B)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0September 15, 1915<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“The Georgia Grind”
\nSignor “Grinderino,” barrel piano
\n(Victor 17884 A)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 October 11, 1915<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Signor-Grinderino-The-Georgia-Grind.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Nobody Home” – Medley One Step
\nVictor Military Band
\n(Victor 35457 A)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0May 5, 1915<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Victor-Military-Band-Nobody-Home.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 \u00a0Since 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.\u00a0 (The fourth recording is of historical interest more than musical interest and will likely be featured separately in a future posting.)<\/p>\n

“I’m Simply Crazy Over You” is from the 1915 Broadway production Hands Up<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Among the cast was vaudevillian Will Rogers<\/a>, just a few months before he achieved Broadway star status in Zigfeld’s Midnight Frolic<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0Harry Macdonough<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

“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.”\u00a0 Like barrel organs, the barrel pianos were commonplace on city streets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.\u00a0 They were operated by turning a crank, often by Italian immigrants, in exchange for tips.\u00a0 You can view a brief YouTube video explaining how the machines work at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This recording has two interesting connections to the recording of “I’m Simply Crazy Over You.”\u00a0 \u00a0Victor’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<\/a>.\u00a0 Takes 3 and 4 were recorded six days later on October 11, with take 4 being the one that was ultimately issued.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The other connection, albeit an indirect one, is through the composer of “The Georgia Grind,”\u00a0 Ford T Dabney<\/a>, an accomplished and important ragtime-era black composer, pianist, bandleader, and entrepreneur.\u00a0 From 1915 to 1921, he was the music director of Florenz Zigfeld’s<\/a> \u00a0Midnight Frolics<\/em> at the Roof Garden Club<\/a> atop Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre<\/a>, where Ziegfeld’s flagship production, The Ziegfeld Follies<\/em><\/a>, was held.\u00a0 Dabney appeared at the Midnight Frolics<\/em> with his band, Ford Dabney’s Syncopated Orchestra, which made it the first black band to regularly appear in a Broadway theater.\u00a0 As previously mentioned, the Midnight Frolics<\/em> was where, shortly after appearing in Hands Up<\/em>,\u00a0 Will Rogers achieved his first taste of fame and was soon promoted downstairs to the Follies<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Midnight Frolics<\/em> 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 You can view a few of those remnants at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Nobody Home” is a medley recording of Jerome Kern<\/a> compositions from another 1915 Broadway production,\u00a0Nobody Home,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0which was based on the libretto of a 1905 British musical production,\u00a0Mr. Popple (of Ippleton)<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The songs featured in the medley are “Any Old Night,” “You Know and I Know,” and “Another Little Girl.”<\/span><\/p>\n

While “Victor Military Band” might suggest marching music, much of the group’s output consisted of popular ragtime-era songs performed in dance tempo.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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<\/a> band at Columbia, to supply the new popular demand for dance records.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “I’m Simply Crazy Over You” Harry Macdonough, vocal (Victor 17912 B)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0September 15, 1915   “The Georgia Grind” Signor “Grinderino,” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":49,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,12,13,11,9],"class_list":["post-1731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1910s","tag-broadway-music","tag-harry-macdonough","tag-ragtime","tag-victor-military-band"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731","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=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}