https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Harry-Leader-And-His-Band-Winter-Wonderland.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n <\/p>\n
Here is the very first recording of “Winter Wonderland” and the story of how a now familiar and beloved holiday classic came close to having been overlooked and forgotten.<\/p>\n
The first recording of \u201cWinter Wonderland\u201d was this version presented here by Richard Himber And His Ritz Carleton Orchestra. The song\u2019s lyrics were written in early 1934 by an obscure song writer named Dick Smith after he observed children playing in the snow from his window in a Scranton, Pennsylvania sanitarium where he was sick with tuberculosis. Smith took the lyrics to his friend, pianist Felix Bernard, who composed a tune to go with them. The song might well have been lost had it not come to the attention of Joey Nash, the vocalist for Richard Himber\u2019s popular New York City society orchestra.<\/p>\n
Decades later in the 1970s Nash recalled:<\/p>\n
\u201cA fan in my neighborhood, Bernie Smith, told me about a song his brother Dick, a patient in a Pennsylvania sanitarium, had co-authored with Felix Bernard. He showed me a penciled manuscript and played a wheezy, home-made recording of \u201cWinter Wonderland.\u201d I liked the unique, sleigh bells-snowman romantic lyrics and its lovely melody. I learned Donaldson-Douglas-Gumble music publishers had accepted the tune and evidently forgot about its existence.<\/em><\/p>\nI introduced \u201cWinter Wonderland\u201d on the air and on this Victor date [October 23, 1934] the band and I were scheduled to record it. Due to technical difficulties, time had run out and the session ended without the song being made. Himber had left the studio and the musicians were packing up. I so wanted to do this tune, I asked the band, as a favor to me, to try for a master. They agreed, but it would be a one-shot try. If something or someone fouled it up, well, that would be just too bad. (In those days, before tape recording, a rendition had to be faultless from start to end: if not, you had to do it again \u2013 and again.) It was a perfect performance\u2026”<\/em><\/p>\nJoey Nash\u2019s performances on Richard Himber\u2019s radio broadcasts brought the song to the attention of bandleader Guy Lombardo who recorded his own version for Decca the day following Himber\u2019s recording session. Lombardo\u2019s recording was released in December and it quickly climbed to number 2 on the Billboard charts. Ted Weems recorded the song for Columbia on November 11 and it reached Billboard\u2019s number 13 position.<\/p>\n
I do not have a copy of either the Guy Lombardo or Ted Weems version – but I have included in this posting an exceptionally nice version from Great Britain recorded in January, 1935 by Harry Leader and His Band.\u00a0 This recording is from an eight inch Eclipse record.\u00a0 Eclipse was an in-house bargain label sold through the British branch of the F. W. Woolworth dime store chain.<\/p>\n
Both recordings receive regular air play on Radio Dismuke<\/a>.<\/p>\nDick Smith lived to see his song become a hit before the tuberculosis took his life on September 28, 1935 \u2013 just one day prior to his 34th birthday.<\/p>\n
— Dismuke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWinter Wonderland\u201d Richard Himber And His Ritz Carlton Orchestra; Joey Nash, vocal October 23, 1934 (Victor 24757-B) \u201cWinter Wonderland\u201d Harry Leader And His Band; Sam Browne, The Carlyle Cousins, vocal January 1935 (Eclipse 902-A) Here is the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":511,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","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=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Victor24757.jpg\")
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