{"id":1861,"date":"2025-04-18T14:20:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T19:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2025-04-18T14:43:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T19:43:26","slug":"fletcher-henderson-his-orchestra-1924","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/2025\/04\/18\/fletcher-henderson-his-orchestra-1924\/","title":{"rendered":"Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra – 1924"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"National<\/p>\n

Background information about the recording can be found below the audio selection.<\/em><\/p>\n

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“Charley My Boy”
\nN.M.L. Dance Orchestra
\n(National Music Lovers 1097-B)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 circa July 1924<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s a recording from the Edward Mitchell Collection<\/a>, credited under the generic-sounding N.M.L. Dance Orchestra, but which is actually by Fletcher Henderson<\/a> and His Orchestra.<\/p>\n

National Music Lovers was an early 1920s endeavor to market inexpensive phonograph records by selling directly to consumers by mail.\u00a0 The company offered different series of records based on musical genre, with each series having a different label color.\u00a0 The one here comes from the Dance Series, which had a red label.<\/p>\n

The records were extensively marketed in newspapers and magazines.\u00a0 They were sold in sets of eight double-sided records – 16 musical selections – for $2.98 C.O.D<\/a> plus delivery, a little over 37 cents per record, with a ten-day satisfaction guarantee. In today’s currency, $2.98 in 1924 is worth approximately $55.73, or a little under $7 per record. \u00a0When National Music Lovers made its debut, records from major labels like Victor, Columbia, and Brunswick sold for 75 cents, while those from lower-priced labels typically sold for 50 cents.<\/p>\n

Every few months, a new series of 16 song titles was advertised, and the previous series was discontinued.<\/p>\n

As the 1920s progressed, other low-priced records began to appear on the market that could be purchased individually at retail stores at prices comparable to or less than those of National Music Lovers – and without requiring a minimum purchase of eight records with pre-selected musical content, bundled as a set.\u00a0 This significantly undercut the National Music Lover’s value proposition, and by the end of 1927, the label was out of business.<\/p>\n

The business partners who owned the company, Harry Scherman<\/a> and Maxwell Sackheim, had previously founded the Little Leather Library<\/a> series of inexpensive, bundled sets of small-sized reprints of classic books. The individual books from this series are still relatively easy to find in antique shops and secondhand stores.\u00a0 Scherman left National Music Lovers in 1926 to found a new mail-order service, Book of the Month Club<\/a>, which is still in business today.<\/p>\n

National Music Lovers did not have any recording facilities, but instead leased masters from other record labels.\u00a0 Thus, in most cases, content on National Music Lovers records is duplicated with recordings issued under different artist credits on other labels.<\/p>\n

Fletcher Henderson recorded “Charley, My Boy” sometime in July 1924 for release on the Plaza Music Company’s Banner and Regal labels, with artist credit to Henderson.\u00a0 Plaza also issued it on its lower-priced Domino label, under the pseudonym of the Club Alabam’ Orchestra.\u00a0 \u00a0It also leased the recording for release on other labels besides National Music Lovers under different pseudonyms.<\/p>\n

Several bands and vocalists recorded “Charley My Boy” when the song was published in 1924, with Eddie Cantor’s<\/a> version on Columbia being among the most popular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Background information about the recording can be found below the audio selection.   “Charley My Boy” N.M.L. Dance Orchestra (National Music Lovers 1097-B)\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":62,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1861","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\/1861","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=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1872,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}