{"id":292,"date":"2021-05-16T17:03:04","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T22:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/?p=292"},"modified":"2021-05-16T17:32:47","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T22:32:47","slug":"benny-kruger-and-his-orchestra-1924","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/2021\/05\/16\/benny-kruger-and-his-orchestra-1924\/","title":{"rendered":"Benny Kruger And His Orchestra – 1924"},"content":{"rendered":"

\""Ray<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Ray And His Little Chevrolet”
\nBenny Kruger And His Orchestra; Billy Jones, Ernest Hare vocals
\nJune 30, 1924 (Brunswick 2641-A)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As automobiles became more affordable and an increasingly important part of modern American life during the 1910s and 1920s, the songwriters for the big Tin Pan Alley music publishers churned out countless songs about the machines and their owners.\u00a0 Two common themes centered around their lack of reliability and young men hoping that having a car might result in success in gaining the affection of young ladies.\u00a0 Sometimes, the songs were about both, as in the case of the 1910s hit “He’d Have to Get Under — Get Out and Get Under (to Fix Up His Automobile)”<\/a><\/p>\n

Songs that referred to specific brands of automobiles were most often about Fords.\u00a0 As the 1920s progressed, Ford’s Model T was increasingly viewed as old fashioned compared with more attractive offerings from its rivals – and songs began to portray them as unstylish and cheap.<\/p>\n

Song about Chevrolet and other competitors were not as common.\u00a0 But here’s one from 1924 that was successful enough to attract the interest of the record labels.<\/p>\n

The vocalists on this recording, Billy Jones and Ernest Hare, were highly successful on early radio where they billed themselves as “The Happiness Boys.”\u00a0 A few weeks after they cut this recording with Benny Kruger’s band for Brunswick, they recorded the song again on Okeh with top billing as The Happiness Boys.<\/p>\n

A couple of other famous musicians participated on this recording session as well.\u00a0 On piano is Phil Ohman, half of the famous Arden-Ohman piano duo and later co-leader of the Arden-Ohman Orchestra which he and Victor Arden headed up.\u00a0 \u00a0On banjo is Harry Reser, the most famous banjoist of the 1920s and leader of the house band on the highly successful early network radio program The Clicquot Club Eskimos<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0Neither of the musicians are prominently featured on this recording.\u00a0 But in those days, recording sessions were lucrative work for musicians as participants were usually paid a flat fee per side recorded regardless as to whether the eventually issued record sold well or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “Ray And His Little Chevrolet” Benny Kruger And His Orchestra; Billy Jones, Ernest Hare vocals June 30, 1924 (Brunswick 2641-A)   As automobiles became more affordable and an increasingly important part of modern American life during the 1910s and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":36,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","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\/292","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=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.early1900s.org\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}