The Virtual Victrola

Koko's Earth Control

Here is a delightful 1928 pen-and-ink animation from Max and Dave Fleischer.  Koko's Earth Control features long-time Fleischer character Koko the Clown and his incurably curious dog Bimbo, as they inadvertently bring the world to a somewhat comical end.

It's a good bet that the original screening of this cartoon was silent, but in its reissue it has been given some wonderful period music, including "Dancing Shadows," recorded by the Paul Whiteman orchestra on April 22, 1928.  Soloists on the record are Bill Rank on trombone and Frank Trumbauer on c-melody saxophone.  The "sweet trio" of Jack Fulton, Austin Young, and Charles Gaylord provide the humming under Trumbauer's solo.  Although cornetist Bix Beiderbecke was in the orchestra during this recording, he is inaudible.

Download Paul Whiteman - Dancing Shadows.mp3

Why disc records are superior to wax cylinders ...

I really feel sorry for this poor fellow.  (Brief language may be NSFW)

"Yeah, I'm done with that."

Wurlitzer Model 50 Jukebox

Here is a nice video of a beautiful Wurlitzer Model 50 jukebox, built in 1937.  This was one of the earliest modern-type coin-operated juke boxes.  Machines like this one were one reason that the record industry enjoyed a resurgence in the late 1930's.

Discographies

People often email me with questions about performers or recording dates of specific recordings.  I am usually more than happy to answer their questions, and I would like to share with all of you some of the resources that I use date recordings and identify personnel.

The most extensive online discography of labels, catalog numbers, and recording dates has been compiled by Tyrone Settlemier and is located here:  http://settlet.fateback.com/

Tyrone's personal webpage also has a very extensive list of links to online 78 rpm resources here: http://www.proaxis.com/~settlet/record/links.html

The Red Hot Jazz Archive has a comprehensive listing of jazz artists and their recordings, generally complete up through the early 1940's.  This website also contains RealMedia files of thousands of early jazz performances.

If you are a collector of the cardboard Hit Of The Week records from 1930 - 1932, then Hans Koert's Durium Discography website, which contains catalog numbers and approximate recording dates and personnel (the original records no longer exist) for every Durium and Hit of The Week record ever released.  Koert also blogs about Hit of The Week records at http://hitoftheweek.blogspot.com/.

There are also many individual artist discographies available, including sites dedicated to the recordings of Jack Hylton, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and many more.

JazzDiscography.com contains complete discographies for around 75 artists, but most of them are post-WWII.  JazzDisco.org from Japan is very similar.

Mosaic Records puts the entire, exhaustively-researched discography online for each of their classic jazz box sets.  However, Mosaic only makes limited edition releases, and when a box set is sold out, its discography and liner notes are removed from their web site.

The current king of jazz discographies is Tom Lord, whose voluminous The Jazz Discography boasts entries for 23,000 band leaders, 132,000 recording sessions, and 400,000 recordings from 1897 through today, with updated and expanded versions regularly made available on CD-ROM.

In the field of jazz, there are several notable discographers who deserve special recognition.  In the late 1930's, when record collectors first became interested in obscure jazz and blues records recorded 10 to 20 years earlier, there were no lists or guides for collectors to use.  Two Europeans, Charles Edward Smith from England and Charles Delaunay from France, compiled the first printed guides to "hot music," available to American collectors in the early 1940's.   The next, more comprehensive jazz discography, Index to Jazz, was published by an American, Orin Blackstone, at the end of the decade.  Three Englishmen, Dave Carey, Albert McCarthy, and Ralph Venables, began working on their Jazz Directory in the late 1940's, the first attempt to produce a comprehensive listing of every recording by known jazz artists, listed in chronological order.  They only made it through the letter "L" before the project was abandoned.

In 1961 another Englishman, Brian Rust, published Jazz Records A-Z, 1897 - 1931.  His comprehensive book, which focused only on a specific time period, was eagerly devoured by collectors and became the standard by which all other discographies would be judged.  Rust's second edition covered the period 1895 - 1942.  Soon after, Jorgen Jepsen of Copenhagen released the first of many volumes of Jazz Records 1942 - 1962, which added to the work of Rust and continued where Jazz Directory ended a decade earlier. 

Since the 1950's, dozens of discographies covering country and hillbilly music, gospel, blues, dance music, and personalities from the earliest days of the recording industry through the end of the 78 rpm era have been published.  Many biographers have included detailed discographies in their books on early jazz musicians (Sudhalter and Evans' Bix: Man and Legend is a good example) and other researchers have published so-called "bio-discographies" (a prime example being BG On The Record by Connor and Hicks).

"Magnificent Obsession: The Discographers" by Jerry Atkins is an article that chronicles the birth of jazz discographies in great detail.  It is well worth your time to read it if you are interested in this subject.  I also highly recommend "Mack McCormick Still Has The Blues" by Michael Hall, which is partially available through this Google book search.

Books I own:

Olde Records Price Guide by Soderburgh (1980) - Not by any means exhaustive, but a nice selection of common 78 rpm records with catalog numbers, recording dates, notable sidemen, and relative dollar values.

Jazz Records - 1897-1942 by Brian Rust (4th ed. 1978)

The American Record Label Book by Brian Rust - short histories of over 100 record labels, including matrix and catalog numbers in chronological order; good for approximating dates

The Complete Entertainment Discography - 1897-1942 by Brian Rust

The Jazz Record Book by Smith, Ramsey, Rogers, and Russell

Jazz Directory, vol. 2 and 3 by Carey, McCarthy, and Venables

Index To Jazz by Orin Blackstone (hardcover edition)

Index to Jazz Part 1, A-E by Orin Blackstone (loose leaf edition)

BG On The Record by Connor and Hicks

The Bix Bands by Castelli, Kaleveld, and Pusateri

Bix: Man and Legend by Sudhalter and Evans

Other good books I don't have:

The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900-1950 by Roger Kinkle (1974) - A multi-volume set of over 2500 pages.  Hard to find complete.

The American Dance Band Discography by Brian Rust (1975) - Two volumes and over 2000 pages.  Long out of print.

 

"My Baby Just Cares For Me" from Whoopee

Another great hit from the Eddie Cantor musical Whoopee was "My Baby Just Cares For Me," written by the famous songwriting team of Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson.  In the film version of the musical, Cantor introduced the song as part of a blackface routine, which was a common and acceptable form of stage presentation in 1930.  His energy and unique style allowed Cantor to make the song all his own:

Cantor reprised the song later in the film in a duet number with Ethel Shutta.  Music trivia geeks will remember that George Olsen, whose orchestra is featured in the film, was Ethel Shutta's husband at the time:

A number of great recordings of this song were made in 1930.  First up is Ted Fiorito and his Orchestra with vocalist Frank Luther, recording for Hit of The Week in September 1930.  This is one of my favorite Hit of the Week records,  and it epitomizes the quality of both music and sound reproduction that Hit of the Week records offered.  Too bad they were only made of cardboard.

Download Ted Fiorito - My Baby Just Cares For Me.mp3

Next is the great Ted Weems band with vocalist Art Jarrett, recording for Victor on July 25, 1930.  The Ted Weems band had a number of hits around this time including "Piccolo Pete" and "You're The Cream In My Coffee."  The arrangement on this record is probably by Joe Haymes, who later led one of the best big bands that never made it commercially.  Ted Weems enjoyed the spotlight briefly again in 1947, when his 1934 recording of "Heartaches" became a surprise hit thirteen years after it was recorded.

Download Ted Weems - My Baby Just Cares For Me.mp3

"Cowboys" from Whoopee

Here is the energetic opening number from Whoopee, the famous musical starring Eddie Cantor.  This musical premiered on Broadway in 1929, and in 1930 Samuel Goldwyn secured the rights to produce a film version of the musical.  MGM chose to make an all-Technicolor film and fortunately for us a clean and vibrant print of the film survives.

The color in this YouTube excerpt is a bit faded, but the beautiful costumes and sets still look fabulous.  The girl singer who starts the song is Betty Grable, all of 14 years old at the time.  Betty was pushed into movies by an ambitious mother who lied about Betty's age and forced her to disguise her youth with makeup and wigs.  Choreography for the dance number was done by Busby Berkeley; this is one of his first films.  Music is provided by George Olsen's orchestra.

I'll have more clips from this movie soon, including recordings of some of the film's hit songs including "Makin' Whoopee" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me."

Gus Arnhem film from 1929

Here is a nice vintage Vitaphone short from 1929 featuring Gus Arnheim and His Ambassadors, a great hot band from Los Angeles.  Gus Arnheim is best remembered today for being the catalyst behind the successful solo career of Bing Crosby, who sang with Arnheim's band in 1931.

The most notable member of the band in the film is violinist and singer Russ Columbo, who would go on to have a solo singing career that rivalled Crosby's, yet was tragically cut short by his accidental death in 1934.  And although it is difficult to tell from the video, Arnheim's alto sax player may be actor Fred MacMurray (The Apartment, My Three Sons).

Gus Arnheim and his Ambassadors-1929
Uploaded by redhotjazz

Kindred Spirits #1 WFUV's "The Big Broadcast"

For over thirty years, host Rich Conaty has been spinning 78's over WFUV, Fordham University,  New York City.  Rich entertains his audience with pop music from the 1920's and 1930's, trivia, and dry humor.  He also deals in records through Ebay under the seller name MRC Records.

Through the magic of the Internet, you can hear Rich's show on Sunday nights from 8:00PM 'till midnight, Eastern time.  There is also a limited number of Big Broadcast shows available in the WFUV Archives, although the fate of the archives is uncertain due to the current squabble over Internet music royalties.

Rich's community of listners also meets in an online forum to discuss the show and music and entertainment from the first half of the 20th Century.

Check out The Big Broadcast; you'll be glad you did!

It's The Girl

One of the hidden treasures of American popular music is the deep Depression period of 1930 - 1935.  Virtually all of America's best songwriters -- Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Vincent Youmans, Leo Robin, Jerome Kern, and many, many more -- were in peak form.  Hollywood had just experienced a resurgence in musical films, and Broadway was bustling with new talent and wonderful shows.  A large amount of our best-loved standards were written during this time period, as well as many lesser-known but enjoyable tunes.  "It's The Girl," from 1931, is one of those.

Bandleader, pianist, arranger Bob Haring is not well known today, but his legacy survives in the form of literally hundreds of records by over a dozen bands that he either supervised or led.  This pleasant offering dates from July 1931 and features the equally prolific vocalist, Chick Bullock.  It appears from the discographies that Haring's last records were made in 1931, so perhaps this is one of his last recordings.

Download Bob Haring and his Orch - It's The Girl.mp3

Next up are the amazing Boswell Sisters.  The Boswells were from New Orleans and were perhaps the first singing group to come from a strong -- actually almost pure -- jazz background.  This arrangement, with its tricky transitions between double time and half-time, ending in a frantic minor coda, perfectly illustrates the precision and musicianship that set the Boswell Sisters apart from virtually any other singing group of the era.    The Dorsey Bros. Orch, which features Manny Klein, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and Joe Venuti, serves up some nice hot jazz in the background.  Interestingly, this record was made the same day as Bob Haring's version of the song!

Download The Boswell Sisters - It's The Girl.mp3

I've Got A Feelin' You're Foolin'

Here is a delightful Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed song that premiered in The Broadway Melody of 1936.  "I've got A Feelin' You're Foolin'" was introduced by matinee idol Robert Taylor (who had never before sung in a film) and newcomer June Knight.  The duet is staged on a beautiful set whose lavish design and richly contrasting hues and shapes are the quintessence of 1930's Art Deco design.  Other big hits from this film were "Broadway Rhythm" and "You Are My Lucky Star."  And check out the incredible dancing of Nick Long, Jr, the "bartender" who takes center stage after Taylor and Knight's duet.

The popularity of this song ensured many recorded versions.  My first version is by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.  By the time this record was made, Tommy had already walked out; in fact, this session was the last made by the band under the "Dorsey Brothers" name, before Jimmy took over the band outright.  It is also one of the last records made in the generic sweet style that, thankfully, Jimmy would soon abandon.  The vocalist is Bob Eberle, new to the Dorsey band and still sounding a little green on this record.

Download Dorsey Brothers Orch - I've Got A Feelin' You're Foolin'.mp3

The second version is by the largely forgotten sweet band of Archie Bleyer.  Bleyer's vocalist is Mildred Bailey sound-alike Durelle Alexander.  The discographies indicate that Ms. Alexander also sang briefly with Paul Whiteman, who was Mildred Bailey's first employer.

Download Archie Bleyer and his Orch - I've Got A Feelin' You're Foolin'.mp3