The Virtual Victrola

"Got A Feelin' For You"

Here's a rare treat - a rare film clip from 1929 of Joan Crawford singing, and a great performance of the same song by the Victor studio band The High Hatters.

Joan was one of the stars of MGM's musical spectacular "The Hollywood Revue of 1929."  She is introduced as "the the personification of youth and beauty and joy and happiness."  She sings "Got A Feelin' for You," written by Jo Trent and Louis Alter.  Not only does she sing convincingly, she also does an energetic flapper dance accompanied by a chorus of male singers.

Although her career in films is badly tarnished today through the controversial accusations of her daughter Christina, Joan Crawford was one of the screens brightest stars during the late 1920's and early 1930's.  She made the transition from silent films to talkies flawlessly.  Her classic beauty was eclipsed by only a select few.  And her screen persona was mesmerizing.  Perhaps fellow actress and Crawford's long-time nemesis Bette Davis summed it up best:  "Christ, that broad had a face."

In July 1929, the Victor studio band The High Hatters, under the direction of Leonard Joy, recorded "Got A Feelin' For You."  Frank Luther is the vocalist on this record, and the muted jazz trumpet solo is by Mike Mosiello.

Download The High Hatters - Got A Feelin' For You.mp3

I think I'll also throw in the other side of the record, "Low Down Rhythm," written by Raymond Klages and Jesse Greer.  This song was also featured in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 as part of a song and dance routine by June Purcell and female chorus.  Frank Luther is the vocalist on this side also, and Mike Mosiello again is the trumpet soloist.

Download The High Hatters - Lowdown Rhythm.mp3

And here is Joan Crawford:

PS - a bit of poking around on YouTube revealed that all of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is available (including June Purcell's rendition of "Low Down Rhythm" and all the film's the rare 2-color Technicolor sequences) from twentiesDOLL12213.

The Coon-Sanders Orchestra

(originally posted July 2, 2005)

This week The Virtual Victrola features the Coon-Sanders Nighthawk Orchestra, one of the best and, sadly, one of today's least-known hot dance orchestras of the 1920's.

The orchestra was birthed from a musical partnership between drummer Carlton Coon and pianist-singer Joe Sanders, both Kansas City musicians.  The orchestra played its first engagement in 1919 and quickly became a top draw at local venues.

The orchestra got its first break in 1923 thanks to a novel idea at the time - broadcasting over WDAF radio in Kansas City.  The band's broadcast ran into the early hours of the morning, and consequently a "Nighthawks" fan club was established for the band.  A recording contract soon followed, with the band now billed as the "Coon-Sanders Nighthawks."

The band moved to Chicago in 1926 and settled at the Blackhawk Hotel.  They began a regular radio broadcast over powerful WGN and had a string of hit records.  The band also embarked on several national tours over the next few years, and their popularity grew to dizzying heights.  MCA, the nation's leading booking and management agency, gave them an unprecedented 15 year contract.  And the Auburn Automobile Company gave each of the members of the band an Auburn convertible coup, with Coon and Sanders each receiving a luxury-model Cord.

Money, bootleg liquor, and gangsters flooded the Blackhawk and numerous other Chicago venues like The Dells supper club during this time, and the mob bosses sought whatever means were at their disposal to keep things that way.  Here's an eye-opening tale that illustrates just how deep mob connections ran in the hotels and ballrooms of the day:

[Carleton Coon] often wore a large, prominent diamond ring.  One night, while driving home, Coonie was run off the road by a car with two gangsters inside, who forced him to turn off his car and ordered him to lie face down on the ground.  Coonie pleaded with the mobsters to just take his ring and his wallet and not kill him: "That way, you won't have a murder rap hanging over your heads."  The two hoods decided to spare Coonie's life, with the warning that if he ever talked about this, they'd find him and blow his head off.

Days later, Joe Sanders noticed that his partner's ring was missing.  Coonie was reluctant to talk, but finally told Joe the whole story.  Joe then made a couple of phone calls.  A few nights afterwards, a chauffeur strolled into the Blackhawk with a package. Inside was Coonie's ring and wallet, and a note reading, "The two boys who did this have been taken care of.  Hope to see you soon.  Your friend, AL CAPONE."

The band spent most of 1930 and 1931 on the road, resuming broadcasts from the Blackhawk during their time off from traveling. Even with the onset of the Great Depression, the Coon-Sanders orchestra continued to draw sellout crowds and guarantee top ratings for their radio broadcasts.  But the Depression brought a two-year halt to their Victor recording contract.  The band played for six months in New York during the winter of 1931-32 and during that time they recorded ten new sides for Victor.  They also appeared on their first true coast-to-coast radio broadcast, The Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra program, hosted by Walter Winchell.

But tragedy struck just as the band's popularity reached its zenith.  Carleton Coon suffered from an abscessed tooth, and waited too long to have it treated.  He died of complications resulting from blood poisoning in April 1932.  Unlike most "co-led" bands, the Coon-Sanders Orchestra was a truly co-operative unit, and Joe Sanders found it impossible to continue without Carleton Coon.  As key musicians left and crowds waned, he disbanded a year later. 

The three tunes that I have chosen, "Deep Henderson" (1926), "Here Comes My Ball and Chain" (1928) and "Got A Great Big Date With A Little Bitta Girl" (1929) were three of the band's biggest selling hits and perfectly illustrate the class, energy, and showmanship that this band exemplified.

The Old Masters Records has four CD's that contain the complete recorded output of this great group.  They are currently available from Amazon.com.  Volume 3 and Volume 4 are the best, highlighting the band at the peak of their popularity. The story about Al Capone is from the liner notes to Volume 4.

...

Download Coon-Sanders - Deep Henderson.mp3

Download Coon-Sanders - Here Comes My Ball And Chain.mp3

Download Coon-Sanders - Got A Great Big Date With A Little Bitta Girl.mp3

(originally posted July 2, 2005)

This week The Virtual Victrola features the Coon-Sanders Nighthawk Orchestra, one of the best and, sadly, one of today's least-known hot dance orchestras of the 1920's.

The orchestra was birthed from a musical partnership between drummer Carlton Coon and pianist-singer Joe Sanders, both Kansas City musicians.  The orchestra played its first engagement in 1919 and quickly became a top draw at local venues.

The orchestra got its first break in 1923 thanks to a novel idea at the time - broadcasting over WDAF radio in Kansas City.  The band's broadcast ran into the early hours of the morning, and consequently a "Nighthawks" fan club was established for the band.  A recording contract soon followed, with the band now billed as the "Coon-Sanders Nighthawks."

The band moved to Chicago in 1926 and settled at the Blackhawk Hotel.  They began a regular radio broadcast over powerful WGN and had a string of hit records.  The band also embarked on several national tours over the next few years, and their popularity grew to dizzying heights.  MCA, the nation's leading booking and management agency, gave them an unprecedented 15 year contract.  And the Auburn Automobile Company gave each of the members of the band an Auburn convertible coup, with Coon and Sanders each receiving a luxury-model Cord.

Money, bootleg liquor, and gangsters flooded the Blackhawk and numerous other Chicago venues like The Dells supper club during this time, and the mob bosses sought whatever means were at their disposal to keep things that way.  Here's an eye-opening tale that illustrates just how deep mob connections ran in the hotels and ballrooms of the day:

[Carleton Coon] often wore a large, prominent diamond ring.  One night, while driving home, Coonie was run off the road by a car with two gangsters inside, who forced him to turn off his car and ordered him to lie face down on the ground.  Coonie pleaded with the mobsters to just take his ring and his wallet and not kill him: "That way, you won't have a murder rap hanging over your heads."  The two hoods decided to spare Coonie's life, with the warning that if he ever talked about this, they'd find him and blow his head off.

Days later, Joe Sanders noticed that his partner's ring was missing.  Coonie was reluctant to talk, but finally told Joe the whole story.  Joe then made a couple of phone calls.  A few nights afterwards, a chauffeur strolled into the Blackhawk with a package. Inside was Coonie's ring and wallet, and a note reading, "The two boys who did this have been taken care of.  Hope to see you soon.  Your friend, AL CAPONE."

The band spent most of 1930 and 1931 on the road, resuming broadcasts from the Blackhawk during their time off from traveling. Even with the onset of the Great Depression, the Coon-Sanders orchestra continued to draw sellout crowds and guarantee top ratings for their radio broadcasts.  But the Depression brought a two-year halt to their Victor recording contract.  The band played for six months in New York during the winter of 1931-32 and during that time they recorded ten new sides for Victor.  They also appeared on their first true coast-to-coast radio broadcast, The Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra program, hosted by Walter Winchell.

But tragedy struck just as the band's popularity reached its zenith.  Carleton Coon suffered from an abscessed tooth, and waited too long to have it treated.  He died of complications resulting from blood poisoning in April 1932.  Unlike most "co-led" bands, the Coon-Sanders Orchestra was a truly co-operative unit, and Joe Sanders found it impossible to continue without Carleton Coon.  As key musicians left and crowds waned, he disbanded a year later. 

The three tunes that I have chosen, "Deep Henderson" (1926), "Here Comes My Ball and Chain" (1928) and "Got A Great Big Date With A Little Bitta Girl" (1929) were three of the band's biggest selling hits and perfectly illustrate the class, energy, and showmanship that this band exemplified.

The Old Masters Records has four CD's that contain the complete recorded output of this great group.  They are currently available from Amazon.com.  Volume 3 and Volume 4 are the best, highlighting the band at the peak of their popularity. The story about Al Capone is from the liner notes to Volume 4.

...

Download Coon-Sanders - Deep Henderson.mp3

Download Coon-Sanders - Here Comes My Ball And Chain.mp3

Download Coon-Sanders - Got A Great Big Date With A Little Bitta Girl.mp3

Gold Diggers of Broadway

One of the greatest areas of intrigue surrounding early Hollywood is lost motion pictures.  Films disappeared for a variety of reasons, but most were either deliberately destroyed because they were deemed financially worthless (thus the tragic fate of many silent films), or they fell victim to the highly volatile cellulose nitrate film stock that was used up until 1950, which could ignite through spontaneous combustion or decompose into foul-smelling sludge or crumbly powder.

One of the most interesting lost films is Gold Diggers of Broadway, produced in 1929 by Warner Brothers.  This film is the second of four 1929 Warner Brothers "talking pictures" (On With The Show, Gold Diggers of Broadway, Sally, and The Show Of Shows) filmed entirely in two-tone Technicolor.  Unfortunately, the expense of the Technicolor process ruled out the continuation of Technicolor features after the start of the Great Depression.

Gold Diggers of Broadway was based on a 1923 Broadway stage production of the same name.  The film featured a new musical score, witty dialogue, appealing performances, and lavish color sets.  It became a runaway hit, with worldwide ticket sales totaling ten times the original cost of production.   The film held the record for gross box office receipts until Gone With The Wind was released in 1939.

The film propelled guitar-playing crooner Nick Lucas to superstardom, and his version of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips," introduced in the film, became the number one record of 1929.  Singer/dancer Nancy Welford and comedienne Winnie Lightner also became huge stars after being featured in this film.

The wild success of the Al Dubin-Joseph Burke songs from the film meant that recordings of those songs flourished.  In the Columbia studios, Ben Selvin's Knickerbockers waxed "Painting The Clouds With Sunshine" on Oct. 26, 1929.  And over at Victor, the popular cabaret star Johnny Marvin recorded his own version of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" on September 5.

Download the_knickerbockers_painting_the_clouds_with_sunshine.mp3

Download johnny_marvin_tiptoe_through_the_tulips_with_me.mp3

Here is the original performance of "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" by Nick Lucas, from the next-to-last reel of the film:

Click on the link below to continue reading Gold Diggers of Broadway

"It"

"Sex" was still somewhat of a taboo word during the Roaring 20's.  But being a generation blessed with bountiful creativity, they came up with a fair number of synonymous expressions for sex and sex appeal, most notably "IT."

"IT" is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With "IT" you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. "IT" can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.

So wrote the prolific novelist and later screenwriter and director Elinor Glyn.  And no one exemplified "IT" like the film starlet Clara Bow.  Bow was born in 1905 in an impoverished Brooklyn tenement, where she grew up abused, neglected, and frightened.  She never acted on the stage, and her break into the motion picture industry came as a result of winning a mail-in beauty contest sponsored by Motion Picture Magazine when she was just 15 years old.

Although Clara's sexuality became her defining trademark as an actress, she also possessed a remarkable talent for dramatic acting.  Had Paramount Studios been interested in developing this facet of her acting ability, she might have been remembered as one of the period's great dramatic actresses.

Bow was cast as the lead in the 1927 film adaptation of an Elinor Glyn short story entitled IT, where she plays a salesgirl who has her eyes on the handsome eligible bachelor who owns the department store.  IT became one of the most successful films of 1927 as well as one of the best known films of the silent era.  IT boosted Clara Bow to superstardom.

Here is a wonderful video compilation that shows not only the "flirty salesgirl with brains and a heart of gold" persona that made her so famous, but also highlights her impressive ability to convey emotion through her facial expressions and body language; exquisite talents for a successful silent film actress.

And naturally, "IT' became the subject of many popular songs of the era.  Here are two of them:

The University Six recorded She's Got It (Mp3) in May 1927, at the height of "IT" mania.  This group was a small ensemble drawn from the personnel of the California Ramblers dance orchestra.  This record features prolific singer Arthur Fields as well as trumpeter Chelsea Quealey, Bobby Davis on alto sax, Irving Brodsky on piano, and the great Adrian Rollini doubling on both bass sax and xylophone.

Three years later, singer Annette Hanshaw waxed I've Got 'It' (But It Don't Do Me No Good)(Mp3).  This playful little song features Annette at the apex of her vampish charm, as well a sympathetic backing from her Sizzlin' Syncopators including Manny Klein on trumpet, Tommy Dorsey on trombone, Rube Bloom on piano, and Adrian Rollini on bass saxophone. 

Follow Thru: DeSylva-Brown-Henderson hit from 1928

In 1928, the popular songwriting team of DeSylva-Brown-Henderson (who had written the score for Good News the previous year) had another smash hit on their hands: Follow Thru.

Like Good News, Follow Thru was loaded with superb songs.  In 1929, production was started on a film version of the show.  The film was to be an all-Technicolor adaptation of the stage show, and was one of the first all-Technicolor films produced by a major Hollywood studio.  Unfortunately, the film was not released until 1930 and, with the double-whammy of a faltering economy and poor reviews from critics, it was a box office flop.    Fortunetely, a complete Technicolor print and all the sound elements of the film were preserved, and the UCLA film library has completely restored the film.

Many hit records were derived from the score to Follow Thru.  Here are two of them:

Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra scored a hit with Zelma O'Neal singing "I Want To Be Bad. (MP3)"

Ruth Etting had a hit with "Button Up Your Overcoat (MP3)."

Two fantastic production numbers from the film are available.  The first features Jack Haley (who would later play the "Tin Man" in The Wizard of Oz) and Zelma O'Neal singing "Button Up Your Overcoat."

The second is Zelma O'Neal's feature number in the film, a spirited song and dance routine built around "I Want To Be Bad."  George Olsen and his Orchestra provide the music.

Belle Mann

The advent of the microphone and the two technological breakthroughs that grew out of it -- radio and electrically recorded phonograph records -- helped launch the careers of dozens of new singers during the 1920's.

The microphone allowed singers to deliver lyrics in a softer, more subtle manner.  They could also tell stories and interject spoken asides between the verses of songs.  When records began to be made electrically, these new "whispering" singers, both male and female, became some of the first stars of the new medium.

Honey-voiced male singers like Gene Austin, Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, and Smith Ballew eventually came to be known as crooners. And during the brief years of 1928 - 1930 the combination of radio, talking motion pictures, and the public's fascination with the "vamp" persona exemplified by Clara Bow's smash film hits "Mantrap" and  "It" gave rise to the mythical flapper girl, the playful and high spirited damsel whose nightlife was a perpetual blur of boyfriends, wild parties, and bootleg liquor.  Suddenly "flapper girls" were in demand everywhere, and popular recording and stage stars such as Annette Hanshaw, Helen Kane, Zelma O'Neal, and Libby Holmann eagerly stepped in to fill the role.

But one of the most enigmatic of the 1920's flapper singers was a young lady named Belle Mann.  Almost nothing is known about her, and despite extensive Internet research and correspondence with other collectors I was unable to even find a photograph.  Belle Mann is certainly worth discovering though, as you will find out when you hear her sing.

Ms. Mann's first appearance on records was the result of an October 1928 date with Ben Pollack's Park Central Orchestra.  This session produced the successful coupling of "She's One Sweet Showgirl" and "Buy, Buy for Baby."  At the time of this recording, Ben Pollack's orchestra was one of the most popular dance bands in New York City. They played regularly at the posh Park Central Hotel and featured a number of outstanding jazz soloists including Jimmy McPartland on cornet, Jack Teagarden on trombone, and Benny Goodman on clarinet.

Download belle_mannben_pollack_shes_one_sweet_showgirl.mp3

Download belle_mannben_pollack_buy_buy_for_baby.mp3

Belle Mann must have been a hit at the Victor studios, because she sang for the next two years as a "house vocalist" for Victor studio bands, and orchestras under contract with Victor.  Here are two records that she made with the company's top house band, the Victor Orchestra directed by Nat Shilkret.  Both of these songs are genuine 1920's classics and perfectly fit Belle Mann's style: the lively DeSylva-Brown-Henderson hit "I Want To Be Bad," and the urgent "Wishing And Waiting For Love." 

Download belle_mannnat_shilkret_i_want_to_be_bad.mp3

Download belle_mannnat_shilkret_wishing_and_waiting_for_love.mp3

In the early 1930's Belle Mann faded into obscurity along with a number of other stars who blazed a brilliant but short trail through the Roaring 20's.  Perhaps some day a diligent researcher will shed more light on the delightful Belle Mann.

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Another selection featuring Belle Mann is available at Dismuke's Hit Of the Week. (scroll down 2/3 of the page and look for "Gems From Follow Thru" by the Victor Light Opera Company)