  March 2009
March 28
This
week's Hit of the Week is
brought
to you by Lady
Luck Singin'
In The Bathtub Confessin' I'm
Yours Keepin'
Myself For You Who's
Your Little Who-zis Oh
What A Thrill What
Have We Got To Lose
This
Is Romance Shanghai
Lil Here are some
selections from the Ben Bernie band in the years following its
lengthy
engagement at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York. Bernie's band was
the first to play at the Roosevelt when it opened in 1923 and was so
well received that the engagement lasted until 1929. Some
of these recordings come from Matt From College
Station's collection and others come from my own. Born as Bernard
Anzelevitz in Bayonne, NJ into a family of twelve, Bernie was
earning money by age 15 giving violin lessons. In his October
20, 1943 obituary, the Associated Press quoted Bernie talking about his
childhood: "We were so poor that I still look upon
fruit as a luxury. But in spite of our poverty there was always
music, and I received violin lessons. My first argument with the family was
when, after we had moved to New York's lower East Side and I was
attending Cooper Union School, I received a $25-a-week offer to play
for a neighborhood school. My father turned me down because he
wanted me to be an engineer and thought the orchestra would end any
aspiration for that work. But I took the job nevertheless." In
the early 1910s, Bernie struggled unsuccessfully in small time
vaudeville getting jobs in only the lowest tier
theaters. In 1914 Bernie's unique speaking
voice was
"discovered" and he was offered a job as emcee of the shows at
Reisenweber's Restaurant in New York's Columbus Circle. Dating
back to the 1850s, Reisenweber's was one of New York's most famous
restaurants. The restaurant had a seating capacity of 5,000 and
featured performances by some of the top names in
entertainment. It was also the site of some of the earliest
jazz performances in the Northeast. The legendary
restaurant was liquidated and closed with the advent of Prohibition. Bernie's
second attempt at vaudeville, teamed with accordion player Phil Baker,
was more successful but ended when Baker entered the Navy to fight in
World War I. In 1923, after watching the success of the
Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Bernie purchased Don Juelle's band
renaming it "Ben Bernie And All The Lads" and quickly got a
booking at the newly constructed Roosevelt Hotel. During
the band's years at the Roosevelt, Bernie's fame spread as a result of
recording contract with Vocalion which led to a contract with the more
popular Brunswick label when it bought out Vocalion in
1925.
By the late 1920s, Vocalion became a bargain label and many sides
issued on Brunswick as Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra
were issued on Vocalion under the pseudonym of Al Goering And His
Collegians - the real-life Al Goering being Bernie's piano player. The
biggest break for Bernie while at the Roosevelt was the remote radio
broadcasts of the band's performances from the hotel's supper
club. Radio was still in its infancy and Bernie was able to
apply his skills from emceeing at Reisenweber's to a brand new
medium. During this period, Bernie developed his trademark
"Old Maestro" folksy yet sophisticated on-air persona and his famous
"Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah" catch phrase which quickly became part of the
national slang vocabulary. In
late 1924 or early 1925, the Bernie band appeared in some of the very
first sound-on-film movies which were produced by inventor Lee DeForest
- a full two years prior to the introduction of talking pictures by the
major Hollywood studios. These DeForest films still survive
and can be viewed on the Red Hot Jazz
website. These film clips are excellent examples of the
band's very jazzy sound from its early Hotel Roosevelt days. The
performance Bernie's saxophone player Jack Pettis on the " Sweet
Georgia Brown" clip is the earliest film of a jazz solo.
Bernie was the fist bandleader to record and popularize the song and
was given co-composer credit, presumably so that he could share in the
royalties from its success. Like
many, Bernie had big losses in the 1929 stock market crash and suffered
from the diminished market that all bandleaders had to contend
with. He was successful, however, at maintaining a presence on
network radio and by the middle part of the 1930s was one of radio's
most popular personalities. His 1932-1933 season sponsored
by Blue Ribbon Malt (the sponsor became Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer
the
season after the repeal of Prohibition) was the top rated program on
the NBC Red Network achieving a 33.7 audience share. As was the
case with Rudy Vallee, during the 1930s, Bernie's band became more of a
backdrop to his career as a radio personality rather than a primary
endeavor. One of the factors that helped further publicize
Bernie's radio career was
an ongoing staged feud with columnist Walter Winchell. In real
life the two were actually close friends. Bernie
and his band had staring rolls in four major Hollywood films, Shoot The Works in 1934, Stolen Harmony in 1935, Love and Hisses and Wake Up And Live in 1937. Of
the selections presented here, my personal favorites are "Lady Luck"
which was introduced in the 1929 Warner Bros film The Show of Shows (as was "Singing
In The Bathtub") and "Who's Your Little Who-zis" which Ben Bernie
is credited as being co-composer along with Al Goering and Walter
Hirsch.
- Dismuke If you have questions or comments about the music or would simply enjoy interacting with friendly people who share your interest in it, join in the conversation on Dismuke's Message Board. EXTRA
This section
will present
78 rpm recordings that do not fall within the range of the vintage pop
and jazz fare that I usually present. Here I will
feature
recordings from a wide variety of eras, musical genres and
nationalities
as well as occasional spoken word recordings. Sing Here
Comes The Sun The
National Cavaliers were a vocal group that achieved some measure of
popularity on records and radio in the late 1920s and early
1930s. Over time, the group experienced several personnel
changes. On these particular recordings, both from Matt's
collection, the group consisted of
Leo O'Rourke (1st tenor), Robert Stevens (lead), John Seagle
(baritone), Darrel Woodyard (bass), and Lee Montgomery, Jr. (piano). - Dismuke If you have questions or comments about the music or would simply enjoy interacting with friendly people who share your interest in it, join in the conversation on Dismuke's Message Board.
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