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Parker
Duofold DeLuxe
....so stylish, so efficient
The Parker Pen Company,  Jamesville Wisconsin
(from 1929 ad)

Fess Williams played several instruments but is best remembered for clarinet style that some have unfavorably compared with Ted Lewis as well as for incorporating many of Lewis's vaudeville type antics into his act.   His band, however, featured top notch jazz musians and most of its recordings would be classified as "hot." Willams was also proficient at a technique called  circular breathing which gave him the ability to hold a note indefinitely.

During the 1920s Williams led bands in both Chicago and New York City.  His Royal Flush Orchestra was one of the bands that performed on the opening night of Harlem's famed Savoy Ballroom on March 12, 1926 where it became one of its regular house bands.  Unlike some of the other top Harlem nightspots where black musicians catered to a whites-only crowd, the Savoy welcomed both white and black patrons.

As was the case with many bands, the Royal Flush Orchestra's recording career ended with the onset of the Depression and the band made its last recordings in 1930. 

Fess Williams was the uncle of a jazz star of a much later era , Charles Mingus.

This arrangement of "Ain't Misbehavin'" is quite different in style from the Leo Reisman version featured two updates ago.   Like "Ain't Misbehavin',"  "Sweet Savannah Sue" was composed by pianist Thomas "Fat's Waller" for the revue Hot Chocolates which featured an all-black cast and enjoyed a run at New York's Hudson Theatre from June 20 - December 14, 1929.

 

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The Colonial Club Orchestra was a recording pseudonym used on Brunswick records for Bob Haring and His Orchestra.  Haring also conducted the house band for Cameo Records and its associated labels under a wide variety of pseudonyms from 1922 until the company's merger with Pathe and Plaza (i.e, Banner Records) in 1929.  

Haring began recording for Brunswick in 1926 where he occasionally recorded under other names besides Colonial Club Orchestra.  At the time it was not uncommon for bands to record concurrently for rival labels.  Work in the recording studios was quite lucrative for musicians because, rather than royalties, they were paid on a per recording basis regardless of how many copies eventually sold.  

By contrast, while today's musical groups recording for the major RIAA labels might get an advance on future royalties, they rarely see another penny in terms until the cost of the advance and the label's heavily padded promotional expenses have been recouped.  As a result, most artists recording for the major labels make little money from their recordings unless they happen to have a big seller.  Musicians who were fortunate enough to record regularly during the 1920s and early 1930s made a good living - especially if it was combined with radio and live performances.  "Fortunate" however is the operative word - of the thousands of bands who were active at any given time during the dance band era, only a relative handful ever stepped inside a recording studio.   Records and recording technology was still very expensive and, unlike more recent decades, opportunities to at least record for  "independent labels" were few and usually short lived.

I have wondered if the name Colonial Club Orchestra was a reference to a nightclub that the Haring band might have had a long term engagement at or if it perhaps might have had something to do with a possible radio broadcast sponsored by the company that made the then popular Colonial Club brand of shaving cream.   However, looking though vintage newspaper archives, the only mention of the band I can find is in reference to its Brunswick recordings.   Nor have I been able to find any information to indicate that Colonial Club Shaving Cream sponsored radio broadcasts.   So, apparently, like so many other recording pseudonyms, it was apparently something that a person associated with the record company came up with.

Haring made his last recoding for Brunswick in January 1931.  From February though July of that year he recorded for the American Record Corporation which was the corporate successor resulting from the 1929 Cameo merger.  Most of his recordings from this period were issued on the Perfect label.   His last recording session was July 8, 1931.

I have only been able to find a limited amount of biographical information about Bob Haring. He was born in Mountclair, New Jersey in 1895 and was educated at University of Washington and the Seattle Conservatory.  As late as the 1960s he was working as an arranger/editor for at least one music publishing company.  He spent his last years in Barryville, New York residing on "Haring Road" - which perhaps was named after him - where he died in 1975.

 - 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.
 
 

  

"Potpourri Aus Der Operette
Polnische Wirtschaft  Part 1"  mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Marek Weber Und Sein Orchester
Irene Eisinger and Seigfried Arno, vocal     1928
( Electrola EH 312 mx 4 049314)
       
"Potpourri Aus Der Operette
Polnische Wirtschaft Part 2"    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Marek Weber Und Sein Orchester
Irene Eisinger and Seigfried Arno, vocal    1928
( Electrola EH 312 mx 4 049315) 

Here are some vocal selections from the now obscure operetta Polnische Wirtschaft by German composer Jean Gilbert.  It debuted on December 26, 1909 in Cottbus, Germany.   On August  6, 1910 the operetta opened in Berlin at the Thalia-Theater where it enjoyed over 600 performances.   According to a 1908 tourist guide,  Thalia-Theater specialized in "farces" and at least once source refers to Polnische Wirtschaft as a "vaudeville farce."  Apparently the operetta's popularity never reached outside of Germany as most of the information I have discovered about it has been through German language websites with help from Google Translate.

The term "Polnische Wirtschaft" translates to "Polish economy" or sometimes, "Polish housekeeping."  In Germany, it is used as a derisive stereotype referring to the alleged backwardness and disorderliness of the Poles.  While the stereotype probably dates back to the late 18th century, during the 1930s Hitler's National Socialists made much use of it to justify forcibly dividing Poland  between Germany and the Soviet Union.  It should be noted that when the operetta premiered,  Poland had not been an independent country since 1795 and its former territory was by then incorporated into Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary.   Poland did not reemerge as an independent state until 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.  Thus any commentary or humor that might have been part of the operetta would most likely have been ethnic and not political in nature.

In 1928 a German silent film Polnische Wirtschaft was released which I strongly assume was a film adaptation of the operetta.   The film's cast included Siegfried Arno who is featured on these recordings.  My guess is the record was issued as a way of capitalizing on the release of the film.

The record's label credits Nico Dostal - an operetta composer in his own right - as the arranger of this medley version.

Dostal was the only person credited on this recording who was not forced to flee Germany when the National Socialists came to power.  Siegfried Arno and Marek Weber eventually made their way to the United States.  Irene Eisinger found refuge in Great Britain and Jean Gilbert emigrated to Argentina.

This is a recording that I had somehow overlooked in my collection until a few weeks ago when an unusually heavy snowstorm for Texas left me without electricty for 40 hours.  I suspect it was acquired in a bulk purchase I made in November and it ended up getting missorted.   One nice thing about 78 rpm records and windup phonographs is that one can still have entertainment when the power goes out.  I discovered this while spending the evening listening to records by candlelight.  I particularly enjoy the selections featured on Side 2 of this record.

 

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Here are two songs that have continued to endure as jazz standards and  have been recorded by countless performers over the decades.

Thomas "Fats" Waller wrote and recorded a piano version of "Ain't Misbehavin'" in 1929.  Waller later performed the song in the 1943 film Stormy Weather.   In 1978 it was revived as the title song of the successful musical Ain't Misbehavin' which paid tribute to 1920s and 1930s era black jazz musicians.

This Leo Reisman version  is one that has been in my collection for quite a while.  Initially, the recording did not particularly impress me and was rarely played.   It is definitely  less jazzy than most early recordings of the song and even has a borderline "sweet" quality to it  - which makes sense given that Reisman's band was a hotel society orchestra.   Awhile back  I gave the record another listen and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  Oddly enough, the same "sweet" aspects of the recording which made me initially dismiss it as "dull" were what I found most appealing about it.

"Star Dust" ranks an one of the most recorded pop songs of all time with over 1,800 versions having been made.  Hoagy Carmichael composed and made the first recording of the song as an instrumental in 1927.  Lyrics by Mitchell Parish were added in 1929. 

Over the years, the song's name has been contracted to "Stardust" and is usually performed as a slow ballad.   Many of the early recordings of the song, however, were performed as a peppy, upbeat fox trot as is the case with this version by Wayne King and His Orchestra.   This recording is somewhat unusual for the Chicago based Wayne King band which was best known for playing waltzes and slow tempo arrangements which appealed to Midwestern audiences with conservative musical tastes.

 
 

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.
 
 
  

Bleeding Hearted Blues    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys
Tommy Duncan, vocal                            1937
(Vocalion 03597 mx Dal 218)

Dedicated To You    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys
Bob Wills, vocal                                     1937
(Vocalion 03597 mx Dal 214)

Bob Wills was  one of the pioneers and most famous names  in Western swing,  a musical genre which  combined elements of  jazz oriented dance bands with traditional country or "hillbilly" music as it was then known.   Western swing was extremely popular in Texas, Oklahoma and the American Southwest.

Bob Wills' first band,  the Light Crust Doughboys, was formed in Fort Worth, Texas in 1931  and named after Light Crust Flour which sponsored the band's popular broadcasts on a local radio station.   One of the band's members was Milton Brown who left in 1932 to form his own highly successful Western swing band, the Musical Brownies.

Wills frequently clashed with his boss at Light Crust Flour, future Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel  and left the Doughboys in 1933 to form a new band, the Texas Playboys which found success in Tulsa, Oklahoma with daily broadcasts from Cain's Ballroom  over the far reaching 50,000 watt signal of radio station KVOO.

Both of these sides were recorded in Dallas, Texas in June, 1937, most likely in this still standing but endangered building  prior to the widespread availability of air conditioning. One of the musicians in the band, Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery, recalled that the studio was swelteringly hot with two fans blowing across large blocks of ice in an attempt to provide at least some sort of relief from the heat.   

Most of the vocals on Bob Wills recordings were performed by Tommy Duncan.  Neither the record's label nor the discography I consulted provides vocal credit for either of these sides - but I suspect that both are by Duncan.  The voice talking and making high pitched yells in the background on both recordings is Bob Wills.

"Bleeding Hearted Blues" was composed by Lovie Austin and recorded in 1923 by Bessie Smith.  Wills was a big fan of Bessie Smith and once rode on horseback to see her perform live in Childress, Texas. 

Update - 3/14/10: a visitor was kind enough to inform me that the vocal on "Dedicated To You" was by Bob Wills.  I have subsequently located discographical information that confirms that as well as the fact that the vocal on "Bleeding Heart Blues" is by Tommy Duncan.

 

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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Only Love Is Real    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Jesse Stafford And His Orchestra        1929
(Brunswick 4658)

Should I    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Jesse Stafford And His Orchestra         1929
(Brunswick 4658)

Here are a couple of songs featured in the 1930 MGM musical film Lord Byron of Broadway.  While the film was considered to be a major "flop" quite a few artists recorded its songs.

Jesse Stafford was the trombonist for the Herb Wiedoeft Orchestra, a popular West Coast band.  In 1928 Wiedoeft was killed in a car wreck and Stafford emerged as the band's new leader.  Though these recordings were made on November 17, 1929, the band still sounds very much like the old Herb Wiedoeft Orchestra.    While the Jesse Stafford band continued through 1937,  it stopped recording in 1931, most likely as a result of the Depression's impact on record sales. 

 - 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.
 
 
  

Countess Maritza Selection Part 1    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Marek Weber And His Orchestra             1929
(Victor 36094 A)

Countess Maritza Selection Part 2    mp3 stream  |  Real Audio Stream  | Real Audio File
Marek Weber And His Orchestra            1929
(Victor 36094 B)

Here is a nice instrumental medley of  tunes from the Emmerich Kálmán operetta Countess Maritza (Gräfin Mariza) which debuted at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on February 28, 1924.  

Marek Weber's Orchestra has been featured in a number of previous updates.   Weber was a Polish born violinist based in Germany  who led one of Europe's most famous salon orchestras prior to having to his having to flee  when the National Socialists came to power.    During the 1920s,  Weber regularly appeared at high profile Berlin venues such as Hotel Adlon and Hotel Esplanade.  After leaving Germany, Weber toured Europe and eventually emigrated to the United States in 1937.  For awhile, Weber appeared on network radio billed as "Radio's Waltz King" before he retired from the music business and purchased a farm.   Weber was not fond of jazz music but nevertheless did occasionally record jazz oriented  fox trot recordings.

Salon orchestras had a much broader popular appeal in Europe than the did in the United States - and I find European recordings of this genre to be, on balance, much more enjoyable than those of American salon orchestras of the period such as the A&P Gypsies and Nat Shilkret's Victor Salon Orchestra

 - 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.