Dismuke's Hit Of The Week

May 2009 May 16 This week's Hit of the Week is brought to you by Click here or on image for larger view General Electric Refrigerator (from 1941 ad) People Say I'm Crazy Gene Kardos And His Orchestra Beatrice Wain, vocal 1937 (Radiotone Recording Studio P 21891) A Little After Eight Gene Kardos And His Orchestra Donald Carroll, vocal 1937 (Radiotone Recording Studio P 21891) Love Love Go Away Muzzie Marcellino And His Orchestra Lucille Matthews, vocal circa 1940 - 1941 (Radiotone Record 7293) This Is What I Call Real Love Muzzie Marcellino And His Orchestra Muzzie Marcellino, vocal circa 1940 - 1941 (Radiotone Record 7297) Here are a couple of records on the hard to find Radiotone label. I picked these up in a box of records I purchased awhile back but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I paid much attention to them and realized their significance. Radiotone was a small label - some might even call it a "vanity label" - issued by Tacoma, Washington entrepreneur and part-time songwriter O. B. Clow as a means of showcasing his own compositions. Born in 1886, Oscar Blair Clow was a modern day renaissance man. He was a successful inventor and real estate developer who owned a number of restaurants including a chain of waffle shops which, at its height, had 52 locations in various cities. He also owned the Clow Milling Co. which made and distributed Clow's Waffle Flour. Though Clow was a prolific composer and wrote several hundred songs he was unable to read or write music and relied on his pianist, Hy Seaman, to put his songs on paper. Clow was also among the early composers to license his compositions through the newly formed Broadcast Music Inc.(BMI) and he made his entire body of work available through that organization just in time for the 1941 radio industry strike against ASAP. BMI was founded in 1939 by a consortium of radio stations as an attempt to challenge the near monopoly over music licensing held by ASCAP. The organization was formed in anticipation of the expiration of the radio industry's five year license agreement with ASCAP at the end of 1940. Because the vast majority of radio stations refused to go along with ASCAP's demand for a 100 percent increase in annual fees, all ASCAP compositions were effectively banished from the radio airwaves beginning January 1, 1941. The 1941 ASCAP strike had far reaching consequences for the music industry and provided sudden new opportunities for regional song writers such as Clow. In the 1930s ASCAP was dominated by the New York based Tin Pan Alley publishing houses - the top 15 of the 140 publishing houses it represented accounted for about 90 percent of the music heard on the airwaves. Additionally, in order to become an ASCAP member and collect royalties, a songwriter had to have a minimum of five published songs. Because virtually all music performed on stage, screen and on radio was, at the time, licensed through ASCAP, the system favored and helped perpetuate established publishing houses and composers and made it difficult for new talent and more obscure genres of music to come to the public's attention. (A very similar situation has emerged in recent decades with the near total lock the RIAA has had over the music industry which, fortunately, is starting to unravel as a result of the Internet). By contrast, BMI was willing to allow any songwriter to become a member and be immediately eligible to collect royalties. With the 1941 strike, radio station executives and the bandleaders who performed on network broadcasts were suddenly scrambling to find new works by non-ASCAP writers. The strike was disastrous for ASCAP in ways far beyond the fact that it was forced to settle with the radio stations later that year for a smaller increase in fees. After the strike, radio stations continued to perform and expose audiences to BMI material. And since BMI was willing to license genres such as country and rhythm and blues that ASCAP had shunned, by the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of popular music heard on the airwaves was licensed through BMI. I have not been able to determine how many of Clow's Radiotone records were pressed or how they were distributed. Earlier issues show the name as "Radiotone Recording Studio." Later issues say "Radiotone Record." The Gene Kardos sides featured here are two of six Clow compositions the Kardos band cut for release on Radiotone in an October 15, 1937 recording session at the American Record Corporation's New York City studios. Four other non Clow compositions were also recorded during that same session and issued on ARC labels such as Melotone and Conqueror. It is highly likely that ARC also pressed the Radiotone records from this session. Brian Rust's American Dance Band Discography lists the Kardos Radiotone sides as "Private Recording" which, to me, suggests that Clow most likely offered ARC money to make recordings of his songs. Why the Gene Kardos Orchestra in particular was chosen for the sessions and what connection Kardos might have had with Clow is not known. I have not been able to find any discographical information about the Muzzie Marcellino sides. However, on both sides of the record MUZZY Marcellino's first name is misspelled as "Muzzie." Marcellino is best remembered as a mid-1930s vocalist with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. Between 1938 and 1948 Marcellino successfully fronted his own band which confined most of its activities to the West Coast. Brian Rust's discography does not list any recording sessions by Marcellino's band so I have no way of knowing whether these recordings were outsourced in a way similar to the Kardos sides. It is known that in late 1940 Clow had a recording studio located in the Annobee Apartments, an innovatively designed Tacoma apartment complex Clow built in 1925 and which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I suppose it is possible that the recording sessions could have taken place there. I did find an online listing for sheet music of "Love Love Go Away" which indicates the song was published by Clow in 1940. My guess is the record was made sometime between then and Clow's death in 1942. Bea Wain, featured on "People Say I'm Crazy," is best remembered as a highly successful vocalist with the Larry Clinton Orchestra which she joined less than a month after this recording session with the Kardos band. Wain is one of the few artists featured on this site who is still with us. You can listen here to a lengthy and interesting interview with Bea Wain recorded shortly before her 90th birthday in 2007. - 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. Arrah Wanna Medley Dance Orchestra 1907 (Victor 31613) Here is an old 12 inch single sided Victor Grand Prize label disc that goes far enough back that the record company did not deem it necessary to give any artist credit beyond a generic "dance orchestra" description. "Arrah Wanna: An Irish Indian Matrimonial Venture," published in 1906, was composed by Theodore F. Morse who had had a number of ragtime and popular tunes to his credit. The song's title refers to the name of an Indian maid in its lyrics by Jack Drislane. Around that time there were a number of popular songs which had some sort of American Indian theme. Observe that the band speeds up considerably in the last fifteen seconds of the recording. Perhaps this was intentional - or perhaps the conductor suddenly realized that the record was about to run out. - 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. May 3 This week's Hit of the Week is brought to you by Lightweight Remington Typewriters (from 1932 ad) All Of A Sudden Lew Conrad And His Musketeers Lew Conrad, vocal 1932 (Victor 24026-B) If I Were Only Sure Of You Lew Conrad And His Musketeers Lew Conrad, vocal 1932 (Victor 24026-A) Courtesy of the the collection of Matt From College Station, here are two of the only four sides ever recorded by an all-but-forgotten 1930s dance band. Lew Conrad was best known on radio as a star vocalist on NBC in the early 1930s when he was for a brief while considered to be an up-and-coming "crooner." Both of Conrad's parents were vocalists; his father was a soloist at the Cathedral at Tours in France and his mother sang in a church choir in Leeds, England. However, since they wanted their son to become a musician rather than a vocalist, Conrad studied violin. By his early teens Conrad was billed as a child prodigy and spent two miserable weeks on a vaudeville circuit which he quit as soon as his agreed upon engagement was up. After his father died, Conrad had to support both himself and his mother while he attended high school and, later Tuft's University. "I went to classes most of the day, had rehearsals and played in dance orchestras in the evening and it usually was past midnight when I started to study for the next day's classes. So I formed the habit of sleeping but four or five hours each night. I still do" Conrad told a newspaper reporter in 1931 (The Lincoln Star, May 10, 1931 p 39) After graduating from Tufts, Conrad spent a year with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra before joining the Leo Reisman band as a violinist and vocalist. In addition to recording sessions with Reisman , Conrad also performed in several studio orchestra recording sessions for Nat Shilkret and Ben Selvin. Around 1929 he was given an audition for the National Broadcasting System and began appearing in NBC programs. He was offered an exclusive contract with the network in September 1930. In May 1931, Conrad reflected on the opportunities that the advent of radio opened up for vocalists: It has also meant that we can do the thing we most want to do - sing - and still live like human beings. I've heard older singers tell of the days before the radio. If they insisted upon singing for a living they had to travel in vaudeville, or with stock companies or, hardest of all, acquire a foreign accent and name and spend years trying to break into opera. Today, we singers who use the radio can conduct our lives as any business or professional man would, with regular hours, homes and the opportunity to earn excellent incomes doing the thing we most want to do. Not so long ago, hundreds of real artists among American singers, had to earn their livings in some other way and make of their singing an avocation instead of a vocation. The effect has already been felt in Tin Pan Alley in the demand on the part of the American public for better American lyrics. Before the radio little attention was paid to tho singing of American songs by Americans - our music lovers had not recovered from their inferiority complex about anything in the way of music that was not imported - imported from, it didn't matter where, so long as it was imported. Today, with a radio in every home, all America is listening to American songs. The country hears and applauds the home boys, sings the songs it hears over the radio and writes in to the station to praise, correct and encourage. Our lyric writers are inspired and Tin Pan Alley is turning out better and bettor songs, lyrics that interpret the real American. (San Antonio Express, May 24, 1931 p. 56) The period between 1931 and 1933 seems to have been the peak of Conrad's fame. By the spring of 1931, Conrad could be heard cost to cost on network radio nine different times each week. In 1933 his band was featured in an installment of the Warner Bros/Vitaphone series of musical shorts 'Rambling Round Radio Row. After 1933, however, mentions of Conrad in archived radio newspaper radio programing listings become scarce until 1937 and 1938. The latest mention I could find of him and his band being active was from mid 1941, though it is possible that it might have continued on after that. - 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. 'Leventhirty Saturday Night Eddie Walters 1930 (Columbia 2137 D mx 150030) Me And The Girl Next Door Eddie Walters 1930 (Columbia 2137 D mx 150031) Eddie Walters was a vocalist and ukulele player who was briefly popular on radio and records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On records he cut about 10 sides under his own name and performed in recording sessions with Ben Selvin and other studio bands. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate much more about him in terms of biographical information. These selections also come courtesy of Matt From College Station. - 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.

Click here or on image for larger view
General Electric Refrigerator
(from 1941 ad)

Gene Kardos And His Orchestra on Radiotone Recording Studio P 21891

People Say I'm Crazy
Gene Kardos And His Orchestra
Beatrice Wain, vocal 1937
(Radiotone Recording Studio P 21891)

A Little After Eight
Gene Kardos And His Orchestra
Donald Carroll, vocal 1937
(Radiotone Recording Studio P 21891)

Love Love Go Away
Muzzie Marcellino And His Orchestra
Lucille Matthews, vocal circa 1940 - 1941
(Radiotone Record 7293)

This Is What I Call Real Love
Muzzie Marcellino And His Orchestra
Muzzie Marcellino, vocal circa 1940 - 1941
(Radiotone Record 7297)

Here are a couple of records on the hard to find Radiotone label. I picked these up in a box of records I purchased awhile back but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I paid much attention to them and realized their significance.

Radiotone was a small label - some might even call it a "vanity label" - issued by Tacoma, Washington entrepreneur and part-time songwriter O. B. Clow as a means of showcasing his own compositions.

Born in 1886, Oscar Blair Clow was a modern day renaissance man. He was a successful inventor and real estate developer who owned a number of restaurants including a chain of waffle shops which, at its height, had 52 locations in various cities. He also owned the Clow Milling Co. which made and distributed Clow's Waffle Flour.

Though Clow was a prolific composer and wrote several hundred songs he was unable to read or write music and relied on his pianist, Hy Seaman, to put his songs on paper.

Clow was also among the early composers to license his compositions through the newly formed Broadcast Music Inc.(BMI) and he made his entire body of work available through that organization just in time for the 1941 radio industry strike against ASAP.

BMI was founded in 1939 by a consortium of radio stations as an attempt to challenge the near monopoly over music licensing held by ASCAP. The organization was formed in anticipation of the expiration of the radio industry's five year license agreement with ASCAP at the end of 1940. Because the vast majority of radio stations refused to go along with ASCAP's demand for a 100 percent increase in annual fees, all ASCAP compositions were effectively banished from the radio airwaves beginning January 1, 1941.

The 1941 ASCAP strike had far reaching consequences for the music industry and provided sudden new opportunities for regional song writers such as Clow. In the 1930s ASCAP was dominated by the New York based Tin Pan Alley publishing houses - the top 15 of the 140 publishing houses it represented accounted for about 90 percent of the music heard on the airwaves. Additionally, in order to become an ASCAP member and collect royalties, a songwriter had to have a minimum of five published songs. Because virtually all music performed on stage, screen and on radio was, at the time, licensed through ASCAP, the system favored and helped perpetuate established publishing houses and composers and made it difficult for new talent and more obscure genres of music to come to the public's attention. (A very similar situation has emerged in recent decades with the near total lock the RIAA has had over the music industry which, fortunately, is starting to unravel as a result of the Internet).

By contrast, BMI was willing to allow any songwriter to become a member and be immediately eligible to collect royalties. With the 1941 strike, radio station executives and the bandleaders who performed on network broadcasts were suddenly scrambling to find new works by non-ASCAP writers. The strike was disastrous for ASCAP in ways far beyond the fact that it was forced to settle with the radio stations later that year for a smaller increase in fees. After the strike, radio stations continued to perform and expose audiences to BMI material. And since BMI was willing to license genres such as country and rhythm and blues that ASCAP had shunned, by the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of popular music heard on the airwaves was licensed through BMI.

I have not been able to determine how many of Clow's Radiotone records were pressed or how they were distributed. Earlier issues show the name as "Radiotone Recording Studio." Later issues say "Radiotone Record."

The Gene Kardos sides featured here are two of six Clow compositions the Kardos band cut for release on Radiotone in an October 15, 1937 recording session at the American Record Corporation's New York City studios. Four other non Clow compositions were also recorded during that same session and issued on ARC labels such as Melotone and Conqueror. It is highly likely that ARC also pressed the Radiotone records from this session. Brian Rust's American Dance Band Discography lists the Kardos Radiotone sides as "Private Recording" which, to me, suggests that Clow most likely offered ARC money to make recordings of his songs. Why the Gene Kardos Orchestra in particular was chosen for the sessions and what connection Kardos might have had with Clow is not known.

I have not been able to find any discographical information about the Muzzie Marcellino sides. However, on both sides of the record MUZZY Marcellino's first name is misspelled as "Muzzie." Marcellino is best remembered as a mid-1930s vocalist with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. Between 1938 and 1948 Marcellino successfully fronted his own band which confined most of its activities to the West Coast. Brian Rust's discography does not list any recording sessions by Marcellino's band so I have no way of knowing whether these recordings were outsourced in a way similar to the Kardos sides. It is known that in late 1940 Clow had a recording studio located in the Annobee Apartments, an innovatively designed Tacoma apartment complex Clow built in 1925 and which is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I suppose it is possible that the recording sessions could have taken place there. I did find an online listing for sheet music of "Love Love Go Away" which indicates the song was published by Clow in 1940. My guess is the record was made sometime between then and Clow's death in 1942.

Bea Wain, featured on "People Say I'm Crazy," is best remembered as a highly successful vocalist with the Larry Clinton Orchestra which she joined less than a month after this recording session with the Kardos band. Wain is one of the few artists featured on this site who is still with us. You can listen here to a lengthy and interesting interview with Bea Wain recorded shortly before her 90th birthday in 2007.

- 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.

Arrah Wanna Medley
Dance Orchestra 1907
(Victor 31613)

Here is an old 12 inch single sided Victor Grand Prize label disc that goes far enough back that the record company did not deem it necessary to give any artist credit beyond a generic "dance orchestra" description.

"Arrah Wanna: An Irish Indian Matrimonial Venture," published in 1906, was composed by Theodore F. Morse who had had a number of ragtime and popular tunes to his credit. The song's title refers to the name of an Indian maid in its lyrics by Jack Drislane. Around that time there were a number of popular songs which had some sort of American Indian theme.

Observe that the band speeds up considerably in the last fifteen seconds of the recording. Perhaps this was intentional - or perhaps the conductor suddenly realized that the record was about to run out.

- 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.

Lightweight Remington Typewriters
(from 1932 ad)

All Of A Sudden
Lew Conrad And His Musketeers
Lew Conrad, vocal 1932
(Victor 24026-B)

If I Were Only Sure Of You
Lew Conrad And His Musketeers
Lew Conrad, vocal 1932
(Victor 24026-A)

Courtesy of the the collection of Matt From College Station, here are two of the only four sides ever recorded by an all-but-forgotten 1930s dance band.

Lew Conrad was best known on radio as a star vocalist on NBC in the early 1930s when he was for a brief while considered to be an up-and-coming "crooner."

Both of Conrad's parents were vocalists; his father was a soloist at the Cathedral at Tours in France and his mother sang in a church choir in Leeds, England. However, since they wanted their son to become a musician rather than a vocalist, Conrad studied violin. By his early teens Conrad was billed as a child prodigy and spent two miserable weeks on a vaudeville circuit which he quit as soon as his agreed upon engagement was up.

After his father died, Conrad had to support both himself and his mother while he attended high school and, later Tuft's University. "I went to classes most of the day, had rehearsals and played in dance orchestras in the evening and it usually was past midnight when I started to study for the next day's classes. So I formed the habit of sleeping but four or five hours each night. I still do" Conrad told a newspaper reporter in 1931 (The Lincoln Star, May 10, 1931 p 39)

After graduating from Tufts, Conrad spent a year with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra before joining the Leo Reisman band as a violinist and vocalist. In addition to recording sessions with Reisman , Conrad also performed in several studio orchestra recording sessions for Nat Shilkret and Ben Selvin. Around 1929 he was given an audition for the National Broadcasting System and began appearing in NBC programs. He was offered an exclusive contract with the network in September 1930.

In May 1931, Conrad reflected on the opportunities that the advent of radio opened up for vocalists:

It has also meant that we can do the thing we most want to do - sing - and still
live like human beings. I've heard older singers tell of the days before the radio. If
they insisted upon singing for a living they had to travel in vaudeville, or with stock
companies or, hardest of all, acquire a foreign accent and name and spend years trying to break into opera.

Today, we singers who use the radio can conduct our lives as any business or professional man would, with regular hours, homes and the opportunity to earn excellent incomes doing the thing we most want to do.

Not so long ago, hundreds of real artists among American singers, had to earn their
livings in some other way and make of their singing an avocation instead of a vocation.

The effect has already been felt in Tin Pan Alley in the demand on the part of the
American public for better American lyrics. Before the radio little attention was paid to tho singing of American songs by Americans - our music lovers had not recovered
from their inferiority complex about anything in the way of music that was not imported - imported from, it didn't matter where, so long as it was imported.

Today, with a radio in every home, all America is listening to American songs. The
country hears and applauds the home boys, sings the songs it hears over the radio and writes in to the station to praise, correct and encourage.

Our lyric writers are inspired and Tin Pan Alley is turning out better and bettor songs, lyrics that interpret the real American.

(San Antonio Express, May 24, 1931 p. 56)

The period between 1931 and 1933 seems to have been the peak of Conrad's fame. By the spring of 1931, Conrad could be heard cost to cost on network radio nine different times each week. In 1933 his band was featured in an installment of the Warner Bros/Vitaphone series of musical shorts 'Rambling Round Radio Row. After 1933, however, mentions of Conrad in archived radio newspaper radio programing listings become scarce until 1937 and 1938. The latest mention I could find of him and his band being active was from mid 1941, though it is possible that it might have continued on after that.

- 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

'Leventhirty Saturday Night
Eddie Walters 1930
(Columbia 2137 D mx 150030)

Me And The Girl Next Door
Eddie Walters 1930
(Columbia 2137 D mx 150031)

Eddie Walters was a vocalist and ukulele player who was briefly popular on radio and records in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On records he cut about 10 sides under his own name and performed in recording sessions with Ben Selvin and other studio bands. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate much more about him in terms of biographical information. These selections also come courtesy of Matt From College Station.

- 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.