September 2006

September 21, 2006
 

You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming
Ozzie Nelson And His Orchestra
Ozzie Nelson, vocal                                    1937
(Bluebird B-7159-A)

The Big Apple
Ozzie Nelson And His Orchestra 
Ozzie Nelson, vocal                                    1937
(Bluebird B-7159-B)
 
 

I hesitated about including this record because of the very rough condition of the "You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming" side, especially in the opening passages.  Clearly a previous owner must have enjoyed the song and played it frequently as "The Big Apple" on the flip side is in much better shape.   But since I have a tendency to somewhat neglect the late 1930s and early 1940s  swing and big band eras on these updates and because I think it is a fun record, I decided to go ahead with it.

Today  Ozzie Nelson is best remembered for his radio and, later on, television situation comedy The Adventures of Ozzie And Harriet - Harriet being Harriet Hilliard, the vocalist he hired in 1932 and married in 1935. 

Ozzie Nelson's band first came into the Depression era public spotlight in a rather unorthodox manner.   A New York City newspaper was conducting a "most popular band" poll  in which readers were invited to vote for their favorite.  Nelson found a source of a large supply of the newspaper's unsold copies which were usually destroyed.   Nelson and the band's members filled out and mailed in the ballots from the unsold papers and when the votes were counted the Ozzie Nelson Orchestra beat out the Paul Whiteman band. 

Nelson's dance band was featured on the first few seasons of The Adventures of Ozzie And Harriet after the show premiered on network radio in the mid 1940s but was eventually eliminated from the program's story line.   The program moved to television in 1952 and remained on the air until 1966.   In 1957,  exposure on the program helped launch son Ricky Nelson as a teen idol and one of the top selling singers of the late 1950s and early 1960s.  He died in a 1985 plane crash.  His four children, Traci, Sam and twins Gunnar and Matthew, however,  all have acting or musical careers and carry on what has become a rather unique show business dynasty. 
 
 

 

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.
 
 

Dollar Princess Waltz
Victor Orchestra                                            1910
(Victor 16473-A)

Morning, Noon And Night In Vienna
Victor Concert Orchestra                               1916
(Victor 35543 A, B)
 

This week's "Extra" has a Viennese theme.

The first selection "Dollar Princess Waltz" comes from Austrian composer Leo Fall's very successful operetta Die Dollarprinzessin which opened at Vienna's Theatre an der Wein on November 2, 1907.  In 1909 the operetta enjoyed lengthy runs in both London and on Broadway as The Dollar Princess.

"Morning, Noon, And Night In Vienna" is the 1840 overture by  Franz von Suppé to a musical play by the same name.    Franz von Suppé is considered to be the father of Viennese operetta.  He composed around 40 operettas, the vast majority of which have been forgotten. 

September 14, 2006
 
 

A Lane In Spain
Vincent Lopez And His Casa Lopez Orchestra
Keller Sisters And Lynch, vocal                   1927
(Brunswick 3517-A)

I'll Just Go Along
Vincent Lopez And His Casa Lopez Orchestra 
Keller Sisters And Lynch, vocal                   1927
(Brunswick 3517-B)

Peace Of Mind
Pancho And His Orchestra
Al Ross, vocal                                              1929
(Victor 22032-A)
 
 
 

It is a mere coincidence that the artists in this week's updates have Hispanic surnames and was something I noticed only after I had picked the selections out. 

This past Labor Day weekend, my friends and occasional guest contributors to this site Eddie The Collector,  Christian Kohlhaas and I met in Austin, Texas and visited Immortal Performances, a very interesting record shop which sells vintage 78 rpm records and rare phonographs.   One of the nice things about the store is one can sample the records one is considering on a vintage Orthophonic Victrola windup.     That is where I came across this week's Vincent Lopez record and when I put "A Lane In Spain" on the windup we were all quite impressed with it.   The record is not in the very best of shape - but I was able to clean it up a bit and get a very enjoyable performance out of it. 

Vincent Lopez was among the first bands to regularly perform on the then-new medium of radio.   He began his early broadcasts from New York's Hotel Pennsylvania with the greeting "Hello everybody, Lopez speaking" which he used throughout his long career and even on a few of his 78 rpm records. 

Lopez was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1895.   Determined to see his son become a priest, Lopez's father enrolled him into a monastery for three years.   He left at age 16 and soon found work playing the piano.  As a pianist, he eventually cut over 150 player piano rolls. 

Lopez  formed his first band in 1917 and it quickly become one of the more popular bands in New York City.   As with rival bandleader Paul Whiteman, his band was in such demand during the 1920s that there were actually several different orchestras booked out and performing under the Vincent Lopez name.  From 1925 to 1928 he operated  his own New York City nightclub, Casa Lopez. 

The Lopez band changed with the times and by the late 1930s had adopted a swing format - and, in my opinion, made some rather excellent swing recordings.   In 1941 the band was booked for an engagement at New York's Hotel Taft which would last over 20 years.  Lopez continued to perform until at least the mid 1960s. 

The Keller Sisters And Lynch, who perform the vocal on both of the Vincent Lopez selections, were a popular 1920s brother and sisters vaudeville act.  Lynch was their real last name but the sisters took the stage name of Keller from the fake identification which was necessary to get around laws against under age children performing.  A detailed and very interesting biography of the group can be found at this link. 

I have not been able to find much information about Pancho And His Orchestra.  Like Lopez, Pancho was a pianist and had a band which was very popular in late 1920s New York City nightclubs.   By the late 1930s the band had switched to a Latin music format.  My copy is a duplicate record that Matt From College Station had and sold to me.  According to Matt, Pancho was originally from Argentina. 

 
 
 

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.
 
 

Fondo Azul
Guty Cardenas, vocal                                     circa 1928
(Columbia 3558- X mx 97159)

Pierrot
Guty Cordenas, vocal                                     circa 1928
(Victor 22182-A)
 

Guty Cardenas was an internationally famous Mexican vocalist and composer in the 1920s and early 1930s.   His compositions, which include "Fondo Azul" featured in this update, are still sometimes performed in Spanish speaking countries. 

Cardenas, whose full name was Augusto Alberto Cárdenas Pínelo, was born in Mérida, Yucatan in 1905 to a family of means.  As a child he did well in school, studied music and excelled in athletics.  He was a teenager when he composed his first song.   By the mid 1920s, Cardenas was performing before audiences in Mexico City and throughout Central and South America.  He also made several tours performing in the United States in the late 1920s where he made records, including the two selections featured here, for the Columbia Phonograph Company and even performed for President Hoover.

Sadly, at the height of his success, Cardenas was murdered in a fight in a Mexico City bar on April 5, 1932 at the age of 27. 

September 7. 2006
 
 

 
Mandalay
Abe Lyman's California Orchestra
Charles Kaley, vocal                                     1924
(Brunswick 2631-A)

California Blues
Lyman's California 
Ambassador Hotel Orchestra                         1923
(Brunswick 2530 B mx 11101)

Sweet Little You
Abe Lyman's Califorina Orchestra
Charles Kaley, vocal                                     1924
(Brunswick 2631-B)

Havana (Tango)
Lyman's California Ambassador Orchestra     1923
(Brunswick 2478-B mx 11095)
 

I am still saddened by the destruction earlier this year of the legendary Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles which I have read about and seen pictures of since childhood and always wanted to visit.  Obviously, I will never get that chance. 

The band that most people associate with the Ambassador and its famous nightclub,  The Cocoanut Grove, was the Gus Arnheim Orchestra which had a lengthy engagement there in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  It was Arnheim's radio broadcasts from the Cocoanut Grove which helped launch the solo careers of crooners Bing Crosby and Russ Columbo. 

It was, however, Abe Lyman's band which was first associated with the Ambassador and was a fixture at the Cocoanut Grove from 1922 to 1925.    In 1923, the band became one of the first West Coast bands to have a recording contract with a nationwide record label, Brunswick, which set up a special recording studio in Los Angeles for recording the band. 

Lyman was a co-composer on two of this week's selections: "Mandalay" which he co-composed with Gus Arnheim and Earl Burtnett (both of whom became successful West Coast bandleaders in their own right) and "Havana," a tango which he composed with his violin player, John Schonberger with lyrics by Malvin Schonberger. 

Another of Lyman's violin players, Charles Kaley, provides the vocals for both "Mandalay" and "Sweet Little You."    I think he does a nice job on "Sweet Little You" which he gives a somewhat jazzier treatment than what is usually found on early '20s dance band vocals.   The latter portion of that recording also features some rather jazzy passages along with a  few "do-wacka-do" effects which were briefly popular around that time. 

I think "Mandalay" is a very pretty and haunting tune.  I have another version somewhere that I like better and will have to dig it out sometime for a future update. 

Lyman left the Ambassador in 1925 for Chicago.   Through radio broadcasts and record sales, the band became nationally famous and successfully toured Europe.   The band remained active until Lyman's retirement in the late 1940s. 

 

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.
 
 

Masquerade
Adrian Schubert And His Orchestra
Harold Van Emburgh, vocal                           1932
(Crown 3335-A mx 1759)

If You're In Love You'll Waltz
Roger Wolfe Kahn And His Orchestra           1927
(Victor 22182-A)

Beautiful Lady
The Troubadours                                            1929
(Victor 22117-B)
 

During the period between the early 1910s through the early 1940s, ballroom dancing was one of the more important forms of popular entertainment.  It was enjoyed not just by the well-to-do but by people from all walks of life at venues ranging from elegant grand ballrooms in swanky big city hotels to inexpensive amusement parks to seedy dance halls. 

The majority of the popular music of the era, both on record and on radio, was music which was intended for dancing.   Starting in the late 1910s, such music became largely dominated by jazz influenced fox-trots.   However, through the early 1930s,  the waltz continued to be part of popular dance music.  While waltzes had a strong appeal to the older generation and to people with more conservative musical tastes,  younger people enjoyed them as well and it is not unusual to find a 78 rpm by a popular band featuring a "hot" jazz fox-trot on one side with a slow tempo waltz on the other. 

While I really enjoy a lot of waltz songs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unfortunately, I find the vast majority of the waltz recordings made by 1920s dance bands have not aged very well.   All too many were performed with what I consider to be dull, plodding arrangements.   Apparently,  other collectors of the era's dance band records tend to agree with me as such records are easy to find and have only minimal monetary value.  Indeed, many collectors only have waltz recordings due to the fact that they were frequently issued on the flip side of fox-trot and  jazz oriented recordings. 

Unfortunately, because so many waltz recordings by 1920s dance bands tend to be on the dull side, it is very easy for collectors such as myself to set them aside without ever listening to them.   This is a shame because there were some excellent waltz recordings made during this period which I think are most definitely worth listening to.  This week's update features three of them.  True to form, however, of the three,  I had only listened to one of them, "Masquerade" prior to my selecting the recordings for this update.   In the process of finding other two,  I listened to and rejected about a dozen other waltz recordings. 

"Masquerade" was a very successful 1932 composition by John Jacob Loeb with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster.   One of the very few waltz recordings I have in the Radio Dismuke playlist is a very nice version of the song by the Anson Weeks Orchestra.   This week's Adrian Schubert recording was issued on Crown, a short lived inexpensive Depression era label which sold for 25 cents per record.  Considering that this selection was issued on a bargain label, the production quality is surprisingly excellent.   The fact that such labels only issued records that they thought would have the largest "lowest common denominator" mass market appeal makes this another example of the general public's elevated level of aesthetic taste during the pre-World War II decades. 

"If You're In Love You'll Waltz" comes from the 1927 Broadway musical Rio Rita.   This version by the usually jazz-oriented Roger Wolf Kahn Orchestra was recorded in 1927 during the run of the Broadway production but was not issued.   In 1929,  Hollywood made Rio Rita into a talking picture giving the songs from the show new popularity.   Rather than make new recordings, Victor simply reached into its vaults and issued this recording with a similarly unissued 1927 take of another song from the production, "Following The Sun Around" performed by the Jacques Renard Orchestra, on the flip side. 

"Beautiful Lady" was composed by Ivan Caryll and comes from his enormously successful 1912 musical The Pink Lady.  I think "beautiful" is a very good description for it.   The Troubadours were an in-house studio orchestra for Victor which primarily made waltz recordings. 

The moral to this update for collectors of vintage dance band records is to be sure to give the waltz sides a spin sometime.  Like me, you might discover some hidden treasures you never knew you had.