Joe Samuels And His Orchestra – 1922

Posted on September 4, 2026 by dismuke

 

 

“November Rose”
Joe Samuels and His Orchestra; Arthur Fields, vocal
circa December 1922   (Banner 1150-B mx 5027)

 

Here’s a recording I recently came across while auditioning records in the Edward Mitchell collection for digitization and inclusion in Radio Dismuke’s playlist. I thought the tune was incredibly catchy and was immediately charmed by it.

What struck me most was the fact that, in many respects, it sounds more like a recording from the World War I era than from late 1922, when the Jazz Age was well underway.

Popular music styles evolved at such a rapid pace throughout the 1920s that recordings from just a very few years earlier were perceived as dated – and that’s not counting the decade’s rapid advances in recording technology.

Indeed, there are passages of this recording that very much remind me of a ragtime-influenced World War I song from 1918, “Oui Oui Marie,” which happens to be among my favorite tunes from that era (which you can hear performed by the same vocalist who appears on the recording here, Arthur Fields, in a YouTube upload at this link).

“November Rose” was composed and published in 1922 by Jack Snyder, who should not be confused with Ted Snyder, who wrote well-remembered hits such as “The Sheik of Araby’ and “Who’s Sorry Now.”

Several recordings of the song were made in late 1922 and early 1923.  Most, however, were performed either as a ballad or a waltz.  While the few that I have been able to find and listen to online are certainly pleasant, I personally think its delightful melody is much better suited to the sort of happy, peppy dance-tempo arrangement heard on this recording.

Jack Snyder was the son of Herman Snyder, treasurer of the Crown Music Company, a major Tin Pan Alley music publishing firm that had previously been one of Scott Joplin’s publishers (and had no connection to the 1950s-era music publishing company of the same name).

A 1921 trade publication announced that Jack Snyder was forming his own music publishing company, the Jack Snyder Music Company, and that its general manager would be May Waterson, sister of music publisher Henry Waterson, who, at one point, had been one of Herman Snyder’s partners at the Crown Music Company.

Based on mentions in period publications, the Jack Snyder Music Company seems to have enjoyed modest success throughout the rest of the 1920s.  But I was not able to determine what became of it or of Jack Snyder afterwards.

Nor was I able to find the answer to whether Herman and Jack Snyder were relatives of the much more famous and previously mentioned Ted Snyder.

Herman Snyder’s partner in the Crown Music Company, Henry Waterson, was also a partner with Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin in the prominent music publishing firm Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.

Because none of the information I found on Ted Snyder suggested a family connection, my strong hunch is that the shared last name and mutual business partner were merely coincidental.

Between 1919 and 1926,  Joseph Wilson Samuels’ band was one of the era’s most prolific in the recording studios, with over 400 sides.

For the OKeh label, the band made a number of jazz recordings under its own name and under the pseudonym Tampa Blue Jazz Band.  The band also accompanied early black blues vocalists such as Maimie Smith and Lucille Hegamin.  It was one of the first, if not the first, white bands to record with black vocalists.

Samuels also recorded for Pathé, Edison, Emerson, Grey Gull, and Gennett.  However, the majority of his recordings were with Banner and other affiliated low-priced “dime store” labels, credited under his own name or under a multitude of recording pseudonyms.  After 1925, however, his recordings suddenly stopped, and he abruptly disappeared from the public spotlight.

A contributor to Samuels’ Wikipedia entry writes that, per data from Ancestry.com, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, into the 1940s and, in the 1930 census, described his occupation as “musician in a band.”  He was described in the 1940 census as an employee of the Kollsman Instrument Co., which made aviation instruments, not musical instruments.  He died on July 19, 1953.

The vocal on the recording is provided by Arthur Fields, who was also extremely prolific, recording on over 800 sides between 1914 and the early 1930s.  He was also the co-composer of the very charming, and still occasionally performed, 1914 ragtime-era composition “The Aba Daba Honeymoon” (which you can hear performed by Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan on YouTube at this link).

As with Joseph Samuels, Arthur Fields also died in 1953.  Fields suffered a stroke in March 1953 and, soon after, moved into the Littlefield Nursing Home in Largo, Florida. Early in the morning of March 29, the poorly built and highly combustible building caught fire, resulting in 33 deaths, including Fields.

In addition to Banner 1150, this recording was also issued on Regal 9419 and credited to Joseph Samuels.  In Canada, it was issued on the Apex label under the pseudonym The Music Masters.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Max Fisher And His California Orchestra – 1927

Posted on September 1, 2026 by dismuke

“Lullaby”
Max Fisher And His California Orchestra; Johnny Murray, vocal
December 9, 1927   (Columbia 1226-D mx 145290)
“Maybe I’ll Baby You”
Max Fisher And His California Orchestra
Leonard Layson, Johnny Murray, Richard Newlin, vocal
December 6, 1927 (Columbia 1226 D mx 145277)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two songs from the 1927 musical Take the Air, composed by David Stamper with lyrics by Gene Buck, who produced and directed the show. Buck was a friend and neighbor of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Some historians have suggested that Buck’s lifestyle and lavish parties may have inspired certain elements of Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby.

Bandleader Max Fisher is largely forgotten, even among enthusiasts of 1920s popular music, it seems.   When I started writing this post, I knew little about him and was unable to find any online summary of his life or career.  After I began going through old news articles and trade journals, I was surprised to learn that his band was highly prominent during the 1920s, performing at elite venues, catering to wealthy audiences on both coasts.

Max E. Fisher was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado, on May 26, 1894, to Hyman and Matilda Fisherson and raised in Los Angeles, where he learned to play violin.

A February 28, 1914, article in Goodwin’s Weekly mentions a “ragtime violinist” named Max Fisher appearing at the Pantages Theater (now called the Arcade Theater) in Los Angeles.  I was not able to confirm that this was the same Max Fisher, but the chances are good that it was.

At some point during the 1910s, Fisher was recruited by famed film director Cecil B. DeMille to become his on-set violinist/music director at the Famous Players-Lasky studio.  That might seem like a rather strange job, given that all films in those days were silent.  But silent film sets could be noisy and chaotic. DeMille wanted Fisher to provide “mood music” while a scene was being filmed to help put the cast in the proper emotional state.

During World War I, Fisher served as director of the band at the Liberty Theater, located within the Camp Lewis military base near Tacoma, Washington.

1921 provided Fisher with two significant career breaks, which came in rapid succession.

On New Year’s Day, the legendary Ambassador Hotel (which I discussed in my last blog post) opened in Los Angeles with Max Fisher leading the hotel’s first resident band.  The band performed at the Ambassador’s high-priced restaurant/nightclub, the Zinnia Grill. The venue was so successful that hotel management converted the hotel’s huge ballroom into a nightclub, the Cocoanut Grove, which would remain one of the nation’s premier celebrity hotspots for decades.

The Cocoanut Grove opened on April 21, 1921, a little over four and a half months after the hotel’s opening.  Max Fisher’s band, however, would not be part of that opening, as it had been invited to New York by Florenz Ziegfeld to perform at Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, a rooftop nightclub atop the New Amsterdam Theatre that Ziegfeld established to capture the money that patrons would have spent elsewhere after the performance of his Follies downstairs had concluded.

Even though the band had only been at the Ambassador for a few months,  it must have been highly regarded by the hotel, as a farewell party was held at the Zinnia Grill, and the hotel’s manager presented each member of the band with a Morocco leather and gold-bound billfold with his name stamped on it.

Art Hickman’s band, which had appeared at the Zirgfield Follies the year before, as well as previously, replaced Fisher’s in time for the opening of the Cocoanut Grove.   Fisher’s band would once again become the Ambassador’s house band in 1924 when Hickman’s successor, Abe Lyman, stepped down to take his band on a national tour with the Orpheum Circuit.

After concluding its run at the Midnight Frolic, the band was booked at the recently opened Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City.  The band then returned to Los Angeles for an engagement at the Alexandria Hotel, owned by the same company that owned the Ambassador, billed as “Max Fisher and his Midnight Frolics Orchestra from the Ziegfeld Roof” followed by another engagement at Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater, billed as “Max Fisher’s Ziegfeld Follies Orchestra.”

In October 1922, Fisher started his own high-end nightclub, which some referred to as a speakeasy, the Club Royale, on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, a street with multiple nightspots known to attract “gamblers, prostitutes and members of the movie crowd.”  Because Culver City was, at the time, relatively remote, though still close to Hollywood and Beverly Hills, enforcement of Prohibition laws was a bit more lax.

A June 1925 hotel trade publication reported that Fisher had “signed a contract to appear for six months at the new Prince of Wales Club, the most exclusive supper cafe in London’s West End.”  I don’t know whether this engagement actually took place, as this was the only reference to it that I could find.

In April 1926, the band had another high-profile engagement when it followed the Paul Whiteman and Jan Garber bands for a thirteen-week engagement at the Coral Gables Golf and Country Club near Miami at the tail end of Florida’s frenzied 1920s real estate boom, which was brought to an abrupt end a few months later by the devastating 1926 Miami hurricane.

In 1928, the band appeared in and was the subject of a ten-minute single-reel Fox Movietone musical short feature titled Max Fisher and His California Orchestra. I have not been able to determine if copies of the film still exist or if, like many other films from the 1920s, it has been lost.

Among Fisher’s sidemen who went on to lead their own bands was Earl Burtnett, Fisher’s pianist, who eventually led the house band at the Ambassador Hotel’s archrival, the Los Angeles Biltmore.  Harry Owens, whose band at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki became famous for Hawaiian-themed dance music, played trumpet with the Fisher band.  In 1925, Fisher’s trombone player, Glenn Miller, came to the attention of highly regarded bandleader Ben Pollack, who offered Miller his next opportunity on his road to eventual international celebrity.

All of the above information comes from period source material I located through quick online searches and likely only scratches the surface of Fisher’s 1920s accomplishments.   So why has so little been written about him since then, and why has he become relatively obscure even among record collectors and 1920s enthusiasts?

My theory is that much of it has to do with the fact that his band did not make very many records.  It recorded a single side in 1921 for Vocalion while in New York, appearing at Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic.  In October 1922, it recorded two sides for Gennett Records at their studio in Richmond, Indiana, neither of which were issued.

The band did not record again until April 1927, when it made two sides for Columbia in New York.  It recorded an additional side for Columbia in New York the following month.

The recordings here come from a New York Columbia session held on December 6 and December 9, 1927, during which they also recorded a third side, “Is She My Girlfriend.”

The band recorded its final two sides in Chicago at the end of March 1928, also for Columbia.

Given how well-known and well-received the band was in various parts of the country, why did it only have a one-off side with Vocalion in 1921 and just eight sides for Columbia in 1927 – 1928?

I suspect we will never know for sure.  But my speculation is that much of it has to do with the fact that the band spent most of its time either in the Los Angeles area or on tour.  Prior to Brunswick setting up a recording studio in Los Angeles in December 1927, the only label with a permanent studio in California was Victor.   Prior to that, Brunswick and Columbia relied on occasional field trips to record West Coast talent.

The most prolific West Coast band of the era in terms of recordings was Abe Lyman’s band, which recorded for Brunswick.  But the majority of his 1920s sides were recorded either in New York or Chicago, where Brunswick was headquartered.

My guess is that all of Fisher’s recorded sides coincided with the band’s touring schedule.  If the band was elsewhere when the labels were in Los Angeles, then its only option for recording was to travel elsewhere.  Even if the record label was willing to pay for the band’s travel expenses, it still might not have made sense for a band to do so.  Then, as now, most musicians earned their living through live performances, not through record sales.  The cost of a couple of days’ worth of gigs to record in a distant city might very well have exceeded what they would have earned from the recording session.

Sadly, no matter how prominent a band might have been on radio and at various nightspots around the country, to the degree that it did not make records, it was doomed to be forgotten, as all that remains to remember it by are references in old newspapers and trade publications.

As for what became of Max Fisher after his last recording session with Columbia and his Movietone musical short feature in 1928,  period media mentions become less frequent. And, unfortunately,  research on what bands were up to after 1930 becomes more difficult, as many archives are reluctant to make copies of publications less than 95 years old available online due to fears of copyright infringement.

I was able to find brief references to his band performing at various venues through about 1933.

The May 8, 1943, issue of Billboard included a brief mention stating:

“Max Fisher, a big name in coast music circles 20 years ago, is rehearsing a crew in Hollywood, with GAC [General Amusements Corporation] set to book…”

This suggests that Fisher had become significantly less prominent by 1943, but it doesn’t indicate whether he had previously retired from leading a band and, if so, how long ago it was.   And it is questionable whether that band ever got off the ground, as Fisher died that same year on October 12 at the Veterans’ Hospital in Sawtelle, California. His obituary stated that he had been ill for six months with a heart ailment.

Both of the songs featured here are from the musical Take the Air, which opened at the Waldorf Theater on November 22, 1927.   The show’s plot had an aviation theme, in an attempt to capitalize on the aviation craze that followed Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight.

Gene Buck, a longtime collaborator with Florenz Ziegfeld, decided to create his own production and, as a result, wrote, produced, and directed Take the Air. He even went so far as to purchase the Waldorf Theater, which had opened in 1926, and renamed it the Gene Buck Waldorf Theater.  The show enjoyed a 206-performance run before closing the following May.

The Waldorf Theater, located at 116 West 50th Street, was ultimately not successful and closed as a live theater in 1933 when its ground floor was converted into retail shops.  The theater’s balcony was extended and converted into a cinema.  After struggling to compete with the larger, grander Radio City Music Hall and the Roxy Theater, both of which were nearby, the cinema closed in 1941, and the entire building was used as retail space until it was demolished in 1968.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Jimmie Grier And His Orchestra – 1937

Posted on August 28, 2026 by dismuke

1937 image of the 801 N. La Brea Avenue location of the Chili Bowl restaurant, one of several that existed in the Los Angeles area in the 1930s.

 

“You’re My Dish”
Jimmie Grier And His Orchestra; Julie Gibson, vocal
October 1, 1937   (Decca 1486-A mx DLA 973)

Here’s a recording by a Los Angeles-based band that enjoyed national fame in the 1930s.

“You’re My Dish,” composed by Jimmy McHugh with lyrics by Harold Adamson, comes from the 1937 Universal Pictures film Merry-Go-Round of 1938. The film was not successful at the box office and proved to be a big financial setback for Universal.

The song is best remembered for Thomas “Fats” Waller’s September 7, 1937 recording of it on Victor, deservedly so, in my opinion.  Waller had a special talent for making even trite lyrics sound anything but.

As for this song’s lyrics being trite, in fairness, they are far from being the era’s worst offenders.  However,  they have always struck me as a not-so-subtle knock-off of Cole Porter’s lyrics for his 1934 composition “You’re the Top,” which I do not consider to be at all trite.

Regardless of the lyrics, I personally think this is a very nice recording.  Not only is the tune very catchy, the arrangement and the band’s execution possess a wonderfully opulent, symphonic grandeur.

Julie Gibson, the vocalist on the recording, eventually became Mrs. Jimmie Grier after marrying him in March 1939.   The marriage was short-lived, and she filed for divorce in October 1940.  She went on to become a film actress with Paramount Pictures, as well as a voice and dialogue coach.  She died in 2019 at the age of 106.

During the same session, the band also recorded the very haunting “Everything You Said Came True,” which ranks among my favorite late 1930s dance band recordings.  That recording has long been in Radio Dismuke’s playlist, and you can also hear it on demand on YouTube at this link.

Unlike many bands that struggled in obscurity before finding fame, Jimmie Grier’s band debuted in 1932 at one of the West Coast’s most renowned venues,  the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  A talented musician proficient with multiple instruments, Grier had been a member of both the Abe Lyman and Gus Arnheim bands during their residency at the Cocoanut Grove.

While with the Arnheim band,  Grier also served as its principal arranger and crafted the band’s unique sound. Over time, however, he felt that Arnheim was not compensating him commensurately with his contribution to the band’s success and began to contemplate forming his own band.

That opportunity came in 1932 when Arnheim decided to take advantage of the national fame his band had earned as the featured band on the weekly NBC radio program The Lucky Strike Dance Hour and embarked on a lucrative nationwide tour.

Leveraging close connections he had built over the years, Grier convinced Ambassador Hotel management that he could form his own band to provide the same sound and format that had been so successful under Arnheim.  Several of Arnheim’s featured vocalists remained at the Cocoanut Grove and joined Grier’s band, helping provide additional continuity.

As a result of his arrangements, his amiable demeanor, and high-profile radio broadcasts,  Grier was soon billed as “The Musical Host of the Coast,” which appears under Grier’s name on this record’s label credits.

In 1933, Grier’s band had moved to the Cocoanut Grove’s archrival, the Biltmore Bowl, where it remained, performing six nights per week until 1937.   The Biltmore Bowl was a nightclub with a massive ballroom located in the basement of the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel.  Both venues fiercely competed for the same elite, celebrity-studded clientele.

In addition to its own recordings,  Jimmy Grier’s band also provided the uncredited musical accompaniment on several recordings by Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, and Russ Columbo.  He also wrote arrangements for motion pictures and, for a while, starred in two different radio programs.

Grier’s biggest hit was his October 1934 Brunswick recording of “The Object of My Affection” with Pinkie Tomlin on vocal, which, by the end of the year, had risen to number 1 on the sales charts.  Grier and Tomlin shared composer credit for the song with Coy Poe.  That recording enjoyed renewed visibility decades later when it was featured in the soundtrack of the 1973 film Paper Moon.

Two months later, the band made a second recording of the song, this time with a vocal by the Boswell Sisters.  That recording made its way to the top of the sales charts in early 1935.

Another highly successful Jimmie Grier recording featured in Paper Moon came from the band’s first recording session in March 1932 for Victor.  “One Hour With You” was the title song of the 1932 pre-code film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  Donald Novis, who was a vocalist with the Grier band, performed the song in the film.  A few days after the film was released, Novis provided the vocal for Jimmie Grier’s recording of the song, which eventually climbed to the number 2 position on the sales charts.

Paper Moon and One Hour With You are films that I highly recommend for fans of 1930s era recordings and popular culture.

Though the Grier band made its last recordings in 1938, it remained active until 1942, when the wartime military draft made it difficult for bands to find staff.  Grier himself enlisted in the Coast Guard and served as assistant director to Rudy Vallee, who had also volunteered for the Coast Guard and led the 11th Naval District Coast Guard Band.  When Vallee transitioned back to civilian life in 1944, Grier assumed leadership of the band throughout the remainder of the war.

After the war, Grier formed a new band in 1946 which enjoyed a one-year residency at his old haunt, the Biltmore Bowl.  By that time, however, large dance bands and the number of venues willing to book them were in rapid decline.  For a period, Grier had a small Hollywood-based musical combo.  By the 1950s, after a stint as a radio disc jockey, Grier retired from the music industry and transitioned to a career in real estate.

Sadly, in 2005, despite being a highly significant historical and cultural landmark and organized efforts to save it, the entire Ambassador Hotel complex was destroyed by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Happily, the Los Angeles Biltmore remains standing with much of its ornate 1920s interior still intact.  The Biltmore Bowl, however, did not fare so well and was destroyed by a fire in the 1950s.  The space that it occupied in the hotel’s basement was subsequently reconfigured and “modernized.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Paul Biese And His Orchestra & Henry Halstead And His Orchestra – 1924

Posted on August 26, 2026 by dismuke

Actress Gloria Swanson, circa 1924

 

“Bye Bye Baby”
Paul Biese And His Orchestra
September 6, 1924   (Victor 19474-B)
“Tessie! Stop Teasin’ Me”
Henry Halstead And His Orchestra
August 30, 1924  (Victor 19474-A)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two pre-microphone-era recordings by bands that have been mostly forgotten, but enjoyed significant popularity in the early 1920s.

Paul Biese was born in 1885 as Percy Hawthorne Sudborough. His Chicago-based band entered its brief period of national prominence in 1919, when the dominant inspiration of popular music was rapidly transitioning from ragtime to jazz.

By the time he was a teenager, Biese was already proficient at playing the violin, the clarinet, as well as the instrument he would become famous for, the saxophone. In 1899 and 1900, he spent two seasons touring as a member of Roney’s Boys Concert Company, a then-famous all-boy touring band led by Professor Henry B. Roney that performed for entertainment-starved audiences before the advent of mass media venues ranging from Chautauqua tents in backwoods towns to the White House.

During the 1910s, Biese enjoyed success as the co-composer of several popular ragtime compositions, including “Squirrel Rag” and “Dynamite” (whose sheet music cover can be seen above in this blog’s header image).

Biese’s band and recordings became well-known for his pioneering saxophone style, often billed as the “moaning saxophone.”  He was one of several artists who were instrumental in popularizing the once-obscure saxophone and helped make it a key musical component and cultural symbol of the 1920s Jazz Age.

Biese recorded around 50 issued sides for Columbia between 1919 and 1922, both with his full band and as Paul Biese and his Novelty Trio.  For a period, his records sold well and received good press coverage and strong promotional support from Columbia. However, after his last recording session with Columbia in December 1922, his contract was not renewed.  Biese did not make any more records until an April 1924 Victor field trip to Chicago, during which his band recorded six sides, only three of which were issued.

The recording featured here is from Biese’s last recording session, which was held in Los Angeles on September 6, 1924.  Another song, “Tell Me What To Do,” was also recorded during the session but was not issued.

Leading up to the recording session, Biese had been in Los Angeles since July 3, appearing at Solomon’s Penny Dance Arcade, a large, popular ballroom where patrons were charged a penny per dance (two cents a couple).  A couple of weeks after the recording session, the band also performed for the grand opening ceremonies of the Wurlitzer Building.  The trip westward immediately followed the Biese band’s defection from the Benson Organization, an early Chicago-based band booking agency operated by bandleader Edgar A Benson, to the newly formed Music Corporation of America (MCA), which would eventually become a powerful media conglomerate.

Biese had long struggled with his weight and, at one point, weighed over 400 pounds.  In 1922, over half a century before the advent of liposuction, he underwent a procedure by noted surgeon Dr. Max Thorek to remove 100 pounds of fat from his abdomen.  Surgery of any sort in the 1920s carried a high risk, as widespread usage of antibiotics was still a couple of decades away.  Fortunately, Biese fully recovered from the surgery.

In October 1925,  while the band was appearing at the Castle Farm Road House in Cincinnati, Biese became ill and was admitted to a hospital, where he underwent surgery for a strangulated hernia. This time, he was not as fortunate and died of complications shortly after the surgery at age 40.

Biese’s band was subsequently taken over by another MCA-affiliated, heavy-set saxophone player, Jack Crawford, and renamed Jack Crawford and his Slaves of Music, and completed the Castle Farm engagement.  Though it only recorded a handful of sides for Victor in 1927, Crawford’s band remained active into the early 1940s.

For more information on Paul Biese’s life and career, see Bill Edwards’ in-depth article at this link.

Henry Halstead was one of the more prominent West Coast bandleaders during the early 1920s, thanks in large part to his band’s residency at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel, where its regular radio broadcasts over radio station KGO could be heard throughout California and the wider region.

The year after the recording here was made, the band broke up, and Halstead formed a new one that was eventually billed as the “Favorite Band of Movieland.”

In 1927, the band became one of the first dance bands to appear in a Warner Brothers/Vitaphone sound-on-disc musical short feature, Carnival Night in Paris, which was also the first Vitaphone short feature filmed in Hollywood, rather than at the company’s studios in Brooklyn, New York.  It was also the first film appearance of future actor Lew Ayres, who, at the time, played banjo in Halstead’s band.

While Halstead’s band remained active into the 1940s, it made its last records in 1929. The devastating impact and subsequent consolidation that the Great Depression brought to the record industry significantly reduced opportunities for many bands to record.  Then, as now, most musicians earned their money from live performances, not through record sales. Indeed, there were countless, perfectly talented bands that remained active throughout the 1920s and 1930s and beyond that never stepped into a recording studio.

You can hear a recording that Halstead made of a rather unusual song a few months earlier in this blog’s July 8 posting.

“Bye Bye Baby” was co-composed by Otto Motzan and Rube Bloom.

“Tessie! Stop Teasin’ Me,” co-composed by bandleader Brook Johns and Ray Perkins, was recorded at Victor’s new West Coast pressing plant in Oakland, California.  The title shown on the record differs slightly based on the plant at which it was pressed.  The copy in Eddie’s collection was pressed at Victor’s East Coast facilities and contracted the word “teasing” to “teasin’.”  Copies pressed at the Oakland plant, which are distinguished by a small letter “O” at the top of the label immediately underneath the word “copyright,” spell the word out in full.

You can read biographical information about Brook Johns and hear one of his band’s recordings in this blog’s June 18 posting.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Meyer Davis’ Le Paradis Band & Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra – 1925

Posted on August 19, 2026 by dismuke

“Stop Flirting”
Meyer Davis’ Le Paradis Band
July 10, 1925   (Victor 19728-B)
“Alone At Last”
Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra; J. L. Sanders, vocal
July 13, 1925   (Victor 19728-A)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings from the period when Victor and Columbia had begun issuing records made using microphones but had not yet announced their new, vastly improved electrical recording technology to the public.

Part of the reason was that the new phonographs capable of reproducing the improved frequency range of the new records would not be available until later in the year. The other reason is that both companies wanted an opportunity to sell off their existing stock of records before they became perceived as obsolete.

Meyer Davis’s career as a bandleader spanned more than 60 years, including performances at inaugurations and White House events for every United States president from Woodrow Wilson to Gerald Ford shortly before Davis passed away in 1976.

Davis is best remembered not just for his band but also for the large music contracting empire he built around it.   At its peak, he controlled more than 80 bands employing more than 1,000 musicians that performed as the Meyer Davis Orchestra, primarily along the East Coast but also in other parts of the United States.  He was sometimes known as the “Millionaire’s Bandleader” because of the high demand for his orchestras at debutante balls and various resorts and nightspots popular with wealthy and socially prominent audiences.

One such venue was the Le Paradis Restaurant in Washington, D.C., one of the city’s hottest night spots in the 1920s, which Davis owned and built out to his specifications. You can find an interesting article about the history of the Le Paradis, including its Prohibition-era legal difficulties, at this link.

“Stop Flirting” was composed by Russell Tarbox, with lyrics by Henri Sloane, and was inspired by the success of the 1925 silent comedy film Stop Flirting. The film was an adaptation of the 1922 Broadway musical For Goodness Sake, which starred Fred and Adelle Astaire.  In 1923, the show moved to London under a new name, Stop Flirting, marking the Astaires’ debut on the London stage. The production was a favorite of the Prince of Wales, who attended ten performances and helped thrust the Astaires into London social prominence.

The song, however, came later and was not part of the stage production or the silent film score.

As mentioned in our June 28 posting, the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, led by Carlton Coon and Joe Sanders, was originally based in Kansas City, where it was among the first local, Midwestern bands to achieve national fame through radio, thanks to its late-night broadcasts beginning in 1922 from that city’s Muehlebach Hotel over radio station WDAF.

The band relocated to Chicago in 1924.  At the time this recording was made, the band was based out of that city’s Congress Hotel, where it had another successful late-night program, The Insomnia Club, broadcast over radio station KYW.

“Alone At Last” is a rather haunting tune composed in 1925 by bandleader Ted Fio Rito with lyrics by Gus Kahn. Fio Rito’s own band, however, apparently never recorded it.  Around eleven other recordings of the song were issued in the United States in 1925, including versions by the California Ramblers, Lee Morse, and Fletcher Henderson, as well as British recordings by the Jack Hylton and Geoffrey Goodhart bands.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tuxedo Orchestra (Harry Reser) 1925

Posted on August 16, 2026 by dismuke

“Just A Little Drink”
Tuxedo Orchestra; Irving Kaufman, vocal
March  19, 1925  (Vocalion B 15007)
“I Love You California”
Tuxedo Orchestra; Irving Kaufman, vocal
March  19, 1925  (Vocalion B 15007)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings from a 1925 Vocalion record made just a few months after Brunswick Records had acquired the Vocalion label in November 1924.

At the time these were recorded,  Brunswick was still in the early stages of setting up its studios for the pallophotophone-based, so-called “Light Ray” electric recording system that it licensed from General Electric to compete with the microphone-based system licensed by Victor and Columbia, which they had already started using.

Thus, these recordings were made using the older acoustic recording horn technology.

The Tuxedo Orchestra credited on this record is merely a recording pseudonym and was in no way associated with the New Orleans-based  Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra.  Nor was it related to the Tuxedo Orchestra that appeared on Pathe and its subsidiary label Perfect, which was also a recording pseudonym.

The Tuxedo Orchestra pseudonym on Vocalion was used mostly for its in-house band, though a few recordings were made by bands such as Red Nichols’s, Charlie Straight’s, or, in the case of these two recordings, Harry Reser’s.

“Just A Little Drink” is a 1925 prohibition-themed novelty song with music and lyrics by Byron Gay.

“I Love You California,” composed by Abraham Franklin Frankenstein with lyrics by Francis Beatty Silverwood, dates back to 1913.  In 1951, the California State Legislature passed a resolution proclaiming it to be “an official state song.”  Additional legislation passed in 1987 further clarified it as the official state song.

Irving Kaufman provides the vocals on both recordings.

This recording of “I Love You California” was also issued under different pseudonyms on low-priced British labels: Washington Dance Players on Aco, Southern States Dance Orchestra on Beltona, and Maryland Dance Orchestra on the Coliseum label.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Six Black Diamonds – 1925

Posted on August 13, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Charleston”
Six Black Diamonds
May 14, 1925  (Regal 9835 A mx 6014)
“Sweet Georgia Brown”
Six Black Diamonds
circa May 1925  (Regal 9835 A mx 6015)

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are recordings featuring “hot” arrangements of two iconic 1920s songs that are still familiar to modern audiences.

“Charleston” was composed in 1923 by James P Johnson and featured lyrics (though rarely heard in most recorded versions) by Cecil Mack for the all-black cast Broadway musical comedy Runnin’ Wild. The song inspired the dance and subsequent dance craze of the same name and remains closely associated with the culture and spirit of the 1920s in the popular imagination. This will be the eighth version of the song to be added to Radio Dismuke’s playlist.

“Sweet Georgia Brown” was composed by bandleader Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard with lyrics by Kenneth Casey.  Bernie’s own Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra was the first of many to record the song, and the record was a big seller.  Since 1952, the song has been well-known as the theme song of the Harlem Globetrotters.

By May 1925, Victor and Columbia were already making recordings with microphones, and Brunswick was using its own alternative version of electrical recording.   However, records on smaller labels, such as the ones these recordings were issued on, were still made using acoustical recording horns.

The Six Black Diamonds was a recording pseudonym used for a variety of bands on a multitude of mid- to low-priced labels produced by the Regal Record Company and distributed by the Plaza Music Company.  Regal/Plaza also supplemented its revenues by leasing its masters to other record manufacturers.

As was typical of Regal/Plaza recordings, both of those featured here were issued under a dizzying assortment of pseudonyms on multiple labels.

In addition to the copy here on Regal 9835,  this recording of “Charleston” was also issued as the Six Black Diamonds on Banner 1540.  On Domino 3510, it was credited to the Six Black Dominos.  On Oriole 413, sold through the McCrory dime store chain, it was credited to the Dixie Jazz Band.   On the mail-order National Music Lovers label, it was credited to the Manhattan Musicians.  And on the Sears Roebuck Co. in-house label Silvertone, it was credited as Lanin’s Roseland Orchestra, which was the name of an actual band, but that does not necessarily mean that it was the band appearing on the record.

It also appeared on Perfect 14432, credited to the Blues Chasers.   Perfect was the lower-priced subsidiary of the Pathe label.  Pathe was a completely separate company from Regal/Plaza and had its own recording facilities.  But the company would sometimes supplement its offerings by leasing masters from other labels.

I was not able to find any consensus as to whose band made the recording.  One source provides contradictory information depending on which label the identical recording was issued on, while the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) credits it to Regal/Plaza’s in-house studio band.

The recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown” did not appear on as many labels. DAHR credits it as being by Jack Stillman’s Orchestra, the name also used on its Bell label pressing, which featured a completely different song on its flip side.  On Regal, Banner, and Oriole, it had “Charleston” on the flip side and used the same pseudonyms mentioned above.  It was also issued on Silvertone 2490, but I have not been able to locate the pseudonym used on that issue.

My personal guess is that, given that the two recordings have consecutive matrix numbers, there is a decent possibility that they were made during the same recording session, which would suggest that they were both made by the same band.

The good news for collectors seeking their own copy of these recordings is that their issuance on so many labels increases one’s chances of eventually finding one. The bad news is that if a collector already has a copy and stumbles across a record of the same song by a different band, they may not realize that it is merely another copy of what they already have.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Kenn Sisson and His Orchestra with Vaughn DeLeath – 1927

Posted on August 11, 2026 by dismuke

 

“Whether It Rains Whether It Shines”
Kenn Sisson And His Orchestra; Vaughn DeLeath, vocal
November 4, 1927  (Brunswick 3703-A)
“It Was Only A Sun Shower”
Kenn Sisson And His Orchestra; Vaughn DeLeath, vocal
November 4, 1927  (Brunswick 3703-B)

 

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings by a now-obscure late-1920s band.

Either of these recordings would make an excellent on-air contest asking listeners to guess the name of the band, as, unless they happened to know otherwise, most 1920s popular music fans would immediately recognize the style and guess that it was Ben Bernie’s band.

The reason for the similarity is that before he formed his own band, Kenn Sisson worked as Ben Bernie’s pianist and was responsible for the arrangements on most of the band’s recordings.  Sisson also filled in as conductor on a few of the band’s recording sessions.

The uncredited vocal on both of these recordings is by Vaughn DeLeath, whose voice was well-known in the 1920s through radio broadcasts and the more than 300 sides she recorded for Edison, Columbia, Brunswick, OKeh, and Victor.   She was the very first female vocalist to broadcast on an ongoing basis, starting in 1920 at Lee DeForest’s experimental station 2XG, before the first commercial radio broadcasting license was issued to KDKA in November of that year.

Some credit Vaughn DeLeath as the originator of “crooning,” the soft, intimate singing style that soon became standard for popular music vocals and was made possible by the advent of the microphone, first for radio broadcasting and then for recordings.  She was also the first female vocalist to perform on television through experimental broadcasts made during the late 1920s.

Not everyone was a fan, however.  The February 1928 edition of The Phonograph Monthly Review featured a snark-filled review of recently released dance records.   Here is what it had to say about this record:

“Kenn Sisson is handicapped with a tenor — or is it a boy soprano? –chorus in Whether it Rains.”

The author’s name was not mentioned.  The entire review is filled with similar potshots and assertions that various records were less than good, often with no reason provided for such assessments.

How such a review would have been helpful to readers seeking records they might enjoy is beyond me, especially when the critic’s identity was not disclosed.

I also suspect the potshot about Vaughn DeLeath was likely disingenuous.  Vaughn DeLeath was among the most widely recognized female voices of the 1920s.  Even though she is not credited on the label, given her prominence on radio and her enormous output of recordings for all of the major American labels,  it seems a bit odd to me that someone considered knowledgeable enough to review the latest popular dance records professionally would not have immediately recognized the voice on the record as Vaughn DeLeath’s.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Jimmie Lunceford And His Orchestra – 1939

Posted on August 9, 2026 by dismuke

“You Set Me On Fire”
Jimmy Lunceford and His Orchestra; Dan Grisson, vocal
January 31, 1939  (Vocalion 4712 mx 24054)

 

Jimmy Lunceford’s band was one of the more popular bands of the mid-to-late 1930s and was regarded by some as being in the same elite category as Count Basie’s and Duke Ellington’s orchestras.

Lunceford’s big break came in 1934 when his band was named the successor to Cab Calloway’s band as the house band at the Cotton Club in Harlem, thrusting him into national prominence.

Interestingly,  this acclaimed orchestra evolved from a high school band that Lunceford started while working as a physical education and language teacher at the then-segregated Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lunceford grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he studied music under Wilberforce Whiteman, the father of bandleader Paul Whiteman.   While attending Fisk University in Nashville, Lunceford played alto sax in student bands alongside another future bandleader, Andy Kirk.

In 1927, Lunceford formed a student band with his top music students called the Chickasaw Syncopators, named after a local neighborhood.  The band’s talent was evident from the beginning. In December 1927,  it was invited to record two sides, “Chickasaw Stomp” and “Memphis Rag,” during a Columbia Records field trip to Memphis. Both sides were issued on Columbia 14301-D.

The Chickasaw Syncopators recorded two additional sides during Victor’s June 1930 field trip to Memphis, “In Dat Mornin'” and “Sweet Rhythm,” both issued on Victor V-38141

That same year, Lunceford took the band on the road and eventually changed its name to the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra.

Sadly, Jimmie Lunceford died suddenly in 1947 at the age of 45 in Seaside, Oregon.  Shortly before his death, Lunceford and several of his band members felt ill after eating at a local restaurant.  Because the restaurant’s white owner was reportedly angered by having to serve black customers, speculation arose that Lunceford may have been poisoned.  Apparently, however, no official investigation into the matter was conducted.

“You Set Me On Fire” was composed by Francis Colwell with lyrics by George MacKinnan.  Andy Kirk also recorded a version of the song for Decca in 1939 with Pha Terrell on vocal.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra – 1926

Posted on August 4, 2026 by dismuke

“Thick Lip Stomp”
Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra
December 13, 1926  (HMV B-5302 mx A 37232)
“Harmony Blues”
Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra
December 13, 1926     (HMV B-5302 mx A 37233)

From the Edward Mitchell collection, here are two recordings by Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra, an influential black jazz band based in Kansas City throughout its existence from 1922 to 1935.  The copy here is the British pressing on His Master’s Voice.  In the United States, it appeared on Victor 20406.

Moten’s records for Victor sold well.  The band’s most famous and best-selling record was its 1928 recording of “South,” which remained in Victor’s catalog for many decades until the end of the 45 rpm era.

Sadly, Bennie Moten died in 1935 at the age of 41 from complications of a tonsillectomy. (Another famous jazz musician, Eddie Lang, died as the result of a tonsillectomy in 1933.)

Moten’s brother Buster briefly and unsuccessfully took over the band, after which its top musicians were recruited to form the core of the newly formed Count Basie Orchestra.

These recordings were the first two made during the band’s first recording session for Victor after switching its recording affiliation from OKeh.   The recording session was held on December 13-14, 1926, in the first-floor ballroom of the Webster Hotel in Chicago, which Victor used for many of its Chicago field-recording trips between 1926 and 1931.

If you have ever been impressed by the audio quality of certain early Jelly Roll Morton recordings, it is likely because they were recorded in the same ballroom and benefited from its remarkable acoustics.

After the recording industry converted to electrical recording in 1925, American companies tended to dampen their recording studios with heavy drapery, much more than their European counterparts.  These recordings are anything but dampened.  The acoustics of the Webster Hotel ballroom provided enough reverberation that recordings fortunate enough to have been made there sound incredibly lifelike.

You can hear another recording made in that same ballroom in 1931 by a very different style of band, Wayne King’s,  featuring three selections on a Victor Program Transcription Disc (a commercially unsuccessful attempt to introduce a 33 rpm long-playing record) in this previous blog post.

Happily, the Webster Hotel still stands and is now the Webster House Apartments. If you follow this link and click on the “Photos” section, you can see images of its spectacular, still-intact original lobby.  I have not been able to locate any information about whether the ballroom is still intact.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment