Equal All Ways

A “monstrosity” and an early jazz smash hit share the shellac on this entry of Zayde’s Turntable!

Triangle was a short-lived label affiliated with the New York Recording Laboratories (Paramount) and manufactured from September 15, 1922 to 1925 at the Bridgeport Die and Machine Company on Elm Street in Bridgeport, CT. The label touts the innocuous slogan “Equal All Ways.” Triangle, like most of Bridgeport’s labels at the time (Puritan being perhaps the most voluminous) drew on Paramount masters for their tracks until 1924, when Paramount collapsed in bankruptcy and the manufacturer turned to Emerson for masters. Their contract with Paramount restricted Bridgeport’s sales primarily to the east coast and mid-Atlantic, much of which was done through department store retailers and mail order firms.

With the move to Emerson in 1924, the company was able to branch out and took on the Hudson and Mitchell labels out of Detroit in 1924. Bridgeport was an incredibly prolific manufacturer of early 78s, as a sampling of just some of their associated labels makes clear – Baldwin, Belvedere, Broadway, Carnival, Chautauqua, Everybody’s, Hudson, Lyraphone, Mitchell, Music Box, National, Pennington, Puretone, Puritan, Resona, Supertone, Triangle, and Up-To-date, just to list a few.

Just a sample of some Bridgeport labels.

In addition to Paramount and its myriad affiliate labels (Broadway, Puritan, etc.), in their contract with Emerson the company pressed discs from Dandy, Grey Gull, Blu-Disc, Pathe, and Banner material. They even, briefly, issued their own master series (which can be identified by the master prefix “BDM”), which appeared on later Triangle labels from 1924 to 1925. Triangle classical records were also released (with catalog numbers in the 15000s), as were standards (9000s). Triangle met its demise with the July 1925 bankruptcy of the Bridgeport Die and Machine Company. Unlike other Bridgeport brands, which made their way into other company’s portfolios, Triangle did not live on, leaving just a four year window for their manufacture. To that effect, Triangle label records meet the general requirement for valuable records to be scarce. Of course, the quality, importance, and scarcity of the music still play a role.

This album, Triangle 11145, is in fair condition. It has wear to both sides, with the expected impact on the quality of the audio. The paper label shows considerable wear, rendering some of the text unreadable. It is an acoustically recorded 10-inch diameter 78-RPM black shellac disc with lateral grooves and a ¼” spindle hole. The A-side recording features the Society Syncopators performing “Hot Lips,” by Henry Busse, Henry Lange, and Lou Davis. The master number is 1101 and it was recorded June 29, 1922. It runs 3 minutes and 22 seconds and was published by Leo Feist Inc. of New York. The B-side recording is the same group performing “You Can Have Him, I Don’t Want Him,” by Dan Dougherty, with lyrics by William Tracey (though Tracey’s name does not appear on the label here, since this version is an instrumental only – no vocalist). The master number is 1100 and it was recorded the same day, June 29, 1922. It runs 3 minutes and 12 seconds. It’s interesting to note that the recording date actually precedes the establishment of the Triangle label by three months; this suggests that the recordings were likely made as a Paramount master and intended to be distributed on other labels, which, indeed, they were. The record does not appear in Les Docks’ value guide for 78 r.p.m. records, though there is one dealer selling the same recordings on Regal 9341 for $14.95 on Ebay.

“Hot Lips” (not a reference to the M*A*S*H character; the lyric is “He’s got hot lips when he plays jazz” and refers to the instrumentalist) was written by Busse, Lange, and Davis as a “blues fox trot” for male trio and solo trumpet, for George White’s Scandals of 1922. The Scandals were a string of revue style Broadway shows, produced by George White, that ran from 1919 until 1939. The 1922 cast included Lester Allen, Dolores Costello, Peggy Dolan, W.C. Fields, Winnie Lightner, Sally Long, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, and the George White Girls. Busse was a founding member of the Whiteman orchestra and the song (released on Victor as 18920-A) went on to become a #1 hit for the group in 1922, holding the spot on the charts for six weeks. Legendary saxophonist Clyde Doerr played sax. Whiteman’s band recorded the song on June 23, 1922 – just six days before the Syncopators’ recording was made. The Whiteman recording was featured on the soundtrack to the Oprah Winfrey film The Color Purple in 1985. Busse himself led his own orchestra in the popular song 12 years later on a Decca, #25015-A, recording. Busse’s track was also used across the pond on Brunswick 03791-B, an English record, released the same year. The Decca track was also later re-released as a 45 r.p.m. Eventually it was the title track on a 33-1/3 r.p.m. LP.

Henry Busse on the record cover for the vinyl LP “Hot Lips,” featuring his signature tune as the title track.

The chorus to the song (not heard on this record, as it is instrumental only) is:

He’s got hot lips when he plays Jazz,

He draws out step, like no one has,

You’re on your toes and shake your shoes,

Boy, how he goes, when he plays Blues.

I watch the crowd until he’s through,

He can be proud, they’re cuckoo, too;

His music’s rare, you must declare, the boy is there

With two hot lips, he’s got hot lips.

After the Whiteman recording a plethora of other groups took on the hit song – including the Society Syncopators. Also in June 1922, the California Ramblers made a recording of the tune on Vocalion 14384-A. In August 1922 Bailey’s Lucky Seven pressed it for Gennett 4935-A. The Cotton Pickers made a recording of the song in July 1922 for Brunswick 2292-B. Henry Lange, one of the song’s composers, and his orchestra pressed it for Gennett 6263, Superior 306, and Genett Special 40102 concurrently in 1927. Even into the next decade, the song remained popular, with the Hoosier Hotshots releasing a recording of the “Novelty…Hot Dance with Singing” on Melotone 7-06-60 after recording it on October 5, 1936.

Henry Busse in 1921.

Henry Busse (1894-1955) was born into a musical family in Germany. Originally raised as a violinist, he had to abandon the instrument after a broken finger was set improperly and did not heal correctly; the boy picked up a trumpet in its place. Busse was made by his family to play in an “Oompah” band led by his uncle and he despised it; he made numerous attempts to escape, finally succeeding in 1912. Crossing the Atlantic, Busse found himself in the German neighborhoods of New York. Homeless and unable to speak English, Busse was picked up by the police while sleeping in Grand Central Station. After his release he found menial work on a ship heading to California; while at sea his English improved and by the time he landed in Hollywood the adventurous 20-year old was landing extra roles in Keystone Cop films (one can imagine his performances being inspired by his own run-ins with the police in the Big Apple a couple of years prior) and, fortuitously, playing his trumpet in movie theater pit bands. Busse initially played with the “Frisco Jass Band,” also called the Frisco Jazz Band (not to be confused with the Frisco Syncopators – see below) before forming his own “Busse’s Buzzards,” which went on to develop into the Paul Whiteman orchestra.

Despite being subject to discrimination due to his German accent, Busse found success in the California music scene. At one point in the 1920s eight of the top ten sheet music sales spots belonged to his band and Busse himself brought in more than twice the earnings of fellow band member Bing Crosby. Other members of the band included Tommy and Jimmie Dorsey. Busse began to tour and take his talents overseas and across the states. For a while in the 1930s he ran the house band at the Chez Paree in Chicago, where he worked directly for the club’s owner – Al Capone. Back in California Busse’s career found him leading bands appearing in feature films, including one with a speaking part for Busse – “Lady Let’s Dance”.

Busse in a promotional photo taken by the William Morris Agency when he was near the height of his celebrity.

Busse became a celebrity, with all the attendant scandal: after he partied hard at the Hotsy Totsy Club one night, he awoke the next morning married to a woman he had met the night prior. The legal wrangling for the annulment lasted 18 months, during which Busse toured Europe. Busse married twice more and professionally continued to lead his own dance orchestra, the Henry Busse Orchestra, until his death in 1955. Henry Busse’s fascinating life ends with not a little irony: the trumpeter was playing with the Shuffle Rhythm Band at a professional convention in Memphis when he suffered a heart attack. The meeting was the National Undertakers Convention.

Henry W. Lange (1896-1985), the “monarch of the ivories,” was introduced to music through a friend of his father: Arthur Kortheur, the conductor of the Toledo Orchestra in the early 1900s. After Kortheur’s death Lange’s musical education continued with the accomplished pianist Max Ecker. Lange graduated from the Illinois College of Music and went on to serve as music director for a handful of radio stations (WOAI San Antonio, WFAA Dallas, and WHIC Dayton) and pianist for a number of hotels across the southwest. From 1920 to 1924 he played with the Paul Whiteman orchestra in New York at the Palais Royale, where he crossed paths with Henry Busse. With the Whiteman band Lange served as one of the trio of pianists in the 1924 premiere performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” – the other two being Gershwin himself and Ferdie Grofe, who shared a regular stint with the Whiteman band with Lange. Lange was apparently quite versatile, appearing both in dance bands and with the Ziegfield Follies, and in European tours performing classical concerts for members of the aristocracy and even royalty. His original piano compositions and performances were released on Ampico, Duo-Art, Melodee, Brunswick, Gennett, and Pathe, among others, and he spent some time as composer to the filmmaker Rudolph Valentino. Lange struggled with health problems for much of his life, and was forced to put his music career on hiatus for a period in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, when he was finally able to return to the circuit, the Great Depression struck and most of the bands dissolved. He performed solo under the moniker “Monarch of the Ivories” for a while, resumed his radio work, and eventually retired.

The final credited name for “Hot Lips” is Lou Davis, about whom I could find almost nothing. The always-helpful World Catalog does reveal an extensive collection of original songs from the period with him named as a composer, lyricist, or arranger (I couldn’t determine which), but there is no biographical information about him that I could identify. If you know anything about Lou Davis, please share it in the comments!

The B-side recording is the blues tune “You Can Have Him, I Don’t Want Him” – also called in some publications by the rather lengthy title “The You Can Have Him, I Don’t Want Him, Didn’t Love Him Anyhow Blues.” The song should not be confused with Irving Berlin’s “You Can Have Him,” from the 1949 musical Miss Liberty or with Roy Hamilton’s 1961 “You Can Have Her,” which has been occasionally rewritten for female vocalists as “You Can Have Him.” The Berlin tune was recorded by the likes of Allyn McLerie, Mary McCarty, Ella Fitzgerald, Nancy Wilson, Doris Day and Dinah Shore, Vanda King, Shirley Bassey, Anita Lindblom, Liza Minnelli, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and Nina Simone. I cannot find many other references to the Tracey/Doughtery song, however, which predates the Irving Berlin tune and is here performed by the Society Syncopators. There was a recording of it made by the legendary blues singer Mamie Smith, with her Jazz Hounds, in August 1922 – around the same time as this recording – released on Okeh 4670. A little later, on October 3, 1922, the popular vaudeville duo Gus Van and Joe Schenck recorded it for Columbia A-3735. I cannot locate any other references to the tune being recorded after 1922. And the Van & Schenk and Mamie Smith recordings are the only two mentioned by Warren Vache in his 2000 book The Unsung Songwriters: America’s Masters of Melodies. The only critical review of the piece I could locate was a one sentence panning by Sigmund Spaeth in his 1948 History of Popular Music in America in which he simply called it “a monstrosity.”

Mamie Smith (left) and Van & Schenck (right). It is fascinating that two entirely different types of musicians/performers could record this song.

The catalog of copyright entries specifies that Dougherty penned the melody and Tracey the words to this “monstrosity,” though on this recording there is no vocalist and, hence, no lyrics.  A native New Yorker, William Tracey (1893-1957) was a staffer for a number of music publishers where he collaborated with a host of major composers from the early 20^th century, including Lewis Muir, George Meyer, Maceo Pinkard, Doris Tauber, and Nat Vincent. A charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), Tracey penned the words to such Tin Pan Alley standards as “Gee, But It’s Great to Meet a Friend from Your Home Town,” “Bring Back My Daddy to Me,” “Them There Eyes,” “Mammy ‘o Mine,” “He’s Had No Lovin’ For a Long, Long Time,” “Dixie is Dixie Once More,” “Give a Little Credit to Your Dad” (I like that title), and “Is My Baby Blue Tonight.”

Dan Dougherty (1897-1955) of Philadelphia joined ASCAP in 1927 and saw many of his popular songs end up in early films. He composed for Sophie Tucker and collaborated with Nick Kenny and Jack Yellen. His most well-known popular works include “It Certainly Must Be Love,” “It’s All In Fun,” “Glad Rag Doll,” “Mollie,” “Alone in the Rain,” “Moaning for You,” “I’m Dreaming,” “Sittin’ on a Rainbow,” “You’re Still in My Heart,” Mr. Segal, Make It Legal” (“the story of a girl who sleeps with her boss and gets pregnant. Naturally, the boss won’t answer her phone calls, hence the lyric, ‘Mr. Siegel, please make it legal.’”), and the political ditty “Let’s Get Behind the President” written with George Jessel for Harry Truman in 1949. “Glad Rag Doll” is perhaps his most recorded and longest-lived song, with versions being pressed by Dolores Costello for the 1928 film of the same name, again in 1928 by Ted Lewis and his band, Arthur Briggs and His Boys and Earl Fatha Hines in 1929, Tommy Dorsey, Ruth Etting, Johnnie Ray in 1954, Kay Starr in 1955, Barbara Cook in 1975, Joyce Moody and Earl Wentz in 2007, and Diana Krall in 2012. Other films with music by Dougherty include shorts Aunt Jemima: The Original Fun Flour Maker (1927), The Wild Westerner (1928), Grace Johnston and the Indiana Five (1929), the 1929 and 1930 Metro Movietone Revues, The Grand Parade (1930), Crashing the Gate (1933) and feature films Glad Rag Doll (1929), Call of the West (1930), Brothers (1930), Rain or Shine (1930), The Range Feud (1931), Under Pressure (1935), and Follow the Boys (1944).

Specht’s Society Syncopators, sometimes called the Georgians or Specht’s Syncopators, in 1922. Paul Specht is at right with violin and trumpeter Frank Guarente is back center.

Who are the Society Syncopators? According to Michael Harris in The Rise of the Gospel Blues, when it came to the names of popular music recording ensembles of the early 1920s, “jazz was the most frequently used designation, with various forms of the word syncopated a close second…in 1923 appeared the Society Syncopators.” Initially, I thought the band on this record was Fate Marable’s Society Syncopators; Marable, a jazz pianist, led bands on Mississippi river boats that were the proving grounds for many of the legends of American jazz. That suspicion, however, was quickly rejected; Marable’s Society Syncopators only recorded one record – Okeh 40113, which has neither of these tunes. Strangely enough, the answer was suggested when I checked the recording date for Triangle 11145 at the Online Discographical Project: their database mistakenly lists two entries for this record, suggesting that it may have been issued with two different labels. The first, the one I have, only refers to the Society Syncopators; a second seems to refer to “Paul Specht and his Orchestra” on the A-side (that title may be an error – see below) and “Specht’s Society Syncopators” on the B-side.

Paul Specht and the Society Syncopators/Serenaders in 1921, with trumpeter Frank Guarente at the far left and Specht in center with his violin. That’s right: jazz violin.

Puritan issue of the exact same masters, using the exact same catalog and matrix numbers. Only the label is different; while Triangle is “equal all ways,” leave it to Puritan to claim it is “America’s best record.”

This recording, of June 29, 1922, was only the second made by Paul Specht’s orchestra – first coming five days prior with a recording session of “A Dream of Romany” and “In Rose-Time,” billed as “Paul Specht’s Society Serenaders,” a name which was used by the band in live performance from at least as far prior as December 1920. The band’s recording of the songs on this Triangle record appeared simultaneously on Banner 1090 and Imperial 1184 as “Specht’s Society Serenaders,” Paramount 20148 and Puritan and Triangle 11148 as “Specht’s Society Orchestra”, “Specht’s Society Syncopators” and, of course, simply as “Society Syncopators”, Emerson 10546 as “Emerson Dance Orchestra, and Regal 9341 again as “Specht’s Society Syncopators.” This illustrates the general lack of consistency in band names from the period, especially on printed labels, and also the on-going use of pseudonyms for, not simply solo musicians, but entire ensembles. Interestingly, studio records show the recording session of June 29, 1922 was booked for “Specht’s Jazz Outfit,” a name not found on any records issued by the group. The ensemble for the recording – and on this record – comprised of Paul Specht conducting, Frank Guarente on trumpet, Ray Stilwell on trombone, Johnny O’Donnell on clarinet, alto sax, and bass clarinet, Arthur Schutt on piano, Joe Tarto on tuba, and Chauncey Morehouse on drums.

Early jazz trumpeter Frank Guarente. Though Guarente left Specht’s ensemble, cordially, in the mid-1920s he is most likely the trumpeter on this particular recording.

Frank Guarente is likely the trumpet soloist featured on “Hot Lips.” Guarente was born in Avellino, Italy, in 1893 and emigrated to the U.S. out of Naples in 1910.

Paul Specht (1895-1954) was raised as a violinist by his bandleader father, Charles Specht. After graduating from Combs Conservatory in Philadelphia in 1916 Paul put together his first band. The group signed with Columbia in 1922, recording both as the larger band (called Paul Specht and his Orchestra – the reference to that ensemble having made this recording seems to be in error, as this record was pressed by the smaller jazz-focused set) and as a smaller jazz subset that Paul called The Georgians and, later, the Frisco Syncopators or the Society Syncopators. Specht and both of his groups were quite popular throughout the 1920s and starting in 1922 they toured several times to England, where Specht eventually established the “School for Jazz Musicians” in 1924. Specht’s ensembles started the career of many notable jazz musicians, including Charlie Spivak, Joe Tarto, and Chauncey Morehouse, among many others.

Paul Specht on board ship for one of his several trips to England in the early 1920s.

While overseas, however, the group ran into legal troubles: the British government refused to grant them work permits, a fact that Specht only learned after their ship was half-way across the Atlantic. Fortunately for Specht there was a delegation of attorneys, as well as American Secretary of State Charles Hughes aboard the same vessel; after playing some concerts for their fellow passengers, Specht made an entreaty and they intervened on the group’s behalf. There was some diplomatic and legal wrangling, but the group was allowed to disembark and perform. Specht was embittered by the experience, in addition to hassles he ran into with the British music unions, and did not return to England again after 1926, despite the existence of his school and the popularity of his music with the British people in general.

Specht (leaning forward with the white hat in his hand in the front row) and the band in England in 1923.

Specht’s group went on to become the first orchestra to broadcast for RCA, the first to broadcast on a nation-wide radio network (covering 109 stations in all), and one of the earliest to issue a “phonofilm” – sound on film – with a 1925 release. While Specht’s was the first orchestral phonofilm recordings, it was not the first phonofilm recording at all, as some have suggested; the very first phonofilms were made in 1922, with the first public presentations in 1923. Ironically, in 1929 Specht’s group was selected over Paul Whiteman’s (with Henry Busse and Henry Lange) to play at the inauguration of Herbert Hoover. Arthritis hampered his ability to play into the 1940s and he turned more to arranging music for radio and television until his death at age 59.

Guarente, center, is the star of the show in this performance by The Georgians in 1924, towards the end of his affiliation with Specht’s ensembles.

There are all kinds of fun little tid-bits of history associated with this record. The Bridgeport Company, the two “Frisco” bands, Busse’s fascinating career, brush with America’s most famous mobster, and his ironic death, Specht’s diplomatic drama and important role in early sound film, not to mention the “monstrosity” review. The fact that this record features a (once upon a time) hit back to back with a song that seemingly went nowhere is an extra historical treat. There’s still a lot of mystery around this record – why leave Specht’s name off the band’s credit if he was a relatively well-known celebrity? Why no vocalist for two songs written with lyrics? Who decided to do that? Who was Lou Davis? Maybe you know the answers to some of these questions or can provide more background on these tunes and this band. According to my research this record – truly drawn at random from my collection this time – has no monetary value. But I think it still adds another kind of value to my collection, nevertheless.

Holst On a Moment!

After a very long hiatus Zayde’s Turntable is back! We return with an older record from one of the most prolific record companies in history: Columbia. I’ve already posted about the history of Columbia elsewhere, so I won’t delve much into it here. This record, in a way, ties together some important figures in the earliest jazz recordings and…Holst!

This series is from the Columbia Graphophone Company (not a typo): “Beginning at A1 (10”) and A5000 (12”) the early couplings [on the Columbia A-series] were often wildly inappropriate, sometimes pairing comic songs with concert band selections or vaudeville routines with Victorian sentimental ballads… In early 1916, Columbia’s manufacturing branch…was reorganized as the Columbia Graphophone Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut and New York.” (from Allan Sutton’s 1994 Directory of American disc record brands and manufacturers 1891-1943) Actual manufacturing was done at the Howe factory in Bridgeport, most famous for creating Elias Howe’s sewing machines.

Elias Howe’s factory, most famous for manufacturing sewing machines, was also home to the Columbia Graphophone company.

How “wildly inappropriate” were the pairings? Consider the records immediately surrounding this album (A-1485) in the Columbia catalog. A-1484 offered Eddie Morton singing “While They Were Dancing Around” and Al Campbell and Henry Burr doing a duet version of “I’m On My Way To Mandalay” – and A-1486 carried two harp and zither tracks, one of Offenbach’s “La Belle Helene” and the other Karl Millocher’s “I And My Boy.”

This album is in Good condition. It has some light wear and scratches on both sides, but there is no effect on the recorded audio, and the B-side label shows some soiling. It is an acoustically recorded 10-inch diameter 78-RPM black vinyl disc with lateral grooves and a ¼” spindle hole. The record catalog number is Columbia Record A-1485 and the master number is 39064/38997. It bears a stamped number “51” in the end gap on the A-side. Columbia records after 1924 had a three part code stamped in the same place to indicate the stamper and mother number used to press the record, but as this record pre-dates that practice I am not entirely certain to what “51” refers. If it were a stamper number, it could suggest that as many as 51,000 copies of the record were pressed.

The top label is an example of a 1910s Columbia Graphophone record and the bottom is ca. 1919/early 1920s. The top one is clearly the same as this album, suggesting the 1913 date – not the 1919 date – is correct.

The A-side recording features Prince’s Orchestra led by Charles Adams Prince (1869–1937) playing “Babbling Brook” by Charles W. Rega (?). It runs 3 minutes and 26 seconds. The B-side recording features Prince’s Band, again led by Prince, playing the gavotte “The Village Belles” by Eduard Holst (yes, Eduard) (1843-1899). It runs 3 minutes and 5 seconds. The A-side was recorded in August 1913 and the B-side in October 1913 (Tim Brooks’ Columbia Master Book Discography lists the recording date as August 16, 1919, which does not seem likely as the Columbia A1000s series was produced between 1911 and 1913; a 1919 recording would show a catalog number in the A2500s). Les Docks sets the value at $3-$5. I could find no other current listings of this album for sale online.

If the Columbia Graphophone Company didn’t come onto the scene until 1916, how come the 1913 recording year? My guess is this album carries two tracks that may have been previously recorded and issued on another label in the Columbia family. Many of Prince’s instrumental recordings also appeared anonymously on the affiliated Climax and Oxford labels. This is purely speculation, however, as I could find no reference to either of these pieces existing on any other record besides Columbia A-1485 (the always helpful Online Discography does not have a directory of Climax records and their listing of Oxford albums shows no recording with either of these titles – except Oxford 5600A, a recording of “Village Belles,” however the composer is not Holst but Edwin F. Kendall, a piano composer better known for his ragtime pieces). Another possibility would be that this record is actually from the British branch of Columbia, confusingly also named The Columbia Graphophone Company. I don’t think this is the case for two reasons: first, the British company wasn’t founded until 1922. Second, the record bears a price that is clearly American: “65c”. Both the cost and the currency are consistent with the American record company.

The 65-cent price is visible in the lower right of this image. Note the enigmatic “Grand Prizes” – they refer to those year’s World Fairs, at which the Graphophone itself (not the record) won a prize.

Grapha-what?

Now – what the heck is a Graphophone? It’s really no different from a gramophone or phonograph. The concept was identical, for the most part, to the phonograph originally developed by Thomas Edison. Competing scientists at the Volta Laboratory (founded by Alexander Graham Bell) refined and improved Edison’s machine by introducing a lateral recording method (instead of vertical cuts) and by replacing Edison’s impractical tinfoil-coated cast iron cylinder with wax-coated cardboard cylinders. Some authors breathlessly declare that it was Bell’s return fire against Edison; I think that’s a bit overly dramatic. Nevertheless the end result was no small improvement: “records” became less expensive, easier to produce, lasted longer, and offered much better sound quality. A trademarked name, the Graphophone moniker and the heavily patented technology was passed around by a series of company mergers and bankruptcies between the 1880s and the early decades of the 20^th century, ultimately ending its usage in the 1930s as a Columbia disc brand. The technology itself spawned not only the laterally-grooved vinyl disc we are familiar with today, but also the Dictaphone and similar recording devices.

Early Graphophones employed a cylindrical mechanism.

Later Columbia Graphophones played disc type records. A Grafonola was another Columbia product that employed an internal horn and disc records. Confused?

The piece “Babbling Brook” is by the composer Charles W. Rega. Stop reading this for a second, open another tab and head to Google. Enter “Charles W. Rega” and hit search. That’s about as much as I could find about Rega, too.

No Rega.

After checking hard copy references I could still find no reference to a Charles Rega ever existing in this period (except one: Charles Rega was a lay reader in the village of Skaguay, Alaska as part of the Alaska Missionary District in 1895 – I doubt he also wrote songs). Then, a break-through. Brooks’ Columbia Master Book Discography does include a listing for “Babbling Brook” and the master number matches exactly with the one on this record: 39064. It is the same exact song, but in the Discography the composer is listed as “Milo Rega.” Aha. Milo Rega was the pseudonym of Fred Hager (1874-1958).

Hager is best known as one of the first “A&R” guys. He and his colleague Justin Ring were scouts for Okeh records in the 1920s and assembled the group that backed black singer Mamie Smith in some of the recordings that many blues buffs consider the foundations of the “Race record industry.” Okeh would go on to become one of the leading labels for early blues musicians. Hager’s instincts were rooted in his own musical abilities. Starting in the 1900s he wrote songs for the Zonophone (a label founded in 1899 and shortly sold to, yep, Columbia, who affiliated it with its other alternative label Oxford). Hager and Ring worked together on compositions into the 1920s, many of which were credited to the fictitious F. Wallace Rega, Miles Rega, or Milo Rega, aliases derived from Hager’s own name. I cannot find any other reference to his using “Charles W. Rega” but the composer of “Babbling Brook” is almost certainly Fred Hager. A search for Hager’s name in connection with “Babbling Brook” confirms this: in February 1922 Nathan Glantz directed the Xylo Novelty/Specialty Orchestra in a recording of the piece, credited to Hager by name, that appeared simultaneously on Banner Records 1083 and Regal Records 9207. Interestingly, Glantz also directed the “Rega Dance Orchestra” on Okeh Records. Here, however, is the earlier Columbia A-1485 recording of “Babbling Brook” from my collection.

I almost titled this post “Bait and Switch” because when I first picked up this record it was the composer’s name on the B-side that caught my eye: Holst! A Holst song from circa 1913 would immediately precede the famed composer’s most acclaimed work – “The Planets.” Perhaps the “The Village Belles” would provide some taste of the almost hymn-like orchestral masterpiece, an early testing of the resounding bells that fill Gustav Holst’s Opus 32 masterwork (if you listen to it, it clearly does not). I hit the books, but could find no piece – not even a movement within a larger piece – titled “The Village Belles” by Gustav Holst. Thinking it may have been a different title wrongly ascribed to another Gustav Holst piece I listened to his works from the 1910s and 1900s to find a match. No luck. I searched for instrumental works with that title from the period and found reference to a piece with that title by a T.E. Spinney in the 1884 edition of The Monthly Musical Record and in the library of Victorian era English tenor Sims Reeves. The Reeves connection, and a discovery that Spinney also wrote a Te Deum, among other works for vocalists, suggested that his piece “Village Belles” was likely also a piece for vocalist. That and the 1884 date discouraged me from considering this song to be Spinney’s.

Then I stumbled across the other, lesser known but more prolific Holst: Eduard.

Eduard Holst

Eduard Holst was born in Copenhagen in 1843 and was an exceptionally productive composer, dance master, playwright, and occasional actor. Most of his over 2,000 works were songs and solo piano works, the most popular of which were probably his “Dance of the Demons,” “Beautiful Evening Star,” and “Diana Grande Valse de Concert” – a piece arranged variously over the years for 2, 3, and 4 pianos (that’s 4, 6, or 8 hands).

Little else is known of Eduard today, despite his lengthy roster of compositions and his copious output. He died in New York City at the relatively young age of 56. Assuming he started composing when he was 20, that’s 2,000 pieces over 36 years – or an average of about 56 compositions a year, almost five pieces per month every month of his life. In his time Eduard Holst’s piano music was so inexhaustible that one publication included it in a “Litany” that is well worth posting in its entirety:

A LITANY: CANTO II From wedding invitations and from the history of the United States; from the piano pieces of Eduard Holst and from fat women who are afraid of being betrayed; from all plays that run on Broadway more than fifty nights and from the Emmanuel Movement; from female bachelors of arts and from physical exercise in all its hideous forms; from editorials in newspapers and from the theory that it is sinful to chew tobacco; from the streptococci and from serial novels; from denaturized [sic] alcohol and from chilblains; from the works of Henryk Sienkiewicz and from chicken salad; from ecclesiastics who essay to be jocose in the pulpit and from the initiative and referendum; from fresh water oysters and from labor leaders; from theosophy and from the genealogical page in the Boston Transcript; from Uncle Tom’s Cabin and from elderly ladies who sit on the piazzas of summer hotels and swap obstetrical anecdotes; from bier jisch and from glassy potatoes; from perfumed cigarettes and from remorse from the doctrine of infant damnation and from Rosa Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair” – good Lord, deliver us! (The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, Volume 37, 1912).

Give the type and style of music Eduard Holst composed, the years in which he was most active, and the style and sound of this song on Columbia A-1485 (a gavotte is a type of French dance from the mid-19^th century) I am quite confident in saying that “The Village Belles” is the work of Eduard Holst, not Gustav. Here is, as far as I can find, the only audio recording of “The Village Belles” by Eduard Holst available today.

Charles Adams Prince around the time he worked for Columbia.

The “Prince” in Prince’s Orchestra and Prince’s Band refers to Charles Adams Prince. Prince, said to be a descendant of Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, was an accomplished pianist and organist, cutting his first recording in 1891 for the New York Phonograph Company and making his way, eventually, to Columbia, where he accompanied on the first Columbia Grand Opera Records through 1902. In that year, Columbia’s orchestra director – Fred Hager (that’s right) – stepped down from the post and Prince was named to fill the spot. Three years later Prince’s Band (or Prince’s Orchestra, largely depending on the instrumentation called for with each piece) was formed at Columbia. He would serve as the director of various Columbia house bands and his own eponymous one until 1923 when he changed labels to Puritan Records and, finally, Victor Records, to serve as associate music director.

Most jazz aficionados are familiar with the Prince’s Band recordings as they are often the first recordings of some true classics of the genre. Their 1915 rendition of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” is one such record, as are their recordings of Porter Steele’s “High Society” in 1911 and Lew Pollack and Ray Gilbert’s “That’s A Plenty” in 1914 (a song that was, incidentally, a standard part of this author’s repertoire when he played in the band Lookin’ For Treble in the late 1990s). The Prince’s Band recording of Handy’s “The Memphis Blues” in 1914 was preceded by the initial recording – by the Victor Military Band – by only one week. In addition to these jazz classics in 1917 the versatile Prince conducted Richard Wagner’s “Rienzi Overture” for what was Columbia’s very first classical music release.

Charles Adams Prince in his later years.

Prince’s Band/Orchestra was made up of some of the top instrumental talent of the day. Most of these men can likely be heard on this particular record: Vincent Buono (cornet), Leo Zimmerman (trombone), George Schweinfest and Marshall P. Lufsky (alternately flute and piccolo), Arthur Bergh and George Stehl (violin), Thomas Mills (xylophone, bells), Howard Kopp (xylophone, bells, drums), Thomas Hughes and William Tuson (clarinet), and Charles Schuetze (harp). While they primarily backed vocalists for Columbia, often without label credit, the band itself had a remarkable 80 instrumental recordings in the Top Forty hit charts between 1905 and 1923, including three #1 hits: “Ballin’ The Jack” in 1914 and “Hello, Hawaii, How Are You?” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” both in 1916.

For the return of Zayde’s Turntable I wanted to go back to the original spirit of this blog and the project that inspired it: to select a record at random from my collection, research it, record it digitally, and share it. When I pulled Columbia A-1485 out from the middle of the stack I was very happy to find the name Holst on one of the sides. Knowing the Columbia label was from around the time period of “The Planets” I got ahead of myself and thought it was Gustav Holst. It took several days of research for me to piece together the truth – though it would have been nice if Columbia had used a first name for the composer, as they did on the other side, or at least a first initial. Then, when I set to work on the reverse side I was flummoxed by the non-existent Rega. Even searches for pseudonyms of Charles Rega were fruitless. A careless typo led me to Milo Rega and then to Fred Hager. It’s not the first time I discovered a pseudonym on a record and, indeed, they were exceptionally common throughout the 20^th century of recording.

Still, when I started on this post, I thought it would be a simple one to research. But even the simplest look record on the surface may have an interesting historical mystery beneath. I am quite pleased to place online a recording of Eduard Holst’s “The Village Belles” that – to my knowledge – not only does not exist in audio format anywhere else, but has been lost to history as a song that he even wrote. Given his current obscurity and the volume of his work, of course, that’s not a real surprise. I’m also happy to have been able to connect the enigmatic Charles Rega with Fred Hager. The early Columbia A-series was known for having a sometimes odd combination of songs on a record or in a series of records. A-1485 is two instrumental pieces, sandwiched in the catalog between two other styles of music, and representing two very different – but equally mysterious (and strangely, at the same time, equally prolific) – composers. It may have been a bait and switch, but I have to say that I’m satisfied with the outcome.

A historic Harmony

This week on Zayde’s Turntable is an album of no true monetary value to a collector, but I wanted to learn a bit more about it because it captures an important historical moment in American history.

First, a word about the label. Harmony Records were pressed from 1925 until the early 30s and was owned outright by Columbia Records. It was often used as a low-price outlet for Columbia’s reissues and, in the 1950s, Columbia revived the label for a series of LPs with nothing but reissued tracks (about five songs per side). Columbia continued to release reissues on the LP version of the label into the mid 1970s.

Harmony labels (with the ca. 1950s version on the left and ca. 1930 versions center and right).

Perhaps the most interesting facets of the original Harmony Records is their role in straddling one of the most significant technological shifts in recording history: the movement from acoustic recording to electrical recording. Reportedly Columbia had just completed a major overhaul of their acoustic recording system when the new fad – electrical recording – came onto the scene. Rather than scrap their significant investment in the acoustical studio they simply continued to utilize it for their “lower end” Harmony label. The result is some of the finest, and last, acoustically recorded commercial records.

Acoustical recording is a mechanical process in which the artists performed live, their music being captured in a massive machine with a diaphragm; a needle connected to the diaphragm literally cut the recording into master disc (or cylinder). Level control was achieved by actually having a performer move physically closer to or further from the machine.

The Victor Orchestra recording acoustically. Auto-tune function not available on this model; sorry, Ms. Black.

Electrical recording was introduced in 1925 and is still, in many respects, the manner by which audio recordings are made. Electrical recording systems allow for microphones, over-dubbing, level adjustment, and, these days, even more. In its earliest incarnations, however, the process still physically cut a master record with a needle, meaning that a mistake at any point in the recording rendered the entire take – and record – useless. (Some labels would reissue scrapped takes of popular songs on later albums, though it was far more common to simply reissue the originally released take.)

This album, the only Harmony label in my collection (according to my notes from the late 1990s) is in Good to Very Good condition, with some slight wear and one light scratch to one side (the scratch does not effect the record’s playability and both my Symphony phonograph needle and my Crosley Archiver needle were able to navigate it without problem). It is a standard 10-inch diameter 78-RPM black vinyl disc with ¼” spindle hole. The record catalog number is Harmony 418-H and the master number is 144218/144219.

Harmony Records #418-H

Harmony records include a unique Columbia code.

Peculiar to all post-1924 Columbia records is a third identifying number pressed into the vinyl of the end gap of the record at the 12-o’clock position: 3-B-5 on the A-side 1-B-6 on the B-side. The first number is the take number, the middle letter designates the “mother” (the metal master disc), and the final number indicates the “stamper” (the metal “negative” of the mother). One stamper could press out about 1,000 copies of a record before it was no longer useable (hence the need for a “mother” that could create more stampers). With this information we know that the A-side song took three takes and the B-side song took only one take. At least two mothers were created (probably more), and at least 5 stampers for the A-side and 6 for the B-side – meaning, at a minimum, about 10,000 to 12,000 copies of this record were made.

The A-side recording is “Lucky Lindy,” lyrics by L. Wolfe Gilbert and music by Abel Baer, and runs approximately 2 minutes and 41 seconds. The B-side recording is “Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.),” lyrics by Howard Johnson and music by Al Sherman, and runs approximately 2 minutes and 55 seconds. Both songs are sung by tenor Jack Kaufman, backed up by an unnamed orchestra. While I could find no indication of a specific recording date, it is likely from 1927 or early 1928.

Both songs were written on the occasion of “Lucky” Charles Lindbergh’s celebrated May 1927 trans-Atlantic solo flight. The record-setting event engendered a remarkable level of patriotic fervor and an incredible number of musical tributes, perhaps more so than any other event in American history until then or since. Ironically, the flight was considered an illustration of mankind’s (and America’s specifically) technological prowess and ingenuity – I say ironic because this particular record was recorded in what was then an antiquated technology, the acoustic method. Lindbergh became celebrated more than any star of Hollywood or radio and there was a rush to capture that spirit by the leading cultural medium of the day: recorded music.

Charles Lindbergh, around the time of his famous 1927 flight.

To say the quantity of songs written about Lindbergh’s flight exceeds that written to mark any single event in American history before or since is not an exaggeration. Not even including the still recognizable dance craze inspired by the flight (the Lindy Hop), in all in the two years following Lindbergh’s journey the U.S. Copyright Office received three hundred applications on songs related to the flight and the pilot. Thirty songs alone had the same title – “Spirit of St. Louis,” Lindbergh’s plane. Another twelve were entitled “Lindy” (there was some confusion over the spelling, resulting in Lindberg, Lindburg, Linberg, Linderburg, and Linbergh). The third most popular title was “Lone Eagle” – a commonly used metaphor for the pilot that combined jingoistic American symbolism with the physical feat of flying itself. Other Lindbergh tributes included “Won’t You Take Me to Heaven, Please, Lucky Lindy Do,” “America Did It Again,” “Like an Angel He Flew into Our Hearts,” “Plucky Lindy’s Lucky Day,” “Just Like a Butterfly through Sun and Rain, and “He Did It, the Thing that Couldn’t Be Done.” The Hoover for President campaign benefited from “If He’s Good Enough for Lindy.” The volume of musical tributes was so great that one Tin Pan Alley songwriting team even wrote one entitled “This Song Is Not About Lindbergh.”

Lindbergh received a hero's welcome on his return to the U.S.

In 1929 Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, and Bertolt Brecht penned an opera entitled “Der Lindberghflug” (Lindbergh’s Flight), though Brecht would later remove all references to the pilot and rename the piece “Der Ozeanflug” (Ocean Flight) in 1950 in reaction to Lindbergh’s perceived Nazi sympathies. Indeed Lindbergh’s apparent right-wing political viewpoints also engendered negative musical references, though not for some decades after his flight. In the 1940s Woody Guthrie’s “Lindbergh” skewered the celebrated pilot for his affiliation with the far right America First Party (“They say America First, but they mean America Next”). Guthrie probably would have found the lyric “Lucky Lindy, right all along…” on the A-side of this record to be a bit too true.

On the A-side we have the prolific recording artist and vaudevillian Jack Kaufman singing Gilbert and Baer’s “Lucky Lindy” – perhaps the single most popular and widely produced of the Lindbergh paeans. Gilbert and Baer had just finished composing the piece on May 21, 1927 when word of Lindbergh’s safe landing at Le Bourget was announced on the radio. It was performed that very evening at several venues around New York City; Leo Feist printed the sheet music that very weekend and it was on sale by Monday. On Tuesday the number was headlining at the Paramount Theater, being performed on the cinema’s massive Wurlitzer in between films. The song was probably featured on every major label by most of the leading singers of the day. I can find evidence of (in addition to the Harmony recording) a ca. 1927 recording by Vernon Dalhart on Perfect (#12345), another Jack Kaufman recording (possibly the same) also from around 1927 on Velvet Tone (#1418-V), a Domino Records (#17260) recording with baritone Ernest Hare, another Ernest Hare recording on Banner (#1994-A) (which one EBay seller is currently listing for $1), and a May 26, 1927 (yes, five days after Lindbergh landed) Victor scroll recording (#20681-A) by Nat Shillkret and the Victor Orchestra. Not one of these albums appears in Les Docks’ guide to “collectible” records – in fact, I could not locate a single of the Lindbergh tribute songs anywhere in his compendium. This simply further illustrates that, today, value is determined more by scarcity than historical import, musical quality, or even the featured artist.

The sheet music for "Lucky Lindy" was on sale just a few days after Lindbergh landed.

Songwriter Abel Baer (1893-1976).

Abel Baer (1893-1976), a World War I veteran, originally trained to be a dentist, but abandoned that career in 1920 when he joined a music publisher as a staff writer. His works include many Tin Pan Alley hits, including “Mama Loves Papa,” “When the One You Love, Loves You,” and “I’m Sitting Pretty.” Less celebrated today is his World War II jingle “We’ve Got A Job To Do On The Japs, Baby.” Two years after penning “Lucky Lindy” – probably his greatest commercial success – Baer moved to Hollywood and wrote songs for the films “Paramount on Parade,” “True to the Navy,” and “Frozen Justice.” His credits also include the Broadway scores of “Lady Do” and “Old Bill M.P.”

Lyricist Wolfe Gilbert (1888-1954).

Louis Wolfe Gilbert (1886-1970) started as a singer in a quartet on Coney Island, before being discovered by an English producer and being brought to London to perform as part of The Ragtime Octet. He started writing music in 1912 and made the move to Hollywood in 1915, writing – eventually – over 250 songs for film, television, and radio, including “Ramona” – the very first motion picture theme song, as well as numbers for the Eddie Cantor Show and the lyrics for the hit children’s program “Western Hop-Along Cassidy” on NBC. Gilbert was an astute self-promoter and one of the first songwriters to publish and market his own catalog; his acumen for the business led to his selection to serve as director of ASCAP from 1941 to 1944.

The B-side recording is Kaufman singing “Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)” – again keeping with the eagle symbolism. It is clearly the more jingoistic of the two songs, with Al Sherman, the writer, appropriating snippets of melody from classic American anthems (listen for a bit of the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Yankee Doodle” in the clip below). Like “Lucky Lindy,” this tune was released within days, perhaps even hours, of Lindbergh’s successful landing in France in May 1927. In addition to this recording I was able to identify several contemporaneous recordings: three issues of Vernon Dalhart singing it, one recorded on May 23 (two days after he landed!) on a Victor scroll record (#20674-A – note how close the catalog number is to the “Lucky Lindy” Victor recording, illustrating how closely together the two albums were released), one on Edison Blue Amberol cylinder (#5362), and one on Perfect (#12345; the reverse side of the same disc with “Lucky Lindy,” exactly as with this Harmony record, though with a different artist; one seller on EBay currently lists this disc for slightly overpriced cost of $30). There was also a Harry Crane recording on Oriole Records (#922-A) and another issue of the Jack Kaufman recording found here on Velvet Tone (#1418-V – again, identical to this record, in this case in both song selection and artist).

Sheet music to "The Eagle of the U.S.A."

Lyricist Howard Johnson (1887-1941) was likewise a veteran of World War I. After getting out of the Navy in 1917 Johnson, a pianist, joined ASCAP and began his career as a songwriter. In addition to penning “I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream” Johnson was behind many of the most popular ballads of the period. One of Johnson’s (now ironic) pieces was the 1917 song “China, We Owe A Lot To You” (music by Milton Ager). No kidding.

Songwriter Al Sherman (1897-1973).

Al Sherman (1897-1973) came to America from Prague in 1909. Speaking little English and serving as a surrogate father for his four siblings after their father left them, Sherman taught himself piano and quickly became one of the most in-demand improvisers in America. He developed a reputation for providing “mood music” and his skills were sought by many of the leading film stars of the silent movies; in 1916 Universal signed Sherman to do bit parts in the films himself. In 1918 he joined the Remick Music Company as a staff pianist, composing numbers alongside some of the top songwriters of the day, including George Gershwin. Sherman also organized and directed his own orchestra that played in both Miami Beach and New York City. Sherman’s sons, Robert and Richard, would continue in their father’s footsteps, eventually writing the music for the classic films “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Sherman’s own Tin Pan Alley credits include over 500 songs, most notably “Over Somebody Else’s Shoulder,” “For Sentimental Reasons,” and “Potatoes Are Cheaper, Tomatoes Are Cheaper, Now’s The Time To Fall In Love,” which became his signature tune and “helped raise the spirits of the Depression generation.” His songs made or furthered the careers of a remarkable roster of musicians: Maurice Chevalier, Fred Waring, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Eddie Cantor, Ruddy Vallee, Ozzie Nelson, Lawrence Welk, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, and Duke Ellington and the Cotton Club Orchestra. His music can be heard in the Broadway hits “Ziegfeld Follies,” “George White’s Scandals,” “The Passing Show,” and “Earl Carroll’s Vanities.” His film music includes songs for “The Big Pond,” “Sweetie,” “The Sky’s the Limit,” and “Sensations of 1945.”

Cyndi Lauper in 1983. Her cover of one of Sherman's songs earned her a Grammy award.

Sherman’s music continued to influence American musicians even into the 1980s, when Cyndi Lauper’s rendition of Sherman’s “He’s So Unusual” – titled “She’s So Unusual” (1983) – even featured scratches and hisses designed to sound like a vintage 78-RPM record. The song hit #4 on the Billboard pop charts and won a Grammy for Best Album Package; it made #494 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” and sold more than 16 million copies worldwide.

The vocalist on both sides of the album is tenor Jack Kaufman, one of the famous singing brothers Irving, Phillip, and Jack Kaufman, who originally hailed from Syracuse, New York, about an hour from where Zayde’s Turntable currently resides. Irving has been called the “most recorded singer between 1914 and 1930” and his two brothers, who performed for a while as “The Kaufman Brothers” (until Phillip’s death in 1918), were quite prolific in their own respects.

Jack (left) and Phil Kaufman in a promotional poster from around 1910.

Jack and Phil’s early vaudeville acts seemed to include quite a bit of the reviled “blackface” routines. An undated period newspaper review of their act states:

“The Kaufman Brothers… [began] their act by impersonating the Russian dancers and the Parisian vocalist who had just preceded them.” … “Especially worthy of attention are their parodies of Italian songs. Both men… play ‘swell coons’ attractively.” … “Their entrance is made in bangy, bangy coon-shouter style… These brothers have excellent voices, but are too full of monkeyshines to take time to sing properly.” … “Ragtime and Italian songs are their long suit.” … “They sing exceptionally well, but otherwise just indulge in effervescent nonsense and wear red vests and checkerboard suits.” … “Their Yiddiher Opera brought a storm of applause.”

They grew to become “second stringers” – vaudeville acts that filled out the bill for larger stars like Irene Franklin and Will Rogers.

Newspaper cartoons depicting Phil and Jack Kaufman in their blackface performance (top row and bottom left, 1910-1911; bottom right, 1914).

Jack and Phil Kaufman in an undated photo appear in blackface as part of their vaudeville act.

After Phil’s death, Irving joined with Jack and the two performed together for a number of years. The partnership dissolved in 1923, though they reunited briefly again starting in 1928. It was during this five year hiatus that Jack, performing and recording as a solo artist now, cut this album for Harmony Records. Irving and Jack (and, earlier Phil) were studio workhorses and recorded separately and together probably more albums during the Tin Pan Alley period than any other musical family, appearing by name or by pseudonym on quite literally hundreds of records for dozens of labels. Jack’s sense of theatricality, a maybe even bombast, comes across in the two recordings on this album – listen to his rolling R’s and energy, due probably to both the enthusiasm around the event and his own personality. The last Kaufman recording was made by the busiest of the brothers, Irving, in 1974, meaning the Kaufman era of original recordings lasted a remarkable 60 years.

Lindbergh and his plane - the inspiration for over 300 songs.

This May America will celebrate the 85^th anniversary of Lucky Lindbergh’s historic non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic. The air mail pilot took off from Long Island a virtual unknown and landed, 3600 miles and one day later, in Paris, France as a national hero and icon. One can imagine the songwriters, musicians, studio executives, sheet music publishers, and recording technicians scrambling for that one week in late May in 1927, trying to be the first to get a piece of that Lindbergh magic. In some ways it may not seem so different than today’s commercialism. But, when I put that record onto Zayde’s Turntable and try to imagine the energy, the (much needed) optimism, and the pride that must have been coursing through the singer, the band, and the original listener, playing this disc for the very first time in 1927, I can’t help but think that it is, maybe in some way, just a bit different.

A Perfect record to get things started

For the first album we’ll look at on Zayde’s Turntable I’ve chosen a Perfect record.

That is neither its condition nor a description of its musical content. Perfect records first came on the scene in 1922 and was the American brand of the prolific European record company Pathé, which had been creating first cylinder recordings and later standard 78-RPM discs since the 1890s. Perfect records were lower quality dime-store albums, but the label proved so popular (read: affordable) with the American public that they continued as their own brand even after Pathé itself folded in 1929 during a large merger of many record companies into the mammoth American Record Corporation. Perfect records, headquartered at 34 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn, continued to be manufactured until 1938.

34 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn - once home to the Perfect record company. Now Raels Gable (sic).

A “Perfect” label of 45-RPMs was issued in the 1950s, but I can find no evidence that it was at all related to the original 1922-1938 company. In 1993 Dean Blackwood revived the label briefly to issue recordings by a handful of 1980s experimental rock and rockabilly artists.

Perfect labels from 1922 through the late 1950s.

Perfect record 15228, featuring the La Palina Broadcasters and Ted Bancroft - neither of whom existed.

This particular album is in Very Good to Excellent condition, which is not common for a Perfect record given, ironically, the generally lower quality manufacturing that went into the brand. It is a standard 10-inch diameter 78-RPM vinyl disc. The record catalog number is Perfect 15228 (15228-B) and the master number is 37047A (37047B). The A-side recording features the waltz “Pal Of My Sweetheart Days” by Benny Davis and Fred Coots and runs approximately 2 minutes and 45 seconds. The B-side recording features the waltz “All That I’m Asking Is Sympathy” by Benny Davis and Joe Burke and runs approximately 2 minutes and 50 seconds. Both songs are sung by “Ted Bancroft” (more on the use of the quotations below) backed up by the “La Palina Broadcasters.” Tyrone Settlemier dates the album to August 20, 1929, which seems to match with the appearance of the encircled “E” on the label – a feature that appeared on Perfect labels only in the late 1920s. The record is valued at approximately $7 to $10.

Side-by-side with another 78-RPM of the period the color difference of the Perfect is more apparent.

It is one of eight Perfect records in my collection, but is probably the one in the best condition. One reason I decided to start with a Perfect label is the company’s interesting decision to forgo the traditional black shellac for a reddish/orange shellac – not all 78s look the same and as record companies competed for ways to make their product stick out a bit more they became increasingly more creative in how they made their albums look and not just sound. Only one other label at the time – Vocalion – did the same. Another Pathé label, Pathé-Actuelle, pressed mottled vinyl albums for a time. The epitome of this practice were the picture discs, best represented by the highly collectable Vogue picture records – in which complete color illustrations were printed on paper, covered with a thin vinyl sheet, and then the recording grooves were pressed onto the disc. The albums were pretty, even if the sound quality was a bit less than ideal.

Another bonus aspect of this album is that it is in my collection in its original sleeve. While most collectors don’t care about the album sleeve (except for some records, mostly 45s, where the sleeve artwork is actually more collectible than the record itself), there’s something nice about having the disc in its original home. Album sleeves were prime real estate for the record company to advertise and promote the other recordings (hey, if you bought this one…).

B-side of sleeve lists Perfect artists (so to speak).

On one side the headline of the sleeve copy here reads “A Selected List of Perfect Standard RECORDS THAT SHOULD BE IN EVERY HOME.” It then lists 28 albums in six categories – Hawaiian (“Ciribiribin…With Whistling,” “Kawaha,” and “O Sole Mio” -?), Instrumental, Vocal, Humorous and Novelty (“Casey At The Dentist” – a less successful sequel to Casey at the Bat perhaps?), Sacred, and Operatic and Classical. The song “La Paloma” must have been a real hit as it appears twice – once under Hawaiian (featuring “Louise and Ferera” on Hawaiian Guitars) and once under Instrumental (featuring the Casino Orchestra). The sleeve implores the reader to “ASK FOR COMPLETE STANDARD CATALOG OF PERFECT RECORDS.”

A-side of sleeve with promotional image and copy.

The front of the sleeve touts “AMERICA’S FASTEST SELLING RECORD…Better Records Can’t Be Made”. The former claim may have been true, but the latter almost certainly not. In addition to a black and white illustration of various types of musicians performing on top of a record the sleeve front additionally partially lists 35 popular and famous artists and orchestras that appeared on the Perfect label (the Original Memphis Five, Ukulele Ike, Hotel Biltmore Orchestra, Harry Barth’s Mississippians, Phil Hughes and his High Hatters, Irving Kaufman, Arthur Fields, Yvonne Gall, etc.).

A better look at the sleeve graphic, untorn.

The music on the album is less than thrilling.

The A-side recording, “Pal Of My Sweetheart Days,” is a standard waltz like so many that came out of Tin Pan Alley in the 1920s, with a cookie-cutter sensibility to the tune, accompanied by trite rhymes and clichéd lyrics.

“Mem’ries awaken the old love again, pal of my sweetheart days / Tho’ we’re far apart, you seem to linger in my heart.”

You get the idea.

1929 sheet music for

In addition to appearing on Perfect a version of the song appeared on the Broadway label, featuring “Frank Raymond’s Do”, some time between 1929 and 1932. The song was published in 1929 by Coots & Engel Inc. of New York City. In addition to a piano, vocal, and ukulele sheet music and the albums the song appeared on a Sears “Supertone” piano roll (#4430) issued by Columbia featuring an unknown pianist (though I have a very strong suspicion that the artist was…well, I’ll give away part of the end of this post if I tell you now).

1929 sheet music to

The B side recording is likewise a standard waltz from the period. “All That I’m Asking Is Sympathy” was also recorded by Art Jarrett and his Orchestra for Victor (record catalog number 22236) on December 2, 1929. It received a revival (and serious tempo adjustment) in 1953 on the album “Slim Whitman Sings” – the third record from the prolific country music singer and acclaimed yodeler Ottis Dewey “Slim” Whitman (issued on an Imperial 78-RPM #8180 and currently selling on EBay for about $15). The song was published by the Joe Morris Music Company of New York in 1929. “You are all I had / Now I am so sad / All that I’m asking is sympathy.”

Lyricist Benny Davis (1895-1979).

The works of three composers appear on the record. Benny Davis (1895-1979) had a hand in both songs. Davis, a former vaudeville performer and accompanist, was one of the busiest, and most successful, lyricists of the period. In addition to the two songs here Davis was responsible for the lyrics to the hit song “Baby Face” and several dozen others. He wrote lyrics to the Broadway shows “Artists and Models of 1927” and “Sons o’ Guns” (1936), as well as three versions of the Cotton Club revue. His song most recognizable to contemporary listeners is probably “With These Hands,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands” sung by Tom Jones.

Davis’ colleague on “Pal Of My Sweetheart Days” (and many other songs) was J. Fred Coots (1897-1985), another high-volume Tin Pan Alley songwriter. A banker-turned-songwriter, Coots’ produced over 700 published songs and the scores to nine Broadway shows including “A Night in Paris“ (1926). His song “Louisiana Fairy Tale,” was used as the original theme song to the PBS show “This Old House” many decades later. In 1940 Coots – a fierce Rangers fan – wrote the “New York Rangers Victory Song,” which is still played after each of the hockey team’s home wins. Timely with the recent holiday, Coots most famous contribution to the American songbook, however, is doubtless the Christmas classic “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (1934) – the tune for which he supposedly cooked up in ten minutes and which has sold over 4 millions copies of sheet music (500,000 of which were in the first year alone).

Composer Fred Coots (1897-1985).

Jack Burton’s 1950 “Honor Roll of Popular Songwriters” in Billboard magazine ranked Coots at number #52. Burton’s profile of Coots relates how the young banker gave up a lucrative career (fortuitous with the eventual market collapse of the late 1920s) to follow a passion for music. He sold his first song, the less-than-marketably-titled “Mister Ford, You’ve Got The Right Idea” (1917) for $5 – then promptly spent the entirety of the earnings on a celebratory dinner that same night. Years later, when the same publisher who bought that 1917 tune was himself on hard times the then-wealthy Coots presented him with a check for $500: “I owed the guy,” he explained.

Coots also composed music for several popular “night spots” during Prohibition, including the Alamo in Harlem, where the songwriter discovered a large-nosed pianist with a ripping sense of humor. Coots persuaded the young Jimmy Durante to give up his 75-cents-an-hour piano gig to get onto the comedy circuit professionally.

Waite Hoyt: championship Yankees pitcher, funeral director, and vaudeville performer.

Coots himself also appeared on stage on occasion, mostly in vaudeville acts in New York City. Following the New York Yankees 1927 World Series victory Coots teamed up with Yankees pitcher Waite Hoyt – fresh off pitching two winning Series games – to perform to sold out crowds at the Palace Theater. Hoyt, a consummate performer himself, went by the nickname “The Merry Mortician” – an allusion to his two non-baseball jobs: running a funeral home and starring in vaudeville numbers (including acts with Durante, Jack Benny, and George Burns). One might imagine Derek Jeter doing soft-shoe with Zach Galifianakis…or one might not.

Davis’ collaborator for “All That I’m Asking Is Sympathy” was Joe Burke (1884-1950), a songwriter better known for his film scores and songs than his popular singles. Burke started his career as an actor, appearing as Senator Keene in the 1915 black and white silent film “The Senator” and in the 1929 flick “The Show of Shows”. His catalog of Billboard Number One hit songs includes “Moon Over Miami” (1936), “Carolina Moon” (1929 – the same year as “All That I’m Asking Is Sympathy”), “On Treasure Island” (1935, for Tommy Dorsey), “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” (1930), and “Who Wouldn’t Love You” (1942). He also penned the official college anthem for Villanova University (even though Burke himself was educated at UPenn). Burke’s most (in)famous song is perhaps “Tip Toe Through The Tulips” (originally for Nick Lucas for the 1929 show “The Gold Diggers of Broadway” and later more notoriously covered by Tiny Tim).

Tiny Tim, in his final video interview shortly before his death in 1996.

A second attraction for using this record to get Zayde’s Turntable spinning – in addition to its unconventional color – is its usefulness in illustrating the wide use of pseudonyms in the period. Collector and author of the “American Premium Record Guide” Les Docks notes: “the real name of the artist was not always used on all the affiliate labels…the purpose was often to evade exclusive recording artist contractual restrictions, or to avoid making royalty payments to artists…If this isn’t confusing enough, one pseudonym…might conceal the true identity of a dozen or more bands, whose performances appeared on other labels perhaps under different pseudonyms.”

Particularly fascinating on this record is that both the orchestra and the vocalist appear as a pseudonym. After a fair amount of digging I was able to ascertain the true identity of both the enigmatic “La Palina Broadcasters” and “Ted Bancroft.”

Bandleader Fred Rich (1898-1956).

Docks’ compendium lists several albums of value from the La Palina Broadcasters on Conqueror, Domino, Pathe-Actuelle, and Perfect – all valued $7 to $10. There is absolutely no record elsewhere of such an orchestra actually existing, however. La Palina was (and is) a brand of cigar, which – at one point – sponsored radio programs on CBS radio. In late 1928, a 30-year old man by the name of Fred Rich (1898-1956) was hired to be the music director for CBS radio. Rich, who came from an already lengthy career as a bandleader with numerous recordings to his credit, would be a natural to lead a radio orchestra (hence “Broadcasters” in the title) for Perfect (and other labels, all of which had some sort of business relationship with Columbia and CBS).

A search for more on Rich and La Palina confirm the pseudonym – Robert Stockdale’s “The Dorsey Brothers” lists four recordings on, literally, dozens of labels using up to six pseudonyms (“Ted White’s Collegians,” “Pierrot Syncopators,” “Pete Mandel and his Rhythm Masters,” “Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra,” etc.). Brian Rust’s “Jazz Records, 1897-1942” adds the front name “Jimmy Pollack’s Orchestra” on the rare Domino label to the mix. Docks identifies Fred/Freddie Rich and his Orchestra as being synonymous with the “La Palina Orchestra” – not Broadcasters – and lists over fifty of his albums on Banner, Cameo, Columbia (naturally), Gennett, Harmony, Hit-of-the-Week, Okeh, Pathe-Actuelle, Perfect, Regal, Romeo, and Vocalion – with an overall range of value between $5 and $30.

Rich’s recordings are mostly fairly standard and unimpressive dance fare (such as appear on this particular album), though he did press a few remarkable and acclaimed jazz albums. A writer in the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors 1971 volume observers about an unspecified La Palina Broadcaster’s recording: “Ted Bancroft does the vocal. There is the lead trumpet work, a lengthy Tommy Dorsey trombone solo, with brother Jimmy taking a clarinet solo. On the B-side the vocalist is Irving Kaufman [see list of featured Perfect artists above]. The quite commendable trumpet solos are by Leo McConville. The trombone solo is played straight but has T.D.’s [Tommy Dorsey’s] tone. A most interesting piano solo. Who? The B-side original issue cannot be traced. Banner?? It is a real sleeper.”

Rich’s finger-work as a pianist lives on immortalized in the dozens of piano rolls he also recorded for the Aeolian Company and others (perhaps even the uncredited roll for “Pal Of My Sweetheart Days”?). Rich left his job at CBS in 1938 but still made musical appearances on a number of programs (including The Abbott and Costello Show on NBC from 1943 to 1945). Leaving radio behind his final artistic endeavors were for the big screen, providing the scores to the films “Stage Door Canteen” (1943), “Jack London” (1943), “A Walk In The Sun” (1945), and “A WAVE, a WAC, and a Marine” (1944), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best score.

There is no Ted Bancroft. A cursory search finds references to a Benny Goodman drummer, Ben Pollack (hmmm….”Jimmy Pollack’s Orchestra”?), singing under the pseudonyms “Ted Bancroft” and “Eddie Gale” (not, of course, Eddie Gale the jazz trumpeter…confused yet?). Pollack was a bandleader and singer by the late 1920s and his band had recently relocated from Chicago to New York City. They pressed albums for a vast array of labels: Banner, Perfect, Domino, Cameo, Lincoln, Romeo, and Victor, under an equally vast array of pseudonyms: Mills’ Merry Makers, Goody’s Good Timers, Kentucky Grasshoppers, Mills’ Musical Clowns, The Lumberjacks, Dixie Daises, The Whoopee Makers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, and Jimmy Bracken’s Toe Ticklers. But Pollack’s music was almost all straight jazz and “hot dance.” Furthermore, as I am certain that the La Palina Broadcasters are the Fred Rich orchestra, it seem very unlikely that Ben Pollack would appear as a solo vocalist on an album backed up by someone else’s band.

Ted Bancroft is another Columbia/CBS artist. A musician who provided vocal accompaniment to Fred Rich’s Columbia house orchestra on numerous Columbia labels, including the original “Singin’ in the Rain.” He was one of the original “singing cowboys” and appeared in western films for Paramount and 20^th Century Fox up through the 1950s, including dubbing the singing for John Wayne in “Riders of Destiny” and “The Man from Utah” and starred opposite Frances Langford as the lead in “Palm Springs.” He recorded hundreds of records with dozens of bands (including Ben Pollack’s). His own short-lived orchestra, on the Okeh label, gave a start to Glenn Miller. His name was Sykes “Smith” Ballew (1902-1984).

Sykes “Smith” Ballew (1902-1984), aka Ted Bancroft, pictured in 1931 two years after recording this album and at the height of his one-time fame.

And not one of his albums is commercially available today. You can only hear them on Zayde’s Turntable.

And that, in some ways, seems Perfect.