Today on Halloween, we have Fess Williams’s Royal Flush Orchestra performing the excellent “Phantom Blues”.
Williams himself arranged this composition by Al Handler and Len Riley – and it is full of great playing. If this is what phantoms are listening to, well, maybe we have some fun to look forward to in the afterlife!
The Royal Flush Orchestra had opened at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem a year earlier and was the veritable house band there until 1928.
Williams himself was originally from Kentucky – and studied at the Tuskegee Institute in Cincinnati. He moved to New York in 1924 and formed the Royal Flush Orchestra a year later.
His birth name was Stanley Rudolph Williams, but when he taught students in Winchester, OH, after he graduated from Tuskegee, his pupils called him “Fess” – short for Professor.
Recorded in New York City on March 28, 1927.
Released as Brunswick 3532.
Credits:
Fess Williams – clarinet, alto sax, director, arranger
George Temple, Kenneth Roane – trumpet
David “Jelly” James – trombone
Otto Mikell – alto sax
Perry Smith – clarinet, tenor sax
Henry Duncan – piano
Ollie Blackwell – banjo
Clinton Walker – baritone brass
Ralph Bedell – drums
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