Lem Fowler was a very active composer and musician in New York from 1922-1932 – recording over 50 sides and scores of player piano rolls. The composition that put him on the map was “He May Be Your Man But He Comes To See Me Sometimes”, which he sold to Perry Bradford immediately after copyrighting it. Bradford published it and it rapidly became a favorite among blues singers and jazz bands alike.
Despite this, very little is known about his life – and he completely dropped off the radar of jazz world for the rest of his life. It is not even known when or where he died.
On this tune, we hear Fowler and his instrumental trio playing “Washboard Stomp” by Relphow James. Percy Glascoe solos in the gas pipe clarinet style, sometimes using the instrument to emit “laughing” sounds. Fowler and Harding serve as the rhythm section, keeping the tune swingin’ along.
Recorded in New York City on July 2, 1925. Released as Columbia 14084-D.
Credits: Lemuel Fowler – piano Percy Glascoe – clarinet, alto sax Stanley Harding – washboard
Benjamin Albert Rolfe worked in vaudeville and the motion picture business before starting a dance orchestra in New York City in 1926. While many of their releases over the course of their three year recording career with Edison Records were sweet dance music, there are a number of titles that are quite hot – “Deep Hollow” being one of them.
Hot trumpet, trombone, and bass sax solos can be heard within a delightful arrangement that ends with a few wild punctuations by an unruly slide whistle of some kind.
Edison Diamond Discs were electrically recorded with microphones starting with Edison 52089 in 1927, and while the sound quality was not quite as good as Victor Orthophonic or Columbia Viva-tonal, it was a step above the old acoustic method of recording. But the change came too late for the Edison company, and by late 1929, they got out of the record business entirely. Thus, these later 52000 series Edisons are quite scarce.
Recorded in New York City on May 14, 1928. Released as Edison 52319.
Credits: B.A. Rolfe (“Trumpet Virtuoso”) – trumpet Other players are unidentified, though Rolfe was known to record with players such as Phil Napoleon, Andy Sannella, Ross Gorman, and Tony Colicchio.
I recently acquired a fairly beat copy of this record – which has a rough start (the first 20 grooves are quite worn), a grainy swish for the first 30 seconds, and a lengthy crack that I was able to stabilize which caused very slight tics (which I was able to digitally remove). All of that said, for what the seller called “a wall hanger”, it was still quite listenable! 😊
Between July 1923 and April 1926, Jelly Roll Morton recorded twenty piano solos. “Shreveport Stomps” was one of eleven compositions Morton recorded in one epic one-day session in 1924 at the Gennett studio in Indiana where 20 takes were made that resulted in nine sides.
Of these early solos brimming with vitality, William Russell wrote in The Needle in 1944 that “Jelly’s performance is a revelation of rhythmic variety by means of such devices as shifted accents, slight delays, and anticipations.”
Jelly himself would have been more emphatically clear about the merit of these recordings. When he asked one of the Melrose brothers what they thought of a new piece he just played, the publisher encouragingly answered “That’s good, Jelly.” Morton rose to the occasion: “Good, Hell – That’s perfect!”
Perfectly wonderful, to be sure. Please enjoy this gem of American jazz.
Recorded in Richmond, Indiana on Monday, June 9, 1924. Released as Gennett 5590. A master pressing was also released as Silvertone 4036.
The wonderful Gladys Bentley singing the Leroy Carr tune “How Long How Long Blues”, which had just been released as a single on the Vocalion label by Carr and guitarist Scrapper Blackwell a few months earlier.
Bentley is accompanied by guitarist Eddie Lang and an unidentified pianist. Bentley was an excellent pianist in her own right, but the piano here sounds a bit distant in the recording.
Recorded in New York City on August 31, 1928. Released as Okeh 8612
Credits Gladys Bentley – vocals Eddie Lang – guitar Unidentified – piano
The first recording by Indiana jazz band The Happy Harmonists, later known as Hitch’s Happy Harmonists, after bandleader and pianist Curtis Hitch.
Most information about this band pegs them as fawning acolytes of Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverine Orchestra – or mentions them only in reference to recording Hoagy Carmichael’s first tunes (“Washboard Blues” and “Boneyard Shuffle”).
It is important to note that at the time of this recording of their original composition “Home Brew Blues” in September of 1923, Bix and his Wolverine Orchestra had only just played their first show at the Stockton Club in Ohio – and didn’t record their first record for Gennett for another six months. And their collaboration with Carmichael was still two years away.
The Happy Harmonists were based in Evansville, Indiana – a city right across the river from Kentucky – so far south that it was closer to Louisville than it was to Indianapolis. They were part of a midwestern territorial jazz scene about which historian Merrill Hammond remarked, “There was a whole separate style of midwest jazz playing, and no one seems to remember that. It flourished in and around Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio long before the so-called ‘Chicago style’ became well-known.”
Hoagy Carmichael opined on this scene in his memoirs, writing, “In the farmlands among the Indiana-Iowa corn, and from the cow-pasture universities, there sprouted a beardless priesthood of jazz players and jazz composers. Instead of buttermilk and Blackstone, we were nurtured on bathtub gin and rhythm. . . It just happened, like a thunder cloud. It may sound sentimental to say that young men caught fire in a quest for beauty, that they dedicated themselves to its realization, starving and striving, laughing, dreaming, and dying.”
0:00 Intro 0:10 Clarinet solo (Wright) 0:44 Cornet solo (Rollison) 1:02 Bass sax solo (Neal) 1:26 Ensemble 1:55 Cornet and Clarinet
Recorded in Richmond, Indiana, on September 19, 1923. Released as Gennett 5286.
Credits: Curtis Hitch – piano, director Fred Rollison – cornet Jerry Bump – trombone Harry Wright – clarinet Rookie Neal – C Melody Sax Dewey Neal – baritone sax Maurice Mays – banjo Earl McDowell – drums
Richard McDonough was a New York City-based banjo player who played with the Ross Gorman Orchestra in 1925. While with Gorman, he began a gradual switch to guitar, playing in the style of Eddie Lang. Carl Kress also started on banjo, switching first to the four-string tenor guitar before making the jump complete.
Kress and McDonough were both prolific sidemen in the late 1920s who played with a wide variety of artists such as Paul Whiteman, Frank Trumbauer, Charleston Chasers, Annette Hanshaw, Nat Shilktret, Boswell Sisters, Boyd Senter, the Cotton Pickers, Miff Mole, Ben Selvin, Fred Rich, Jack Pettis, Red Nichols, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra.
Along with Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson – these two helped to establish the guitar firmly in the jazz tradition during the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In 1934, during the depths of the Great Depression, they recorded this duet of one of McDonough’s compositions: “Stage Fright”. It is quite an accomplished performance of virtuosity.
Recorded in New York City on April 2, 1934. Released as Brunswick 6917.
Credits: Dick McDonough – guitar Carl Kress – guitar
The second hot five session finds the group doing “Come Back Sweet Papa”, a tune by Paul Barbarin and Luis Russell.
Satch and Ory seem to be lit up and swingin’ hard on this track!
0:00 Intro (Armstrong & Ory) 0:08 Alto Sax solo (Dodds) 0:48 Cornet solo (Armstrong) over ensemble chorus 1:27 Ensemble 1:48 Piano solo (Lil Armstrong) 2:07 Ensemble and Cornet solo (Armstrong)
Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on February 22, 1926 Released as Okeh 8318 – this copy is a master pressing reissued in the 1930s.
Louis Armstrong – cornet Kid Ory – trombone Johnny Dodds – alto saxophone, clarinet Lil Armstrong – piano Johnny St. Cyr – banjo
The song “Copenhagen” was written by Indiana bandleader Charlie Davis as an homage to his sousaphone player’s favorite chewing tobacco. When the band performed the newly written piece in Indianapolis in April 1924, the seven members of The Wolverine Orchestra were in the audience listening. Within a few weeks, the Wolverines became the first band to record the composition in a session for Gennett that was released in June.
Melrose Brothers publishing quickly prepared a stock arrangement of the piece based on the Wolverines record – which was published in August of 1924. The title page of the arrangement stated: “This arrangement is RED HOT as written. Play what you see and the horns will start smoking.”
On September 8, the Benson Orchestra of Chicago recorded a very popular version for Victor. A week later, Charlie Fry and his Million Dollar Pier Orchestra – who had been playing with the Benson Orchestra in Atlantic City during the summer – released this version. Coincidentally, between these two sessions, the Wolverine Orchestra began a residency at the Cinderella Ballroom in New York City.
In the last three months of 1924, ten additional versions were recorded by bands including Fletcher Henderson, California Ramblers, and Arkansas Travelers.
Fry’s version stuck closely to the stock arrangement, with an extra clarinet and sax solo for good measure – since they were recording on Edison, maybe they figured had a little extra time since Diamond Discs could hold nearly 4 minutes of music compared with a little over 3 minutes for a standard 10″ shellac disc.
0:00 Intro (ensemble) 0:17 Clarinet solo 0:30 Tenor Sax solo 0:43 Ensemble 1:00 Clarinet solo 1:13 Tenor Sax solo 1:26 Ensemble 1:43 Trumpet solo 2:01 Ensemble 2:17 Tuba solo with banjo 2:43 Ensemble
Recorded in New York, New York on September 15, 1924. Released as Edison 51406-L
Charlie Fry – Director, Alto Saxophone, Violin Julian Kurtzman, Theo Wohleben – Trumpet Oscar Moldaur, Ray Thwaite – Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone John Baviton – Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone Ben Morgan – Trombone Ray Allen – Piano Herman Schmidt – Tuba Frank Kriell – Banjo Fred Niehardt – Drums
All the credit for the excellent information about the history of “Copenhagen” goes to the very informative article “Revisiting Fletcher Henderson’s ‘Copenhagen’” by Jeffrey Magee in the Journal of the American Musicological Society , Spring, 1995, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 42-66 http://www.jstor.com/stable/3128850
In January of 1924, Fletcher Henderson’s band began its tenure at the newly opened Club Alabam on W. 44th St in New York City. Within several months they became known as one of the best jazz orchestras in the city.
In May of 1924, Henderson began making records for the Plaza Music Company, which owned the Banner, Regal, Domino, and Oriole labels. On the Plaza labels, Henderson’s orchestra went by a variety of pseudonyms so that the different labels could each advertise recordings seemingly by different bands. The recordings were also then leased to other labels, where new pseudonyms followed.
The recording of “I Can’t Get The One I Want” in June of 1924 set a record of sorts when it comes to this type of pseudonymic shenanigans: its three recorded takes were pressed and issued on at least twenty different labels, including Banner, Domino, Regal, Broadway, Lyratone, Triangle, Emerson, Federal, Globe, Nadsco, Radiex, Oriole, Paramount, Puritan, Silvertone, Apex, Usiba, and this one, the rather obscure National Music Lovers label, where they go by the rather unimaginative name of “Manhattan Musicians”.
While more of a sweeter style dance number, there are many interesting instrumental interactions in the arrangement and opportunities for hot breaks – we even hear the vivacious Coleman Hawkins leap in with a bouncy bass sax solo at 2:40 and again at 2:58.
Recorded in New York City on June 19, 1924. Released as National Music Lovers 1099.
Credits: Fletcher Henderson – piano, director, arranger Elmer Chambers, Howard Scott – cornet Teddy Nixon – trombone Don Redman – clarinet, alto sax Lonnie Brown (?) – alto sax Coleman Hawkins – tenor sax, bass sax Charlie Dixon – banjo Ralph Escudero – tuba Kaiser Marshall – drums
