I think we all need a 78 break. Of course, "break" and "78" in the same sentence seems like bad luck. I will say, and I think it's true (not positive), that I have only broken four 78s by accident over my collecting career. At times, I've busted them on purpose, but I very rarely break them by accident. And I've had a few that gave up the ghost in storage. You pull them out of the rows, and they're cracked. I've been told that, in these cases, a hairline crack was already present--and just itching to become a complete split.
Anyway, I did not know until just now that Harry Raderman was born in Odessa, Russia, where he did not star as an extra in Potemkin. Wow, what's next? Irving Berlin coming from Siberia? Anyway, Harry Radernan was the laughing trombone on Joseph C. Smith's (in my opinion) wonderful recording of W.C. Handy's Yellow Dog Blues. And it looks like he played in Earl Fuller's jazz band, so we've get Raderman times three today--twice, with Fuller, and once as leader of his own jazz orchestra. The Fuller jazz sides aren't as bad, jazz-wise, as I'd remembered, and they're catchy and fun, with Coon Band Contest (such attitudes were front and center back then) pretty close to actual jazz. The players are very good, save for Ted Lewis and his awful clarinet, and the drumming (Fuller, I assume) is captured marvelously well by Victor's recording horn. Raderman's Make That Trombone Laugh is jazz in the complex, carefully planned Paul Whiteman manner.
The 1917 Columbia Original Dixieland Jass Band sides were long thought to predate the group's Victor recordings--collectors assumed that Columbia, following the ODJB's success on Victor, had released its two rejected sides by the group. No such luck. These are from May, 1917. The Victor sides go back to February. These have a loose quality I really like. And the warm Columbia sound suits them better than the colder, more clinical Victor fidelity. Cold fidelity. Did I just make up a term? Superb sides.
And the two W.C. Handy recordings, also from 1917, feature virtuoso playing and boundless energy and not the best fidelity--the weak treble is a feature of the recording, I think, not over-filtering on my part. (So he says.) Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag is a blatant rip-off of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, but the arrangement is fascinating in its ragtime/jazz synthesis. Styles merge all the time in popular music, but, despite the inane (and widespread) notion to the contrary, the merging of styles is not the thing that powers musical evolution. It's not a sustainable model, for one thing. If any given style is a matter of two styles joining together, then we get into infinite regression pretty quickly. But it's cool to find records that straddle the stylistic fence to the extent this one does, and what in the heck did I just type? I used to think jazz came right out of ragtime--until I realized that "right out of" doesn't make much sense as a concept. It's always wisest to think of evolution in terms of change, because that's what evolution is. Mutation over time makes more sense than A+B=C, and again because of infinite regression. So there. Where the heck was I?
Oh, yeah--Anna Wheaton. A "musical theatre actress and singer of the early 20th century"--Wikipedia. I'd Like to Be a Monkey in the Zoo (1917, again) holds up as fairly amusing 113 years later, so she had to be talented. My copy is far from mint, but my wider needle made most of the lyrics possible to make out. I'm not that much into vaudeville, but the occasional example is fun. And we get two helpings of the superb band led by Charles Adams Prince, and two sides by Harold Veo's Orchestra (1917!! What's with that year?), which are quite jazz-influenced. The Zoo Step almost sounds like slowed-down Dixieland.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: And I screwed up the track order. The zip is now fixed. Sorry!
DOWNLOAD--78 Break
Indiana--One-step (Hanley)--Original Dixieland Jass Band (Columbia A2297; 1917)
Darktown Strutters' Ball (Brooks)--Same
Li'l' Liza Jane--One-step--Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band (Victor 18394; 1917)
Coon Band Contest (Pryor)--Same
Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag--One-step (Morton)--Handy's Orchestra (Columbia A2421; 1917)
The Snaky Blues (Nash)--Same
"The Zoo Step"--One-step (Clarence Wilson)--Harold Veo's Orchestra (Victor 18372; 1917)
Don't Leave Me Daddy (J.M. Verges)--Same
Make That Trombone Laugh (Henry Scharf)--Harry Raderman's Jazz Orch. (Okeh 4089; 2930)
Black Diamond Rag (Henry Lodge)--Prince's Band (Columbia A1140; 1912)
Another Rag--A Raggy Rag (Theodore Morse)--Prince's Badn (Columbia A1292; 1913)
I'd Love to Be a Monkey in the Zoo (White)--Anna Wheaton, Soprano (Columbia A2384; 1917)
Anna Wheaton
