Abe Lyman "What Have We Got To Do Tonight But Dance?" on Brunswick 6094 (1931)

Abe Lyman & His Orchestra plays "What Have We Got To Do Tonight But Dance?" on Brunswick 6094, recorded on March 30, 1931.

Well, those are certainly among the best sides that Lyman did.

But compare and contrast...

Milenberg Joys-Fletcher Henderson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuEXyD6vJM8

Milenberg Joys-Bennie Moten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxklKHsYLgU

This was a time when most of the white bands and musicians didn’t fully understand jazz, and that would apply to the public as well.

That’s why Paul Whiteman could bill himself as “The King of Jazz”, and even though he could afford to employ top quality musicians (including several who are legendary for their work outside Whiteman’s control), it was still just a first rate commercial band that occasionally played jazz, not a true jazz band.

The same would apply to Lyman.

Well, I really don’t fault Whiteman for the “King of Jazz” moniker all that much. Having spoken to enough people who bought records back during that era, it was pretty obvious that the term ‘jazz’ was utilized more broadly by the public at large than it later came to be. More like it was a demarcation point between the older Joseph C. Smith or Benson Orchestra styles and the looser, peppier offerings by Whiteman, Isham Jones, and Paul Specht (whose small-group records under the name of “the Georgians” are pretty solidly jazz any way you slice it; I’m particularly partial to their very first recording in 1922, a rather dark take on the old “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”).

But I certainly understand the general differences between the black and white jazzmen. Sort of like the differences between the relaxed Thomas Morris Past Jazz Masters 1923 recording of “Lonesome Journey Blues” and the nervy Little Ramblers 1924 recording of “Prince of Wails.”. Sort of encapsulates it. But personally, I don’t have a preference. I love ‘em both. Have just about everything on cd. And, a sturdy batch of original 78s as well, including a King Oliver on Gennett from his first session.

I have gravitated to jazz of the late 20s/early 30s era, for the more sophisticated urbane style, and also the better quality that came with electrical recording. I also like early up-tempo hillbilly records like Gid Tanner’s.

But everybody’s taste is different, and that’s what’s great about record collecting.

When I was in my teens, I discovered a small batch of 78s that had come from my father’s uncle after he died. Apparently, the bulk of his collection was broken up and used for landfill, and that apparently included a large number of 16 inch transcriptions from what I was told.

In that batch were some good 20s dance bands, and I discovered that I liked the sound. So, that’s when I got the record collector disease!

I don’t have a huge 78 collection (45’s are a different matter, though), but I do have some nice stuff. One of my best is a mint copy of King Oliver’s Snake Rag on Okeh.

One interesting find is the Aug. 1924 copy of Etude magazine, the cover feature of which was “The Jazz Problem”.

It contains drivel like this...

“When a savage distorts his features and paints his face so as to produce startling effects, we smile at his childishness; but when a civilized man imitates him, not as a joke but in all seriousness, we turn away in disgust. Attempts have been made to ‘elevate’ jazz by stealing phrases from the classic composers and vulgarizing them by the rhythms and devices used in jazz. This is not only an outrage on beautiful music, but also a confession of poverty, of inability to compose music of any value on the part of the jazz writers.”

Wow, and I used to pick up old “Etude” magazines for my mother, at flea-markets and such!

By the way nobody’s a bigger fan of Bennie Moten than me. Ditto Tiny Parham. Heck, what about Zach Whyte’s Chocolate Beau Brummels? I love their “Wailing Blues” Gennett. But I started out, long ago, with big-band stuff (Goodman, Basie, etc.), and generally my tastes grew backward in time as opposed to forward. I’ve tried to be a completist in regards to vintage jazz and hot-dance. The CD-releases have really dried up the past few years. The only two I noticed and picked up this year were a new Frog release of Clarence Williams (all of which I already had, but these were upgrades), and a Rivermont release of early, acoustic Ted Lewis (better than I expected).

Already had quite a lot of 78s, but about twenty years ago a neighbor of my late grandparents gave me a collection she had up in her attic that belonged to her father. Her father had been a budding musician in the early-to-mid-1920s, and picked up records to learn the latest musical styles (being slightly pre-radio, it was the only way to learn). The records were heavy into jazz and territory bands. Lots of the early New Orleans stuff, like Tony Parenti, Halfway House Orch., Johnny DeDroit, and whatnot. Got a lot of real rarities with this batch.

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