Dance Bands From Canada 1922-1930 Producer's Notes
by Bill Pratt
CAPS first CD is out! Producing a CD
reissue from 78s was a new venture for me
but several CAPS members have
considerable experience with such projects and
provided their expertise at various stages. Without
their support, experience, skill, enthusiasm,
knowledge and phenomenal collections the CD
would not have seen the light of day and certainly
not met its target launch date.
The germ of the idea came from a casual comment
in 1996 when CAPS member David Lennick
expressed an interest in producing a "Canadian-
content" CD for the Society. By profession David
is a record producer with numerous credits for
reissues of many types of music from 78 rpm
discs. David's knowledge of early Canadian
recording artists is substantial and, as it turned out,
his vast collection was the source of several of the
78s used on the CAPS CD. David also made the
disc transfers for the project to digital audio tape
which he then passed on to the next key player.
Graham Newton is a former recording engineer for
RCA Victor's Canadian studios in Toronto.
Fortunately for CAPS he now freelances from his
home where he has a remarkable studio of
electronic sound processing equipment and an
impressive list of record reissue projects on which
he has performed the audio restoration magic that
can vastly improve the sound of early recordings.
Graham uses CEDAR processing, the premier
method of restoring sound recordings using digital
signal processing and microcomputer technology.
The digital audio tape transfers are filtered through
the CEDAR boxes, aptly named Decrackler,
Declicker and Dehisser,in real time and clean
audio emerges out the other end! Still, with some
of the less than perfect source material available
for this project it was necessary to remove major
gouges in the record surface by manually editing
the track using computer software. This is
precise and painstaking work.
Jack Litchfield's 1982 publication, The Canadian
Jazz Discography, and his 1986 LP issued on the
British Harlequin label, Jazz And Hot Dance In
Canada, were really my starting points for
identifying relevant and interesting records for
the project. His comprehensive discography gave
me recording dates, matrix numbers and
personnel for some of the sides. I spent a
morning at the University of Toronto's Music
Library listening to the early tracks on the LP.
Excellent choices all and ripe for CD reissue but,
in the end,I elected to duplicate only the
Lombardo Orchestra's superb Cotton Pickers'
Ball. Jack included the Apex version of the
Melody Kings Music (Makes The World Go
'Round) on his LP whereas for the CAPS CD
I used the Berliner recording of the same title. I
am indebted to Jack for his continuous interest
and support of the CAPS project and for his
meticulous proof-reading of the booklet notes.
Gene Miller possesses an extraordinary
collection of original recordings of hot dance and
jazz bands from the 1920s, all carefully
organized and stored in his basement music
archives. He also has a vast collection of music
sheets, original photographs and other ephemera
depicting the bands that I was interested in
including on the CD. More than half of the 24
transfers were made from 78s in Gene's
collection and the majority of photographs and
music sheet covers are also his. I spent
memorable evenings in his music room sampling
scores of 78s to finally isolate the 24 that appear
on the CD. Without Gene's extensive
knowledge of Canadian dance band musicians and without his
generosity in making his collection available to
CAPS the final result would be far less
comprehensive and visually far poorer.
Throughout the project Colin Bray has been my
guide and mentor steering me through the tortuous
path of record production. Colin is co-owner of
Jazz Oracle, one of the premier hot jazz reissue
CD labels, and co-producer of its 19 (to date) CDs
which set a high standard for projects of this type.
Colin is also an historian of 1920s Canadian hot
dance music and authored the extensive booklet
notes for the CAPS CD. With his many collector
contacts he was able to track down some of the
most interesting sides for the project, recordings of
Dave Caplan's Toronto-Band From Canada and
New Princes' Toronto Band made in Germany and
England respectively and therefore quite rare in
this country. Colin encouraged my input in the
final notes and the give and take of ideas and the
continual clarification of the facts substantially
enriched the text.
My first challenge was defining a "Canadian dance
band". "Canadian Dance Bands from the 1920s"
was an obvious title for the CD, but in the end
I decided on "Dance Bands From Canada". This was
purposefully chosen so that the story might reflect
not only bands whose major personnel were
Canadian-born (Romanelli, Munro, Plunkett,
Lombardo, Culley, New Princes' and related
groups ) but also bands with a significant
Canadian connection (Joyce and Waring).
I also included two sides by a band (Leonard),
probably American, that had several long residencies at a
prominent Montreal hotel and recorded
numerous sides at the Berliner recording studios. All of these
bands present important aspects of the "Canadian" story.
Initially my intention was to concentrate on the
216000 series of recordings issued on Berliner's
HMYV label in Montreal. Moogk's Roll Back The
Years conveniently lists all of these records and
local collectors have many of the titles. Several evenings
of listening, however, dispelled any
notion of compiling a significant or even
moderately interesting CD's worth of titles using
only this series. Most of this music is of the
"straight" dance variety, entertaining perhaps in
small doses but difficult to sustain interest for long
periods, especially to fill out the 70 minutes that I
was planning for the CD. It became apparent to
me that the focus should be on dance recordings
by Canadian personnel playing both here and
abroad. Some of the most exciting tracks on the
CD were recorded in the United States, Britain and
Germany.
From the outset I viewed the CAPS project as an
historical reissue that would not concentrate on the
"hottest" sides but rather document the entire
decade. This would perforce span the complete
spectrum and include some straight dance music
from the early years and some hotter tracks from
the mid to late 20s. Thus the CD presents the
earliest side (1922) by the most prominent Toronto
band, Romanelli's Orchestra, and several by its
counterpart in Montreal, the Melody Kings Dance
Orchestra. In 1922 and 1923 these were
considered by Canadians to be the finest "jazz"
bands. The Lombardo tracks are gems and include
the orchestra's first recording in 1924 made at the
Gennett studio in Richmond, Indiana, Cotton
Pickers' Ball. This is considered by some to be the
finest Canadian hot dance record of the 1920s. I
have used the rare Canadian-issued Starr-Gennett
copy of this title from the collection of the
National Library of Canada. You are in for a treat
if you associate Guy Lombardo exclusively with
"the sweetest music this side of heaven". The three
Lombardo sides are some of the best on the CD.
The Canadian connection with Britain is perhaps
the most interesting and involved facet of the story
of Canadian dance bands in the 1920s. Although
the personnel of the three bands that you will hear
(New Princes' Toronto Band, Dave Caplan's
Toronto-Band From Canada and Alfredo And His
Band) is almost exclusively Canadian not a single
one of their records was made or issued in Canada
and they were likely unknown to record buyers at
the time. Consequently the records are extremely
rare and even in Germany, where Dave Caplan
recorded 56 sides for Deutsche Grammophon/Polydor
in 1926, some of the titles are not known to exist.
The Canadian connection of Toronto's Culley
brothers with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, a
widely admired American dance band, is also
fascinating and mostly forgotten. Fred Culley was
concert master of Waring's group for 36 years and,
in a 1971 interview, his brother and fellow
musician Edwin Culley remarked that "there were
five Torontonians in Waring's band". I couldn't
resist including the popular Waring dance tune
Hello Montreal! on the CD because it musically
illustrates the allure of Canadian culture, or at least
of Quebec's relaxed liquor laws, for dance band
musicians during the "Jazz Age"!
David and Graham have worked wonders with the
less than perfect copies of several of the earliest
sides on the CD. One title, Everything Happens
For The Best, was available in four local
collections but none was in excellent condition
from the first note to the last. In the end, Graham
seamlessly blended the first half of one of the
discs with the last half of another resulting in an
excellent transfer. Three of the tracks were
transferred from copies available to us only in
cassette format provided by collectors in England
and Germany. These are some of the rarest sides
on the CD.
Once the titles were identified and the records
located it was then possible to begin to research
and to write the booklet notes. Initially I had
budgeted for a modest 4- or 6-panel gatefold insert
but the more involved the project became the more
apparent it was that the story deserved a
comprehensive telling. As an ephemera collector I
also wanted to include as many photographs of the
bands as possible and I was overwhelmed by the
wealth of rare, unpublished material that came to
light. A snapshot of the New Princes' Toronto
Band taken by one of its band members at a
recording session in the Columbia Studios in
England in 1924 and preserved by its trumpeter,
Alfie Noakes, is a jewel. A trade card from the
same collection, in pristine condition, announcing
"Canada's Gala Night" at the New Princes'
Restaurant in Piccadilly in 1924 - how many of
these are likely to have survived? I wanted to
show the interior of a typical 1920s Canadian
dance hall and tracked down a photograph dated
June 10, 1929 at the Metropolitan Toronto
Reference Library depicting the newly-opened Old
Mill Dance Hall where the Romanelli Brothers and
many other Toronto bands held forth. (I visited the
Old Mill recently and, although the wood beams
are considerably darker and the dance floor is new,
the room is otherwise identical to the 1929
photograph.) So, I suggested to Colin that he write
as much as he needed to tell the story and, with the
addition of a complete discography and
photographs of some of the record labels, the
booklet bloomed to 28 pages.
The Canada Copyright Act states that
a master recording becomes public
domain after 50 years. There is,
however, an independent agency,
CMRRA (Canadian Musical
Reproduction Rights Agency) that
oversees the issuance of mechanical
copyright licenses for reissues such as
the CAPS CD. Mechanical copyright
refers to the "author" of a musical
work, meaning both the composer and
the lyricist, and is administered by the
copyright owner, usually the music
publisher. Copyright extends until 50
years after the death of the last
surviving author. The CMRRA issues
licenses on the basis of 7.4 cents per
song per copy manufactured where the
playing time is five minutes or less. A
license is extremely specific and is
limited to a particular composition as
manufactured by a user on a particular
product with a particular catalogue
number. The CAPS CD includes
obscure titles as well as some well
known songs by famous authors and
more than half fulfilled the conditions
of mechanical copyright.
After photographing the music sheet
covers and the record labels using a
digital camera and massaging the
images using Photo Shop, I used the
computer software program
QuarkXPress to lay out the booklet design. From
the beginning the Canadian composition
Music (Makes The World Go Round), which
I was including on the CD, had struck me as an excellent
sub-title for the project and by a remarkable stroke
of good fortune Gene Miller had a mint copy of
the music sheet in his collection. It guided the
overall design of the booklet cover. The addition
of a Berliner record sleeve with the HMV 78 of
Music highlighted the major Canadian record
company in the 1920s. For the back cover a
Columbia Records leaflet from 1924 advertising
the New Princes' Toronto Band made a nice
juxtaposition with the photograph of the Montreal-
based Melody Kings on the front cover.
For the tray card and the graphic on the face of the
CD I also struck it lucky. The Magic Highway
(music sheet cover illustrated) was the signature
song of Fred Culley at the Royal York Hotel in
Toronto in 1930. Although I wasn't including the
song on the CD - (was it ever recorded?)- the
image of the two dancers set against a backdrop of
the globe was a natural.
Finally, Punch Media in Toronto coordinated the
printing of the booklet and the manufacture and
packaging of the CD. The tracks, list of contributor
and the complete booklet notes together with many
of the photographs are accessible on the CAPS web
site at www.CAPSnews.org.
Since there were only two recording studios in
Canada in the 1920s, Berliner and Compo, and
both of these were located in Montreal, we will
never know what the many other Canadian bands
that fed the dance band craze in other parts of the
country sounded like. We get tantalizing hints from
contemporary newspaper ads and notices and
occasionally an unrecorded band is depicted on the
cover of a music sheet. Such is the case with Irvin
Plumm and his Jasper Park Lodge Orchestra in
1926, one of my favorite band photos. Set deep in
the Canadian Rockies it is unlikely that this band
made the trek east. But even had they ventured
cross country to Montreal how would they have
managed to fit their band into the recording studio?
|