Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Europe's Society Orchestra, from 1914: "The Castles in Europe," a.k.a. "Castle House Rag"


Above: A Victor record sleeve I forgot I owned.  It features Irene and Vernon Castle, the Castles of "The Castles in Europe."


So, guess what?  SoundCloud reinstated The Castles in Europe after deleting it for copyright reasons!  I explained that the recording is question is a 101-year-old Victor label 78, and they wrote back and said:

"Good news! We’ve reinstated this track to your account.

We're constantly working on making our copyright processes better, but mistakes do sometimes occur. Thank you for your patience as we looked into things, and apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Thanks,

The SoundCloud team"

How cool is that?  So, of course, I'm glad I disputed the deletion.

And... here is the track.  It's an absolutely amazing ragtime-to-jazz performance composed and arranged by James Reese Europe, music director for Irene and Vernon Castle (see sleeve scan above).  The restoration is mine.  I tried to do justice to the incredible percussion on this track.

Actually, I decided to link you to the entire set of 78s I posted, 16 in all, starting out with the 1914 masterpiece in question:

Dance and Jazz 78s, Part 1--Late 1910s to early 1920s




Lee

2 comments:

Ernie said...

You fought the law...and won!

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Indeed!