Earl Fuller, 1917-1921--Cold Turkey, More Candy, Down Home Rag, Howdy, Singapore, Mummy Mine!

All but two of these tracks are not available on CD, so I'm making them available on blog.  So to speak.

The fun and fascinating Rector Novelty Orch. sides by Earl Fuller (1885-1947) make for a nice distraction from COVID-19 tension, to the extent that distraction from COVID-19 is possible.  The band recorded for Columbia from 1917 to 1919 (there's a great pic below), and it was apparently a totally separate unit from his "jazz" band, which recorded for Victor, and which gets all the attention (though few reissues).  His "jazz" sides don't do much for me, and they don't fit even my open-minded definition of jazz--they're like inept imitations of Dixieland, if you ask me.  Just a group of guys playing in different directions in a wild fashion.  Not uninteresting, but not jazz.  His often amazingly lively novelty sides, however, are of considerable jazz interest, in my view, and they're musically superb, in terms of incredibly solid playing.  Select examples, like Cold Turkey and Pork and Beans, even verge on weird.  Good-weird, I should note--innovatively weird. Of course, if you've never heard the earliest modern dance sides, such as these, then they all sound pretty weird, but Cold Turkey, in particular, sounds downright experimental no matter how many times I play it.  I'd love to have the words.  Of my six (!) copies, I chose the best-sounding copy.  I have no idea if Cold Turkey had the John Lennon meaning back in the late 1910s.

After working on these transfers for a week or more, I'm convinced the Columbia acoustical engineers weren't quite sure how to arrange these guys around the recording horn, because the equalizations vary quite a bit.  And pre-electric 78s did have eqs--emphases on different portions of the frequency range, which were often the result of placing one instrument or section closer to, or farther from, the horn.  And engineers must have had dampening methods--some ability to suppress a given portion of the frequency range.  Say, the bass.  The final selection in this playlist, from 1921 on the lesser-quality Olympic label, required a big boost in the rougly 1,000-2.000 Hz range to get any body in the sound.  I did much tweaking, and re-tweaking on all of these.

For some reason, I always assumed "Rector," as in "Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra," referred to a hotel, but it was a New York City restaurant.  Now we know.  As far as I'm aware, only two of Fuller's Rector sides are commercially available (hm--I already said that, I notice), and a handful of his "jazz" sides.  It's the jazz sides that get the attention, because of the word "jazz."  But people have to get over this childishness of expecting early examples of a style to arrive with a label--common sense tells us that, in the early stages of a style, labels are evolving along with the music.  And many no-"jazz"-in-the-description dance sides from the period just before and after the 1920s are, in my opinion, jazz.  I refer to two or three sides by Harold Veo, many of Paul Whiteman's early efforts, select numbers by Frank Westphal, Jan Garber, the Benson Orchesstra, Gene Rodemich, and so on.  Arranged jazz is fine by me, and I think those seeking high degrees of formal improvisation in the earliest jazz efforts are practicing wishful thinking.  Formal improvisation isn't something that could have crawled otu of the woodwork--at the very least, a system had to evolve that allowed solo space.  When you've got nine or ten guys playing at the same time, there has to be a game plan.  Incredibly, some jazz fans continue to believe that jazz is and was something that just happened.  Guided by some higher hand, I guess.  I'm not an Intelligent Design believer, myself, so....

The Red Hot Jazz site, where I typically go to get info on dance and jazz band line-ups, seems to be down, maybe even dead.  And Brian Rust's American Dance Band Discography gives me the names of only two members of the Rector orch.--Bill Scotti on clarinet and alto sax, and, "during the latter part of this band's existence," the amazing Teddy Brown on xylophone and drums.  Meanwhile, Wikipedia indicates that Brown was featured on these sides as a rule, though it tells us the equally amazing George Hamilton Green, Jr. was also used "in this role."  I've discovered a reliable-seeming source which credits Green with the dizzying, swirling xylophone arpeggios that appear on the 1917 waltz recordings One Fleeting Hour and Castle Valse Classique--the latter a 3/4 version of Dvorak's Humoresque.  To say that Valse drags is quite an understatement, but we have to remember that this is modern dance music getting its start, back when the role of dance music was to accompany all the weird ballroom steps, slides, and spasms of the day.  At least come the 1910s, ballroom dancing was not the sedate, soporific affair presented in movies set in that period--too many of these selections are more uptempo and (for the dancers, certainly) acrobatic than we'd have thought. Or I'd have thought. Or someone would have.

And here is the background on Castle Valse Classique and its connection with Irene and Vernon Castle and Earl Fuller and George Hamilton Green--the source I mentioned.  I think we can assume it's George on the two 12" Columbia waltz sides.  I don't know if the quotation from Old Folks at Home is part of the original arrangement or something Fuller or his arranger stuck in.  Just picture people stop-gliding across a ballroom as you listen to Castle Valse, and just relax with that vision, and soon you will hear only my voice, and nothing but my voice, and then you will steal for me all the TP I command you to.

I'd been assuming for years that the personnel of Fuller's Ted Lewis-dominated jazz outfit was the same as on these, but it doesn't look that way.  This would explain why Lewis' sour clarinet tone is nowhere to be heard on the Rector sides (no knock on fellow Ohioan Lewis, whose corny style I dig), though busy drumming, similar to the percussion on the jazz sides, crops in and out.  In some cases, the percussion comes through loud and crisp--in others, more like mud behind the rest of the orchestra.  The equalizing challenge on these was to maintain a decent low end plus clarity in the "highs."  Not as easy as it may sound.

Apparently, Ted Lewis took off with Fuller's orchestra when a much better offer was given, and I'm guessing it was the jazz band that Lewis took with him, not the Rector band.  Again, I do find the Rector sides to be jazz--orchestrated jazz, but with a decent degree of looseness in the parts, with the xylophone free to roam where he wishes, though on some numbers, he clearly has a designated support or melody-doubling function.  There's a loose, semi-worked-out-on-paper sound to these sides, whether they were tightly arranged or no.  Less freedom to ad-lib than offered by Art Hickman, but enough to make things fascinating.

The strange Cold Turkey (too bad I don't have a decent sheet music cover image) is credited to "Donaldson," and for a long time I figured it must be Walter Donaldson.  Not.  It's Will Donaldosn, who wrote his share of hits, but who may be most famous for co-composing the 1917 ragtime number Rialto Ripples with a 16-year-old George Gershwin.  The extent to which Will did or didn't contribute to this rag number is unknown, but Will got Gershwin published.  I remember learning of this piece way back around 1978, when I was stationed in Scotland and had locally bought a book of ragtime classics.  Never got the original, which has a really cool cover (directly below).  At any rate, at that time, I was able to sight-read the piece, but my piano chops were way above where they are 42 years later.  Doubt I could sight-read it now.

Conditions vary on these, with Russian Rag (by George--Alabama Jubilee--Cobb, not Cobbs, as indicated on the original label) the most worn.  But most are average or well above.  The sort of odd but beautifully conceived Pork and Beans is by famed African American pianist Luckey Roberts, whereas the "Roberts" who gave us the famous Smiles is Lee S. Roberts, whose ragtime march Ching Chong I have on a 12-inch 78 by Prince's Band.   "Mary Earl," composer of Ruspana (a take-off on Rachmaninoff's ultra-famous Prelude in C-sharp minor) as well as Sweet Siamese, was a pseudonym for Robert A. King. Now you know.  I talked about Texas (and Texan) composer David W. Guion in a previous post--in fact, today's file is a re-rip of Texas, and hopefully one with more audio body.  Here he is at Wikipedia.

I had no idea Missouri Waltz (Missouri's official state song since 1949) had a minstrel show origin, and the composer credits on Fuller's side are a bit of a mess.  John V. Eppel (as "Eppel") is credited, though the melody was actually composed by Lee Edgar Settle.  Columbia can be forgiven for not knowing this, but the "Knight, Logan" part of its song credit is a typo--they meant Frederic Knight Logan, the man who did the sheet music arrangement, and who probably didn't use a comma between his middle and surname.  Sounds like a lot of fingers were in this pie, which is one of our many polite descriptions for white-collar theft.

I forgot to include the Graveyard Blues composer on the mp3 tag, so please don't confuse the song with the John Lee Hooker recording that bears no relation.  This 1916 number was by Clarence Woods and John S. Caldwell, and the sheet music shows us the Rector Novelty Orchestra, with Earl himself on drums.  Which is more info that the Brian Rust discography yielded:

Dig the string bass.  And I can't imagine a recording horn picking up an acoustical bass, but who knows?  Note the make-up of the orchestra--more a string band than a "proper" jazz unit, though again I suggest that "proper" has little meaning when applied to a genre still in formation.  In addition to the almost complete Columbia Fuller line-up (I'm short one 78), I have an Olympic label side (a label as cheap as it sounds): Ain't We Got Fun and Just Because.  These two required a major boost in the 1 to 2 kHz range, which is usually overkill for an acoustical 78, but not when they're as under-recorded as on these numbers.  And I included the lone non-jazz Earl Fuller's Orchestra side to be released on Victor--While the Incense Is Burning, from 1917.  This orchestra recorded a number of unreleased takes for Victor, and I wish I could hear them all, but they're long gone, I'm sure.  The Victor and Olympic sides are xylophone-less, for those of you wishing for some relief from the mallets.

Some amazing sounds here, and I hope I did some justice to them, and I hope you enjoy!  I'm offering them in two zip files of fifteen tracks apiece.  Be sure to click on both links!







DOWNLOAD: Earl Fuller, 1917-1921--Part One  Part Two






All Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orch., unless otherwise credited

Cold Turkey--One-step (Will Donaldson)
12th St. Rag (Bowman)
Pork and Beans (Luckey Roberts)
More Candy--One-step (Mel B. Kaufman)
Ida!  Sweet as Apple Cider (Eddie Munson)
One Fleeting Hour (John Stepan Zamecnik, as "Dorothy Lee") (12-inch)
While the Incense Is Burning (Walter Smith)--Earl Fuller's Orchestra
Castle Valse Classique (Dvorak, Arr. by Ford T. Dabney) (12-inch)
Smiles (Lee S. Roberts)
Graveyard Blues (Woods-Caldwell)
Sweet Emalina, My Gal --One-step (Creamer and Layton)
I Ain't Got Nobody Much (Graham-Williams)
Down Home Rag (Wilber C.S. Sweatman)
Mickey--Medley (Williams and Moret)
The Missouri Waltz (Lee Edgar Settle, Frederic Knight Logan, as "Knight, Logan and Eppel")
Here Comes America--Medley One-step (Jack Glogau)
Texas (David W. Guion) (12-inch)
Oriental--One-step (Vincent Rose) (12-inch)
Singapore--Medley (Gilbert and Friedland)
Out of the East--Oriental Fox Trot (Joe Rosey)
Sand Dunes--Oriental One-step (Byron Gay, Arr. Henri Klickermann)
Spaniola (Joe Rosey)
Egyptland (James. W. Casey)
Mummy Mine (Vincent Rose)
Ruspana--One-step (Robert A. King, as "Mary Earl")
Sweet Siamese (Robert A King, as "Mary Earl")
Ain't We Got Fun (Kahn-Egan-Whiting)--Earl Fuller's New York Orch. (Olympic 15116; 1921)
Just Because (Stevens-Frosini)--Same

Lee