That Hifalutin, Rootin'-Tootin', Son-of-a-Gun from Arizona

Vaudeville singer and recording artist Bob Roberts did well in front of the microphones in the early years of the last century, even rivalling such stars as Billy Murray for popularity with such fare as "The Woodchuck Song." But his fortunes were ebbing in 1912 when he managed to enjoy one last hit, a record that would become one of the most popular of that year - "Ragtime Cowboy Joe." 

It's a song that was still well known when I was a pup 40 years later, and was one of my firm favorites. In today's post we'll look back at its recordings over the period from Bob Roberts' Camden session until the Jo Stafford disc of 1949 - one that I would have heard as a young Bronco Buster.

"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" was the handiwork of three successful young songwriters. The clever words are by Grant Clarke, who also wrote the words to "Am I Blue?", "Second Hand Rose" and "He'll Have to Get Under (Get Out and Get Under)." Maurice Abrahams wrote the music for the latter song. Lewis Muir's biggest hit was "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee." 

The story is told that Abrahams was inspired to write "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" by the cowboy outfit sported by his young nephew, Joe. That sounds like a publicist's concoction, though.

The Bob Roberts record is a fun listen, with the singer coming through with great presence, although he is mainly notable for being able to enunciate at a rapid clip while singing loudly into the recording horn. As per usual in 1912, the orchestra makes wheezing sounds in the background.

The Girls of the Golden West

"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" had a recording revival in 1938, for reasons that aren't clear to me. Our next disc comes from that year and is by a radio act called the Girls of the Golden West. Said girls were two sisters (Dorothy and Millie Good) who named their act after a Puccini opera. Dorothy accompanied the sisterly vocals on guitar in this recording. They seem under-rehearsed, which is surprising because they surely had the song in their repertoire.

Ella Logan

The unlikeliest 1938 disc may have been a Brunswick release by Ella Logan, a Glasgow-born band singer who would not have her greatest success for nearly another decade - in Finian's Rainbow. Her backing on the record is by a Perry Botkin group.

Singer-songwriter Pinky Tomlin did well with his 1939 recording, where he was backed by the Foursome and Harry Sosnik's band. Grant Clarke's lyrics had called Ragtime Cowboy Joe a "son-of-a-gun from Arizona" but Tomlin relocated him to Oklahoma, his home state. Pinky's greatest hits were "The Object of My Affection" and "The Love Bug Will Bite You If You Don't Watch Out."

Louise Massey and the Westerners

The Good sisters weren't the only country act to feature "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" - Louise Massey and the Westerners recorded it in 1939 for Conqueror. They were very much a Western swing outfit at the time, with a prominent trumpet similar to Bob Wills' band. Louise isn't featured on this record; I believe the lead vocal is by her brother Curt, who could have used another take. Curt, who is in the center of the photo above, later had a successful solo career.

Finally, Jo Stafford's 1949 recording. This is certainly the best sung rendition but it has a few mildly mysterious elements. First the label claims the song is from Hello, Frisco, Hello. True, but that Alice Faye film had come out six years earlier, and the song had also been used in a more recent movie, 1945's Incendiary Blonde with Betty Hutton. The label also claims the piano solo is by Pat Gillham, which may be the case, but if so, he has no other recording credits I can find. The Jo Stafford discography and Wikipedia both claim the pianist is actually Joe "Fingers" Carr. But that name is a pseudonym for Lou Busch, who hadn't started recording as "Fingers" just yet. Was "Pat Gillham" another nom du disque that Busch used before the Carr identity?

The Stafford record was not the end of Ragtime Cowboy Joe's recording history. I have spared you and the song the indignity of including the most recent hit version - a 1959 single by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Today, an adaptation of the tune is in use as a fight song by at least one US university - that of Wyoming.

These recordings were redone from Internet Archive needle drops.

Paul Kletzki's 1948 'Siegfried Idyll'

When we last heard from the urbane gentleman at the right, he was conducting a Wagner program that included a stereo version of the Bayreuth master's most pacific score, the Siegfried Idyll. 

It was not the first time that he (Paul Kletzki) had recorded the Idyll. The maestro had started recording for EMI in late 1946, and by the time he got around to the Idyll in May 1948, he had already set down the Lohengrin preludes and the Flying Dutchman overture from Wagner's oeuvre.

But his way with the Siegfried Idyll was special, although certainly much different from what Cosima Wagner would have heard from her window on Christmas morning 1870, when Hans Richter and a small ensemble serenaded her to mark the birth of the Wagners' son Siegfried.

The 1870 ensemble included a relative handful of instruments. Today and in Kletzki's day the work is usually performed with a bigger ensemble - even bigger than the expanded chamber orchestration that Wagner published.

Still and all, it remains a unique work in Wagner's catalogue, here in a graceful, yet carefully controlled performance from the vintage Philharmonia Orchestra, in a beautiful recording from the long-lost Kingsway Hall.

Paul Kletzki can also be heard on my other blog in music of Brahms and Mendelssohn.

The Foursome - 1926-37 Singles

Back in April I posted some Gershwin songs as performed in 1939 by the Foursome vocal group, both on their own and accompanying Shirley Ross. That delightful act mated clever vocal arrangements to harmonizing on the ocarina, the sweet-potato shaped wind instrument with a distinctive sound. They helped popularize the instrument in the 1930s.

Today, a return to the Foursome via eight additional songs, ranging from their first record, from 1926, through to the bulk of their solo discs, made for Decca in 1937, and including the first recording of their most famous number, the Gershwins' "Bidin' My Time."

I am indebted to Jordan Young's biography of the group on Allmusic for much of the following information. The original group included Marshall Smith, Dwight Snyder, Harry Isaacs and Kearney Walton, all from the Pacific Northwest. By 1926, they had recorded a single with bandleader Paul Ash, "There Ain't No Maybe in My Baby's Eyes," a big hit song that year. Ash's version is bouncy in the style of the time, and the Foursome acquit themselves well, although their style was not yet distinctive.

By 1930, the group had appeared in a few films then on Broadway in Ripples, an Oscar Levant-Irving Caesar musical that went nowhere. By this time, the group consisted of Marshall Smith, Dwight Snyder, Del Porter and Raymond Johnson, the members for most of the ensemble's history.

Not sure, but this may include at least three of the Foursome - still from Girl Crazy

Ripples may have flopped, but the quartet had much better luck with their next opportunity - Girl Crazy from the mighty Gershwins. Introducing "Bidin' My Time" helped make their career. This set includes their first recording, made for Brunswick in 1930, which presumably is close to what was heard at the Alvin Theater as the opening number in the show. (Confidentially, their 1939 remake is better.)

By 1937, the group had secured a Decca recording contract, and devoted its solo first session to a dynamic specialty by Del Porter and Ray Johnson, "Sweet Potato Swing," which was backed by the 1923 chestnut "Nobody's Sweetheart," which is handled much better than the song deserved. By this time, the group had mastered playing their ocarinas. Jordan Young quotes Ray Johnson: "We worked like hell to get them in tune. You'll never hear that sound again - nobody would be fool enough to do it."

The Foursome

The final four songs in this set come from a November 1937 recording date, where the Foursome was joined by a Perry Botkin ensemble, with Botkin the stylish guitarist and Spike Jones as the drummer. 

Again the group reached back to the rhythm numbers of the 1920s for "My Honey's Lovin' Arms" and "Sweet Georgia Brown," both well suited to their style, and both most impressive. They added "Chinatown, My Chinatown," a 1906 number which is badly dated today but was a jazz favorite for many years, and "Blue (and Broken-Hearted)," which was popular in 1922 and for some time thereafter. The Foursome do both beautifully.

Perry Botkin

The groups' final records under their own name were included in the previous post. They also kept busy accompanying some of Decca's biggest artists, including Bing Crosby and Dick Powell. As I mentioned in the earlier article, later on, Del Porter started a band called the Feather Merchants, which eventually turned into Spike Jones and the City Slickers. The Allmusic article adds that Porter, Johnson and Snyder also were in a group called the Sweet Potato Tooters, and that the first two appeared on Capitol as members of the Starlighters. (The version of that group that I am familiar with had different personnel, however.)

Most of these recordings come from Internet Archive needle drops, which I've cleaned up in ambient stereo, but which still have some residual noise at times. Great performances, though!

Constant Lambert Conducts 'The Skaters Waltz'

In 1937, Composer-conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51) devised a ballet score for the Vic-Wells Ballet called Les Patineurs, utilizing music from two operas by Giocomo Meyerbeer. Selections from that score have appeared on disc several times, including a set by Lambert in 1939. My other blog has the 1950 Sadler's Wells recording led by John Hollingsworth, one of Lambert's successors with the company.

Émile Waldteufel

By the time of the Hollingsworth recording, Lambert was a sick man who would survive only until August of the following year. Fortunately the UK Columbia company had him in the recording studio several times in 1950, with his final session in late September. Among those last dates were a few devoted to the works of Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915), the Alsatian composer whose best-known work was another (and better known) Les Patineurs - in the Anglophone world usually called The Skaters Waltz.

Lambert also recorded more works by Waldteufel at the same time - Estudiantina, Pomone and Sur la plage. I don't - or to be more accurate, Internet Archive does not - have those discs. A shame because Lambert and the Philharmonia Orchestra do Les Patineurs beautifully, and the Kingsway Hall sound as remastered in ambient stereo is excellent.

I admire Lambert's conducting, and generally like his championing of lighter works such as this. In his last year of recording, he had a final go at Walton's Façade (which can be found on my other blog), plus Suppé's Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna (also available there). His last recorded performance was his own arrangement for orchestra of Chabrier's piano piece Ballabile (which I don't have).