For My Sweetheart / The Harmonians

[Wolfe]

The 'Harmonians' deliver a pretty in the pocket dance band arrangement/performance, complete with some surprisingly jazzy, hootchie-kootchie solo turns. Vocal is by Irving Kaufman. Recorded in 1926.



PLAY

[EdisonSquirrel]

Wolfe, very nice! It's amazing how many treasures of dance band music lie within the grooves of the Harmony label.



Rocky

[WDC]

You can really find some amazing stuff on Harmony. Great song!

[Lenoirstreetguy]

I always grab Harmonys : they can be quite jazzy. But they do have a funny recorded sound. sound: the trumpet always sounds like a kazoo and the tuba sounds like a bathtub hose. But the vocals are usually clear as crystal. Acoustic though they were, they seemed to have sold pretty well in the face of the early electricals..of course the price helped.
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JRT

[Schmaltz]

I just posted a Harmonians side on my "old schmaltz" web site. You can find "Thanks for the Buggy Ride" in the archives (see the link in my signature below) and, when you're there, follow the link for "New Additions" to find "Sunny Skies."

[EdisonSquirrel]

Harmony records have a unique "boxed-in" sound that was not found on earlier acoustic records.

It is reported on Dismuke's site that Columbia had updated its recording studios in 1923; the updated equipment was obsolete in just two years due to the advent of electric recording. Columbia decided to relegate the recently acquired acoustic equipment to its Harmony discount label as opposed to discarding it.

That being the case, I wonder why the Harmony "sound" was so one-of-a-kind.

I understand that the late sound engineer John R. T. Davies did not consider Harmony records to be acoustic. Maybe he knew something that we don't.



Rocky

[Viva-Tonal]

Beginning around late 1928 or early 1929, the H/D/VT series began to have electrically recorded sides amongst the acoustics. Many of them still lacked the W prefix, so you have to listen to them to determine which is which.

I don't know when they began placing the W on them, but my battered VT of 'Georgia Moonlight Serenaders' doing 'At your command' (W.351038-2) and 'Many happy returns' (W.351037-2) (vocals by 'Bobby Dix'--Dick Robertson actually) recorded 19 June 1931, sports the W on both sides, and 'Electrically Recorded' on the labels, and mentions Columbia Phonograph Company at the bottom of them.

I'm thinking I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but the H/D/VT series also sported some of the last acoustic sides recorded anywhere. The last known to be recorded and released was 'There's a wah-wah gal in Agua Caliente' by the 'Golden Gate Orchestra' (Harmony 1183-H, VT 2183-V etc), matrix 150528, recorded 23 May 1930!

[Lenoirstreetguy]

They sneaked in the odd electric side without telling to avoid paying the royalty to Western Electric, whose equipment they were obviously using. The later Velvet Tones 'fess up and put the W in the wax. They probably had received a terse letter from Western Electric's legal department.

[Viva-Tonal]

Which they still had to use, as they didn't have an in-house electronics concern to develop a new one, as RCA did for Victor.

(Makes me wonder, if there had been no antitrust issues at play, if EMI, when it formed, would not have sold the US part of Columbia, would US Columbia have continued on with the WE system, or which of the other major electrical systems that newly emerged would they have likely adopted? RCA's? Or Blumlein's, developed for UK Columbia, then adopted for Abbey Road Studios and elsewhere in Europe?)

[Wolfe]

Harmony records have a unique "boxed-in" sound that was not found on earlier acoustic records.

It is reported on Dismuke's site that Columbia had updated its recording studios in 1923; the updated equipment was obsolete in just two years due to the advent of electric recording. Columbia decided to relegate the recently acquired acoustic equipment to its Harmony discount label as opposed to discarding it.

That being the case, I wonder why the Harmony "sound" was so one-of-a-kind.

I understand that the late sound engineer John R. T. Davies did not consider Harmony records to be acoustic. Maybe he knew something that we don't.



Rocky

I wonder why Davies might have thought that. Be interested to hear his comments in more detail.

At least in the case of this record, it sounds to me like they might have used a very large, all encompassing horn.

When Kaufman starts singing, you can hear a bit of reverberation around his voice bouncing around in there, and when soloists come in after him, en masse, they don't have that strangled quality that they often do, when they have to crowd around the tight space.