Teens decade Music... Boring?

[Victrolacollector]

These are all very great insights to music of the teens.

I actually like Harry Lauder, Alma Gluck and many of the red seal Victors from the era. It just seems the Xylophone records are the ones I am not very big on. I am sure its a matter of taste.

I agree with the statement about putting on a red seal Victor and dimming the lights, closing the eyes and it is some of the most beautiful and clearest sounding music.

[ambrola]

I will get jumped on for this, but I don't listen to a lot of music on my phonographs. Most of the music just sucks. Now don't get me wrong, I love Red Wing, The Preacher and the Bear, Aunt Dinahs Golden Wedding and Sousa Marches. My personal all time favorite record is a white label, Red Wing. I hate Collins and Harlan but have a ton of them. I guess it because I don't play a lot of records. I once was working on a Victor 4-7, and I can't remember the record I had on it, but I loved it. It was a big band song.

[HisMastersVoice]

I hate Collins and Harlan but have a ton of them.

I'd be happy to dispose of them for you, PM me if interested.

[Wolfe]

I think the 1910s and early 20s had some of the finest popular music ever written:

They Didn't Believe Me (1914)
The Ladder of Roses (1915)
The Perfect Song (1915)
I Ain't Got Nobody (1916)
Poor Butterfly (1916)
Till the Clouds Roll By (1917)
Till We Meet Again (1918)
Smiles (1918)
Beautiful Ohio (1918)
After You've Gone (1918)
I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (1918)
A Good Man is Hard to Find (1919)
Swanee (1919)
A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody (1919)
My Baby's Arms (1919)
Waiting for the Sun to Come Out (1920)
The entire score of Sally

I could go on, but the above group is sufficient. Liking the *songs* from that era might not always translate to liking the *recordings*, but I think very highly of the arrangements found on records by the Victor Military Band, Joseph C. Smith and other dance bands. Their subtlety and taste rewards careful listening. So do the vocal records by established stage celebrities and studio vocalists.

-HA

Joseph C. Smith's are among my very favorite dance band records.

Count me as another not at all bored with this era. It's quite exciting in a lot of ways. There was a lot of change going on.

[John]

Generally right before the coming of a great new genre, there's a compost-pile of crap from a genre that's running on fumes. In the late '40s and early '50s, the pop music sections in music shops and radio stations were filled to capacity with schmalz (Babbbyyyy, Loooovee is strange ), novelties/weird stuff (generic electric organ solos), country, and extremely bland jazz. Then rock 'n roll came along and breathed new life into the pop music industry. People were buying the records, watching performances on TV, new stars were made, teens rebelled again, and labels were making tons of money. Even nowadays, I'd say that pop music is reaching another breaking point. Hyper-manufactured acts, top-billed producers, and the reused themes of clubbing/girls/money/fame/sex, etc. have been clogging the top 40 since the '90s. There are good artists (Timberlake, Macklemore, etc.), but they are few. Pop music is a visceral, shallow market. It has always been aimed towards the lowest-common denominator, not the discerning music lover. Nobody in their right minds would say that "Love Me Do" or "Twist 'n Shout" is lightyears ahead of "What Makes You Beautiful" or "Baby". All 4 are/were cheesy, meaningless pop tunes designed to make pre-teen girls swoon. It wasn't until the Beatles begin taking shrooms and putting out really oddball stuff that they began to get noticed and acclaimed.


Anyways....

The teens were another "breaking point" for pop music. Ragtime "songs", minstrel ditties, and weepy ballads had run their course in the previous decade, but jazz hadn't been recorded yet, so there was nothing new. Plus, a war going on led to many war/victory-themed marches, but for the most part, it was just blah. In the collection of 78s I inherited, there were only 1 or 2 pop records from before 1922, which shows that the pop music of that time was pretty dry, even for my great-grandparents. Their piano-rolls and sheet music from the same period also reflected that sentiment-Mostly operatic/classical, with small smatterings of showtunes, ethnic comedy, and ragtime/novelties. Then again, they were wealthy and probably had more sophisticated tastes than the average person in 1915.

All that being said, the ones that I do have are...interesting. Sometimes, it's in a trainwreck sorta way (Cross My Heart & Hope to Die), and sometimes it's in a historical context (Oh! What a Time for the Girls (When the Boys Come Marching Home!). Not something I'd listen to often, but an interesting peek into another period in time.

[Roaring20s]

You won't catch me in a lie, even I, roaring20s, have many likes from the decades prior. The sad truth is how boring we all are to a generation growing without knowledge of this media and its instruments!

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A Polygraph! Really?!

[CptBob]

That's an interesting analysis John and one that rings true, but in addition we have to take into account the fact that the genres that we're more interested in are the ones that we have more points of connection with. From the perspective of the decade 1913-1922, sentimental songs, music hall and religious records were the past and jazz and dance bands were the future. That statement is, of course, a generalisation. But it is true to say we have fewer points of contact with the former and more with the latter because of the way those genres developed. What we can't do is put ourselves in the position of the listener of say 1913.

[FloridaClay]

Young people, quite naturally, want to explore who they are and find their own voices. It is part of separating from parents and moving into adulthood. Part of that is, with exceptions of course, rejecting the music of older generations. It has always been that way and always will be. Today's rebel is tomorrow's old codger.

And I suspect each generation in turn, and throughout its lifetime, secretly (or not so secretly) thinks that only the music of its generation was the genre that moved in the right directions, stands out from the pack, and was/is the best.

Clay

[Wolfe]

There was jazz being recorded in this time period, vaudeville blues shouters, pop songs getting a little edgier especially after WWI. People like the Gershwins and Irving Berlin were working...

It wasn't all just "Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet Sally Dear" or whatever. "Uncle Josh's Train Trip With His Cousin The Coon."

[marcapra]

I have a box of records that someone gave me at a swap meet and they are old Magic Notes Columbia's from the teens, mostly 12 inchers. I thought they were just junk that I should probably just give away and I did give some away. Some of them were duplicates, like 25 of the same record. Must be dealer stock. but I've been playing some of them lately and they are very pleasant, at least some of them. A lot of them are by Prince and his orchestra who plays a lot of elegant sounding waltzes. They sound like background music for old movies. Very nice. I found one record by the Jockers Brothers Columbia A6062 (1918) 12 inch playing "While the Incense is burning" medley fox trot. I guess that's the name of the musical. The first song is called "I'll take California for Mine" by Billy Frawley. Then I thought that couldn't be William Frawley who played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, could it? After doing a little research on the Internet I found out it was him. It turns out Billy Frawley was the first singer to sing the 1912 song "My Melancholy Baby" and he also helped introduced My Mammy and Carolina in the Morning in 1922. Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Frawley