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Fred Rich and his Hotel Astor Orchestra:

I'm sitting on the Top the World

Harmony 64-H, 1925

Excellent dance song! Thanks for posting this, Norman.

On the lighter side, the title of the song brings to mind an image of the earth from afar, showing a guy with a prominent derrière sitting atop a rounded section of the planet, as if it were a sofa cushion.



Rocky

Norman,

Thank you for posting this
I love this song and this is a great rendition!

Paal.

This is pretty good! And for once we have a Harmony that doesn't sound as if it were recorded down a garden hose. This is real dance tempo stuff. Kinda makes you want to fox trot across the living room. I'd like to know who is doing the trumpet solo .
JRT

Hot tune!

Allegedly this songs title and general mood inspired the Chatmon Brothers (of the Mississippi Sheiks) to write their best know song, with the same title.
Not much in common though, except for the obvious title & when listen to them right after each other, there is actually the same sorts of feelings in the music.

This song was later on covered by a lot of artists from The Wolf to Milton Brown. Even later on, it became a staple song for Grateful Dead at their live shows.

By the way, I searched a bit to try to figure out who the trumpeter was.
I found no details about the Astor Orchestra, other then that they were a house band of the Astor Hotel and went under different name, sometimes the Astorians and so on.

Probably no known musicians, but rather a mixed bunch of guys, anyone with the proper skills could play at any given time. Not uncommon in those days.
A lot of very talented artists that never got that "break" and became a known name.

Great song Norman. Shows how good acoustic recordings could be and this Harmony proves that good sounding recordings did roll off their production line!

RJ

According to Brian Rust, this was recorded in NY on October 28, 1925.

He also lists a collective personnel of the band: Hymie Haberman - Mike Mosiello - Leon McConville -t; Lloyd Turner - Earl Kelly -tb; Jimmy Dorsey -cl-as; Ken "Goof" Moyer -cl-as-mel; Rudy Adler -ts; Jimmy Johnston -bsx; Phil Oliwitz -vn; Fred Rich -p-ldr; Unknown bj; Jack Hansen -bb; Ray Bauduc -d.

It is a great recording - and one of the best sounding acoustics I've ever heard!

Thank you for the info, I'll keep this with the record.