"Personality" Recordings

[LizzieMaine]

While jazz, swing, and R&B records get the bulk of attention from fans of the 78rpm era these days, there's a whole 'nother very fertile field for collecting that's just as much fun and a lot more affordable -- personality records. These are the kind of discs that emphasize the popular show business figures of the day -- singers, entertainers, Broadway figures, even the occasional movie star -- performing some very fine popular tunes.

Personality records run the gamut -- you could certainly put crooners like Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, and Russ Columbo in that genre, along with film and stage figures like Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Fred Astaire and Maurice Chevalier, and torch singers like Ruth Etting, Helen Morgan, and Annette Hanshaw. Some even cross over between genres -- Fats Waller is collected by both jazz and personality fans, Ben "The Old Maestro" Bernie has a following among both personality and dance band buffs, and The Boswell Sisters can find fans among personality collectors, jazz fans, and sister-act enthusiasts.

Me, I enjoy all the personalities named above, and many others. Probably my most unusual personality record is a Brunswick 78 by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson -- who tap dances to "Doin' The New Low Down".

Who else is a "personality record" fan? Who's your favorites?

 

[dhermann1]

Oddities

I've always just called them "Oddities". I pick up odd stuff, that I figure nobody else wants. I have several 78's of Rabbi Joseph Rosenblatt, the great cantor of the 1930's and 40's, I have Danny Kaye singing "Farming", hmmmm . . . what else. I'll have to dig. My 78's are NOT properly stored, and I need to do a project to get them all into protective covers, etc., etc. Let's see, what else. Just randomly grabbing, here's "Danses des Pygmees Batwa, Ngomo, Belgian Congo", (I'm not making this up) from the Denis-Roosevelt African Expedition, produced by Armand Denis Productions, Inc., "Three Naughty Kittens", by the Light Crust Doughboys (a great early western swing group), and somewhere around here I have Merv Griffin's greatest hit, "I've Got Lovely Bunch of Coconuts", with Freddy Martin's Orchestra. And here's a broken one. Drat. I have a little side specialty in 10 inch 33 rpm lo fi records. One of my favorites in that genre is "Songs at Christmastide" with the Ilford Girls Choir, circa 1951. It has 5 songs per side, including "The Holy City", and "Jerusalem". It was my grandmother's and I love it. The Ilford Girls Choir was from Ilford, a not very upscale suburb of London. I often wonder what became of those girls, they all certainly lived through the worst of the Blitz. There must be plenty still out there in England.
Here's another: a sort of brownish paperbacked 78 that says "Hit of the Week", "Many Happy Returns of the Day" by the Maxwell House Orchestra. Must have been some sort of promotion. Lizzie?
Anyhow, if I start digging any more I'll have a bad accident, so who's next up?
Oh, and I have a number of Xavier Cugat rhumba records. I love Cugie.
And the original cast album of "South Pacific".

 

[The Wolf]

Phil Harris was certainly a personality.
Louis Jordan was a personality with his amusing songs and advice. Then he would make you weep with "Nobody Loves You when You're Down and Out".

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Flivver]

I'm a big fan of Billy Jones and Ernie Hare...The Happiness Boys...from the 1920s. I can never get enough of them singing songs like "She Knows Her Onions", "Twisting The Dials" or "Henry's Made A Lady Out Of Lizzie".

These songs often are about topical issues of the day presented in a very humorous way. I wonder if anyone has ever done a compilation of their most popular recordings?

 

[Fletch]

"Henry's Made A Lady Out Of Lizzie".

Love that one.

She's even got a rumbleseat with lots of style and class
The horn just seems to holler out, Toot Toot! They shall not pass!*
*once-famous WW1 expression, coopted by the Spanish Loyalists in the '30s.

Unfortunately no one in 1932 wrote a song about the new V-8, altho Ford later copped a pleasant old ditty called Ro, Ro, Rolling Along for their V-8 Revue transcribed musicale.

New York has always been a hothouse for personality record fans. Folks hereabouts know their Broadway like Detroiters know their iron. In addition - and probably just serendipitously - some of the best straight dance band music out of the 78 era was preserved from extinction by this self-same corps of Men in Chairs, typically fey and a bit scruffy, who lived and/or worked on the periphery of show business.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

When I was a kid we had this old Edison record player, non-electric windup model. (My sister still has it.)
There were a few records which featured this character named "Uncle Josh" or something like that. I guess he could be one of the first stand up comedians who made recordings. He was a sort of country bumpkin dude who told these stories that may have been hilarious back in the day, but have somehow lost their edge over the last 100 years or so.
He would talk about new fangled things of his time such as the automobile, all the while laughing this exaggerated laugh at his own musings.
Very surreal, but interesting nonetheless.

 

[dhermann1]

Billy Murray

I don't have any recordings by him, but I first heard Billy Murray's "The Little Ford Rambled Right Along", from 1915, on a friend's old Victrola. He was probably the first big recording star.
One of my other treasures is a 78 produced in Greensburg, PA (about an hour southeast of Pittsburgh) by Boxer Records. It's Cowboy Phil and the Golden West Girls, singing "Pennsylvania, my Pennsylvania", and on the other side "Trailing", (about the joys of living the nomad's life with a trailer).

 

[Flivver]

Billy Murray

Billy Murray was popular from the turn of the century right into the 1920s. Like Jones & Hare, he often sang about topical issues of the day.

"The Little Ford Rambled Right Along" is one of my favorites too (does that come as a surprise to anyone?).

Other great Billy Murray recordings include "Roll 'Em Girls", done by the Billy Murray Quartette and "Bridgit O'Flynn Oh Where Have You Been", done with Aileen Stanley. Both of these are about the antics of rebellious teenagers of the 1920s. And both are hilarious!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Anyone who's bought 78s in bulk lots can't help but know Billy Murray -- he was the most popular "personality recording artist" of the acoustic era, making hundreds of different sides for various labels under his own name, and likely just as many under pseudonyms, and most of his work is still very much enjoyable today.

My favorite Murray record is a 1919 side called "My Old New Jersey Home," which is a sharp satire both of yearnin'-for-the-old-south minstrel songs and of the uncontrolled proliferation of advertising billboards along the highways of the Northeast. Lotta fun!

 

[LadyStardust]

Chiming in on the Billy Murray appreciation voiced here, he's also a favorite of mine, and I'm always amazed by the sheer amount of work he produced, and with how many different/groups he sang. He was definitely a great(in all senses of the word) personality, and a very fun voice. My favorite song of his is "The Whole Dam Family". The plays on words never fail to make me crack a smile.