Leo (F.) Reisman (October 11, 1897 - December 18, 1961) was a violinist and bandleader in the 1920s and 1930s. Born and reared in Boston, Reisman studied violin as a young man, and formed his own band in 1919. He became famous for having over 80 hits on the popular charts during his career. Jerome Kern called Reisman's orchestra "The String Quartet of Dance Bands".

Mr. Reisman's first recording was on a 10" in. 78rpm record for Columbia Records, recorded on January 10, 1921 - the two titles being "Love Bird", with a catalog issue of Columbia A-3366, mx.79634 and the other title being "Bright Eyes", with a catalog issue of Columbia A-3366, mx.79635.

Reisman recorded for Columbia exclusively from July 1923 through March 11, 1929, when he signed with Victor and stayed until October 1933. He then signed with Brunswick and stayed until 1937 when he re-signed with Victor. During his 1929-1933 Victor period, Reisman recorded many lesser-known period Broadway songs, some of which were recorded by no other band.

Reisman also had the habit of featuring composers and Broadway performers as band vocalists, including Harold Arlen, Fred Astaire, Clifton Webb, and Arthur Schwartz. He also featured Lee Wiley in 1931-32 for her first 3 recordings. More often than not, his vocalists were Frank Luther, Dick Robertson and later Sally Singer and George Beuler. A notable recording from this era was "Happy Days Are Here Again" in November 1929, with vocals by Lou Levin.

Among his more popular hits were his #1 recordings of Cole Porter's "Night and Day" (1932) and Con Conrad's "The Continental" (1934), and Astaire's recording of Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" (1935).

Reisman's was primarily a dance orchestra; he was not a fan of jazz music, but some of his early 1930s 78 RPM recordings were a bit "hot". (However, Reisman employed the legendary trumpet player Bubber Miley in 1930-31, who had been a featured member of Duke Ellington's orchestra.)

Eddy Duchin was a member of Leo Reisman's orchestra; it was Reisman who gave Duchin his big break.¹ The band leader and TV personality, Mitch Miller, also was a member of Reisman's orchestra.²

Leo Reisman died in New York City on December 18, 1961 at the age of 64.

External links[link]

• Leo Reisman at IMdb
• Leo Reisman at Fadograph's Weblog: contemporary comments, personal photos, links to music, notes for a Bio

References[link]

1 The Eddy Duchin Story. Columbia Pictures, Samuel A. Taylor (screenplay) and Leo Katcher (story), released 21 June 1956 (USA)

2 William G. Hyland, George Gershwin, A New Biography (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 151

This article about an American musician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Leona Belle Helton (born January 7, 1943 in Vienna, Missouri) is an American country music singer known professionally as Leona Williams. Active since 1958, Williams has been a backing musician for Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard, to whom she was married between 1978 and 1983. She also charted eight times on Hot Country Songs, with her only Top 40 hit being a duet with Haggard titled "The Bull and the Beaver."

Biography[link]

Leona Belle Helton was born January 7, 1943 in Vienna, Missouri.^[1] Active in her family's band since childhood, she had a radio program on KWOS in Jefferson City, Missouri when she was fifteen.^[1] Later on, she worked as a bass guitarist and backing vocalist in Loretta Lynn's road band. By 1968, Williams signed to the Hickory record label and released two singles: "Once More" and "Country Girl with Hot Pants On."^[1] In 1976, she recorded the album San Quentin's First Lady for MCA Records, which was the first country album recorded by a female artist inside a prison.^[1] She also joined Merle Haggard's road band in the mid-1970s, supplanting his estranged wife, Bonnie Owens. Leona wrote two of Merle's #1 hits, "Someday When Things Are Good", and "You Take Me For Granted". She also wrote songs for Connie Smith--"Dallas", Loretta Lynn--"Get Whatcha Got And Go", and others. Between 1978 and 1983, she was married to Haggard, and in 1978, the two charted in the country Top Ten with the song "The Bull and the Beaver."^[1] She recorded two singles for Elektra Records in 1981, and charted another duet with Haggard titled "We're Strangers Again."^[2] She later married singer-songwriter Dave Kirby in 1985,^[2] and remained married to him until his 2004 death. Williams continues to tour with her son, Ron.^[3]

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

References[link]

Adam Aston (Adam Wiński, born Adolf Loewinsohn, aka Adam Stanisław Lewinson, recorded also under names J. Kierski, Adam Winski and Ben-Levi^[1], born 1902 in Warsaw, Poland, died 1993 in London. Polish Jewish singer, actor and pianist, worked often with Henryk Wars.

He debuted at the revi-teater (music hall, cabaret) Morskie Oko in Warsaw. He made his first record in 1927; in 1930 he began to work with Henryk Wars at the Morskie Oko cabaret and adopted his stage name of Adam Aston.^[2][3]

He recorded for Syrena-Electro, Odeon, Parlophon, Columbia, and Lonora, singing as many as 900 sides between 1930-39.^[1] He also appeared in a few musical film comedies including Dwie Joasie and Manewry miłosne in 1935; he sang the Polish version of Dancing Cheek to Cheek (Polish title W siódmym niebie (In Seventh Heaven)).

After the outbreak of the war he was evacuated to the East and performed in Lvov. Later he joined the 2nd corps of General Ander's Army. He spent the rest of his life in Italy, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

References[link]

External links[link]

• notes on Aston from GWIAZDOZBIÓR POLSKIEJ PIOSENKI

Label of a Sam Lanin recording on Banner Records.

Sam (C.) Lanin (September 4, 1891 - May 5, 1977) was an American jazz bandleader.

Lanin's brothers, Howard and Lester, were also bandleaders, and all of them had sustained, successful careers in music. Lanin was one of ten children born to Russian-Jewish immigrants who emigrated to Philadelphia in the decade of the 1900s. Sam played clarinet and violin while young, and in 1912 he was offered a spot playing in Victor Herbert's orchestra, where he played through World War I. After the war he moved to New York City and began playing at the Roseland Ballroom in late 1918. There he established the Roseland Orchestra; this ensemble recorded for the Columbia Gramophone Company in the early 1920s.

Recordings[link]

Sam recorded with a plethora of ensemble arrangements, under names such as Lanin's Jazz Band, Lanin's Arcadians, Lanin's Famous Players, Lanin's Southern Serenaders, Lanin's Red Heads, Sam Lanin's Dance Ensemble, and Lanin's Arkansaw Travelers. He did not always give himself top billing in his ensemble's names, and was a session leader for an enormous number of sweet jazz recording sessions of the 1920s. Among the ensembles he directed were Ladd's Black Aces, The Broadway Bell-Hops, The Westerners, The Pillsbury Orchestra and Bailey's Lucky Seven. He had a rotating cast of noted musicians playing with him, including regular appearances from Phil Napoleon, Miff Mole, Jules Levy Jr. and Red Nichols, as well as Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Manny Klein, Jimmy McPartland, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Lang, Bunny Berigan, Nick Lucas and Frankie Trumbauer.

Radio[link]

Lanin did little actual playing on these records; his main contributions were clean, well-orchestrated arrangements and session directions. In addition to his recordings, he also played regularly on radio after 1923, and the Roseland Orchestra played on New York radio weekly every Monday from 1923 to 1925. He entered into a sponsorship with Bristol-Myers for their toothpaste, Ipana; as a result, his ensemble was renamed The Ipana Troubadors. In 1928 and 1929, Lanin recorded with Bing Crosby.

The 1929 stock market crash hit Sam Lanin hard, unlike his brother Lester; in 1931, he lost his contract with Bristol-Meyers, his radio show and the name Ipana Troubadors. By the middle of the 1930s, Sam was spending much of his time cutting transcription discs. While his fame had waned, he was still well off from the money he saved in the 1920s and retired from the music business by the end of the 1930s. He was essentially forgotten at the same time Lester went on to stardom. He died in 1977, having never returned to music.

Further reading[link]

• Sam Lanin at Allmusic.com
• Tim Gracyk, Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925 (2000)

Cliff Edwards (June 14, 1895 – July 17, 1971), also known as "Ukelele Ike", was an American singer and voice actor who enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes. He had a number-one hit with "Singin' in the Rain" in 1929. He also did voices for animated cartoons later in his career, and is best known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940).

Early life and musical career[link]

Edwards was born Clifton A. Edwards in Hannibal, Missouri. He left school at age 14 and soon moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he entertained as a singer in saloons. As many places had pianos in bad shape or none at all, Edwards taught himself to play ukulele (then often spelled "ukelele") to serve as his own accompanist (selecting that instrument as it was the cheapest in the music store). He got the nickname "Ukelele Ike" from a club owner who could not remember his name. He got his first break in 1918 at the Arsonia Cafe in Chicago, Illinois, where he performed a tune called "Ja-Da", written by the club's pianist, Bob Carleton. Edwards and Carleton made the tune a hit on the vaudeville circuit. Vaudeville headliner Joe Frisco hired Edwards as part of his act, which was featured at the Palace in New York City, the most prestigious theater in vaudeville, and then in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Edwards made his first phonograph records in 1919. He recorded early examples of jazz scat singing in 1922. The following year he signed a contract with Pathé Records. He became one of the most popular singers of the decade, and appeared in several Broadway shows. He recorded, in his distinctive style, many of the pop and novelty hits of the day, such as "California, Here I Come", "Hard Hearted Hannah", "Yes Sir, That's My Baby", and "I'll See You in My Dreams".

In 1924, Edwards himself performed as the headliner at the Palace, the pinnacle of vaudeville success. In that same year, he was featured in George and Ira Gershwin's first Broadway musical Lady Be Good, alongside Fred and Adele Astaire. In 1925, his recording of "Paddlin’ Madeleine Home" would reach number three on the pop charts. In 1928, his recording of "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" was number one for one week on the U.S. pop singles chart. In 1929, his recording of "Singin' in the Rain" was number one for three weeks. Edwards's own compositions included "(I'm Cryin' 'Cause I Know I'm) Losing You", "You're So Cute (Mama o' Mine)", "Stack O' Lee", "Little Somebody of Mine", and "I Want to Call You 'Sweet Mama'". He also recorded a few "off-color" novelty numbers for under-the-counter sales, including "I'm a Bear in a Lady's Boudoir".

More than any other performer,^{[citation needed]} Edwards was responsible for the soaring popularity of the ukulele in the 1920s. Millions of ukuleles were sold during the decade, and Tin Pan Alley publishers added ukulele chords to standard sheet music. Edwards always played American Martin ukuleles favoring the small soprano model in his early career. In his later years Edwards moved to the sweeter, large tenor ukulele more suited to crooning which was becoming popular in the 1930s.

Edwards' continued to record until shortly before his 1971 death. His last record album, Ukulele Ike, was released posthumously on the independent Glendale label. He reprised many of his 1920s hits, but his then failing health was evident in the recordings.^{[citation needed]}

Film, radio, and television[link]

In 1929, Cliff Edwards was playing at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, California, where he caught the attention of movie producer-director Irving Thalberg. His film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Edwards to appear in early sound movies. After performing in some short films, Edwards was one of the stars in the feature Hollywood Revue of 1929, doing some comic bits and singing some numbers, including the film debut of his hit "Singin' in the Rain". He appeared in a total of 33 films for MGM through 1933. He had a small role as Mike, playing a ukelele very briefly at the beginning of the 1931 movie "Laughing Sinners", starring Joan Crawford.

Edwards was very friendly with MGM's comedy star Buster Keaton, who featured Edwards in three of his films. Keaton, himself a former vaudevillian, enjoyed singing and would harmonize with Edwards between takes. One of these casual jam sessions was captured on film, in Doughboys (1930), in which Buster and Cliff scat-sing their way through "You Never Did That Before". Buster was battling a drinking problem at the time, and Cliff was nursing a drug habit, both of which are evident in the finished film. In scenes when Keaton is sharp and alert, Edwards appears befuddled; when Edwards regains his sobriety, Keaton is now stumbling and fumbling. (Edwards was ultimately replaced in the Keaton films by Jimmy Durante.)

Edwards was also an occasional supporting player in feature films and short subjects at Warner Brothers and RKO Radio Pictures. He played a wisecracking sidekick to western star George O'Brien, and filled in for Allen Jenkins as "Goldie" opposite George Sanders in The Falcon Strikes Back. In a 1940 short, he led a cowboy chorus in Cliff Edwards and His Buckaroos. Throughout the 1940s he appeared in a number of "B" westerns playing the comic, singing sidekick to the hero, seven times with Charles Starrett and six with Tim Holt.

Edwards appeared in the darkly sardonic western comedy The Bad Man of Brimstone in 1937, and in 1939 he played the character "Endicott" in the screwball comedy film His Girl Friday. Also in 1939, he voiced the off-screen dying Confederate soldier in Gone with the Wind in the makeshift hospital scene with Vivien Leigh and Olivia De Havilland casting large shadows on a church wall.^[1] In 1940 came his most famous voice role, as Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio. Edwards's rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star" from that film is probably his most familiar recorded legacy. In 1941, he voiced the head crow in Disney's Dumbo and sang "When I See an Elephant Fly".

In 1932, Edwards got his first national radio show on CBS. He would continue hosting network radio shows on and off through 1946. However, from the early 1930s, Edwards' popularity faded as public taste shifted to sweeter style crooners like Russ Columbo, Rudy Vallee, and Bing Crosby.

Like many vaudeville stars, Edwards was an early arrival on television. For the 1949 season, Edwards starred in The Cliff Edwards Show, a three-days-a-week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings) TV variety show on CBS. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he made a number of appearances on The Mickey Mouse Club, in addition to reprising his Jiminy Cricket voice for various Disney shorts and the Disney Christmas spectacular, From All of Us to All of You.

Personal life[link]

Edwards was careless with the money he got in the boom years of the 1920s, always trying to sustain his expensive habits and lifestyle. While he continued working during the Great Depression, he would never again enjoy his former prosperity. Most of his income went to alimony for three former wives and for paying other debts. He declared bankruptcy four times during the 1930s and early 1940s. Edwards married his first wife Gertrude Ryrholm in 1919 but they divorced in 1923. He married his second wife Irene Wylie in 1923, and they divorced in 1931. In 1932, he married his third and final wife actress Judith Barrett. They divorced in 1936.

Edwards suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction in his later years, living in a home for indigent actors. He often spent his days hanging around the Walt Disney Studios to be available any time he could get voice work, sometimes being taken to lunch by animators to whom he told stories of his days in vaudeville.

He had disappeared from the public eye at the time of his 1971 death as a charity patient at the Virgil Convalescent Hospital in Hollywood, California. His body was initially unclaimed and donated to the University of California, Los Angeles medical school. When Walt Disney Productions, which had been quietly paying many of his medical expenses, found out about this, it offered to purchase the corpse and pay for the burial; but this was actually done by the Actors' Fund of America (which had also aided Edwards) and the Motion Picture and Television Relief Fund. The Disney company paid for his grave marker.^[2]

Honors[link]

In 2002, Edwards' 1940 recording on Victor, Victor 26477, "When You Wish Upon a Star", was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Partial filmography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• The Cliff Edwards Discography by Larry F. Kiner, Greenwood Press, New York, 1987. ISBN 0-313-25719-1 Contains a short biography, an extensive discography, and listing of his film, radio, and television appearances.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cliff Edwards

Biography portal

• Cliff Edwards at the Internet Movie Database
• Cliff Edwards at the Internet Broadway Database
• Cliff Edwards extensive fan site by David Garrick
• Cliff Edwards "Ukulele Ike" on RedHotJazz.com, with .ram files of his vintage recordings.
• "Cliff Edwards". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1742. Retrieved August 28, 2010.