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Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band - Beale Street Blues (1917)

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Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band plays "Beale Street Blues"

Victor 18369

Ted Lewis on clarinet.

August 13, 1917

If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk,
Married men would have to take their beds and walk,
Except one or two who never drink booze,
And the blind man on the corner singing "Beale Street Blues!"

The great composer W. C. Handy lived from 1873 to 1958.

By 1917 Earl Fuller led a society dance band at the popular Rector's Restaurant in New York City.

On Victor, Columbia, Emerson, and Edison records that sold well from 1918 to 1920, Fuller ensembles helped popularize dance band trends of that period.

For several of his earliest sessions Fuller led a small jazz ensemble dubbed on record labels Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band, which was probably formed at the suggestion of Victor executives eager to duplicate the success of the first disc of the Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB), made in late February of 1917.

Fuller's hastily assembled jazz group filled the void, enabling Victor later in 1917 to meet a sudden demand for jazz music.

Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band included Walter Kahn on cornet, Harry Raderman on trombone, Ted Lewis on clarinet, and John Lucas on drums. This was the nucleus of the dance orchestra later led by Ted Lewis.

Before Fuller's first session, Lewis had been playing with Arthur Stone's Syncopated Orchestra. In the early 1920s, the popular Ted Lewis orchestra consisted of these four musicians in addition to cornetist David Klein, trombonist Frank Lhotak, tuba player Harry Barth, and pianist Frank Ross. This is reported on page 21 of the October 1923 issue of Musical Truth, the trade journal for the maker of Conn instruments.

Photographs on sheet music suggest Fuller played piano on these dates though Ernie Cutting may have been the pianist on records (as on other jazz records of the period, piano on Fuller discs is the least audible of the instruments). It was one of the first bands to imitate the ODJB though the Frisco Jazz Band made an Edison recording on May 10, 1917, a little earlier.

"Slippery Hank" and "Yah-De-Dah," cut during the group's first session on June 4, 1917, were issued on Victor 18321 in September 1917. These jazz performances are notably loud, and the musicians use instruments for comic effects. Victor's September 1917 supplement states, "A terrific wail from the trombone starts 'Slippery Hank' (F.H. Losey) on his glide, and the rest of the Jazz Band noises are in kind. And if you think these are all the noises available for a Jazz Band, turn the record over and listen to 'Yah-de-dah' (Mel. B. Kaufman). The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet. Notice the two little chords at the end of each number. This is how you know for certain that a Jazz Band is playing."

His jazz discs sold well, especially "The Old Grey Mare" backed with "Beale Street Blues" (Victor 18369).

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