the1920sand30s | Billie Holiday - Mean To Me (1937) @the1920sand30s | Uploaded August 2023 | Updated October 2024, 10 minutes ago.
Performed by: Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra
Vocalist: Billie Holiday
Full Song Title: Mean To Me
Recorded in: May 11th, 1937, New York, NY
A-side: youtu.be/Q-HHxQ1Uo4Q
Theodore Shaw Wilson (born November 24, 1912 – died July 31, 1986) was an acclaimed American jazz pianist. Critic Scott Yanow hailed him as "the definitive swing pianist," noting his gentle, elegant, and virtuosic piano style. Influenced by Earl Hines and Art Tatum, Wilson's mastery graced recordings by jazz luminaries such as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. Notably, he broke racial barriers by performing prominently alongside white musicians, notably with Goodman. Amidst his prolific sideman work, Wilson led his own groups and recorded sessions from the late 1920s to the 1980s.
He married three times, including to the songwriter Irene Kitchings. Throughout his life, he remained active as a soloist and collaborated with various groups, including leading a trio with his sons Theodore Wilson on bass and Steven Wilson on drums.
In 1979, Berklee College of Music honored him with an Honorary Doctorate of Music.
He succumbed to stomach cancer in New Britain, Connecticut, on July 31, 1986, at 73 years old. He found his resting place at Fairview Cemetery in New Britain. Wilson's family included Theodore, Steven, William, James (Jim), and Dune.
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – died July 17, 1959) stood as an iconic American jazz and swing music singer. Fondly dubbed "Lady Day" by her close friend and musical collaborator, Lester Young, Holiday left an indelible mark on the realms of jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal approach, deeply influenced by jazz instrumentalists, introduced a revolutionary approach to phrasing and tempo manipulation. She earned renown for her unique vocal delivery and exceptional improvisational abilities.
Born to Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1915, her life's particulars are shrouded in ambiguity, inviting scrutiny. On her birth certificate, she is listed as Elinore Harris, but she adopted Eleanora Fagan until her music career began, when she became Billie Holiday. Her father's abandonment prompted her to change the spelling to Halliday, distancing herself. Later, she reclaimed Holiday, earning the moniker "Lady Day" from Lester Young, and "Billie" from her admiration of movie star Billie Dove. Despite a challenging upbringing, she ventured to New York City in the late 1920s and early 1930s, singing in jazz clubs, earning repute as a gifted jazz vocalist.
Holiday's career escalated in 1933 when John Hammond discovered her at Monette's in New York. She recorded with Benny Goodman and performed across the city. By the late 1940s, she was a jazz icon, voted best jazz vocalist by Esquire and appearing in films. Holiday's singing style was influenced by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, transforming melodies with inventive improvisations.
Sadly, her success coincided with substance abuse, notably drugs and alcohol. In the late 1940s, her career faltered due to drug addiction and depression. Following rehabilitation, she performed at Carnegie Hall but faced restrictions due to her cabaret license suspension. Her European tour in 1954 marked a decline in performances due to declining health.
Holiday's autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues" (1956), co-authored with William Dufty, highlighted her struggles with drugs and poverty. It was adapted into a 1972 film. She passed away in 1959 while under house arrest for narcotics possession.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
Performed by: Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra
Vocalist: Billie Holiday
Full Song Title: Mean To Me
Recorded in: May 11th, 1937, New York, NY
A-side: youtu.be/Q-HHxQ1Uo4Q
Theodore Shaw Wilson (born November 24, 1912 – died July 31, 1986) was an acclaimed American jazz pianist. Critic Scott Yanow hailed him as "the definitive swing pianist," noting his gentle, elegant, and virtuosic piano style. Influenced by Earl Hines and Art Tatum, Wilson's mastery graced recordings by jazz luminaries such as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. Notably, he broke racial barriers by performing prominently alongside white musicians, notably with Goodman. Amidst his prolific sideman work, Wilson led his own groups and recorded sessions from the late 1920s to the 1980s.
He married three times, including to the songwriter Irene Kitchings. Throughout his life, he remained active as a soloist and collaborated with various groups, including leading a trio with his sons Theodore Wilson on bass and Steven Wilson on drums.
In 1979, Berklee College of Music honored him with an Honorary Doctorate of Music.
He succumbed to stomach cancer in New Britain, Connecticut, on July 31, 1986, at 73 years old. He found his resting place at Fairview Cemetery in New Britain. Wilson's family included Theodore, Steven, William, James (Jim), and Dune.
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – died July 17, 1959) stood as an iconic American jazz and swing music singer. Fondly dubbed "Lady Day" by her close friend and musical collaborator, Lester Young, Holiday left an indelible mark on the realms of jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal approach, deeply influenced by jazz instrumentalists, introduced a revolutionary approach to phrasing and tempo manipulation. She earned renown for her unique vocal delivery and exceptional improvisational abilities.
Born to Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1915, her life's particulars are shrouded in ambiguity, inviting scrutiny. On her birth certificate, she is listed as Elinore Harris, but she adopted Eleanora Fagan until her music career began, when she became Billie Holiday. Her father's abandonment prompted her to change the spelling to Halliday, distancing herself. Later, she reclaimed Holiday, earning the moniker "Lady Day" from Lester Young, and "Billie" from her admiration of movie star Billie Dove. Despite a challenging upbringing, she ventured to New York City in the late 1920s and early 1930s, singing in jazz clubs, earning repute as a gifted jazz vocalist.
Holiday's career escalated in 1933 when John Hammond discovered her at Monette's in New York. She recorded with Benny Goodman and performed across the city. By the late 1940s, she was a jazz icon, voted best jazz vocalist by Esquire and appearing in films. Holiday's singing style was influenced by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, transforming melodies with inventive improvisations.
Sadly, her success coincided with substance abuse, notably drugs and alcohol. In the late 1940s, her career faltered due to drug addiction and depression. Following rehabilitation, she performed at Carnegie Hall but faced restrictions due to her cabaret license suspension. Her European tour in 1954 marked a decline in performances due to declining health.
Holiday's autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues" (1956), co-authored with William Dufty, highlighted her struggles with drugs and poverty. It was adapted into a 1972 film. She passed away in 1959 while under house arrest for narcotics possession.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
______________________
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.
![Jean Sablon - Ces Petites Choses [These Little Things] (1936)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DzATKB_OypY/hqdefault.jpg "Jean Sablon - Ces Petites Choses [These Little Things] (1936)
Performed by: Jean Sablon
Full Song Title: Ces Petites Choses
Recorded in: 1936
Flip side of: https://youtu.be/YpynbMU8boE
Jean Sablon (Nogent-sur-Marne, 25 March 1906 - Cannes, 24 February 1994) was a popular French singer and actor of the 1930s.
The son of a composer, with brothers and sisters who had successful careers of their own in musical entertainment, Jean Sablon studied piano at the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris. He left before graduating to enroll at the Paris Conservatoire in order to concentrate on a vocal career. He started in the cabarets of Paris at the age of 17, and was subsequently accompanied on his first album by the pianist/composer Mireille, whose song Couchés dans le foin became a great success. Later, he partnered the wildly popular Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris and boosted his career considerably. He was the first cabaret singer to use a microphone in his stage act. In the 1920s he spent time in Brazil where his recordings remain extremely popular today.
In 1937, he won the Grand Prix du Disque for the song Vous qui passez sans me voir, written for him by Charles Trenet and Johnny Hess. That same year, he went to the United States, where he sang on live radio broadcasts for CBS and made several records in the English language. On Broadway, he worked with luminaries such as Cole Porter and George Gershwin. He returned to Paris but, with the German occupation of France in World War II, he went back to America for the duration.
March 30, 1950, Jean Sablon records Cest si bon in London. June 26, 1950, Louis Armstrong recorded the American version of the song in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra and English lyrics of Jerry Seelen. The song became a worldwide hit.
Jean Sablon became one of the most widely acclaimed male French singers, considered second only in overall lifetime popularity to Maurice Chevalier. His records sold in the millions around the world and he is frequently referred to as the French equivalent of Americas Bing Crosby. During his career, he recorded with some of the worlds top musicians, including Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Sablon is credited with arranging Reinhardts debut in a fashionable cabaret in 1933. He is also recognized for his talents as a lyricist and a composer. Sablon appeared in a number of motion pictures and television films performing as a vocalist or pianist, his last being in 1984 when he sang April in Paris in Mistrals Daughter, the popular American TV miniseries filmed in France.
Jean Sablon died in Cannes in 1994 and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners")
![Max Mensing - Das Lied Der Liebe Hat Eine Süße Melodie [The song of love has a sweet melody] (1929)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EhmfGF6qU-M/hqdefault.jpg "Max Mensing - Das Lied Der Liebe Hat Eine Süße Melodie [The song of love has a sweet melody] (1929)
Performed by: Saxophon-Orchester Dobbri
Full Song Title: Das Lied Der Liebe Hat Eine Süße Melodie
Recorded in: September 1929, Berlin, Germany
Flip side of: https://youtu.be/De6B4QKM_wI
Otto Dobrindt (born August 24, 1886 in Henkendorf / West Prussia (today Hanki) — died September 13, 1963 in Berlin) was a popular German orchestra director and film composer of the 1920s and 30s.
Dobrindt began as a production manager at the record company Carl Lindström AG, of which he became the chief production manager in the same year.
From 1925 he recorded his own productions in different styles under various pseudonyms (including the Dobbri Saxophone Orchestra, Odeon Tanz-Orchester, Wiener Bohème-Orchester, Dobbri, Robert Renard, Eddie Saxon, Frank Sandlers, Eric Harden, Götz Höhne, Horst Platen), from swing to light classical music. The “Otto Dobrindt Orchestra” accompanied many Ufa stars on recordings, for example Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch and Hans Albers.
Dobrindt conducted the recording of a potpourri of the Merry Widow with Zarah Leander. In 1935 Dobrindt took over the management of the entertainment orchestra at the Deutschlandsender. In the same year he wrote the music for the film Alles hört auf mein Kommando (Everything listens to my command). He conducted numerous musical request programmes with the party badge of the NSDAP on his lapel.
From 1945 Dobrindt directed the Berliner Rundfunk entertainment orchestra in the citys eastern sector. Dobrindt also conducted other orchestras in the GDR. He recorded cross-sections of operettas with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and the DEFA version of the bat with the DEFA Symphony Orchestra in 1955.
Max Christian Erich Mensing (born August 11, 1886 in Hamburg — died May 3, 1945 in Berlin-Charlottenburg) was a popular German tenor and actor of the 1920s.
Mensing was the son of the surgeon Dr. med. Johannes Hartwig Christian Mensing and his wife Helene, born Noodt. During the First World War, the Berlin concert singer Max Mensing gained a lot of recognition on the Eastern Front, namely in Bjalystok, for his performance of the most beautiful German songs.
He reached the peak of his career in Berlin of the Weimar Republic as a singer of daily hits. During this time he was involved in numerous recordings by well-known Berliner dance orchestras. Mensings commercial success dwindled in the mid-1930s, but he continued working as a singer until the end of the decade. In the film Es leuchten die Sterne (1938) Mensing lent his voice to an actor, in Der Gouverneur (1939) he played a supporting role.
Max Mensing committed suicide by poison in his house in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Battle of Berlin in the last days of World War II. He was buried in the war cemetery of Luisenfriedhof I (Block A, Row 3, Grave 28).
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
![Pyotr Leshchenko - Golubyye Glaza [Голубые Глаза/Blue Eyes] (1933)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/G8ACEybyDYg/hqdefault.jpg "Pyotr Leshchenko - Golubyye Glaza [Голубые Глаза/Blue Eyes] (1933)
Performed by: Оркестр Фрaнкa Фоксa [Frank Fox & His Dance Orchestra]
Vocals: Пётр Лещенко [Pyotr Leshchenko]
Full Song Title: Голубые Глаза [Blue Eyes]
Recorded in: Vienna, Austria 1933
Pyotr Leshchenko (born 2 June 1898 – died 16 July 1954), was a popular singer in the Russian Empire, Romania and later the Soviet Union, is universally considered the King of Russian Tango and specifically known for his rendition of Serdtse a tango, sung unusually not in Spanish but in Russian.
He was born as an illegitimate child of the Russian Empire in Isayevo village of the Kherson Governorate into a poor and illiterate Ukrainian peasant family. During the First World War, his mother and stepfather moved to Chișinău, which was later united with Romania. He was drafted into the Russian army, and attended an officers college in Kiev. After graduating he was sent to the front, and was wounded soon thereafter, recuperating at a military hospital in Chișinău. He was proficient in numerous languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, German, and others. In his early childhood, he sang in a church choir and learned how to play the 7-string guitar.
After the war, Pyotr, who had never learned a real trade, worked at various restaurants, serving, dish-washing and performing small theatrical acts. He had a soft baritone voice.
After taking some ballet lessons in Paris, he started performing with his Latvian wife Zinaida Zakit, a dancer. Their act was a mixture of ballet, folklore dance and European tango, which was so popular it led to tours to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Germany, and Great Britain. It was at Riga, when he improvised gypsy music and tango singing to make up for the absence of his pregnant wife, that he discovered he could sing in front of an audience. In 1935, he was at the peak of his success. Though he still included old Russian romances, and even Soviet songs (like Serdtse, which was originally sung by Leonid Utyosov) in his repertoire, songs were now composed for him exclusively (with the tango songs turning Argentine in style and arrangement). One of his favourite non-Russian composers was Jerzy Petersburski, but he also sang work composed by Pavel German, Konstantin Podrevsky and Isaak Dunayevsky. Composers who composed certain songs specifically for him included Oscar Strok, Mark Maryanovsky and Yefim Sklyarov. Many lyrics of Leshchenko songs were written by Boris Fomin.
Leshchenko performed for European nobles and White (anti-Bolshevik) Russian émigrés at his own Leschenko cabaret in Bucharest (dubbed the Eastern Maxims). The first part of every performance would typically be dedicated to gipsy music, but during the second part Leshchenko would dress up in a tuxedo, with a white silk handkerchief and sing and dance Argentine tango.
In the Soviet Union his work was banned both because he was believed to be a White émigré (which he was not legally) and because the style (tango and foxtrot) was deemed counter-revolutionary. Nevertheless, secretly he was very popular: people would even listen to Radio Tehran to hear his music, 78 records were smuggled into the country from the Baltics, and specialists would bootleg his music onto ribs (used X-ray plates). When during the Second World War and the subsequent occupation of Odessa by the Romanian army, Leshchenko was finally able to perform in the country he still considered his own, people would queue for hours on end to buy a ticket to one of his Odessa concerts. It was at Odessa that Pyotr met his second wife, Vera Georgievna Belousova, for whom he would later, back in Romania, divorce Zinaida.
After Romania switched sides in August 1944 and the Soviet army entered Romania, Leshchenko was not arrested, and became the protégé of general Vladimir Ivanovich Burenin, military commander of the Red Army garrison in Bucharest.
In 1951, a week after receiving an official letter granting them permission to settle in the Soviet Union, Vera and Pyotr were arrested by the Romanian police. Vera was extradited to the Soviet Union, where she was condemned to forced labour for amongst other things, marrying a foreigner. Pyotr was detained in a prison near Bucharest, and then was sent to a forced labor camp at the Danube–Black Sea Canal. Both outlived Joseph Stalin, but Pyotr died in a prison hospital in Târgu Ocna on 16 July 1954, without Vera at his side (she had already been released but did not know her husband was still alive). Some friends present when he died claimed his last words were Friends, I am happy, for I will return to my fatherland! I am going away, but I leave you my heart. Vera died on December 18, 2009, age 86.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.
Best wishes,
Stu
Please Note: I do not claim copyright or ownership of the song played in this video. All copyrighted content remains property of their respective owners.")
