Uploaded December 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Hum Your Troubles Away
Words and Music by Cliff Friend and Harry Woods
Johnny Marvin, tenor with ukulele
Recorded October 6, 1926
Victor 20288
Johnny Marvin was a very popular star of vaudeville, records and radio during the 1920s and 1930s. This recording represents one of his early recoding sessions for the Victor record label self-accompanied on ukulele. Marvin, along with Gene Austin, Cliff Edwards and Nick Lucas were emerging as the first of the male crooners, with a personal style that was made possible by the advent of the microphone in the recording studio. During the late 1920s, Marvin's records for Victor sold in large numbers, but by 1930, with the Depression, record sales plummeted, Marvin made fewer records but continued his performances on radio and a stage act with his brother, Frankie who played the steel guitar. By the late 1930s he had relocated to Los Angeles to become a radio producer and song writer. It was at this time he went into a partnership with singing cowboy, Gene Autry and formed Western Music Publishing Company. Marvin died in 1944 at the young age of 47 and is mostly forgotten today, but in 2003 he was inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
Hum Your Troubles Away
Words and Music by Cliff Friend and Harry Woods
Johnny Marvin, tenor with ukulele
Recorded October 6, 1926
Victor 20288
Johnny Marvin was a very popular star of vaudeville, records and radio during the 1920s and 1930s. This recording represents one of his early recoding sessions for the Victor record label self-accompanied on ukulele. Marvin, along with Gene Austin, Cliff Edwards and Nick Lucas were emerging as the first of the male crooners, with a personal style that was made possible by the advent of the microphone in the recording studio. During the late 1920s, Marvin's records for Victor sold in large numbers, but by 1930, with the Depression, record sales plummeted, Marvin made fewer records but continued his performances on radio and a stage act with his brother, Frankie who played the steel guitar. By the late 1930s he had relocated to Los Angeles to become a radio producer and song writer. It was at this time he went into a partnership with singing cowboy, Gene Autry and formed Western Music Publishing Company. Marvin died in 1944 at the young age of 47 and is mostly forgotten today, but in 2003 he was inducted into the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
