{"id":1199,"date":"2013-07-03T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T17:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2019-12-03T20:14:56","modified_gmt":"2019-12-04T02:14:56","slug":"abe-lyman-1928-1931","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/?p=1199","title":{"rendered":"Abe Lyman – 1928 & 1931"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brunswick3890\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“My Suppressed Desire”
\nAbe Lyman’s California Orchestra
\n1928 (UK Brunswick 3890-A)
\nMy Suppressed Desire – Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra<\/a><\/p>\n

“Sweethearts On Parade”
\nAbe Lyman’s California Orchestra
\n1928 (UK Brunswick 3890-B)
\nSweethearts On Parade – Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra<\/a><\/p>\n

“Ooh That Kiss”
\nAbe Lyman And His California Orchestra
\n1931 (Brunswick 6208)
\nOoh That Kiss – Abe Lyman And His California Orchestra<\/a><\/p>\n

“You’re My Everything”
\nAbe Lyman And His California Orchestra
\n1931 (Brunswick 6208)
\nYou’re My Everything – Abe Lyman And His California Orchestra<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the things I find interesting about the popular music from the early decades of the twentieth century is how rapidly music styles evolved and fell out of fashion.\u00a0\u00a0 As an example here are two records by Abe Lyman’s orchestra recorded just under three years apart (November 2, 1928 and October 23, 1931).\u00a0\u00a0 By the end of 1931 the Jazz Age style and frenzy of “My Suppressed Desire” was very much out of date and certainly out of step with the Depression era mood.\u00a0\u00a0 While there is a definite Jazz Age influence in “Ooh That Kiss” the mood is much more subdued and there is a far greater emphasis on the lushness of the arrangement – which is even more pronounced on “You’re My Everything.” \u00a0 Just a few years later musical styles were transformed again with the advent of the swing bands.<\/p>\n

One of the factors that drove this rapid pace of change was the fact that there were far fewer media outlets and records were still very expensive to produce and purchase.\u00a0\u00a0 Even very large cities had only a handful of radio stations and, in those days, many hours of programing was devoted to non-musical performances. \u00a0 A radio station with any sort of “oldies” type format was unheard of until several decades later.\u00a0 \u00a0 And, because records were expensive it was not economically viable to have the sort of back catalogs and specialized niches that we take for granted today.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the pressure for both the music and broadcasting industries was to be constantly ahead of the curve in terms of\u00a0 appealing to the widest possible common denominators of the moment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A bandleader who failed to stay up-to-date with the latest styles would have soon found himself no longer welcome in the studios of the record labels and broadcasting networks.\u00a0 Guy Lombardo was a notable exception – his saccharine-sweet style was so unique he was able to remain successful with it for over five decades. \u00a0 But for a bandleader such as Abe Lyman, who was active from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, survival meant being willing to adapt to the popular mood of the moment.<\/p>\n

My copy of “My Suppressed Desire”\/”Sweethearts On Parade” is on a pressing issued by Brunswick’s British subsidiary.\u00a0\u00a0 Notice the stamp in the label image.\u00a0\u00a0 The purpose of this stamp was to indicate that the record label had paid the necessary mechanical royalties on the musical composition.\u00a0\u00a0 Such stamps were common on British and European records – though, in many instances, the indication that the royalty was paid was pre-printed on the label thus making a stamp unnecessary.\u00a0\u00a0 The catalog number for the American issue of the record was Brunswick 4117.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“My Suppressed Desire” Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra 1928 (UK Brunswick 3890-A) My Suppressed Desire – Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra “Sweethearts On Parade” Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra 1928 (UK Brunswick 3890-B) Sweethearts On Parade – Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra “Ooh That … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12,23,13,9,16,22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6lko4-jl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2105,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/2105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dismuke.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}