Gene Fosdick's Hoosiers - Complete

Gene Fosdick's Hoosiers was one of several excellent jazz bands that seemed to spring up from the fertile ground of the Midwest in the early 1920s. The Hoosiers recorded nine sides (at four sessions) for Vocalion in late 1922 and early 1923. An alternate take of one of the sides also exists: the version of "Farewell Blues" issued in Europe on the Beltona and Homocord labels is different than the Vocalion take. The nine Vocalion recordings were reissued as one side of an LP on the excellent reissue label Retrieval in 1979, but the music of the Hoosiers remains little-known. And to my knowledge, the European "Farewell Blues" has never been issued with the Vocalions.

Describing Fosdick's Hoosiers as a Midwestern band may not be really accurate. Fosdick was from Liberty, Indiana, but his recordings were all made in New York City. The personnel is not known in its entirety, and the names listed in the Rust discography are obscure, for the most part. Besides the leader's clarinet and saxophone, Rust lists Joe Rose on cornet, duo pianists Gerald Finney and Will Lanin, Ray McDermott on banjo, and drummer John Sonin. And then there's Gene Fosdick's younger brother Dudley; more about him later.

In his notes to that Retrieval LP, Mark Berresford puts forth a personnel that includes members of the Original Memphis Five, including cornetist Phil Napoleon, for all but the first session. Before I was aware of that, the clarinetist on the last session sounded remarkably like the OM5's Jimmy Lytell to me.  In any case, the personnel does differ from session to session, as does the musical approach.

The first two sessions feature a well-integrated three-piece saxophone section, and the style leans toward hot dance music, although jazz breaks and solos are featured. The passages featuring the two pianists, seemingly playing the same instrument, are some of the most dated elements of the first session. By the third session, there are two "melody" reeds, doubling clarinet and various saxes. The bass instrument seems to be a bass saxophone until the last session, when a tuba takes over the bass duties. By that last session, the Hoosiers have become an unabashed jazz band, and all pop/dance elements have fallen by the wayside. The European take of "Farewell Blues," taken from a German Homocord record, is broadly similar to the Vocalion version, but differs in enough details to let us know that there was some real improvisation going on. The reverse of the Homocord is "Railroad Man" - the same take as on Vocalion.

I've barely mentioned Dudley Fosdick, whose name has to be in the running for the least jazz-musician-like moniker ever. At only 20 years of age, he was in some ways the star of the first two sessions. (He doesn't appear on the last two dates.) In spite of the fact that his chosen instrument was the mellophone, that awkward cousin of the French horn, he became far more well-known that his brother and had a long career in music. To jazz buffs, he is probably best known for his contributions to records by Red Nichols and Miff Mole. His solo on "One Night In June" is a wild, virtuoso statement, and pretty advanced for 1922.

Here are the complete recordings of Gene Fosdick's Hoosiers in chronological order, with recording dates and details about the source records. The usual caveats concerning 78 RPM records apply: the records are in various states of wear, and there is surface noise. I have been sparing with noise reduction. I wish all the records had been in as good condition as "Railroad Man."

Novermber, 1922; NYC

10312            One Night in June (Vocalion 14473)
10313            Lost (A Wonderful Girl) (Vocalion 14473 - a different copy from the above)

December, 1922; NYC

10525            You've Got to See Mamma Ev'ry Night (Vocalion 14496)

January, 1923; NYC

10635            Peggy Dear (Vocalion 15403)
10636            Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (Vocalion 14496)
10641            Apple Sauce (Vocalion 15403)

March, 1923; NYC

11025             Farewell Blues (Vocalion 14535)

11026             Farewell Blues (Homocord B359 - as Homocord Jazz Band)

11027 or 8     Railroad Man (Blues) (Vocalion 14585 - reverse is by Ben Bernie Orchestra)

11030             Aunt Hagar's Blues (Vocalion 14535)

Mitchell's Christian Singers

Mitchell's Christian Singers is my favorite gospel group - this quartet's loose, raw, rural style is unlike that of any other group. The Singers were farmers and laborers in and around Kingston, North Carolina, and they recorded extensively between 1934 and 1940; their earlier recordings appeared on the ARC (American Record Corporation) family of labels - Romeo, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, and Vocalion, as well as Sears' Conqueror label. Later issues appeared on Columbia and their Okeh subsidiary.

By the time they began making records, the group consisted of tenors Julius Davis and William Brown, baritone Louis Panella Davis, and bass Lewis Herring (replaced a year or so into their recording career by Sam Bryant). The "Mitchell" in their name was their manager,
Willie Mitchell. The Christian Singers remained
a local group, performing almost exclusively in
eastern North Carolina, although they did perform in John Hammond's 1938 "Spirituals to Swing" concert in Carnegie Hall. The group traveled to New York and Chicago to record, but otherwise stayed close to home.

Today Mitchell's Christian Singers are mostly remembered for the "Spirituals to Swing" appearance, if they are remembered at all. Like a lot of rural early-20th-century artists, their recordings have become more accessible in the digital age while paradoxically still being somewhat hard to find. Their complete output (nearly, anyway) has been reissued on several CDs on the Document label, but Document is not exactly well-distributed.

In any case, I have chosen to present transfers of three of my favorite  records, as well as pictures of all the different labels I have in my collection - so the pictures won't necessarily match the recordings.  The Conqueror is not in great condition, but the quality of the performance makes the flaws unimportant.

Conqueror 8769  - recorded April 28, 1936
Standing by the Bedside
What Kinda Shoes Do the Angels Wear

Vocalion 03180 - recorded August 10/11, 1937
I'm Praying Humble
I Don't Care Where You Bury My Body

Columbia 37479 - recorded August 6, 1940
Take My Hand
Don't You Want That Stone

Vocalion Catalog - September, 1934

Not only do I collect 78s, but for the past couple of years I have been collecting record catalogs from the 78 era.  I find them fascinating; like 78s themselves, the catalogs are windows to a lost world.  And while any record collection is formed by the taste of its owner, record catalogs give a fuller picture of the taste of the record-buying public of the time.  And of course, it's fun to find records from your collection listed, as well as listings of particularly rare or collectible records.

Most of the major labels issued complete catalogs of their in-print records annually, with supplements containing new releases printed monthly, or at least several times per year.  This post features the September, 1934 Vocalion catalog, listing new releases for that month, along with highlights from previous releases.

The history of the Vocalion label is fairly complex; here I'll just say that at the time this catalog was published, Vocalion was a subsidiary of Brunswick.  Both were owned by the American Record Corporation (ARC), which also owned Columbia at this time.  Vocalion was one of ARC's lower-priced labels; as you can see on the first page of the catalog, their records sold for 35 cents each, or three for a dollar.

This eight-page booklet is a delight to look through, especially for collectors of "race" records, as records marketed to African-Americans were called in the 78 era.  The "Vocal Blues" section in particular has listings for mouth-watering records by Blind Willie McTell (just called "Blind Willie"), The Georgia Browns (a group which included Buddy Moss), and the daddy of the blues, Charley Patton.  (Vocalion spelled his name "Charlie.")  In various instrumental categories you'll find records by Jack Kelly's South Memphis Jug Band, the Beale Street Washboard band (a fabulous little group which included New Orleans jazzmen Herb Morand and the Dodds brothers, Johnny and Baby), Fletcher Henderson, Clarence Williams, and Joe Robechaux's hot little New Orleans swing band.  There's a Blind Joe Taggart listed in the "Sacred Race Records" section.  Some black artists, like Cab Calloway and Jimmie Noone, apparently had enough crossover appeal to warrant listing their records in the "Popular and Standard Records" section.  The country section, "Old Time Tunes," is not quite as stunning as the Race section, but there are still some interesting names there - (Clarence) Ashley & (Gwen) Foster, Ernest Stoneman, and the Carolina Tar Heels, for example.

I'm posting scans of all eight pages of my fragile copy of this catalog.  Click for a larger view, and in most browsers, and can right-click, choose "view image" and click on the resulting image for an even larger view.  Enjoy the Vocalion record catalog from September, 1934