AuthorA. G. Kozak

Bert and John Firman

“Sweetheart’s Holiday” (1930)

“Sweetheart’s Holiday.” Music by J. Russel Robinson, words by Irving Kahal. Recorded in Studio A, Hayes, Middlesex on January 24, 1930 by the Rhythmic Eight under the musical direction of John Firman with vocalist Maurice Elwin. Zonophone 5559 mx. Yy-18307-3.

Personnel: John Firman dir. Sylvester Ahola-t / Danny Polo-cl-as-bar / ?E. O. Pogson-cl-as / Johnny Helfer-cl-ts / Bert Read-p / Joe Brannelly-bj / Billy Bell-bb / Rudy Starita-d-vib-x / Maurice Elwin-v

The Rhythmic Eight (v. Maurice Elwin) – “Sweetheart’s Holiday”

“Sweetheart’s Holiday”1 was composed by J. Russel Robinson (who had been a member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and who had written “Singin’ the Blues”), with words by Irving Kahal (who would, the next year, write the words for the hits “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” and “By a Waterfall”). The incredibly catchy tune’s lyrics repeatedly reference an upcoming tryst (a “sweetheart’s holiday”) with a “steady” (slang for boyfriend or girlfriend); personified aspects of nature (the moon and the birds, for example) are described as taking part in the preparations for lovers’ rendezvous.

In the peppy Rhythmic Eight version of “Sweetheart’s Holiday,” the individual virtuosity of the players is very much in evidence. Particularly memorable is a segment where Bert Read achieves a ragtime piano sound, accompanied by Rudy Starita on the drums (the cymbals would appear to be rather near the microphone2). The latter’s playing approximates the sound of tap-dancing feet.

Maurice Elwin’s vocal refrain is upbeat and does credit to the song’s admirable wordplay. It is a comparatively short vocal interlude but memorable, nonetheless. I first heard this song in the Tom Clines version, where Jack Carney provides elegant but somewhat awkward and mannered vocals. Elwin, by comparison, sounds natural and youthfully enthusiastic. The overall effect is perhaps most comparable to Elwin’s vocal chorus in the Rhythm Maniacs version of “She’s My Slip of a Girl” (recorded only a week after “Sweetheart’s Holiday”), where he also engages in a rapid-fire delivery of playful love lyrics.

“Sweetheart’s Holiday” was recorded in the United States in 1929 by Jerry Macy and Ed Smalle, The New Yorkers, Tom Clines and His Music (v. Jack Carney), Tom Gott and His Rose Room Orchestra (v. Scrappy Lambert), Ted Wallace and His Campus Boys (v. Smith Ballew), Walter Cummins, Henry Busse and His Orchestra (v. Richard Barry), Lee Morse, and Charles W. Hamp. It was also sung by Georgie Price in a Vitaphone short, Don’t Get Nervous.

It was recorded in Britain in 1929 by The Savoy Plaza Band (dir. Les. Norman/v. by unknown person) and by Bidgood’s Broadcasters (as Nat Lewis and His Dance Band/v. Tom Barratt).

“Sweetheart’s Holiday” (1929) Sheet Music
George van Dusen

“Yodel-O-Eskimo” (1931)

“Yodel-O-Eskimo.” Composed by Joe Pearson and Harry Stogden. Recorded c. February 2, 1931 by George van Dusen and Maurice Elwin. Parlophone R-1000 & Regal Zonophone MR-1906 (mx. E-3912-1).

George van Dusen & Maurice Elwin – “Yodel-O-Eskimo” (1931)

When commemorating milestones in Maurice Elwin’s life and afterlife (today is his 127th birthday), I am always faced with a difficult choice. Should I share my thoughts on one of his many sublime dance band recordings? Should I surprise my readers with a lesser-known solo recording? Or should I share something considerably more outré that attests to his good sense of humor and his willingness to record virtually anything as long as it paid? Put that way, the latter choice seems obvious, so I will turn my attention to an instance of Elwin’s propping up a novelty yodeling act with the strength of his excellent singing.

Yodeling is a technique of alternating the voice between the natural and falsetto ranges to produce a warbling effect; it is found around the world, but in European contexts it is most often associated with Swiss cowherds and other such people. Originally a way of calling out to animals, yodeling does not usually involve conventional language, but rather comparatively nonsensical vocalizations. I like to think of it as “Alpine scat.” For Anglophone audiences, yodeling may be generally considered an acquired taste, but it does appear to have been somewhat in vogue in the early 1930s. Perhaps the popularity of Jimmie Rodgers’s cowboy yodeling from the late 1920s onward had opened people’s minds to the art form’s potential.

Thomas Harrington (1905-1992) spent more than half a century sharing his love of Alpine yodeling with the British public,1 starting his music hall career in 1921 at the age of 16. He always worked under pseudonyms, the most common of which was the one used on “Yodel-O-Eskimo”: George van Dusen, the Great Dutch Yodler. He recorded quite a few records, and there are nine known sides where he is joined by Maurice Elwin, whose singing voice van Dusen acknowledged to be stronger than his own.2 On this particular record, Elwin does all of the singing, and van Dusen only provides the yodeling. The usual rule seems to have been for van Dusen alone to be acknowledged on the label; only on Parlophone R-1080 is Elwin credited (as John Curtis, his usual Parlophone pseudonym).

van Dusen seems to have populated the record catalogues with various attempts at driving home the universal appeal of yodeling. He recorded “The Yiddisher Yodeller,” “The Yodelling Chinaman,”3 “The Yodelling Bullfighter” — the list goes on. “Yodel-O-Eskimo” presents us with the story of Ice Pack Joe, an indigenous Arctic person who hears yodeling over the radio and is inspired to imitate it. The concept of the song is ridiculously simple, and there is little attempt at understanding or even stereotyping Northern peoples; the lyrics mostly just reiterate how cold it is where they live. van Dusen even recorded a follow-up to “Yodel-O-Eskimo,” “The Wedding of Eskimo Joe” (without Elwin). The silliness of the underlying concepts for these songs is apparent: van Dusen just wants an excuse to yodel, so he is not bothered by the complexity of an Englishman (Thomas Harrington) pretending to be a Dutchman (George van Dusen) pretending to be an Inuit (Ice Pack Joe) pretending to be a Swiss yodeler.

What makes this record worth having, though, is Maurice Elwin’s wonderfully mock-sincere delivery of the lyrics. The contrast between his careful diction and van Dusen’s awkward vocalizations is simply hilarious. It is hard to imagine Elwin keeping a straight face during the recording; it is easy to imagine him smiling all the way to the bank, though. “Yodel-O-Eskimo” is just one extreme example of how he was admirably willing to lend a hand in the production of music of all genres.

  1. Rick Hardy and Arthur Badrock. “George van Dusen: A Life by Rick Hardy; A Discography by Arthur Badrock.” Talking Machine Review 86 (Spring 1994): 2502-2505. ↩︎
  2. Ibid., 2504. ↩︎
  3. Apologies for the dated and now offensive exonym; for that matter, I understand that “Eskimo” is now frowned upon, as well. ↩︎
Arthur Lally

“Peter, Peter” (1929)

“Peter, Peter.” Music by Rudolf Nelson, words by Friedrich Hollaender (1929). Recorded by the Rhythm Maniacs with vocalist Maurice Elwin on November 28, 1929. Decca F-1608 mx. FMB-719-2.

The Rhythm Maniacs (v. Maurice Elwin) – “Peter, Peter” (1929)

The transfer that I am sharing on the forty-seventh anniversary of Maurice Elwin’s death is a little unusual. The record that it is taken from is unfortunately very worn, but it is rare enough that I thought it worth the trouble to clean the audio up as best I could. What makes “Peter, Peter” so special is that Elwin sings it in German.

This is not the “Peter, Peter” song by Jimmy Campbell, Reg. Connelly, and Harry Woods that Elwin would eventually record with the Savoy Hotel Orpheans in 1933. It is, rather, a 1929 Rhythm Maniacs version of the Rudolf Nelson composition most famously recorded by Marlene Dietrich simply as “Peter” in 1931. The refrain is:

Peter, Peter, komm zu mir zurück!
Peter, Peter, warst mein bestes Stück.
Peter, Peter, ich war so gemein.
Später, später sieht man erst alles ein.

Peter, Peter, come back to me.
Peter, Peter, you were my pride and joy.
Peter, Peter, I was so mean.
Later, only later does one understand everything.

As a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, Elwin may have learned to sing in any number of languages associated with high culture. “Peter, Peter” does not appear to have been his only German recording, for that matter; my discography lists several that he is supposed to have made with the Rhythm Maniacs in 1929-1930. That said — can my German readers confirm my sense that Elwin flubs the final line?