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Arthur Lally

“She’s My Slip of a Girl” (1930)

“She’s My Slip of a Girl.” Composed by Cyril Watters for the Melody Maker “All British Song Competition” (first prize, 1929). Recorded in Chelsea, London on January 31, 1930 by the Rhythm Maniacs under the musical direction of Arthur Lally with vocalist Maurice Elwin. Decca F-1630 mx. MB-914-2A.

Personnel: Arthur Lally-cl-as-bar / Sylvester Ahola-Dennis Ratcliffe-t / Ted Heath-tb / Danny Polo-cl-as / Joe Crossman or Johnny Helfer-cl-ts / Claude Ivy-p / Joe Brannelly-bj / Spike Hughes-sb / Max Bacon-d-vib / Maurice Elwin-v / Lew Stone-a1

The Rhythm Maniacs (v. Maurice Elwin) – “She’s My Slip of a Girl” (1930)

“She’s My Slip of a Girl” won first prize in the 1929 Melody Maker magazine “All British Song Competition,” which aimed to identify a foxtrot “considered worthy of holding its own with foreign importations.”2 The judges included C. B. Cochran, Noel Coward, and Jack Hylton, and there were 500 competitors. The prize was taken by Cyril Watters, a twenty-two-year-old pianist and musical clerk who would go on to compose over 250 songs and win many more prizes in the coming decades.

“She’s My Slip of a Girl” is undeniably catchy, even infectious, with its anapestic patter and rapid-fire rhyme scheme. The singer speaks of his elation (verging on ecstasy) at somehow having been so fortunate as to have a certain slender or otherwise diminutive type of woman in his life. The B part is particularly precious:

Maybe she's not a beauty,
But beauty's only skin deep.
She's the kind of a cutie
Knocks 'em all of a heap.

I know of no other lyrics that express so well the idea of a visceral attraction that transcends conventional standards for good looks.

Of the four British versions recorded of “She’s My Slip of a Girl,” the Rhythm Maniacs’ version best captures the trance-inducing qualities of the tune, which is repetitive yet never dull. As with many early Decca recordings, the sound engineers set the gain very high, and the song is blaringly loud. The result is that it almost pulsates, bringing out the nearly primal appeal of the Lew Stone arrangement. A quick scan over the personnel list reveals that the Rhythm Maniacs at this time were almost a subset of Ambrose’s orchestra.

One effect of the song’s high volume is the contrast between the blaring instrumental parts and Maurice Elwin’s vocal. The latter sounds deeply earnest — who would expect otherwise from Elwin? — but he is also enthusiastic, almost impassioned. There is considerable warmth in his voice. At a couple of points the melody goes rather high, and the baritone follows it upwards deftly, allowing himself to sound momentarily more vulnerable, as men sometimes do when they successfully sing above their usual range.

“She’s My Slip of a Girl” encapsulates for me one of the things that I love generally about Elwin: he is a fundamentally calm, mellow singer with a wholesome-sounding voice who found himself working with some of Britain’s hottest bands (I think particularly of the Firman bands along with Lally’s studio orchestras). To a certain extent he introduces a pleasant contrast with his comparatively composed vocal refrains, but at no time does he sound out of place.

To appreciate the brilliance of the Rhythm Maniac’s version of “She’s My Slip of a Girl” requires us to compare the other contemporary interpretations of the song, which happen to be all very good in their own ways. Eddie Hardie and His Night Club Boys recorded a December 1929 version on Piccadilly with a Harry Bentley vocal that is slow and bluesy. The same month, Ray Noble’s New Mayfair Dance Orchestra made a booming but elegant one, also comparatively slow, with touching vocals by Pat O’Malley, who scats gently at the end of the recording. In March 1930, Jack Payne and His BBC Dance Orchestra did a purely instrumental interpretation of the tune that must be at least as fast as the Rhythm Maniacs and whose arrangement is marked by amusing variations on the underlying tune that keep it from seeming overly repetitious. Finally, there is an interesting French version that I think may be a response to the Rhythm Maniacs.

  1. My thanks to Mike Thomas for providing me with the correct personnel lineup. ↩︎
  2. Daily Mirror, January 1, 1930, 4, British Newspaper Archive. ↩︎
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
Carroll Gibbons

“Round about Sundown” (1933)

“Round about Sundown” (a.k.a. “‘Long about Sundown”). Words by Billy Moll, music by Joseph Meyer (1932). Recorded in London on January 20, 1933 by Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans with vocalist Maurice Elwin. Columbia CB-565 mx. CA-13370-2.

Personnel: Carroll Gibbons-p dir. Bill Shakespeare-Billy Higgs-t / Arthur Fenoulhet-t-tb / Paul Fenoulhet-Sam Acres-tb / George Melachrino-cl-as-vn / Laurie Payne-cl-as-bar / George Smith-ts / Ben Frankel-vn / Sid Bright-2nd p / Harry Sherman-g / Jack Evetts-sb / Rudy Starita-d-vib-x / Maurice Elwin-v

Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans (v. Maurice Elwin)
“Round about Sundown” (1933)
(Transfer by Charles Hippisley-Cox)

At first inspection, Carroll Gibbons’s recording of “Round about Sundown” with Maurice Elwin as vocalist would appear to be the only version of that song committed to shellac. In fact, the song was otherwise known as “‘Long about Sundown” and was recorded under that title in the United States. My suspicion is that someone at Columbia Records in London may have thought that “‘long about” (meaning “approximately at”) was an unintelligible North American expression and opted for the more transatlantic “round about” instead.

The theme of “‘Long about Sundown” is fairly conventional: the singer longs to return at day’s end to spend time with the one he loves. Both the title and the subject matter recall Walter Donaldson’s “At Sundown (When Love Is Calling Me Home)” (1927); there are also similarities with Donaldson’s “My Blue Heaven” (also 1927), which he wrote with lyricist George Whiting.1 Moll and Meyer’s work does not seem unusually derivative to me, however. There may be a limited number of surefire themes in popular song, but that does not say anything about the manifold melodies and arrangements that songwriters may attach to them. For example, Robinson and Dubin’s “Halfway to Heaven” (1928) was another similarly themed song that was recorded no fewer than three times by Elwin, and it built on the same basic concept.

The Savoy Hotel Orpheans’ arrangement of “Round about Sundown” (as they called it) comes in punchy and upbeat. Their overall sound suggests an urbane sophistication that is typical of their recordings from this period but which might almost be said to clash with the simple, largely natural imagery of the lyrics. Maurice Elwin, on the other hand, is subdued, subtle, and confidential, not to mention vocally mellifluous. His precision and control as an artist who had mastered microphone technique are particularly on display — his every breath seems premeditated. It is not unusual for a vocal refrain to be considerably quieter than the rest of a dance band recording, but in “Round about Sundown” there would appear to be a conscious experiment in contrasts that allows allows us to experience both playful fun and tender sincerity in the same short time span.

“‘Long about Sundown” was recorded in 1932 by Hal Kemp and His Orchestra (v. ?Skinnay Ennis), Don Bestor and His Orchestra (v. Maurice Cross), Tom Berwick and His Ritz-Carlton Orchestra (as “Harold Mooney and His Orchestra; v. James Harkins), and Macy and Smalle (instrumental, with Eddie Lange, Joe Venuti, and Charles Magnante). There is also a surviving radio transcription of Phil Harris and His Orchestra performing “‘Long about Sundown” (v. Leah Ray).

  1. As pointed out by “Trombonology Erstwhile” in a YouTube comment. ↩︎