The record changer (Feb-Dec 1948)

That made it more than ordinarily essential to keep all overhead and cost items at an absolute minimum, including the price of talent. This, in turn, ruled out the use of name bands in most cases, and meant attempting to make as few masters as possible while still issuing all hit material on the various labels as fast as it appeared. Another and related factor was the necessity of creating at least a superficial illusion that the record of (let us say) "My Blue Heaven" which was sold at the W. T. Grant store differed entirely from the one which was offered at the YVoolworth's across the street on a different label, even though both were actually pressed from the same master. This aim was accomplished, to a degree, not only by using the different labels (nearly every chain and mail order house had its own or one reserved for its sole use by Mills) but also in many cases Heads" always means Nichols) it could not be generally adopted, perhaps in large measure because the make up of most of the recording groups was so extremely fluid (no offense, fellows!). About the best you can count on is that certain names are more likely than others to cover either a hot record or at least a few respectable bars from a collectable soloist. For example, records listed as by The Red Heads, The Whoopee Makers, The Kentucky Grasshoppers, Jimmy Bracken's Toe Ticklers, Mills Musical Clowns, Goody and His Good Timers, The Washingtonians, The Indiana Five, The Six Hottentots, The Dixie Jazz Band; The Ten Blackberries, The Original Memphis Five, Five Birmingham Babies, and Gil Rodin's Boys are nearly always collectors' items, although many of these names are used to cover quite different groups from time to time. Records^ and Phonographs men JAZZ FOX TROT o JAZZ FOX TROT No. 9134 SHAKE IT AND Bl By LAWN'S SOUTHERN SEREl Composers: FRISCOE-CHIHA & CLARK 41924 ±LsOk fx. HfiiC ^>*Ll2I^N0graph Company <hcj^^ SHAKE IT AND BREAK IT By KENTUCKY SERENADERS Composers: FRISCOE-CHIHA 4 CLARK <«1M4) ©I92» by changing the name of the band. Very popular numbers — late hits and evergreens such as "Tiger Rag" or "St. Louis Blues" — might appear on ten or twelve labels under half a dozen or more different band natnes, but with the music identical on each. This camouflage could even be carried to the point of giving aliases to the vocalists who received label credit (and for some of those vocalists, an alias was probably also in the nature of self-defense!). It would have been a break for collectors had Mills always used the same house name to cover at least the same style of playing, let alone groups with a semi-fixed personnel. Unfortunately, although this practice was followed to some extent in a few cases (for example, as far as I know "The Red Often collectable, but apt to be found quite regularly on entirely worthless records, are issues under The Lumberjacks, Paul Mills and His Orchestra, The Varsity Eight, The Dixie Daisies, The Caroliners, Joe Candullo and His Orch., The Golden Gate Orch., The Broadway Broadcasters and some others. Perhaps the majority of the pop vocal soloists should fall into this group, too ; Lee Morse, Annette Hanshaw and Cliff Edwards (among others) often had Venuti, Lang, Nichols, the Dorseys and, others supporting them. That leaves dozens and dozens of other names used by Mills which are entirely unpredictable. Among those most commonly encountered, and under which at least one or two good items have turned up, we should mention Lanin's Arcadians, Sam Lanin's Orch. or Troubadours, The University Boys, The Campus Boys, Lou Conners' Collegians, Ted White and His Collegians, The Missouri Jazz Band, The Southampton Society Orch., Willard Robison's Orch. — but this could go on indefinitely. Suffice it to say that even the lowly Imperial Dance Orch., The Hollywood Dance Orch., and Ernest Carl's Orch. have been known to mask outfits led by or featuring Nichols, Henderson, Rollini, the Dorseys, Jack Pettis, Venuti and Lang, Teagarden, McPartland, Goodman. I guess you'll just have to listen to all of them, same as I — misery loves company ! The more we do listen to these sides, and catch up with the occasional chorus that sounds as if it had been made by someone who knew what he was doing, the more we look to the master numbers to try to help us decide for sure who the soloist might be ; because with all this confusion of names, we can't get much help from what's printed on the label. But the Devil really gets into the cheese when we say "Master Numbers." I am now, I suspect, about to shock a good many hardened old collectors, so brace yourselves : MOST "MASTER NUMBERS" PRINTED ON MILLS LABELS OR IMPRESSED IN THE WAX ARE NOT REALLY MASTERS AT ALL! The sad fact is that in a great many cases these numbers, which are shown in most discographies, are actually only indicia used in some manner in the Mills book-keeping system — I conjecture that their usual role was to indicate the order in which the masters were allocated from one label to the other, serials then being used to show the actual order of issue on each label. You can see what this means to us in our attempt to reconstruct the recording sessions. We must now try to discover which, if any, of these numbers are actually the basic masters. And, friends, after all these years, I'm still not absolutely sure. The best I can do is to give you a theory. My listings tend to show that for the greater part of the period of Mills activity, the master numbers used for Pathe and Perfect were basic, where the same master was used to press platters issued on these labels and on others as well ; and that for pieces not found on these, the numbers usually used for bookkeeping for the Banner-Regal-DominoOriole series or those for the CameoRomeo-Lincoln series also may have been used as actual masters from time to time. I am very reluctant to entertain this latter idea, as it would mean that there actually was no one single list that was kept to show the complete chronology of all Mills cutting1 dates. But this is the only theory which will account for some of the aberrations which have turned up among the listings, as you will see a little later on. JULY, 1948 17