WHEN IT’S NIGHT TIME IN ITALY { 0:00 }
ARABIANNA { 2:51 }
- The Albany Dance Orchestra (Savoy Orpheans) – Unnamed vocal duo in When It’s Night Time
HMV B-1763 (recorded 18 January 1924, issued March 1924)
The Savoy Orpheans were contracted to Columbia, for whom they recorded WHEN IT’S NIGHT TIME in in the company’s 100-108 Clerkenwell Road converted attic studio, complete with exposed roof beams. Two days later, they were at Hayes in HMV’s purpose-built studio recording the tune again. It was their fourth session for HMV, and were given the pseudonym The Albany Dance Orchestra. The Romaine Orchestra was another.
Whereas the Columbia version had one vocalist, the HMV had two. The latter’s words are less clear. Was it the cloak of the pseudonym which permitted a more sophisticatedly jazzy performance, especially the riff at the end.
ARABIANNA is evocative of mid-1920’s sophistication, one could imagine it as background music to a period scene in a play or a film. It taps into that 1920s fashion for things Egyptian and Arabian after the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in late 1922. It made me note the composer’s name – Fisher Thompson; who, it turns out, was not a regular tin-pan-alley tunesmith. The Orpheans give his tune great atmosphere.
He was born on St Valentine’s Day 1892 in Baltimore. Whilst a child, his family moved to Butte Montana. He studied piano, and was musical director for the musical show Rose’s Royal Midgets in New York and on tour in Mexico, Japan, China, Hawaii and Cuba. He worked as an arranger for a New York publisher and returned to Butte for what looks to have been a minor, and local, musical career. ARABIANNA is not typical of his compositions, which included a lot of marches. ‘Rio Nights’ and ‘You, Just You’ were apparently his popular successes. He died on 8 January 1972 in Butte.
My two other uploads of WHEN IT’S NIGHT TIME IN ITALY
