Lou Gold & His Orchestra – Trudy, Fox-Trot (Tobias & Sherman) with Vocal refrain by Billy West, Harmony 1926 (USA)
NOTE: That lovely little fox-trot was probably inspired by the loud achievement of the American swimmer Gertrude (“Trudy”) Eberle, who on the 6th of August 1926 became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. She was born to the family of German immigrants (her father owned a butcher shop in Manhattan) and that fact must have made the arrangers of this recording to place a comical Englis/German introduction to the song (although the lyrics do not seem to contain any more hints to Eberle or to her swimming success). That fact made me select for the slideshow several photographs of the “sporting ladies” of the Jazz Age. As we all know, bobby-haircut, short dress, dancing the charleston, smoking cigarettes and training sports were main principles of any self-respecting flapper of the era.
American pianist Lou Gold led one of the hottest and most prolific dance bands of the Roaring Twenties. His favorite genre were early jazz pieces, foxtrots and novelty songs, such as Clap Yo 'Hands, Do Do Do (1926), Skadatin-Dee (1928), My Kinda Love (1929). His vocalist were fine singers: Scrappy Lambert, Irving Kaufman, Gladys Rice, Franklyn Baur or Smith Ballew. Lou Gold recorded mostly for the smaller companies, like Banner, Cameo, Crown, Harmony, Imperial, Perfect and Romeo, partly under various pseudonyms. In January 1927 he recorded the earliest version of the Roaring Twenties’ icon song “Ain’t She Sweet”, and his version of another big hit “The Varsity Drag” (1927) was used in the film adaptation of the musical Good News (1930). After the Great Depression, Lou Gold’s orchestra disbanded and the Latin orchestra Don Carlos and His Rumba Band emerged from it.
