Jan Garber & His Orchestra – Too Tired, Fox-Trot (Little-Sizemore-Shay), Victor 1924 (USA)
NOTE: This tune is one of those pseudo-“fox-trots” which, under that cover are hiding the original charlestons. Perhaps, in the early 1920s, for commercial reasons they were labelled as “fox-trots”, when popularity of foxtrot was still greater than the charleston. It was then a still criticized novelty and moreover, to dance the charleston skillfully and without harming your knees or ankles, you needed to undergo a solid training with professional dance-teacher.
The pleasure of listening to this early charleston is even greater when it’s played by such fabulous band as Jan Garber’s. Jan Garber was born in 1897 in Morristown, NJ. He attended the University of North Carolina, he briefly played violin with the Philadelphia Symphony and after that, he formed his first band in New York in 1918. His next outfit was co-led by pianist Milton Davis in the early 1920's, playing a 'semi-hot style' of jazz - this was known as the Garber-Davis Orchestra. In the mid-1920s he again formed his own dance orchestra, whose recordings of popular American dance tunes belong to the hottest and most valued through the whole history of the “hot-dance” style in dance music of the Roaring Twenties. The dawn of the big band era which followed the Great Depression made Jan Garber change his arrangements into a 'sweet' band style, which came about in the 1930's, when Garber took over the Freddie Large Orchestra in Cleveland. His career thereafter spanned more than a half century. He recorded primarily for Victor and American Decca records. By the time he retired in the early 1970's, he had become very wealthy, owning substantial real estate holdings in Louisiana. He died in 1977 in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA.
