Benny Meroff & His Orchestra – Happy Days Are Here Again, Fox-Trot from Chasing Rainbows (Ager – Yellen) with Vocal Chorus, Brunswick 1929 (USA)
NOTE: Benny MEROFF (1899-1973) was an American dance bandleader active in the end of the Roaring 20s and the swing era. He played violin, clarinet, and saxophone. Meroff’s first professional engagements were in vaudeville. When he decided to form his own dance band in the mid-20s, he managed to recruit some of the top sidemen of the day (eg. Wild Bill Davison, Al King, Vernon Brown, Frank Teschemacher). Meroff’s band concentrated on a blend of jazz and dance band songs. Meroff was a talented showman, who was able to make simultaneously bandleading and a complicated stage show. His orchestra played predominantly in the Chicago vicinity, they were at their top in the late 20s and early 30s, with releases on the Victor Records, OKeh Records and Columbia Records labels. There were also sporadic trips to New York for theatre and hotel engagements. Meroff disbanded his orchestra around the end of World War II and left music as a profession.
The 1929 song “Happy Days are Here Again” was featured in the 1930 MGM motion picture Chasing Rainbows and became associated with the US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when his staff made the decision to play it at the 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After that, it became his official campaign song, and thereafter became indelibly associated with New Deal Democrats. For the celebration of Roosevelt’s election, the American Record Corporation recommended the release of a very jubilant new version played by Gene Kardos’ dance orchestra with a vocal by Dick Robertson.
Benny Meroff’s rendition was recorded shortly before the crash day of the Great Depression on 24th Oct. 1929, therefore the slideshow presents only the happy covers of the New Yorker magazine from the years of prosperity
