High Society Blues
LP Saville SVL 162
There is no doubt that the jazz music born in the US was superior to the European attempts in the beginning, and it still may be so today, but around 1930, England was a competitor to American dance music and even “hot” dance music.
The New Mayfair Dance Orchestra was a revival of an orchestra that existed before the First World War, and it was assembled to meet the great demand for dance music records in the late 1920s. The director was Carol Gibbons, an American pianist. His success led to another job in the new sound film business, so the band was taken over by the British Ray Noble. Under Noble’s direction, the band recorded extensively, and the discs were also released for the American market.
The vocal in this good arrangement recorded in 1930 is by one W. Vernon that we do not know anything about, not even whether he was English or American.
The tune is, of course, not to be confused with the one played by the New Orleans jazz bands but a composition by James F. Hanley, whose greatest hit was Back Home in Indiana.