[78-L] "Shine", "St. Louis Blues" and copyright legislation

[Michael Biel]

Tbroo at aol.com wrote:
>  
> The first recording of "St. Louis Blues", an instrumental, was indeed  the 
> Columbia by Prince's Band in December 1915. It's a fascinating recording,  
> full of musical intricacies (including the habanera counterpoint during the  
> opening bars).

As I mentioned recently in the thread about dances, at one of the annual 
seminars at the Great American Brass Band Festival held at Centre 
College and Danville, Kentucky, there was a presentation about the 
unremembered popularization of ragtime and early jazz by military bands 
such as Sousa, Prince, Creatore, etc.  It was a natural because march 
tempo is much the same as dance tempo, and until 1922 most of the 
records used for dancing were 12-inchers.  St. Louis Blues was probably 
spread throughout the nation by the very. very popular military and 
concert band concerts that were frequently held in every city, town, and 
hamlet in those days. 

I'm not sure if I have this record, but obviously Tim does although 
nobody else seems to have ever seen it.  Ironic, since Tim is the most 
fervent critic of Osborne's Pop Memories which cites this rarely 
encountered record as a #4 hit.  As Tim has written and Don C hinted at, 
shouldn't "hit" records be among the least rare records?

Mike (who also has Lost Sounds, and it's even autographed) Biel  
mbiel at mbiel.com