[78-L] (no subject)

[andrew.evans at free.fr]

Can anybody out there help me fill gaps in a sequence of matrices recorded by
Columbia in London for the French market in the mid-1920s? I'm looking at the
sequence which began with (W)L253 in December 1925 and ended with (W)L304 in
October 1926 - 52 matrices in all. All but a handful of them are by, or include,
the jazz/novelty piano duo of Jean Wiener and Clement Doucet, but there are
three gaps in the series. I've always presumed Columbia simply allocated a block
of matrices to them (though why it should have been 52 is beyond my ability to
speculate), as indeed they seem to have earmarked a block of record numbers, and
went on over the months and years until both blocks were fully used. Hence my
mystification about the gaps in the sequences.

L271 and 272 were presumably recorded some time between 14 December 1925 and 22
April 1926 - otherwise I have no no details.

L289 and 290 are the first of two gaps in a sequence of recordings made by
Wiener & Doucet on 25-26-27 October 1926. They had apparently made the trip from
Paris to London in company with Maurice Chevalier, Yvonne Vallée (Chevalier's
girlfriend of the day) and the Corsican tenor Stéphane Pizella. On Monday 25th
Wiener & Doucet recorded three duets and a solo apiece, ending with L288. Then
comes this two-matrix gap, then 291-4 on the Tuesday with the singers in various
combinations, followed on the Wednesday by L295-6 and L299 to L304.

The 12-side series of recordings with Maurice Chevalier, Mlle Vallée and M.
Pizella is thus broken by L-297 and 298. I have them both, on Columbia D6216, a
disc from a completely different series; both are solos by Pizella with an
unnamed piano accompaniment. Does anyone know whether Columbia had a house
pianist at the time, or have any other clue as to who the unnamed accompanist
might be?

Andrew in Luxembourg