[78-L] Identifying vocalists

[Geoffrey Wheeler]

“I posted a reply regarding Trumbauer.I was out in my shed and came 
across an old album I picked up some
time back.The record is a Varsity 78 of "Jimtown Blues" backed with 
"The Laziest Gal in Town".It was issued
on Varsity 8223.I once had a Joe Davis 78 and all I can recall about it 
was that at the very bottom of the lab-
l,it said "Gennett Records".”

Joe Davis licensed use of the “Gennett” name for perhaps a year. The 
label design is quite different from any of the original Gennett 
series.  According to the late Henry Renard, Davis thought by using the 
Gennett name black record buyers would associate it with King Oliver, 
Jelly Roll Morton, and other great black artists of the ’20s. As Henry 
put it to me: “Why would any juke-box listener of the mid-1940s even 
know the Gennett name, let alone know anything about Oliver or Morton?” 
Because Davis likely started in the music business in the 1920s, these 
names were familiar to him but not likely to his prospective customers.

Davis Gennetts often featured recordings that could be found on other 
Davis labels. An example are “Jumpin’ With Judy” and “Blues on the 
Bayou” recorded by Walter “Foots” Thomas in 1944 and issued on Joe 
Davis 8126, Celebrity 8126, and Gennett 8126 (Gennett 8126 is not 
listed in Delaunay ’48). Thomas’s 1944 recordings for Davis labels 
feature excellent personnels that include Emmett Berry, Jonah Jones, 
Hilton Jefferson, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Budd Johnson, Clyde 
Hart, Oscar Pettiford, Milt Hinton, and Cozy Cole. The sides were later 
reissued on a British LP label (Harlequin?)