[78-L] Identifying vocalists

[David Lennick]

I believe Joe Davis's main reason for using the Gennett name was that it still existed, as a sound effects library, and had an allotment of shellac..hard to come by during WWII.

 

dl
 
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> From: dialjazz at verizon.net
> Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 11:35:42 -0400
> Subject: [78-L] Identifying vocalists
> 
> “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?)
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