[78-L] Identifying vocalists

[Steven C. Barr]

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From: "Geoffrey Wheeler" <dialjazz at verizon.net>
> “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?)
>
IIRC, the Gennett bame was revived in 1943 because the label still had a
shellac allocation...?!

Steven C. Barr