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Said to be the world's most popular novelty song, this 1935 tune has been in dozens of movies, shorts, documentaries, ads, radio and TV shows.
Betty Boop (Helen Kane) offers her iffy take from the dawn of media. Many 2022 no-no's.
Factoid: the lyrics refer to a French horn, not a trumpet.
Tommy Dorsey had the original... Edythe Wright was his vocalist in the late '30s.
3 comments:
Well, the Dorsey/Wright version is early (Dec. 9, 1935) but it's not the first. That was done by "Mike Riley and Eddie Farley & Their Onyx Club Boys" for Decca on Sept. 26, 1935. Riley (trumpet) and Farley (trombone) are the composers.
They actually did it twice, as apparently it sold so well the record company needed a new master, and in between there own two versions recorded one with Ella Logan doing the vocal. (Logan was the aunt of singer Annie Ross, as in Lambert, Hendricks & Ross).
Doesn't seem likely that a french horn is referred to...
Music of the Great Depression (Nancy K. Young)
"The music going round and round refers to the music traveling through the sinuous curves of a french horn. Farley and Riley usually performed it with exaggerated gestures, with the idea the sound comes out here in the bell of the instrument."
I only know what I'm told.
A supposition by Young. The sound goes "round and round, and out the bell" of trumpets and trombones, too. Those (not french horns) are the instruments played by the composers, so what would you believe they are thinking of?
The french horn was very rarely played by pop/jazz people, so why would it be on their minds at all? It's an odd instrument -- valves fingered by the left hand, with the sound from the bell is muted by the hand and comes out towards the rear. (Somewhat flatulent, right?)
BTW, love your work, except here. Since when did you ever do what you're told? ;-)
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