During the 1920s, quite an assortment of jazz and hot dance bands made records for multiple labels using aliases displaying the name of New York's world-renowned theater district and its main drag: Broadway. As early as 1921, Thomas Edison's Diamond Discs featured something called the Broadway Dance Orchestra, and in 1922-1923
Ben Selvin's groups recorded for Vocalion as
the Broadway Syncopators. In a marvel of duplicity,
the California Ramblers and
Fletcher Henderson's orchestra were each billed as both
the Broadway Melody Makers and the Broadway Music Masters.
The Original Memphis Five became
the Broadway Seven when recording for Grey Gull, and that company's regular studio band was sometimes identified as the Broadway Merry Makers. Whenever recording for Columbia's budget-line subsidiary Harmony,
Sam Lanin's dance band was magically transformed into an entity known as
the Broadway Bell-Hops, while on Cameo they were billed as the Broadway Broadcasters. Vintage Music Productions has reissued 22 of
the Bell-Hops' 80 known recordings on CD. Most of these feature period pop vocals by people like Billy Jones,
Arthur Fields, and
Irving Kaufman.
Few musicians recorded with more pseudonymous bands than cornetist and trumpeter
Red Nichols,
Lanin's choice for
the Bell-Hops when they first convened in the recording studio on February 10, 1926. Also present were trombonist
Miff Mole and tuba tamer
Joe Tarto. Except for one session in May of 1926,
Nichols was first-chair trumpeter with
the Bell-Hops through June of 1927. When
Lanin next led a group for Harmony three months later, the band was essentially recognizable as the
Frankie Trumbauer unit, complete with cornetist
Bix Beiderbecke, pianist
Frank Signorelli, and violinist
Joe Venuti. The remaining entries in the
Broadway Bell-Hops discography involved players whose identities have never been fully verified. A comprehensive anthology of the many "Broadway" bands has yet to materialize. If and when such a collection is ever assembled, it will need to include examples of
Duke Ellington's orchestra masquerading as
the Broadway Revelers,
Teddy Hill's as
the Broadway Rhythm Kings,
Ben Pollack's as
the Broadway Bandits, and
Mezz Mezzrow's as the Broadway Swingstars. ~ arwulf arwulf