The Hot Sides

During the first week of October 1929 Raymond Stanley Noble (1903-1978) replaced Carroll Gibbons as leader of the English HMV record company's house band. Over the next two years Noble, today remembered mainly as the composer of pop and jazz standards like "The Very Thought of You" and "Cherokee," would cut 18 titles with this group under the mantle of the New Mayfair Dance (or Novelty) Orchestra. Released on the Retrieval label in 2007, Ray Noble: The Hot Sides 1929-1934 combines 12 of these Mayfair recordings with four titles waxed in January and October 1930 by the Night Club Kings (a smaller ensemble with Noble on "harpophone" or vibraharp), along with eight of the first recordings ever issued under the name of Ray Noble & His Orchestra; these date from December 1932 through July 1934. It all adds up to a charming time capsule lined with 24 vintage British dance band records. Participants include trumpeters Max Goldberg, Nat Gonella, and Norman Payne; reedmen Freddy Gardner, Danny Polo and Lawrence "Laurie" Payne; string bassist Spike Hughes, and master crooner Al Bowlly. Recorded in April 1930, "You've Got to be Modernistic," credited to songwriters James V. Monaco and Cliff Friend, bears only faint incidental and probably emulative resemblance to James P. Johnson's masterwork of Harlem stride piano, "You've Got to Be Modernistic," which was recorded by Johnson's Orchestra in November 1929 and as a piano solo in January 1930. Months later and thousands of miles away inside Small Queen's Hall in London, Friend and Monaco's tune fits in nicely with titles like "Makin' Wickey-Wackey Down in Waikiki" and "You Ought to See Sally on Sunday." Those who find themselves smitten by two consecutive versions of "Who Walks In When I Walk Out?" should seek out the Australian longhaired jug band version by the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band on their 1973 album Smoke Dreams (ESP LP 3009).