1931 Centuries of Sound

    • Music History

At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only the first 45 minutes. For the full 160-minute version please come to centuriesofsound.com to stream, or patreon.com/centuriesofsound for downloads and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.















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It almost certainly goes without saying that the great depression was difficult time for many people around the world, but in any reshuffling a few unexpected cards will come to the top of the deck. In this darkest year of the period, a few artists were at the apex of their success, and for whatever reason the music and films they made seem to have fixed themselves in the popular consciousness better than anything from the previous few years.



In our just-passed golden age, Cab Calloway hadn't been doing that well. After a few years of touring around the USA with his more successful band-leader sister Blanche, he'd set himself up in New York with his own group, but following a disastrous debut at the Savoy Ballroom, they split up. Forced to take a job as a singer in the musical Connie's Hot Chocolates, he found a new band, and by 1930 they were the star attraction at The Cotton Club, and about to release the first million-selling single by an African-American artist.



Minnie The Moocher was not entirely an original piece, in the way that nothing really is. The bulk of it was sourced from a much earlier song called Willie the Weeper, and many of the adaptations had already been made in a 1927 version by Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon. Even the sleazy, funky style of Calloway's band was lifted largely from his sister Blanche, who would also do scat singing not far from the "hi de hi de hi de ho" refrain. But there's no denying that Cab himself is an electrifying presence, even ninety years later - where Louis Armstrong is warm and welcoming, he's aggressive, preening and feline in a way we won't really get again until the birth of rock & roll. The song is pretty shocking too - beneath the flimsiest of euphemistic slang terms it's a story about cocaine and opium use and open displays of female sexuality, and you have to wonder how many listeners got that - I would wager the answer is "surprisingly many" — though perhaps not Al Bowlly, whose version I probably won't be including in the 1932 mix.



1931 was a bumper year for this sort of thing in Hollywood too. Though the censorship regimen The Hays Code was officially adopted in 1930, it wouldn't really be taken seriously until 1934, and it feels like producers were going as far as they could before someone stopped them. High profile movies this year include morally-ambiguous gangster pictures Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, stories about a secretary-turned-prostitute (Safe In Hell), lurid parties (Dance, Fools, Dance) and open mockery of religion (The Miracle Woman.) This was a massive year for horror movies too, with the release of the classic versions of Dracula, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein, the latter directed by James Whale, an openly-gay British man whose career would later be derailed by his open conflict with Hitler a few years before the rest of the western world joined in.



Hollywood might have been having a golden age, but the same cannot of course be said about the record business - in fact movie musicals were really the only growth area for musicians this year. While some companies had remained afloat in 1930, further economic shocks from Germany had now done for what was left of their business. Of course important bandleaders were still being recorded, but the expeditions to record across The South had mostly withered and died.



The vital exception to this is the guitar blues coming o

At Centuries of Sound I am making mixes for every year of recorded sound. The download here is only the first 45 minutes. For the full 160-minute version please come to centuriesofsound.com to stream, or patreon.com/centuriesofsound for downloads and a host of other bonus materials for just $5 per month. This show would not be possible without my supporters on there, so please consider signing up or sharing this with someone who may be interested.















MP3 preview download | Patreon | Apple | Mixcloud | Spotify | Castbox | Stitcher | Radiopublic | RSS



It almost certainly goes without saying that the great depression was difficult time for many people around the world, but in any reshuffling a few unexpected cards will come to the top of the deck. In this darkest year of the period, a few artists were at the apex of their success, and for whatever reason the music and films they made seem to have fixed themselves in the popular consciousness better than anything from the previous few years.



In our just-passed golden age, Cab Calloway hadn't been doing that well. After a few years of touring around the USA with his more successful band-leader sister Blanche, he'd set himself up in New York with his own group, but following a disastrous debut at the Savoy Ballroom, they split up. Forced to take a job as a singer in the musical Connie's Hot Chocolates, he found a new band, and by 1930 they were the star attraction at The Cotton Club, and about to release the first million-selling single by an African-American artist.



Minnie The Moocher was not entirely an original piece, in the way that nothing really is. The bulk of it was sourced from a much earlier song called Willie the Weeper, and many of the adaptations had already been made in a 1927 version by Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon. Even the sleazy, funky style of Calloway's band was lifted largely from his sister Blanche, who would also do scat singing not far from the "hi de hi de hi de ho" refrain. But there's no denying that Cab himself is an electrifying presence, even ninety years later - where Louis Armstrong is warm and welcoming, he's aggressive, preening and feline in a way we won't really get again until the birth of rock & roll. The song is pretty shocking too - beneath the flimsiest of euphemistic slang terms it's a story about cocaine and opium use and open displays of female sexuality, and you have to wonder how many listeners got that - I would wager the answer is "surprisingly many" — though perhaps not Al Bowlly, whose version I probably won't be including in the 1932 mix.



1931 was a bumper year for this sort of thing in Hollywood too. Though the censorship regimen The Hays Code was officially adopted in 1930, it wouldn't really be taken seriously until 1934, and it feels like producers were going as far as they could before someone stopped them. High profile movies this year include morally-ambiguous gangster pictures Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, stories about a secretary-turned-prostitute (Safe In Hell), lurid parties (Dance, Fools, Dance) and open mockery of religion (The Miracle Woman.) This was a massive year for horror movies too, with the release of the classic versions of Dracula, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein, the latter directed by James Whale, an openly-gay British man whose career would later be derailed by his open conflict with Hitler a few years before the rest of the western world joined in.



Hollywood might have been having a golden age, but the same cannot of course be said about the record business - in fact movie musicals were really the only growth area for musicians this year. While some companies had remained afloat in 1930, further economic shocks from Germany had now done for what was left of their business. Of course important bandleaders were still being recorded, but the expeditions to record across The South had mostly withered and died.



The vital exception to this is the guitar blues coming o