[Dixielandjazz] Professors and Philharmonics

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

The man Ralph Sutton called Wellstride had lots of witticisms --
and in his youth no doubt a a callow youth encountered Professor 
Hot Lips Henry Levine and his Barefoot Dixieland Philharmonic,
but the tarting up rather than send-up of names for ensembles was an 
uncomic but ridiculous business in the 1920s.  I know of one college band
which had broken up in acrimony and was reassembled because records by 
the unseen because fictional band they were marketed as on disc actually sold. 
I like the idea of executives trying to find out who they had got to simulate the
vododeo-dodos dreamed up by a colleague, and then having to persuade the 
guys to get together and record under the same empty name. 
Which is likely to have been swanked up into the sort of name Dick and Kenny
played under -- but mainly above, and beyond. 


Robert R. Calder