'Fats' Waller's records
Sir: For the sake of the record (no pun intended) I feel I must take mild issue with Benny Green about the 78 rpm HMV records of the great 'Fats' Waller.
For the home market, HMV had three price categories for their ten-inch 78 rpm records. The cheapest was the BD series with a magenta label (not brown), next came the B series with a plum label, and at the top price came the red (scarlet) DA series.
The magenta label was generally used for run-of-the-mill dance bands, some brass bands, popular vocalists and comedians. The plum label was where the jazz was usually to be found Muggsy Spanier, Benny Goodman, Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and others. Likewise the Coldstream Guards Band, and Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth.
HMV kept the scarlet label fairly exclusively classical Gigli, Caruso, Adrian Boult, but it made the occasional concession to Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.
Turning to the HMV catalogue for 1944-45, I see that although it shows three double titles by 'Fats' Waller, including a duet with Bennie Paine, on plum label, all the other Waller discs some 12 of them are on the cheap magenta label. HMV never put 'Fats' or any other jazz artist on the scarlet label.
All this, of course, is now academic. Waller's recordings, on whatever colour label, are eagerly sought by collectors, to whom the original sale price of the disc means nothing. It's the very devil to find one in good condition.
K. W. Lou ghland
33 Derwent Drive,
Maidenhead, Berks
Previous page
