“Oh, My Bundle of Love.” Words by George Price, music by Abner Silver. Recorded by Elsie Carlisle with piano accompaniment by Carroll Gibbons on October 6, 1926. Zonophone 2829 mx. Yy-9071-1.
Original 78 rpm transfer by Erik Høst
Elsie Carlisle sang “Oh, My Bundle of Love”1 at her third recording session, for her third record, accompanied, as she always would be that year, by a 23-year-old Carroll Gibbons on the piano. The composition has a bubbly energy typical of the dance music of its period, and the lyrics express the goofy enthusiasm of a young lover by way of precious, cutesy colloquialisms (e.g. “sweetie-sweet”). For this song, Elsie dons a persona of somewhat mindless ebullience that reminds me of her 1930 version of “Wasn’t It Nice?”; she is the picture of pure, giggly fun. The recording is also a good example of Carroll Gibbons’s developing piano virtuosity (he would not be known as a band leader for another year).
“My Bundle of Love” was recorded in America in 1925 by Gene Austin (accompanied by Jack Shilkret on the piano) and by Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards. In 1926 there were versions by Mal Hallett and His Orchestra, Emerson Gill and His Castle of Paris Orchestra (with vocals by Pinkey Hunter), Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra, The Southerners (with vocalist Jack Kaufman), and Nick Lucas. There is a piano roll of the song from that year by Ralph Reichenthal (a.k.a Ralph Rainger), the composer of “Moanin’ Low,” amongst other successful tunes.
Elsie Carlisle’s 1926 recording of “Oh, My Bundle of Love” was preceded that year in Britain by a take by Jay Whidden and His New Midnight Follies Band (rejected by Columbia) and by a version by Jack Hylton and His Orchestra.
- “Oh, My Bundle of Love” more commonly has the simpler title of “My Bundle of Love,” and why not? The expression “Oh, My Bundle of Love” does not occur in the song. ↩︎
