Lawrence Wright Articles

Ray Starita, Sam Browne

“You’ll Find Out” (1932)

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“You’ll Find Out.” Words and music composed by Archie Gottler and Betty Treynor (a pseudonym of Lawrence Wright) for On with the Show. Recorded in London on June 15, 1932 by Ray Starita and His Ambassadors with vocalists Elsie Carlisle and Sam Browne. Sterno 984 mx. S-2477-2.

Personnel: Ray Starita-cl-ts dir. Nat Gonella-t / t / tb / prob. Chester Smith-cl-as-bar-o / Nat Star-cl-as / George Glover-cl-ts-vn / George Hurley-vn / Harry Robens-p / George Oliver-bj-g / Arthur Calkin-sb / Rudy Starita-d

Ray Starita and his Ambassadors – You’ll Find Out – 1932

Transfer by Henry Parsons

Between 1932 and 1937, Elsie Carlisle would make some 42 record sides with Sam Browne, most famously with Ambrose and His Orchestra, but occasionally also with other bands. The two singers became best known for on-shellac vituperative bickering (the best examples being found in “Seven Years with the Wrong Woman,” “What’s Good for the Goose Is Good for the Gander,” and “I’m Gonna Wash My Hands of You”). But their fictional relationships could be much more playful and subtle, as we see here in “You’ll Find Out,” which they recorded with Ray Starita’s band.

“You’ll Find Out” was a joint composition of American songwriter Archie Gottler and the prolific British composer Lawrence Wright, who most frequently used the pseudonym “Horatio Nicholls.” (His pseudonym used here — “Betty Treynor” — may have been a one-off.) As far as I can tell, this West End musical song was only recorded one other time; that recording, from April 1932, featured Sam Browne with Billie Lockwood under the Zonophone pseudonyms “Jack and Jill.” Now, “Jack and Jill” numbers, while delightful, tend to be comparatively sedate, and that is definitely the case with the Browne-Lockwood version. The two singers slowly take their turns delivering the increasingly suggestive lyrics, leaving the song’s comic sensibility underdeveloped.

Browne and Carlisle, in the Ray Starita recording of the song, uncover the composition’s potential. Part of their success is due to an audible chemistry that few duettists could match. But just as important is their phrasing as they deliver the lyrics. The joke of the song is that the young couple asks each other questions that seem to answer themselves: “What do lovers do out in the moonlight?” “What will we do evenings when it’s raining?” Supposing I must leave you for a week or two / And you haven’t got as single thing to do / How would you spend all those lonesome evenings?” Answered with “You’ll find out!” the questions suggest sex, infidelity, and the like.

The repeated punchline risks seeming monotonous. But we hear Sam and Elsie breaking up that monotony by altering the line “You’ll find out” in such a way as to dramatize it. “You’ll find out” gives way to “Ah! You’ll find out…”; “Could I? You’ll find out!”; “Oh, but…you’ll find out!”; “It is! You’ll find out…”; “Hmm… You’ll find out!” and finally, “Try and find out!” By varying the response, they produce something resembling a witty, funny conversation.

The vocal chorus is unusually long in this dance band recording, and the arrangement is remarkably sophisticated. Ray Starita’s musicians remain comparatively quiet during the vocal refrain, but as it progresses they build momentum and come in strong at the end. Starita’s band was brassless at the time, and one gets the sense from the powerful sax section work in “You’ll Find Out” that the orchestra could execute a dynamically scored arrangement without  trumpets and trombone — instruments added only for recording purposes in Starita’s 1932 British Homophone sessions.1

Notes:

  1. My thanks to Henry Parsons for reminding me of this latter point. ↩
Nat Star, Ray Starita, Rudy Starita

“Rock Your Cares Away” (1932)

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“Rock Your Cares Away.” Words and music by Leonard Blitz (as Leo Towers), Harry Sugarman (as Harry Leon), Lawrence Wright (as Horatio Nicholls) (1932). Recorded in London on November 5, 1932 by Rudy Starita and His Ambassadors with vocalist Elsie Carlisle. 4 in 1 – 17 mx. X-218-2.

Personnel: probably Nat Star-cl-as dir. / Nat Gonella-t / t / tb / cl-as / cl-ts / vn / p / bj-g / bb-sb / Rudy Starita-d-vib-x

Elsie Carlisle – “Rock Your Cares Away” (1932)

It is a little difficult to taxonomize this recording of “Rock Your Cares Away” by bandleader. It is clearly Ray Starita’s band, as is indicated on the label of the Sterno recording made at the same session (Sterno and 4 in 1 were both products of the British Homophone Company), but Ray had not returned from a vacation to America the previous summer and so could not have directed the music. The 4 in 1 record from the session mentions not Ray, but his brother Rudy Starita, the percussionist who did eventually take over control of the band from his brother. And yet Rust and Forbes think it likely that this particular session was led by Nat Star, who was generally in charge of dance music at Homophone.1

Whoever directed it, the result was a memorable piece of lively dance band music. The lyrics of “Rock Your Cares Away” exhort us to cast away gloom, live in the moment, and “…rock [our] cares away / In a cradle of dreams.” The Star/Starita 4 in 1 version is uptempo; Elsie Carlisle’s vocal refrain, while brief, is memorable for its ebullience. Her enthusiastic delivery is infectious and evocative of a carefree mental state, and she gets across the song’s message through raw energy rather than mere earnestness.

“Rock Your Cares Away” was also recorded in 1932 by Billy Cotton and His Band (v. Cyril Grantham), Ray Noble and His New Mayfair Orchestra (v. Al Bowlly), Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (v. Pat O’Malley), and Ambrose and His Orchestra (with an unidentified vocalist).

Notes:

  1. Brian Rust and Sandy Forbes. British Dance Bands on Record, 1911 to 1945, and Supplement. Bungay, Suffolk: Richard Clay, Ltd., 1989, 1021-1022. ↩
Carroll Gibbons

“Coming Thro’ the Cornfield” (1926)

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“Coming Thro’ the Cornfield.” Words and music by Horatio Nicholls (a.k.a. Lawrence Wright). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle with piano accompaniment  by Carroll Gibbons on June 21, 1926 at the Gramophone Company’s Studio B at Hayes in Middlesex. Zonophone 2772 mx. Yy8563-2.

Elsie Carlisle – “Coming Thro’ the Cornfield” (1926)

Elsie Carlisle sang “Coming Thro’ the Cornfield” at her second recording session for what was to be her second record, accompanied by pianist Carroll Gibbons, who would soon become the famed director of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans. The song was written by performer, music publisher, impresario, and composer Lawrence Wright, who tended to use the pseudonym “Horatio Nicholls” on his own original compositions. Elsie handles this effusive expression of love in a rustic setting with her usual sweetness, and the pairing with “I Love My Baby” on the other side of the record allows her to adopt the personae of two very different girls in love.

“Coming Thro’ the Cornfield” was recorded two days later by the Savoy Havana Band, in late July 1926 by Bert Firman’s Dance Orchestra, and again in late September by Bert Firman’s band (as “Newton Carlisle’s Dance Orchestra” on Homochord and as “Dan Frederick and His Dance Orchestra” on Sterno).

Embassy Rhythm Eight, Solo Recordings

“Whisper Sweet” (1935)

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“Whisper Sweet.” Words and music by James P. Johnson, Jo Trent, and Horatio Nicholls (a.k.a. Lawrence Wright). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle, probably with the Embassy Rhythm Eight, on February 1, 1935. Decca F. 5436.

“Whisper Sweet” – Elsie Carlisle

Transfer by Clive Hooley (YouTube)

The names James P. Johnson and Horatio Nicholls (a pseudonym of composer, music publisher, and impresario Lawrence Wright) are well known, that of Jo Trent considerably less so, and the origin of their song “Whisper Sweet” is comparatively obscure. Legendary stride pianist James P. Johnson composed many classic jazz tunes, including the original “Charleston.” Jo Trent was a lyricist who worked with many of the great composers, including Johnson; in 1931, for example, the two of them collaborated on the songs “Fooling Around with Love,” “Hanging Around Yo’ Door,” and “Hot Harlem,” but Trent appears to have avoided the spotlight; it has even been uncertain whether he was a man or a woman (he was the former, it seems:  Joseph H. Trent).  Lawrence Wright used his own name when publishing and sometimes even writing music, but he used the pseudonym Horatio Nicholls solely on compositions. There is sheet music for “Whisper Sweet” featuring a photograph of Eve Becke that credits Jo Trent and James P. Johnson as having written the words and music, with no mention of “Nicholls” at all (although the music was published by Lawrence Wright and bears that trademark). It might be asked if Lawrence Wright made some contribution to the arrangement that Elsie Carlisle sang. For what it is worth, I can find no fundamental difference between the arrangement that Elsie used and the one used by Bob Howard the next day in New York.

As with the flip side “Dancing with My Shadow,” it is assumed that Elsie’s accompanists for “Whisper Sweet” were the Embassy Rhythm Eight, as the matrices of Decca F. 5436 and two recordings that the Rhythm Eight did on February 1 and 5 form an interlacing sequence. “Whisper Sweet” is considerably livelier than “Dancing with My Shadow,” and its theme more upbeat. Elsie’s simple, sweet interpretation is suited to the dreamy lyrics, which focus primarily on the subtle outward signs of the beginning of romantic attraction.

The day after Elsie Carlisle recorded “Whisper Sweet,” Bob Howard and His Orchestra did a version in New York. Later in January there were London recordings by Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans (with singer Brian Lawrance) and by Pat Hyde. In April Valaida Snow sang it for Parlophone, again in London. Sometime that year Eve Becke must have both broadcasted and recorded it, something which is asserted by the cover of the Lawrence Wright sheet music, but I have not identified an actual disc.

"The Idol of the Radio." British dance band singer of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.