Arthur Fields and Ford Dabney’s Band

Wanting to run away from home since age eleven, Abraham Finkelstein was always after something. He masked his Jewish background by adopting the stage name Arthur Fields and launched a long and prolific career as a songwriter, vaudevillian, recording artist, radio personality, and music publisher. Featuring 26 tracks and a 32-page booklet with notes by Grammy-nominated author Ryan Barna, Anthology: Singer, Songwriter, Soldier tells the story of Fields’ four-decade recording career and constant reinventions. We hear his 1914 debut with a long-forgotten Irving Berlin number, follow along as he becomes one of the key voices and songwriters of World War I, then listen as he reinvents himself as a “hillbilly” during the country music boom of the ’20s and ’30s. The compilation ends with two remarkable selections: His emotional 1941 recording of “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” and a 1951 wire recording captured by record collector Dick Carty in which he reprises his most famous composition, “It’s a Long Way to Berlin, but We’ll Get There!" Read more
List price: $17.99

As a founding member of the all-Black Clef Club, Washington DC-born-and-raised Ford T. Dabney helped revolutionize 1910s society dance music with his chief collaborator, James Reese Europe. In 1916, his syncopated orchestra began a multi-year residency with Flo Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, an after-hours show staged in New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre rooftop garden. Subsequently, Dabney’s Band made several dozen records for the Aeolian-Vocalion Company, pioneers in vertically-cut longer-playing records. When Prohibition forced the Frolic to close, Dabney moved on musically as well as professionally, making a few standout jazz records for the famed Paramount label. Highlights of the 48 tracks on these two CDs include “That’s It,” “The Dancing Deacon,” “Bugle Call Blues,” “Lassus Trombone,” “Slidin’ Sid,” “Rainy Day Blues,” and “Camp Meeting Blues.” Notes in the 36-page booklet by Tim Brooks, author of Lost Sounds. Read more
List price: $28.99