Harry Reser's Syncopators - Shaking The Blues Away, 1927

Harry Reser's Syncopators, vocal Franklyn Baur - Shaking The Blues Away, Columbia 1927

The slideshow has been devoted to those ones - in the movies or in singing - who DO shake all our blues away... (Too short a clip to present all of these fantastic singers, actors, comedians, that bring the smile to our faces and hearts).....

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Roaring
• Twenties
• 1920s
• Harry
• Reser
• banjo
• USA
• jazz
• age
• orchestra
• American
• hot
• dance
• band
• 78rpm

[56Edify]

I like to think that although certain words like "darkie" were in common usage, in general most people did not think of them as racist, even though they were. My mother used to lament from time to time about "the good old days". I would just laugh and say "yeah ma. Do you mean the good old days before the polio vaccine? Or when blacks were still having to sit at the back of the bus?" But we can't lose history nor should we attempt to sanitize it for 2009 consumption.

[56Edify]

My thoughts exactly. How anyone can consider the 40's & 50's versions to be worthy of recognition is beyond me. Only if you are Mr. & Mrs Ward Cleaver. Your description of those versions being "crap" is overly kind.

[Lapisha1929]

Good Christ on a jumped up pony....what is all the fuss about....history is history....I've got a 1917 Victor NIGGER LOVES HIS POSSUM racist as hell, but is a thing they sold and I am damed proud to own it....gotta make folks remember the coo-coo craziness just like carnival freak shows. Political correctness makes me puke!

[majtom58]

Yes, many of songs had lyrics that wouldn't fly today, but that was then. Consider Clarence Ashley's "Shanghai in China" or Prince Albert Hunt's "Blues in the Bottle" or, from Reser-"Nagasaki". Offensive, but funny in a lighthearted way. JMO

[56Edify]

Music like this was certainly reflective of the optimism of the times that was, sadly, in a few short years, killed.

[Bigband78]

The vocalist is definitely not Tom Stacks.

[56Edify]

I can listen to this version and feel the joy. On the other hand I can watch and listen to later versions done in the 40's, 50's, and later and think to myself (What crap!) Post WW II sanitized for white america and totally devoid of anything like real feeling. It has made me realize why so many young people were really glad when rock & roll come along to kill that stuff off

[56Edify]

I know where you are coming from with the "discomfort". I recently ran across the song elsewhere here on youtube. I have become somewhat obsessed with it as I am with a lot of music from that period. gotta keep things in context. It is preserving history, and THAT'S important

[paintmonkey61]

more than uncomfortable, I am extremely offended by it's usage from anyone today but back then it was just one of many awful words in common use in America. This is why video work like this is important, it lets us reflect on an older age and see not only their joys but also their prejudices. It lets us see how we have grown as a culture, how we have grown in respecting our fellow Americans and to know something of the origins of the racial dicord that still vexes us today.

[Sshelly34213]

uhhh...

anyone extremely uncomfortable at the word Darkie??