Roger Wolfe Kahn's Orch. - Hot Hot Hottentot, 1925

Roger WOLFE KAHN (1907 - 1962) was an American jazz and popular musician, composer, and bandleader ("Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra"). Roger Wolff Kahn (Wolff was his middle name's original spelling) was born in Morristown, New Jersey into a wealthy German Jewish banking family, and his father, Otto Hermann Kahn, was a famous banker. Kahn is said to have learned to play 18 musical instruments before starting to lead his own orchestra in 1923, aged only 16. In 1925, Kahn appeared in a short film made in Lee De Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process (it can be senn on You Tube!!!).
Kahn hired famous jazz musicians were Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, and Gene Krupa. Recordings were made for Victor until 1929, Columbia in 1929 and 1930, and for the Brunswick label in 1932.
Kahn always had fun leading and conducting his orchestra. Reportedly, when the band was playing especially well he used to throw himself onto the floor and wave his legs in the air. However, in the mid-1930s, he lost interest in his orchestra and disbanded it. Instead, he preoccupied himself with aviation and eventually, in 1941, became a test pilot for the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, a well-known aircraft manufacturer.
In 1931, Kahn made headlines on the New York society pages when he married musical comedy actress Hannah Williams January 16, 1931. The wedding was at Oheka Castle, his family's estate on Long Island, and was kept secret from the public for two weeks, until the Broadway show Williams was appearing in, Sweet and Low, had had its final performances. The couple made headlines again when they divorced two years later and when, after only a few weeks, Williams married boxing champion Jack Dempsey. Two days after the divorce, on April 7, 1933, Roger Wolfe Kahn married Edith May Nelson, a Maine politician's daughter. That marriage lasted from 1933 till Kahn's death of a heart attack in New York City on July 12, 1962.

After „The Original Charleston", composed in 1913 by African-American James P. Johnson, the Fisher's „Hot Hot Hottentot" - together with Duke Ellington's „Jig Walk" - will probably remain as three classics and most charleston, of all „crazy chareleston tunes" of the Jazz Age.

Recording:
Roger Wolfe Kahn & His Orch. -- Hot Hot Hottentot (F.Fisher), Victor 1925

Category:

Music

Tags:

• The
• Charleston
• Madness
• Roaring
• Twenties
• 1920
• American
• hot
• dance
• band
• 78s
• shellack

[stonedshit]

@barbcard sane as christians or non believers?

[megaswenson]

FABulous song! Perfect to Charleston by.

[hep2jive]

i love how roger was 18 when this song came out. i love him!

[RahmSifr]

Interesting - the introduction of this piece is almost entirely similar to the introduction of Julian Fuhs' version of "Kannst du Charleston, tanzt du Charleston".

[Rundfunksender]

Possibly, this was an reply on a comment that has been removed. Now it lost his context.

[HarborGuy]

And this has what to do with the recording?

[mrjoeri]

My last name is HOTTENTOT :D!

[voidforpurpose]

"What makes the Hottentot so hot? Courage!"

(See: The Cowardly Lion.)

Nifty montoage.

Thanks for listing this little gem.

[barbcard]

Yes, another American friend wishes you Merry

Christmas--and she happens to be Jewish. :)

But some of us pitiful Americans are still sane,

at least as much as some Europeans!

[kspm01]

I must admit this kind of political hypercorrectness more and more influences public life in my country as well.