This is one of the fine recordings made by Okeh using their portable recording equipment, recording territory bands throughout the nation in the early 1920's. This recording was made in San Antonio, TX at the famous St. Anthony Hotel, still a thriving enterprise today.
Although superficially viewed as a state preoccupied with oil wells and cowboys , Texas was a significant contributor to the jazz music scene during the 1920s primarily from recordings made on Okeh of the territory bands of Jack and Fred Gardner and James Maloney (aka Jimmie Joy), all students at the University of Texas during the early 1920s.
James Monte Maloney was born in 1902 and arrived on the University of Texas campus in 1921 where he took over the leadership of a five piece band. While playing at the Joyland Park in Galveston, Texas, park management billed the band as Jimmy's Joys. Because so many people began referring to him as "Jimmy Joy" Maloney adopted it as his professional name and eventually his legal name.
Fellow Texan Smith Ballew, who would also make his own name in the music world of the later 20s and into the 30s, entered the University of Texas in 1922 and was the band's banjo player periodically during this time. Ballew was in the band in February 1923 when it presented a half hour jazz concert over San Antonio station WOAI which was then billed as the "Southern Equipment-Express-Evening News radio-phone station." The newspaper article announcing the broadcast also indicated that the band had just accepted an offer of 40 weeks on the big time vaudeville circuit.
The band evolved into one of the favorites in the Midwest, proving to be a fine hotel and ballroom orchestra - Joy played both the sax and clarinet and would sometimes surprise audiences by playing two clarinets simultaneously after the fashion of Wilbur Sweatman. He also sang the blues in a manner reminiscent of another fellow Texan, Jack Teagarden.
The band played regularly at top hotels such as the Muehlbach in Kansas City, the Peabody in Memphis, the Baker and Adolphus Hotels in Dallas, and the St. Anthony Hotel in San Antonio. Joy made occasional trips to the East Coast and was playing at the Casino Gardens in Santa Monica, California in the early forties.
Before she went on to become one of the best-selling female recording artists of the 1950s, Patti Page was the Jimmy Joy Orchestra's vocalist and she toured with the band from 1946 - 1947.
Such was Texas's pride in Joy that he was made an honorary Texas Ranger. Joy was also made an honorary Kentucky colonel and for three consecutive seasons his was the official orchestra of the Kentucky Derby. Joy moved to Dallas permanently in 1949 and was semi-active as a band leader during the fifties. He died in 1962 at the age of 59 - one of his pall-bearers was Herman Waldman, another fine musician and band leader from the 20s and 30s.
