Dajos Béla

Dajos Béla

Dajos Béla (born December 19, 1897 in Kiev , Russian Empire (today Ukraine ); † December 5, 1978 in La Falda , Argentina ; actually Лев Гольцман (Leon / Lew Golzmann) , as a stage name also Sándor Józsi ) was a Russian violinist and Dance band leader.

Life

“Don't always look at the tango violinist.” Song by Friedrich Hollaender with Dajos Béla.

Leon Golzmann was the son of a Ukrainian Jew and a Hungarian. He actually wanted to become a lawyer. He learned to play the violin and performed at a concert in Kiev at the age of nine. He was a soldier in World War I , after which he studied violin in Moscow with Michajl Press and in Berlin with Issay Barmas. To earn a living he played in small bars in the north of Berlin; after Orel Mikes he got his stage name “Dajos Béla” there from a musician colleague who died of drugs, “inherited”. But it is more likely that Dajos was the maiden name of Béla's mother, who died when he was a child.

The company Carl Lindström AG, for which he started recording records from 1920 (brands: Odeon , Parlophon and Beka ), required a Hungarian artist name: Many record artists of the time had Hungarian and Romanian names or pseudonyms (see Take Banescu , Arpád Városz and Jenő Fesca at Homocord , Giorgi Vintilescu , Nicu Vladescu and Joan Florescu at Grammophon). On the ODEON labels of the acoustic era, in addition to the title “artist band”, “Dajos Béla, violin primate” was noted to underline the Hungarian flair; The Lindström Group also marketed him on the same ODEON label as Sándor Józsi . The Romanian or Hungarian Zigány - Prímás was still remembered as an entertainment musician from the imperial era of the dual monarchy ; it was not until the mid-1920s that the image of the entertainer changed with the changed economic and political situation.

In the early 1920s he founded his salon orchestra in Berlin , with which he was soon engaged for the Lindström Group. In addition to dance music, his repertoire also included a large number of light music by composers such as Johann Strauss and Erik Meyer-Helmund . He was also often heard as a soloist in demanding classical works. Along with those of Paul Godwin and Marek Weber, Béla's orchestra was one of the most successful German bands. His records have been exported millions of times around the world. The mid-1920s saw the first heyday of jazz music. Like many of his colleagues, Béla went to great lengths to find talented musicians and by 1927 already had an international ensemble with musicians such as the pianist and singer Rex Allen and the banjo player Mike Danzi . The ensemble also recorded records under the names of The Odeon Five , Mac's Jazz Orchestra and Clive Williams Jazzband , with a changing line-up . In February 1929, the orchestra recorded various songs with the original line-up of the Comedian Harmonists , including “Eilali, eilali, eilala”.

With the advent of talkies , Béla also took the opportunity to appear in films with his band. So one saw him u. a. 1931 in "Everyone asks for Erika", in Erich Engels "Who takes love seriously" with the music of Wilhelm Grosz and subsequently u. a. in “A song, a kiss, a girl” and “ Gitta discovers her heart ”. At the same time, his band became a popular record accompanist for well-known film actors such as Marta Eggerth and Max Hansen . As early as the 1920s, Bélas Kapelle was also active in the radio and in the luxury hotels in Berlin.

Béla was a Jew. After the handover of power to the National Socialists in Germany, he went on tour, first to Holland, then to Paris to the renowned "Monseigneur" and to London to the " Palladium ". In 1935 he worked in the sound film “Dance Music” in Vienna. In 1935 he got an engagement from Radio Splendid in Buenos Aires to perform there with his orchestra. On March 2, he left Boulogne-sur-Mer with several members of his orchestra in Europe and did not return there until the early 1970s. Béla quickly made recordings again and was active in radio and film. After his engagement with Radio Splendid he switched to Radio El Mundo , where he ran a daily radio program for many years. He also played in several dance cafes, u. a. at Richmond and El Galeon . Thanks to his success, he was able to enable several endangered Jewish musicians from Europe to leave the country by sending them contracts to perform with him and his orchestra. He saved many lives in this way. The Hungarian singer Tino Dani was one of them. Although Béla's great love was classical music (e.g. he mastered Tchaikovsky's violin concerto by heart), he never got around to devoting himself to it professionally.

Béla lived in Olivos in the province of Buenos Aires . He continued his career in Argentina after 1945, but, like many other musicians, found it increasingly difficult to get engagements. As in other countries, live music disappeared from the coffee houses in Buenos Aires. Béla was able to stay afloat for a few years with engagements at weddings and cruise ships, but this also stopped at some point. At the invitation of the Berlin Senate , he came back to Germany to visit and received honors. Dajos Béla died at the age of 80, 14 days before his 81st birthday, in La Falda, a mountain town in Argentina, where he was relaxing. He is buried in the La Tablada Jewish cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Discography

Recording with Dajos Béla at Odeon.

• Waitin 'For The Moon / Adieu, Mimi (Shimmy) (Odeon 0-1921),
• Humming / Bummel-Petrus (Intermezzo) (Odeon A 71942), 1921
• Radio tango / opera foxtrot in potpourri form (Odeon 49039), 1925
• (as Merton Chapel): Dinah / Sevilla (Beka B.6071), 1926
• Who? ("You! When will you be with me?") / Two red roses, a tender kiss (Odeon 0-2087), January 1927
• Heinzelmännchens Wacht Parade / Sleeping Beauty Bridal Ride (Odeon 0-2101), 1927
• Santa Lucia / Venezia (Odeon 0-2122), 1927
• She has a great Nazi! (Odeon O-2420a), 1928
• Hund och Katt / Ref. Sång (Odeon D-4948), 1929
• Do you know the little house on Lake Michigan / Anna Aurora (Odeon D-4975), 1929
• (as Odeon dance orchestra and singing): In Sanssouci, where the old mill is (Odeon O-11301), 1929
• (with Leo Frank (vocals)): In the rose garden of Sanssouci , 1930

literature

• Rainer E. Lotz (Ed.): German National Discography . Series 1, Volume 1, B. Lotz, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-9802656-7-6 , pp. 1115, 1158.
• Michael Fischer and Christofer Jost (eds.): America euphoria - America hysteria. Popular music made in USA as perceived by Germans 1914–2014. Waxmann, Münster, p. 49.

Web links

• Works by and about the Dajos Béla Dance Orchestra in the catalog of the German National Library
• Dajos Béla in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• filmportal.de
• European Big Band Database
• Dajos Béla in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era (LexM)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Information in the booklet accompanying the CD Comédian Harmonists “Sweet Baby” - The German Revellers with their early recordings from 1928 to 1929. Bob's Music, Bob CD 13, 1998, p. 6.