Dardanella

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dardanella is the title of an instrumental hit played by Ben Selvin and his orchestra from 1920, which was the first single to exceed 3 million sold copies.

History of origin

The trained violinist Ben Selvin was the son of Russian emigrants. In July 1919 he got a recording contract with Victor after putting together a six-piece orchestra. His first three recordings were made under the name Ben Selvin's Novelty Orchestra on July 18, 1919, the first single of which was I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles , which was released in October 1919 and made it to first place on the pop hit parade. The next recording date November 20, 1919, Dardanella / My Island Of Golden Dreams emerged , which Victor then released as the third single in January 1920 (Victor # 18633).

Ben Selvin's Novelty Orchestra - Dardanella

The genesis of the A-side Dardanella is very unusual. Fred Fisher , who was born in Cologne on September 30, 1875 and emigrated to the USA in 1900 , had heard a piano instrumental piece titled Turkish Tom-Tom , which the composer Felix Bernard had for 100 dollars , after Prohibition began on July 1, 1919 had sold to Johnny S. Black. Fisher integrated an ostinato bass into this composition and renamed the piece Dardanella (based on the Dardanelles ). Together with copywriter Joseph McCarthy, Fisher secured the copyright. When the sheet music for this was sold, Felix Bernard sued Fisher, of German descent, for fraud. Fisher let the ostinato bass play live in court and was able to convince the judge that it was not plagiarism . In a later process, Fisher had to pay about $ 12,000 to Johnny S. Black, which he could get over given the magnitude of about $ 1 million in royalties . Musically, the instrumental piece was to be classified as pop dance music, but can be classified as a forerunner of Boogie Woogie because of the continuous ostinato run.

Million seller

During the course of the trial, Dardanella had already moved to the top of the charts, where the record stayed for 13 weeks. After a short time it had already sold more than 3 million copies, making it the top-selling millionaire of the time. Eventually Dardanella had total sales of 6.5 million records; in addition, more than 2 million sheet music were sold. Dardanella brought in around $ 1 million for Fisher, making it his most successful composition. In 1920 Gladys Rice & Vernon Dalhart 's vowel version with Fisher's text appeared. Johnny S. Black had also composed Paper Doll , the success of which he was unable to witness because of his untimely death.

Cover versions

In 1920 there were three more cover versions that made it into the charts. ASCAP lists a total of 32 versions of this. In the meantime, Fred Fisher is registered with ASCAP as lyricist and Felix Bernard and Johnny Black as composer.

Ben Selvin's career

Selvin had become Victor's most successful artist. He must have been a very busy artist at the time, because "he conducts his Selvin Orchestra at New York's Moulin Rouge, the 'Bar Harbor Society Orchestra' and the 'Broadway Syncopators' ...". Selvin brought out a total of over 9,000 records between 1919 and 1963, which he placed under 39 different names with several record companies. On his retirement at the age of 65 on March 14, 1963, he received a gold record from the RCA-Victor Company.

Individual evidence

  1. The ostinato bass later became the basic pattern of boogie woogie
  2. ^ A b Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music In The 1920’s , 1989, p. 97.
  3. ^ Butler County Biographies, Dec. 14, 2007, p. 25.
  4. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 17.
  5. ASCAP entry for Dardanella
  6. Talking Machine World, September 1923 issue, p. 143.

Web links