George Olsen

Label of the European edition of George Olsen's hit Who? .

George Olsen (born March 18, 1893 in Portland (Oregon) , † March 18, 1971 in Paramus , New Jersey ) was an American drummer and big band leader in the field of swing and popular music .

George Olsen had his first band in Portland in 1917 and it was very popular in the Northwest. His actual orchestra, George Olsen and his Music , emerged from a campus band he formed while studying at the University of Michigan . The mellophonist Wilbur Johnson, who would later become the President of the American Federation of Musicians , also played in it. Then he went on tour with the band on the west coast of the USA and played a. a. in the ballrooms and theaters of Los Angeles and San Francisco . There, Florence Ziegfeld Jr. invited him to New York and participate in his Broadway revue Kid Boots , in which Eddie Cantor played the leading role. This was followed by a series of other revues in which Olsen worked with his orchestra, such as the Ziegfeld Follies of 1924 .

George Olsen and his Music also recorded for Victor and performed successfully in New York nightclubs such as Jack White's 54th Club , Rendezvous and Club Richman . In 1925 his Jerome Kern title "Who" became a national hit and marked the beginning of his recording career for Victor, from 1933 to 1934 for Columbia . During the recordings for Olsen, u. a. also Fred MacMurray , Red Nichols , Rudy Wiedoeft and the singer and saxophonist Fran Frey . Olsen and his orchestra, which had grown to 16 men in the late 1920s, then appeared in Ziegfeld / Eddie Cantor's revue Whoopee in 1928 (the title song was by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn ) and in the later film version from 1930, as well as in Girl Friend and Good news . Ethel Shutta , who later became Olsen's wife, also sang and danced in Whoopee ; the two then also appeared together in nightclubs and on radio shows. The couple divorced in the late 1930s.

Other successful titles of the Olsen Orchestra were "Doin 'The Raccoon" (1928) and "The Moon Is Low" (1930, from the MGM film Montana Moon , an early western starring Joan Crawford ). The song was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown , also " The Varsity Drag " from the show Good News , and "Beyond The Blue Horizon" (1930, with the vocals of Bob Borger); the Leo Robin song then became Olsen's signature tune. The song "Sunday" featured the band singers William's Sisters .

In 1930 Olsen returned to the west coast of the USA , played mainly in the Los Angeles area, such as in the Plantation Ballroom, and took part in a number of short music films. In 1936, Olsen took over the leadership of Orville Knapps Band, which had played for Olsen and had now died in a plane crash. Olsen appreciated the style of the Knapp Orchestra and went on tours with him across the country; eventually he moved the headquarters of the orchestra to New York. Olsen could not follow the success of the previous band with this band; In 1938 he broke up the formation after a single session for Decca . In 1951, after a last engagement at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago , Olsen finally gave up the management of bands and successfully ran a restaurant in Paramus, in which his previous hits were played as background music.

swell

• Leo Walker: The Big Band Almanac . Ward Ritchie Press, Pasadena CA 1978, ISBN 0-378-01991-0 .
• Bigband database