1911 AL JOLSON Snap your Fingers WHIRL OF SOCIETY Collins Harlan VICTOR 17075 _

$

75

A series of great  PERSONALITY Records from Movies, Vaudeville, Minstrel and Humor  on 78 rpm Victrola Records

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 CREATOR RECORD: great acoustic early Al Jolson he created this song in the 1912 muscial WHIRL OF SOCIETY

Al Jolson / Collins And Harlan – Snap Your Fingers / I Want To Be In Dixie
Label: Victor – 17075
Format: 
Shellac, 10", 78 RPM
Country: US
Released: Jun 1912
Genre: Pop
Style: Vocal
A Al Jolson– Snap Your Fingers
Written-By – H. Von Tilzer*
B Collins And Harlan– I Want To Be In Dixie
Written-By – Berlin*, Snyder*
Record Company – Victor Talking Machine Co.
A: Comic Song
B: Duet

A side (mx. B-11732, take 3) recorded Camden, NJ, March 15, 1912.
B side (mx. B-11293, take 2) recorded Camden, NJ, November 22, 1911.

Please see top of the page for condition

The Whirl of Society was a satirical Broadway musical that played at the Winter Garden Theater from March 5 to June 29, 1912. Louis A. Hirsch composed the music with lyrics by Harold Atteridge, to a book by Harrison Rhodes. The production also featured songs by Arthur Fields. The Whirl of Society was part of a production also featuring Sesostra and A Night with the Pierrots, for 136 productions.[1]

The production also toured the country. It was performed with A Night with the Pierrots in Washington DC in November 1912.[2]

Fanny Brice was in the musical in 1912, when it was listed as a Shubert production. [3] It also featured Al Jolson, one of five musicals he was in with the Shubert empire, in which "the producers recognized his escalating value to their business empire".[4]

Featured Songs
Sheet music featuring songs from the production was also published. In 1912, My Sumurun Girl was published by the Shapiro organization in an eight-page booklet, music for piano and voice accompaniment. The refrain from the song is "Sumurun, sumurun, you're my lovey dovey hon' " [5]

Al Jolson (May 26, 1886ûOctober 23, 1950) was a highly acclaimed American singer, comedian and actor of Jewish heritage whose career lasted from 1911 until his death in 1950. He was one of the most popular entertainers of the 20th century whose influence extended to other popular performers, including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr., Eddie Fisher, Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, and Michael Jackson. Al Jolson was the first popular singer to make a spectacular "event" out of singing a song. Prior to Jolson, popular singers such as John McCormack and Henry Burr would stand still with only very minimal gesturing as they sang. Jolson, in comparison, had tremendous energy displayed in his performances by way of dynamic gestures and other physical movement. Jolson was the first entertainer to ever utilize a ramp extending out into the audience from the center of the stage. Jolson insisted on having a ramp so he could be closer to the audience. It was very common for Jolson to sit on the end of the ramp and have personal one-on-one conversations with audience members which is something that had also never been done prior to Jolson. Jolson was known to stop major Broadway productions in which he was involved, turn to the audience and ask them if they would rather hear him sing instead of watching the rest of the play. The answer from the audience was always a resounding "yes" and Jolson would spend at least the next hour singing an impromptu concert to an ecstatic audience. George Burns, the popular American comedian and friend of Al Jolson probably described Jolson best when he said, "...Jolson was all Show Business!"   Early life and career
Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in Seredzius, Lithuania. The exact date of his birth is unknown but it was estimated to have been May 26, 1886. However, when Jolson sailed aboard the S.S. President Adams from New York (April 30) to Los Angeles (May 18) 1925, he gave his date of birth as May 26, 1885 and his place of birth is regularly given on records as Washington D.C rather than in Lithuania. In his early childhood, his Jewish parents, Moshe Reuben Yoelson and Naomi Ettas Cantor, emigrated to the United States. The family name originally had been Hesselson. It has until recently been thought that Al's father became the rabbi of the Talmud Torah Synagogue (now, Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah), in Washington, D.C. although it is now believed that Al's father was in fact a slaughterer of kosher animals but to Al a rabbi had a more glamorous sound to it.   By 1911, he had parlayed a supporting appearance in the Broadway musical, La Belle Paree, into a starring role. He began recording and was soon internationally famous for his extraordinary stage presence and personal rapport with audiences. His Broadway career spanned close to thirty years (1911û1940). Audiences shouted, pleaded, and often would not allow the show to proceed; such was the power of Jolson's presence. At one performance in Boston, the usually staid and conservative audience stopped the show for 45 minutes. He was said to have had an "electric" personality, along with the ability to make each member of the audience believe that he was singing only for them. Among the many songs he popularized were "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)," "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," "Swanee" (songwriter George Gershwin's first success), "April Showers," "Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye," "California, Here I Come," "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along," "Sonny Boy," and "Avalon." Jolson was the first music artist to sell over ten million records. While no official Billboard magazine chart existed during his career, its staff archivist Joel Whitburn used a variety of sources, such as Talking Machine World's list of top-selling recordings and Billboard's own sheet music and vaudeville charts, to estimate the hits of 1890-1954. By his reckoning, Jolson had the equivalent of twenty-three No. 1 hits, the fourth-highest total ever, trailing only Bing Crosby, Paul Whiteman, and Guy Lombardo. Whitburn calculates that Jolson would have topped one chart or another for 114 weeks.
Blackface performances
 
Performing in blackface was a theatrical convention used by many entertainers at the beginning of the 20th century, having origins in the tradition of the minstrel show. Al Jolson was the most famous entertainer who appeared in blackface.
 Movies
In the first part of the 20th century, Al Jolson was without question the most popular performer to appear in Broadway productions and in vaudeville. His popularity was so overwhelming that show-business historians regard him as a legendary institution. Yet for all his success in live venues, Al Jolson is possibly best remembered today for his numerous recordings and for starring in the landmark motion picture The Jazz Singer, the first nationally distributed feature film with sound. The Jazz Singer was produced by Warner Brothers, using its revolutionary Vitaphone sound process. Vitaphone was originally intended for musical renditions, and The Jazz Singer follows this principle, with only the musical sequences using live sound recording. Much of the film is a silent drama, telling the sentimental story of a Jewish boy who loves to sing popular songs. He becomes a cabaret and stage star, much to the disgust of his estranged father (Warner Oland), a cantor in the synagogue.   Personal life
Jolson was a political and economic conservative, supporting Calvin Coolidge for president of the United States in 1924 (with the ditty, "Keep Cool with Coolidge"), unlike most other Jewish performers, who supported the losing Democratic candidate, John William Davis.   A lifelong devotion to entertaining American servicemen (he first sang for servicemen of the Spanish-American War as a boy in Washington, D.C.) led Jolson to entertain American troops during World War II, and again (against the advice of his doctors) in Korea. Congress posthumously awarded him the Congressional Order of Merit. Jolson remained very popular among the American and International culture and was dubbed the world's greatest entertainer. He contributed millions to Jewish and other charities in his will..
While playing cards, Jolson collapsed and died of a massive heart attack on October 23, 1950; his last words were said to be "Boys, I'm going." At the time of his death, he was staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.