Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians - The Hits Collection 1923-32 (2020)

Fred Waring was a remarkable and high-profile personality in American popular music over many decades, becoming famous during the 1940s and ‘50s for his radio and TV shows which brought him the accolade of being “The Man Who Taught America How to Sing”. However, he began his career as a trombonist and bandleader performing “hot” dance music in the early 20s, and with his brother Thomas formed Waring’s Pennsylvanians, whose recordings for Victor over the ensuing decade into the 1930s became hugely popular in the era often called The Roaring Twenties, before Waring’s band abruptly stopped recording in 1932. Although there were no record sales charts in those days, there were sheet music and other listings, which have been analysed by researchers to produce chart listings for records. This great-value 46-track 2-CD set consists entirely of recordings by Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians which feature in Top 15 positions in those chart analyses, and it comprises most of their listed hits. It includes early recordings of some of the songs from the era which became classics over the years, and features the No. 1s “Sleep”, “Memory Lane”, “Laugh, Clown, Laugh!”, “Little White Lies” and “I Found a Million Dollar Baby”. It’s a hugely evocative musical snapshot of a remarkable era in popular music as it became a mass market phenomenon.