Eddie Lang & Joe Venuti - The New York Sessions 1926-1935 (Box Set 4 CD) (2008)

Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang cut different figures. Joe was combative, a joker and man about town. Eddie was quiet, considerate and careful with money. They were born in Philadephia - Eddie in 1902, Joe in 1903 - to Italian immigrant parents. Both studied the violin. Their partnership began in their mid teens when Eddie joined Joe's newly-formed band as a guitarist. Soon they were performing as a duo. Eddie made the early running. In 1919 he joined Charlie Kerr's Orchestra as a violinist, switching to banjo. For a few years, he was busy, gigging in Philadelphia and visiting New York to record with Kerr. Joe sometimes went to New York with Eddie, looking to jam with local jazzmen. By 1924, Eddie was in Atlantic City with the Scranton Sirens. There he sat in with the Mound City Blue Blowers - a raucous band led by comb and paper player, Red McKenzie. Not an obvious choice for Lang - but they were well known and they were about to cut a record. In 1925, Joe joined Roger Kahn, then one of the highest payers in the music business. In September 1926, when Joe signed a two year contract with Kahn, Eddie too was on Kahn's payroll. The first cut in this collection is the first they made in their own names. The routine Black and Blue Bottom is transformed by Joe's inventiveness and Eddie's energy. It was hailed as an innovation. Venuti and Lang were settling into what looked like becoming a long partnership. By April 1927 both men were New York jazz fixtures. Whether under their names or the leadership of others they were surrounded by great musicians, like Lonnie Johnson (Lang was one of the first white players to record with African Americans), Bix Beiderbecke, Adrian Rollini and King Oliver. The partnership ended when Lang died aged 30 following a tonsillectomy. Venuti soldiered on for some decades, enduring some obscurity before being 'rediscovered' in the late 1960s. He died in 1978 aged 74.