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M
AYNARD
B
AIRD
& H
IS
O
RCHESTRA
Billboard
reported on December 21, 1929, that
the Maynard Baird band “have landed the con-
tract to furnish the dine and dance tunes at the
new Andrew Johnson Hotel … until April 15,
1930,” and would continue to be heard nightly
over WNOX. The trade paper cited the person-
nel at that time as Sammy Goeble and Freddie
Brill (trumpets, saxes), Horace Ogle (trom-
bone), “Red” Schuler and Emery Fields (reeds),
V.A. (Vic) Johnston (accordion, piano), Ebb.
Grubbs (bass), Joe Fox (drums), and Maynard
Baird (director, violin). Some, at least, of these
musicians are likely to be on the lively foxtrot
Postage Stomp
and
I Can’t Stop Loving You
, for
instance Sam Goeble, who co-wrote the former
tune with Vic Johnston.
I Can’t Stop Loving You
was another composition for the band by Bert
Hodgson, the credit shared with Baird; the
singer is likely to have been Fred Myers again.
In summer 1930 the Southern (or more often
Southland) Serenaders, now with the MCA
agency, worked in
Michigan, Pennsylva-
nia, and Ohio. After a
spell at the Wenona
Beach Amusement Park
in Bay City, Michigan,
they took a booking in
mid-June at the Rain-
bow Gardens, Walda-
meer Park, in Erie,
Pennsylvania, where
they played while the
“World’s Champion
Pole Sitter,” Capt. Rus-
sell, was, well, sitting.
“25 Autographed V
O
-
CALION
Records By
Maynard Baird FREE To
the First 25 Ladies to
Enter Rainbow TO-
NITE,” promised a
newspaper ad, which also trailed a forthcom-
ing one-night-only performance at the venue
by Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra. Then,
in June-July, the band moved to Dayton, Ohio.
“A dance orchestra that is a dance orchestra
holds forth currently at Greenwich Village
club,” enthused an unidentified local newspa-
per, “in the person of Maynard Baird and his
famous ‘Southland Serenaders,’ who are now
in the third week of their immensely popular
engagement at ‘Dayton’s smartest supper club.’
Not since Isham Jones appeared at this club
last autumn has the club been visited by a finer
dance band. They are known as the ‘band with
a million friends’ and no orchestra ever had a
truer reputation.”
Postage Stomp / I Can’t Stop Loving You
was is-
sued in December 1930, with the bland credit
“Maynard Baird and His Orchestra,” on V
O
-
CALION
1516, in the company’s “race” series.
This was, on the face of it, a very odd market-
ing decision. The V
OCALION
“race” catalog was
dedicated to African American music: jazz,
vaudeville, blues and gospel. Among its star
names were King Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators,
the preachers Rev. A.W. Nix and Edward W.
Clayborn, songsters Jim Jackson and Henry
Thomas, and blues singers Memphis Minnie &
Kansas Joe, Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell,
and Tampa Red & Georgia Tom. Its nearly 750
releases between 1923 and 1932 were almost
all by black artists. In theory, recordings by
white bands could be smuggled into this list –
an instrumental performance of jazz or hot
dance music doesn’t always reveal the race of
its makers – but to choose a recording with a
vocal by an obviously white singer, such as
Baird’s
I Can’t Stop Loving You
, would surely be
fatal to the illusion. That evidently wasn’t how
B
RUNSWICK
-V
OCALION
saw it. How African Amer-
ican record-buyers reacted to this usurper in
the woodpile we have no idea; all we can say
is that the record sold poorly and is today a
Monday, April 7, 1930
Maynard Baird & His Orchestra
97