Unsung Vocalists of the Past 7: Johnny Marvin

Calling Johnny Marvin an unsung vocalist may seem like a little bit of a stretch. After all, he was one of the most popular singers in the country during his brief heyday of the late 1920s and early '30s, a couple of CD reissues of his work are currently available, and authors Michael Pitts and Frank Hoffman have devoted a whole chapter of their excellent book The Rise of the Crooners (Scarecrow Press, 2002) to discussing his life and career. And yet, Johnny Marvin is almost totally forgotten today, to such an extent that it is difficult not to agree with Pitts and Hoffman when they state that he "is a crooner waiting rediscovery" (184). Born in Butler, Oklahoma, in 1897, Marvin grew up around music because both his parents could play, though they never played professionally. His complete name was John Senator Marvin, and it was as Senator that he began playing informally with his father while still barely a teenager. A barber by trade, Marvin had a brief stint as a Navy barber during WWI, but at the end of the conflict, he decided that the life of an entertainer was for him, and so he started appearing on the vaudeville circuit, often as a solo act but also as part of Sargent, Marvin, and the Four Camerons, a group he formed with baritone Charles Sargent.

By this time, Marvin was already proficient on the mouth harp, the musical saw, and a number of string instruments, including the guitar, the fiddle, the steel guitar, and particularly the ukulele, which ranked high in the preferences of the public due to the enormous success of Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. Though he had cut some records around 1924 with Sargent, Marvin began to make his mark on the record business with his solo records in the style of Edwards, some of which even featured Ukulele Ike's proto-scat routine known as "eefin'." Marvin's recording contract with Columbia, however, was not exclusive, so he was at liberty to make records for other companies, and his output was very prolific throughout the late 1920s, both on major and dimestore labels. Pitts and Hoffman report that, at the highest point in his career, "over ten million homes throughout the country owned Johnny Marvin records" (171), which, together with his successful vaudeville appearances, meant that he was a major force in two of the mainstream entertainment media of the day: records and vaudeville. And yet, despite the success of his performances of songs such as "Breezin' Along with the Breeze," "Half a Moon," and "All Alone Monday," Marvin has not remained associated with one particular tune, which may be one of the reasons for his current obscurity.

His popularity with the record-buying public opened the doors to Hollywood, and Marvin made several early short sound films for MGM and Vitaphone to promote some of his songs. While these shorts were praised by trade publications such Billboard and Variety, Marvin never got around to starring in a feature film like some of his contemporaries (Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, Bing Crosby, to name but three) and so his main claim to fame in the cinematic medium lies in having been one of the main stars of short-subject sound films. In 1926, Marvin appeared, as Honey Duke (one of several pseudonyms under which he cut records) in the hit Broadway show Honeymoon Lane, recording several of the songs he sang on stage for different labels with a great deal of success. Around this time, he was in high demand as a provider of vocal refrains for dance-band records, often working with studio orchestras led by Nat Shilkret, Roger Wolfe Kahn, and Johnny Hamp, among others. A measure of his popularity is the fact that the Harmony company began selling an ukulele known as the Johnny Marvin ukulele, and his records were successful enough in England that in 1928 he signed a contract to appear at London's Kit Kat Club, an establishment that was popular with the cream of English society. By all accounts, Marvin was a big hit in England, though his London engagement was unfortunately cut short due to some throat problems that he developed while in the British Isles.

Frankie and Johnny Marvin

Back home in the United States in the summer of 1928, and completely recovered from his health issues, Marvin maintained a heavy recording schedule, and both his discs and his theater gigs were met with great acclaim. By this time, he began appearing with his younger brother, Frankie Marvin, who was at least as gifted a musician as Johnny, and who would also enjoy a solo career. The Depression still lay ahead, however, and Marvin's career would be dramatically affected by it, particularly because the new economic climate would have a very negative impact on the record industry and would effectively wipe off vaudeville. Even though at first it seemed that Marvin would survive the onset of the Depression, he would soon start feeling its effects and, in fact, his career as a performer would never fully recover. By the early 1930s, Marvin began concentrating primarily on radio work and on songwriting. In the latter capacity, he specialized in Western songs, many of which were sung by his friend Gene Autry in the many movies he made for Republic Pictures. Marvin had been instrumental in getting Autry's career off the ground—both Johnny and Frankie Marvin had even played on the singing cowboy's early sessions—and the two men remained very close until Johnny's death.

An ad for the Johnny Marvin ukulele model

As a radio personality, Marvin appeared in several shows, starring in one of them as Dr. Cheer for the NBC network in 1931. The concept behind the program was that he would sing songs inspired by problems described by listeners in their letters. Fortunately, some recordings of the show survive, and they can be found on the CD compilation A Voice of the 20s (Take Two). He also made some radio transcriptions for MacGregor in the late 1930s, but by that time he had mostly abandoned his recording activities to concentrate on songwriting. According to Pitts and Hoffman, his last commercial recording session (for Decca) took place sometime towards the end of the 1930s, but judging by some of the songs he cut ("Me and My Shadow" being one) he was mostly seen by then as a relic of what seemed like a distant past. During WWII, Marvin became involved with the USO, entertaining troops as far afield as the South Pacific, where he contracted malaria, and the disease would lead to his passing in December 1944, when he was merely 47 years old.

Anyone interested in getting acquainted with Johnny Marvin's melodious, smooth singing style and dazzling ukulele playing may seek out two CD releases. The aforementioned A Voice of the 20s features three tracks from the Dr. Cheer radio series (including a spoken commercial for Columbia Cleaners, the show's sponsor) as well as fine sides made between 1927-1930, like "I Still Get a Thrill," "Crazy Rhythm," "I'm in Seventh Heaven," and even the outstanding instrumental "12th Street Rag." Though now out of print, Breezin' Along with the Breeze (ASV / Living Era) is a rather comprehensive compilation of both solo recordings and dance-band sides for which Marvin provides vocal refrains, all cut between 1926-1930. Highlights include "Just Another Day Wasted Away," "Blue Skies" (a duet with Ed Smalle), "Ain't That a Grand a Glorious Feeling?," "Happy Days and Lonely Nights," and Al Jolson's "There's a Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder," among many others. Those who still remember Johnny Marvin today often tend to think of him as a composer of Western tunes performed by Autry and Roy Rogers, but that is only a small part of his legacy. If we go back to the late 1920s and early '30s, we will discover the appealing work of a smooth crooner and an excellent ukulele player. And, as Pitts and Hoffman remind us, it is a body of work that is awaiting rediscovery.

Unsung Vocalists of the Past 1: Seger Ellis

We begin a new series of articles, spotlighting singers whose popularity has faded over the years and who, for different reasons, have unjustly fallen into obscurity. With the help of a very interesting CD released by The Old Masters and entitled Jazz in a Sentimental Mood, the first entry in the series is devoted to the lesser-known but great Houston-born vocalist/songwriter/pianist Seger Ellis.

At the outset of his career, Seger Ellis did not really want to be a singer. Rather, his main interest lay in writing songs and playing the piano, and it was indeed as a pianist with the now forgotten Lloyd Finlay Orchestra that he made his first recordings in 1925 in his native Houston for Victor. In addition to the sides he cut as part of the Finlay band, Ellis was asked to make some piano solo recordings, which were never issued due to technical difficulties during the recording process. However, Ellis would soon be summoned to Camden, New Jersey, by the label to wax his piano solos again, this time using the then newly introduced electrical recording method, and upon their release, these records were sufficiently well received by the public to persuade Ellis to launch a professional career as a recording artist in New York City. Incidentally, these early piano solos, most of which were written by Ellis himself, can be found in the excellent CD Black and White Piano, Volume 1 (Document Records, 1998), a highly recommendable collection that also includes cuts by Clarence M. James, Sidney Williams, and Lovin' Sam Theard, among other obscure 1920s pianists.

It should be noted that Ellis' intention at this stage was still to sell himself as a pianist, not as a singer. This would soon change, though, when he was encouraged by the small radio station on which he was appearing to sing as well as playing piano over the air. Thus, after his move to New York, when he made his first recordings for Columbia, the company decided to promote him as a crooner, marketing his records to rival those of Gene Austin, who was one of the foremost vocalists of the late 1920s, with smash hits such as "My Blue Heaven," "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling," and "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue." Columbia's marketing efforts most likely explain why Ellis' voice sounds so high-pitched on his Columbia and Okeh records: this was a conscious attempt to make Ellis sound like other popular crooners of the era, such as Austin, Nick Lucas, Johnny Marvin, and Little Jack Little. In his excellent liner notes for the CD Jazz in a Sentimental Mood, Allan Dodge hints at the fact that Ellis was not thrilled by the sound of his voice on these sides, but he kept cultivating that style in view of the success of the records.

One of the attractions of Ellis' recorded output for Columbia and Okeh lies in the amazing personnel that accompanied him on most of the sessions, featuring some of New York's most prominent jazz musicians of the time. It appears that Ellis was granted the power to choose the members of the studio band for his recordings, and if that is the case, he certainly had a keen ear for good jazz, since he was often backed by highly accomplished musicians like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Rube Bloom, Manny Klein, Hoagy Carmichael, and Muggsy Spanier, many of whom would go on to greater things during the Swing Era and beyond. Ellis himself played piano on some of the dates, and Eddie Lang's guitar is heavily featured on most of these very inspired arrangements, which are often quite adventurous, as in the case of Ellis' 1928 version of "Where the Shy Little Violets Grow," with an interesting steel guitar solo by Andy Sannella. In August of 1929, Ellis' studio band even included Louis Armstrong, who was then making his legendary series of hot five and seven recordings, on trumpet, and their reading of "Ain't Misbehavin'" remains one of Ellis' most enduring recordings.

At the time of this writing, there is only one full-length CD devoted to the music of Seger Ellis: Jazz in a Sentimental Mood, produced by the reissue label The Old Masters. Its title accurately encapsulates the defining elements of Ellis' style: his recordings are often sentimental, characterized by his high-pitched voice and relaxed singing style, but there is an undeniable hotness to them, and they are full of jazzy solos by some of the most important jazz instrumentalists of the period. In my opinion, the jazzy quality of the arrangements is precisely what differentiates Ellis' recordings from those of Gene Austin, whose accompaniments were not always comparatively as jazz-oriented. Ellis' repertoire consists of some of the best pop songs written in the 1920s and '30s, and all of them are so enjoyable that it becomes rather hard to name any favorites. The collection includes sides cut over a four-year period, between 1928 and 1931, featuring gems such as "If I Can't Have You, " "Cheerful Little Earful," "I Wonder How It Feels?" and Ellis' beautiful, pensive version of "It's a Lonesome Old Town." The remastering of these old 78s is excellent, and so are Allan Dodge's informative liner notes, which provide some interesting background for the recordings.

Ellis' recording career came to an end during the early years of the Great Depression, although he did assemble a big band in the late 1930s, bearing the odd name of the Choir of Brass Orchestra and featuring his wife, Irene Taylor, as the vocalist. Interestingly, though he did not record his own songs for Columbia and Okeh, he remained active as a songwriter, composing popular songs like "Little Jack Frost Get Lost" and "You're All I Want for Christmas." He passed away in relative obscurity in Houston in 1995, but as the twenty-six songs included in Jazz in a Sentimental Mood clearly show, his very appealing, jazz-influenced singing deserves higher recognition that it has received.

Videos

There are several videos with Seger Ellis recordings available on YouTube, among which we recommend the piano solo "Shivery Stomp," "Here Am I (Broken Hearted)" (a tune also recorded by Johnnie Ray in the 1950s), "Should I?" and "Without You Sweetheart." There is even an interesting, though undated, radio interview with Seger Ellis and Smith Ballew recorded late in their careers.