Ben Bernie & His Hotel Roosevelt Orch. - Hindustan, 1928

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Ben Bernie & His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra – Hindustan, Fox-Trot (Wallace /Weeks), Brunswick 1928 (USA)

NOTE: It’s a fascinating tune, a huge hit of the early 1920s, composed when the Oriental motifs were very much in fashion in Euepoe and America - due to the dramatic downfall of the colonial era in the world politics, as well as the result of sensational archeological findings in that time: in Egypt (opening of the Tut-enkh-Amun’s tomb, excavations in the Kings’Valley and around the Sphynx in Gizeh), in the Middle East (ancient Mesopotamia, Turkey) and in Asia (lot of excavations in China, the increasing renown of the Angkor Vat in Cambodia and the restoration of Taj Mahal by the viceroy of India, lord Curzon, etc.).

First recording of this hot tune was made in 1921 by Joseph C.Smith’s Orchestra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKy9LVVZJWI This Ben Bernie’s rendition is the later version, proving how continuously popular was the composition. Ben BERNIE (Benjamin Anselvitz) was an American violinist, dance band leader and a broadcast star of the 1920-30s. He had been immortalized in the history of pop music of the Roaring Twenties as a composer of “Sweet Georgia Brown - an evergreen and No1 jazz standard of the American Jazz Age. As personality very often depicted in this channel, Ben Bernie will not be blessed today with my too-a –long intro. Instead, enjoy the music and fascinating old photos of the European “paradise” in subjugated India (aka Hindustan) of the colonial times.