ROLLIN
SMITH
1899 – 1969
A
much-travelled Musician & Entertainer.
One day in
about 1976 my aged car wallowed slowly back from the wilds of Worcestershire
towards
The label of
one of these you see below *.
The disc has been soaked in water at
some time, but only the label was washed out. The disc itself was in tolerable
condition. It illustrates the gloriously slapdash Parlophone printing of the
time (1927). At best, their printing was always smudgy, but this label has been
punched out wildly off centre, as though nobody was especially bothered, even
though the expensive Parlophone ‘R-’ series, with their rich purple labels, was
the prestige series of their catalogue.
When played,
the disc sounded like a cover of the famous duo Layton & Johnstone, African
American singers who were extremely popular in
As the tune was
a good one, performed with verve and panache, and the disc was obviously an
obscure item, I filed it away.
Oh, by the way;
would you like to hear it? No problem! Just click on the label for an mp3 of
the side!
Some years
later, poring over Brian Rust’s ‘Jazz Records’, I noticed a Rollin Smith listed
on saxophone with Johnny Dunn’s band on American Columbia in New York ~ 1923.
It just had to be the same man. This fragment was remembered, but little more
happened; except that during a ’phone conversation with discographer Arthur
Badrock, who was at the time compiling a list of the Parlophone 3000 series †,
I mentioned I had this item, which turned out to be a blank in his listing.
This further confirmed that the disc was rare, as he had relatively few blanks
in the R- prefixes.
Time passed
until June 1995, when, in the very last issue of Storyville (No.162) a short
but fascinating article by Morton Clausen on Rollin Smith told us that he had
been working in Denmark in the early years of WW2, and of the difficulties he
experienced either in getting to Greece to visit his wife, or later, even to
get back to ‘home’ in the U.S.A. Among various valuable details was that Smith
was born in
(In an addendum
to the article, Laurie Wright referred to an item in the Baltimore
‘Afro-American’ (a newspaper) of 10th November 1928 which reported that Smith
was working at the Capitol, Montmartre (Paris), and had gone to Europe as a
saxophonist ‘but had been encouraged to sing more by those who heard him’.
Additionally, he was reported as having recorded for Odeon in
Then came the
Internet!
In 2002, on the
78-list, there was a query from Matthew Orwat, who had found a copy of Victor
22930, by Rollin Smith’s Melodians, and sought information about the artist. I
dug out the Parlophone, and emails started flying around…
Bill Dean-Myatt
kindly furnished the details of the
ROLLIN SMITH
Vocal accomp.
by Pietro Zepilli (alias Pierre Zepilli) (pno),
B. Desvernay (voc-1)
Ki-1327-2 Bless her little heart -1 Odeon
165166, Parlophone R-3470
Ki-1328-1 Let's misbehave Odeon 165167
Ki-1329-1 The man I love -1 Odeon 165166, Parlophone R-3537
Ki 1330-2 Argentine –1 Odeon
165167, Parlophone R-3470
Joe Moore also
kindly extracted the details of the Victor sides, which are:
Hollis Smith
(sic) and his Melodians. Male quintet with piano and guitar played by one of
them.
71282-1 Some Of These Days Rejected
71283-1 I Ain't Got Nobody Rejected
71282-2 Some Of These Days Vic 22930
71283-2 I Ain’t Got Nobody Vic 22930
71857-1
71858-1 Somebody Stole My Gal Rejected
Though the
session is entered in the files as ‘Hollis’, Matthew Orwat confirmed that the
label of his Vi 22930 indeed read ‘Rollin’, as he had indeed first stated. This
is also visible on the label scan of the disc kindly furnished by Han Enderman.
So here is a guy who first recorded in 1922, then went to Europe, recorded
again in Paris in 1927, went back to America at least once, then back to Europe
to be in Denmark during the time of the German occupation of that country. Then
back to the
All this
information was assembled into a short web page in 2002, and uploaded. It
concluded with a request that more information would be welcome.
Imagine my
delight, when in October 2004, an email arrived from Åge Skjelborg of
Åge kindly
wrote the following article for this page.
Life is what happens to you when you make other plans
(John Lennon)
A MUSICAL
LESSON FOR LIFE.
A
short encounter with a forgotten, gifted musician.
Firstly, a
little of myself. Growing up in
Many
Danish musicians like Svend Asmussen and Leo Mathiesen had to learn the latest
international dance music by listening to radio transmissions from
Secondly, the
following information is of course primarily about Rollin Smith, not of little
me, but I cannot quite leave out the deep impression he made on me and my
elementary piano playing for the rest of my life.
Just play, man,
as you feel. Do not ask others, especially not dull music teachers, how to do
things, he said. But that was exactly how he appeared to me: as a music
teacher, but in quite another way, of course. I liked very much to play by
heart and therefore I was a really grateful listener and short-term pupil
without having to pay any fee at all for all the great lessons of his!
My left hand,
he said, should be nearly all, second to none, the most important of our two
human hands. After having showed me how to make blue notes and broken chords
with the left hand, he said that from now on I could do pretty well anything I
wanted to on the smiling white keys. When I was improvising, my attention should
be on making the melody (Why, I asked stupidly, because my left hand was
already handling the harmony part of the melody itself, was his answer); the
left hand could be used for what he called counterpoint where two separate
melodies could be heard or made at the same time. This he called chord
progression. Practice is important in the context of enjoyment, that is, it
should not be by rote, as he himself put it. With the left hand to support it,
the human voice was to him the best instrument of the world, was his personal
visionary expression.
He sometimes
referred to, played and sung the famous, legendary and now classical movie
tune, AS TIME GOES BY. Maybe he saw himself in the same role and situation as
the pianist in this movie, having problems from time to time with the bloody
Nazis. He was as you may remember married and lived away from his wife for
shorter or longer periods of time.
Of course I
cannot remember all what he told me or played. But I especially noticed tunes
like On A Clear Day (partly singing, with small breaks in the piano). And, as I
mentioned before, As Time Goes By (with his own special singing performance), a
few piano blues and Opus One. By the way, he was amused when I played some
jazzified mazurkas by Fr. Chopin trying to cross the - at that particular time
- often narrow borders of various music genres. Just carry on, man, feel free,
was his comment. I preferred A flat to all other keys but he warned me not to
play in that same key, and of course I followed his good, friendly advice. It
helped a lot that Rollin too taught me the many other, different chords and
keys so I gradually got out of my own ‘swamp’.
The wire
recorder had not yet been followed by the tape recorder so I was amazed by the
high quality of the sound of his songs and animated piano playing.
As a youngster
I did not reflect at all over Rollin’s particular music style, presumably
because I did not yet have enough music or musicians to compare him with.
I did not know
that he played the saxophone too, quite new to me. But I am not at all
surprised!
As far as I
remember, we spend more than four intense weeks together in the summer of 1953,
in each others jolly company, mostly evenings and nights when I was off duty on
the hotel Landsoldaten, in the city of
As Rollin himself
said, he would very much like to establish a music school in
Finally, he
mentioned that he had had a short engagement in
Still remember
the “blue” mood in the shadowy, dusky piano bar and its many mixed, exotic
smells and of course especially the pretty girl behind the bar! I still remember
Rollin as a very generous, open-minded and warm person.
All this is to
the best of my recollection, based on both memory and written sources of my
own.
A few years
after, musicians like Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan invaded our young, sensitive
and hungry minds in the mid 1950s; but the style of gifted artists like Rollin
and Fats Waller survived some time after. But I have never forgotten my short
encounter with Rollin Smith.
I will try to
get hold of some newspaper clippings, telling about Rollin’s various stays in
You are most
welcome to edit or do whatever you want with my enclosed information written in
a rather incomplete English.
Åge Skjelborg.
(In fact, nothing has been edited out, and no significant changes
made to Åges excellent English! He also provided Rollin Smith’s autograph,
which we gratefully include here. Thank you very much for all your time and
trouble in sharing your knowledge with us, Åge! NF)
UPDATES:
On
On 26th May
2005, Neil Godfrey kindly wrote pointing out that both sides of a Roland Smith
record had recently been featured as ‘Record Of The Week’ on a website devoted
to vocal groups. There is also another photograph – alas of poor quality – and
a fascinating newspaper clipping from December 1937 which informs us that
Rollin Smith had just opened on the British vaudeville stage, with a contract
for two years! This is the first knowledge that he came to the
http://www.group-harmony.com/Kickin.htm
In
mid- and late 2008, Han Enderman and Åge both sent scans of a ‘new’ Rollin
Smith record, this time a relatively recent one: Polyphon X-51737, autographed
by Rollin Smith. I don’t have a date for this at the present, but it looks very
much 1950s – we’ll check it out and get a better date. The other side is
HDK-3816 ‘Heav’n – Heav’n’ (I Got A Robe) with the same label credits. The scan
at left is by courtesy of Åge Skjelborg, and the details of the other side are
by courtesy of Han Enderman. While we’re back on the subject of Rollin Smith’s
records, we might as well dig out an early one, seen here at the right. It was
recorded
In early
October 2008, the well-known Jazz Musician Björn Englund kindly
wrote: “As for Rollin' Smith, he also
visited
Well, that’s
about it for now! But who knows, with information being so widespread these
days via the ’net, maybe other information will be forthcoming on Rollin Smith?
If you have any, please email jazz@normanfield.com,
and let us know. You will of course be given full credit.
In fact, early in 2006, I was contacted by another person who
knew Smith in the 1950s. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to follow up at that time,
and now that person’s email languishes, currently inaccessible, on a broken
down computer. It is hoped to retrieve it one day!!
* The
alert-minded reader might be wondering, what were the other two? Very well
then: one was a
† The
Parlophone 3000 series began with an E- prefix and a red label; but in about
1926, they also began to issue some of them with the R- (Royal Blue) prefix and
a purple label, thus producing a discographer’s nightmare. One may not know
which number belongs to which prefix until a listing of all of them has been
made! Arthur Badrock and Bill Dean-Myatt, after many years work, have virtually
accomplished this.
Revised 2nd February 2009.