Ted Lewis Jazz Band – Blues (My Naughty Sweetie Gave Me) (Swanstone, McCanon & Morgan), Columbia 1920
NOTE: Ted LEWIS (b. Theodore Friedman) (b.1892 in Circleville, OH – d. 1971 NYC). Promoting one of Lewis’ sides the Victor catalog remerked humorously:"The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet". The “Blues...” is a perfect illustration of that. Ted’a clarinet is making constant shifts between klezmer and New Orleans style – a blend that found my ironic comment in selection of photoes: a patient in dentist’s chair looking in terror on a gramophone trumpet emitting, as it seems the teasing sounds or dog running away from the phonograph and “his master’s noise”. In later years Lewis, who certainly knew what good clarinet playing sounded like, could hire the best musicians like Goodman, Muggsy Spanier or Jimmy Dorsey. In years he achieved popularity second to Whiteman’s and presenting certainly more real jazz and with less pretension, than Whiteman.