Metal sound disc master for Do it Again, recorded by Bailey's Lucky Seven on April 19, 1922 New York City.
Recording Information Card for Do It Again, recorded by Bailey's Lucky Seven on April 19, 1922 in New York City.
Champion Record Release list to Decca Distribution Company, May 1930.
The rise of Gennett Records coincided with the birth of early American jazz and blues, and also the surge in popularity of social dance band music, packaged and marketed to mostly white audience (Kennedy 1994, 53). From waltzes to tango, Americans filled dance halls in the years following World War I. With the advent of phonograph technology, and specifically the development of the lateral recording technique, recorded music was now affordable and available to those in remote communities and private homes.
Gennett Records wisely capitalized on the developments in lateral recording, employing the method even while they were still fighting Victor Talking Machine in court over the latter’s patent claim over the technology. By the time the case was decided on appeal in Gennett’s favor in 1922, the Starr Piano subsidiary was recording and releasing millions of albums per year (Kennedy 1994, 21-23), flooding American homes with entertainment, and charting the shift in music culture from one in which most participants performed, to one in which the majority of individuals would take on the role of consumer.
This cultural and economic shift helped foment the emergence of the studio musician as a prominent, yet often hidden component to the burgeoning recorded music industry. The recording information card and accompanying sound disc (on the left), from 1922 highlight this new trend, featuring the musical group Bailey’s Lucky Seven, which included members of another studio band, Ladd’s Black Aces. Combined the two groups recorded over 100 sides for Gennett (Kennedy 1994, 52). There was also overlap with the Original Memphis Five, another performance group of white musicians intended to package and promote the new “black” musical styles for white dance audiences.
Legend has it that George Gershwin wrote the sultry “Do It Again” in late 1921 or early 1922 in the office of publisher Max Dreyfus when lyricist Buddy DeSilva suggested they sit down and “write a hit.” Gershwin began noodling at the piano, when a moved DeSilva uttered, “do it again,” referring to the improvised motif. The emotive downtempo piece was reinterpreted for Gennett by Bailey’s Lucky Seven as a foxtrot—a popular dance form marketable to audiences desiring the “best and snappiest hits” (Gennett, 1922) by the day’s newest orchestras. The explosion of recorded music gave way to a proliferation of new genres and styles, like old time tunes, popular, and the newest form, race, which would prove to be immeasurably monumental in cultural and economic terms. As studios like Gennett began recording African American artists in the early 1920s, diverse marketing strategies followed, opening the doors for specialization in the music industry that would exponentially increase in complexity over the next century.
