Bernie Cummins & His Orchestra - My Melancholy Baby, 1928

Bernie Cummins & His Orchestra – My Melancholy Baby, Fox-Trot (Norton, Burnett) with Vocal Trio, Brunswick 1928 (Rec. In USA, British product)

NOTE: Bernie CUMMINS (b. 1900 in Acron, Ohio - d. 1986) American jazz drummer, singer and dance orchestra leader in the 1920s and 1930s. In his youth, he was a boxer before he began playing drums in local bands in Ohio. In 1919, he debuted with his own small band in Indiana. In 1924, his larger orchestra began recording for Gennett, but its breakthrough came when it moved to Brunswick in 1927 and later to Victor. In 1929 Bernie Cummins’s orchestra became the principal dance band at prestigious Biltmore Hotel in New York, and the following year it performed at the New Yorker Hotel. The band also performed at the Blackstone's and the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, as well as in Dallas, Kansas City, New Orleans, Denver and San Francisco. Cummins' band was popular on air, including the Spotlight Dance Program sponsored by Coca-Cola. The orchestra recorded until 1940, but with the pass of time, Cummins found it increasingly difficult to continue on a larger scale and played in smaller clubs in Las Vegas until his orchestra disbanded in 1959.