Jazz Age: Abe Lyman's Orch. - Love Baby, 1927

Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra – Love Baby, Fox-Trot (Music composer and Lyricist: uncredited) with Vocal Chorus, Brunswick 1927 (USA)

NOTE: Abe LYMAN (b. Abraham Simon Lymon in Chicago, 1897 – d. Beverly Hills, CA 1957) American dance orchestra leader and drummer in the 1920s through 1930s. In his youth, Abe Lymon worked hard as newspaper boy, taxi driver or a waiter. He learned to play drums when he was 14 and started performing with dance ensembles at the Chicago cafés. In 1919 he changed his name to “Lyman” and joined the renowned Henry Halstead dance band with whom he traveled to California, where he was employed at Gus Arnheim’s band to play in Hollywood’s fashionable dance venue the Cocoanut Grove. In 1922 Abe founded his own dance orchestra to play at the night club his brother Mike opened in the Sunset Boulevard. The spot was frequented by many Hollywood celebrities including Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton and Lyman’s orchestra became well known in Los Angeles. In 1923 Lyman’s band appeared back in the Cocoanut Grove and a year later he started recording for the Brunswick Records. During the Roaring Twenties, Lyman’s California Orchestra gained established reputation as one of the best and most prolific dance orchestras in the West Coast. He also regularly performed on the radio. He toured in the US and Europe, appearing at the Kit Cat Club and the Palladium in London in 1929 and at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Lyman’s orchestra survived the Great Depression and was continuously present in the music market into the 1940s still recording prolifically for the Victor, Decca and Bluebird labels and becoming one of legends of the American Jazz Age and the Big Band era. Abe Lyman retired from music in 1949.

The slideshow presents several summertime snapshots of American flappers in the Roaring Twenties.