Dance Band 1919: Joseph Knecht's Waldorf-Astoria Orch. - Tell Me, Fox-Trot

Waldorf-Astoria Dance Orchestra dir. by Joseph Knecht – Tell Me, Fox-Trot (Kortlander-Callahan), Chorus by: Irving Kaufman, Columbia 1919 (USA)

NOTE: Joseph KNECHT (1864-1931) American dance bandleader, director of dance orchestra at New York's Waldorf Astoria from 1908 to 1925. Knecht was born in 1864 in Bukovina (Austrian Empire) where he played the violin from an early age. He studied civil engineering at the Vienna University earning money by performing at the Hofburg Theatre. He however left civil engineering to study violin at the Vienna Conservatory, after which he played in the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. In 1905 he was offered a position with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in 1887 he arrived in the US. He later moved to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he became associate conductor. In 1908, he was offered a lucrative position at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel to perform in the summer when the Metropolitan was closed. His show became popular and soon was Knecht’s full-time occupation until 1925, when he resigned to lead the B. F. Goodrich Silvertown Cord Band on a sponsored radio show. Knecht’s band toured with the hugely popular singer Joseph M. White, who performed under the pseudonym The Silver-Masked Tenor. In 1925, the Waldorf-Astoria orchestra and the Silvertown Cord Band became one and the same, described as "the most prolific radio band in the country'. They appeared on air 15 times a week as the Silvertown studio band and were also broadcast from the Waldorf-Astoria, playing dinner music as the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra. Knecht’s band recorded for Victor, Columbia and Okeh from 1917 to 1921 and for Victor as the B. F. Goodrich Silvertown Cord Band from 1925 to 1928. Knecht died of a heart failure in 1931 in New York.