The All Star Trio (Saxophone, Xylophone, Piano) – Swanee, One-Step (G.Gershwin), HMV 1919 (Rec in USA, released in UK)

NOTE: The All-Star Trio (or All Star Trio) was a musical ensemble consisting of three well-known dance-band musicians: George Hamilton Green on the xylophone, Frank E. Banta (or Victor Arden) on the piano and F.Wheeler Wandsworth on the saxophone. Their music was promoted as "dance music", yet today they are considered as pioneers in the very early Jazz Age in the US. The group began recording for the Victor Company in 1918. In 1920 their popularity was such that their recordings were released by His Master's Voice in Great Britain and Pathé in France. The trio made additional recordings for Edison, Brunswick and Okeh. The group’s last recording has been catalogued at Victor on 7 Dec 1922 and the virtuoses went on their own ways: Frank E. Banta continued career as a very valued solo piano performer as well as accompanist to many famous performers who recorded at the Victor Records, Victor Arden founded with pianist Phil Ohman his own dance band, F. Wheeler Wandworth joined the Paul Whiteman’s Saxophone Sextette, and xylophonist George Hamilton Green along with his two brothers, Joe (playing brass instruments and xylophone) and Lew Green (banjo), established the Green Bros. Novelty Band which recorded for Edison achieving high popularity and becoming also the sound music crew for Walt Disney's first cartoons.
"Swanee" is an American popular song written in 1919 by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Irving Caesar. It is most often associated with singer Al Jolson. The song was written for a Broadway revue called Demi-Tasse, which opened in Oct 1919 at the Capitol Theater. Caesar, who was then aged 20, claimed to have written the song in about ten minutes riding on a bus in Manhattan, finishing it at Gershwin's apartment. It was originally used as a big production number, with 60 chorus girls dancing with electric lights, yet the song had little impact in its first show. Some time afterwards Gershwin played it at a party where Al Jolson heard it and he put it into his show Sinbad, already a success at the Winter Garden Theatre. Simultaneously, Jolson recorded it for Columbia Records and the song became a huge international hit. It sold a million sheet music copies and two million records. It became Gershwin's biggest-selling song of his career; the money he earned from it allowed him to concentrate on theatre work and films rather than writing single pop hits.

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