Abe Lyman's California Ambassador Hotel Orchestra - Farewell Blues
- 13 years ago
Lyman (1897-1957) was a popular bandleader from the 20s to the 40s. He made recordings, appeared in films and provided the music for numerous radio shows. At the age of 14 he had a job as a drummer in a Chicago café. Soon after that, when his nine-piece band played at the Sunset in LA, it was a success, but the club closed. For an engagement at the Cocoanut Grove in The Ambassador Hotel on April 1, 1922, Abe added a violinist and saxophonist. Lyman's band toured Europe in 1929, appearing at the Kit Cat Club and the Palladium in London and at the Moulin Rouge and the Perroquet in Paris. Abe Lyman and his orchestra were featured in a number of early talkies. During the 1930s, the Lyman Orchestra was heard regularly on such shows as Accordiana and Waltz Time. When Lyman was 50 years old, he left the music industry. His early recordings often were particularly hot, and so is this one although a little more recent, from 1932, made the same year as the fragment shown in the video.