Jazz Age: Tea For Two - The Knickerbockers (Ben Selvin’s Dance Orch.), 1925

The Knickerbockers (Ben Selvin’s Dance Orch.) – Tea For Two, Fox-Trot from “No No, Nanette” (Youmans – Caesar), Columbia 1925 (USA) NOTE: The fabulous jazz evergreen “Tea For Two“ is played here by Ben Selvin’s Band – one of the most popular and most prolific dance orchestra in USA of the Roaring Twenties. Considering its popularity, artistic level and recording output, the Selvin’s competitor could only be among his contemporaries, the Whiteman’s orchestra. The cases have been known, when Ben Selvin’s recordings were mistakenly sent to the distribution under Paul Whiteman’s label or vice versa, and almost nobody noticed the mistake. From 1927 to 1934 Selvin was artists and repertoire director for Columbia Records, where his many productions included musicians Manny Klein, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Bunny Berigan. His own band recorded under dozens of pseudonyms and also fot another labels, including OKeh, Odeon, Parlophone, Harmony, Diva, Velvet Tone. In the mid-1930s he helped develop Muzak and in the 1940/50s he was director of Majestic Records, and after that again of the Columbia Records in charge of the recordings of Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Dinah Shore and Buddy Clark. In the end of the 1950s, he managed the Camden Records, until he was retired. He died in 1980 in NYC. Due to his activity as the recording manager, he was called The Dean of the Recorded Music.