OLD MAN SUNSHINE [0:00]
SONNY BOY [3:08]
Bert Maddison (Nat Star) and his Dance Orchestra: Vocalist - Fred Douglas
Sterno 105 (3 December 1928)

This is my first Sterno transcription; and as soon as the stylus went in the groove the strange EQ was apparent. It had a plummy dull sound and the smooth hiss of surface noise. The mid to low audio frequencies are at much greater levels than on other records; and the high frequencies are rolled-off drastically above about 3 kHz, exposing the smooth surface noise. Attempts to reveal the high frequencies and transients (e.g. cymbals) in the signal just make the surface noise more prominent.

Charles ‘Nat’ Star was to Sterno what Harry Bidgood was to Broadcast: the leader of a line up of differently named studio bands each with much the same personnel (who allegedly also moved around the studios). The nom-de-groove ‘Bert Maddison’ on this record is an interesting choice. That was also the name of a comedian who toured the halls in Britain and even did a tour in Australia around that time.

Vocalist Fred Douglas was a stalwart of the recording studios who usually delivered light and comedic lyrics. He also recorded as ‘F W Ramsey’ and as ‘Tom Gilbert’, half of ‘The Two Gilberts’ (a comedian by the name of Leslie Rome was, reportedly, the other half).

SONNY BOY was Al Jolson’s big hit from his second Warner Bros/Vitaphone film ‘The Singing Fool’: the first feature-length, sound-on-disc film with dialogue. Jolson’s previous film ‘The Jazz Singer’ used the disc system principally for supplying the mood music, displacing the musicians in the cinema, and was, otherwise, a silent movie with captions; but the scene with ‘mother’, ‘son’ and ‘piano’ with Jolson ad-libbing in lip-sync was the sensation. (Vitaphone used 16-inch diameter, 33⅓ rpm discs with standard sized grooves which played from the centre outwards and were good for 20 playings only. Victor, in Camden New Jersey, was an active part of the disc production.)

‘Sterno’ was originally a brand of gramophones, named after Mr William D Sternberg, a director of the British Homophone Co Ltd. Sterno record issues started at 101, so this (105) is the fifth.

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