Albert Harris & Tea-Jazz Orchestra dir. by Henryk Wars - Забвение (Polish title: Zapomnienie: Pytasz mnie czemu nie płaczę) [To Forget: You’re Asking Me, Wy I’m Not Crying] Tango (H.Wars / Russian Text: Refren), Aprelevskij Zavod, Soviet Russia 1940

NOTE: This rare record was released in 1940 in the Stalinist Russia, during the first year of the 2nd WW. It contains two recordings of the Polish prewar artists: Albert Harris (A) and Renata Jarosewicz (B), who in Soviewt Russia became members of Henryk Wars’ artistic group called the Tea-Jazz which was allowed by the Soviets to perform for the Russian audience in various cities of the Stalin’s Empire.

Tea-Jazz Orchestra and artistic ensamble were establishedby Henryk Wars - the distinguished Polish pop-and film-music composer and bandleader - in Autumn 1939 in a city of Lwów, briefly after the outbreak of the 2nd WW. Having fled from the bombed Warsaw, many Polish artists and musicians found shelter in the eastern Polish territories, until that part of Poland was captured by the Soviets, who on 17th Sept 1939 invaded Poland from the East (- two weeks after the Wehrmacht troops attacked from the West). Caught in a trap, Poles desperately looked for the way out and the Henryk Wars’ artistic group became such chance of rescue for many of them. Using his influences – and being a distinguished, internationally recognized artist – Henryk Wars managed to manipulate the Soviet authorities, using also the love for jazz of some of them – that finally he was allowed to create the big band and the artistic ensemble, with permission to travel and even a very small yet stabile government’s funding was granted . For almost two years, prewar Warsaw artists such as Henryk Wars, Eugeniusz Bodo, Albert Harris and many others traveled from town to town in the dirty and buggy boxcars with piled up costumes and instruments around the Soviet Union, giving concerts of the “happy” jazz and “passionate” tangos, while their hearts of the exiles’ were bleeding. They were happy, however, for first of all thewy were greeted enthusiasticvally ewerywhere and second: the were still alive and not kept in the work camps, where most of the Polish exiles were dying from overwork and hunger. The repertoire of Tea-Jazz contained many prewar Polish hits, including this tango “To Forget: You’re Asking Me Why I’m Not Crying”, which in 1931 was performed in Warsaw by the “Queen of Polish Tango” Stanisława Nowicka [ Ссылка ]

Yet, while Nowicka sung about her parting with a lover, Albert Harris’ pensive interpretation and tragic notes present in his voice, tell us about parting with a homeland and farewell to his beloved city of Warsaw. When in June 1941 the Soviet-Third Reich Pact of Alliance was broken and Germany attacked USSR, Polish minority in the Soviet Russia changed overnight its status from a “burgeois lice” into the most desired allies and many Poles were released from the work camps to create Polish Army in exile, which soon marched out from the Soviet paradise to join its Western allies in Persia, Middle East and North Africa. That’s how most of the Tea-Jazz artist were saved, with one important exception: one of the most popular Polish prewar actors and singers Eugeniusz Bodo was arrested by NKVD and sent to the Kotlas work camp, where he died.

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