Les Loups - Ramona (1928)

Hans & Jo (2008)

This week it has been three years since the founder of the Keep(it)swinging weblog and associated website and blogs, Hans Koert (June 1st, 1951 - September 4, 2014), passed away all too soon. Before it was too late I promised Hans to continue  his blogs, our friendship was too valuable to ignore our mutual engagement in the music we both shared our passion for. Thus, I have tried to follow in the footsteps of Hans in fields of the music we both liked. Our first and mutual project was to collect all available info on the legacy of Oscar Alemán. Hans succeeded in finishing the online Oscar Alemán Discography in time for the Oscar Alemán Centennial in February 2009. I assisted in collecting info and further published entries at the Oscar Alemán weblog documenting our research. In remembrance of this co-work and a great friendship, I'll post the latest entry from the Oscar Alemán weblog below to expose some info here at the keep(it)swinging blog as well on a famous 1920s tune recorded by Les Loups - Alemán's first musical partnership - in 1928: Ramona

Original sheet music (1928)

Ramona is a 1928 song, with lyrics written by L. Wolfe Gilbert and music by Mabel Wayne. It was created as the title song for the 1928 adventure film-romance Ramona (based on the novel Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson).

Original film poster(1928)

Ramona was recorded in 1928 for promotional appearances with Dolores del Río (star of the film) but not featured in the film itself. The film Ramona was the first United Artists film with a synchronized score, but was not a talking picture. Dolores del Río was a Mexican actress, who was the first major female Latin American crossover star in Hollywood, with a career in American films in the 1920s and 1930s. - Here is Ramona by Dolores del Rio (1928)

On record Ramona was a popular hit, usually performed as a romantic ballad, sometimes with a Latin inflection by "Whispering" Jack Smith and, in an idiosyncratic arrangement recorded on January 4th 1928, by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. The Paul Whiteman version, Victor 21214-A, featuring Bix Beiderbecke on cornet and vocal by Austin Young and Jack Fulton, was no. 1 for 3 weeks on the Billboard charts in 1928.

Other popular artists of the time such as Gene Austin and Ruth Etting a.o. also recorded Ramona and had hits with their versions, and outside the USA the song became popular thanks to the film. 

Les Loups, promo (courtesy by Erik Host)

Les Loups recorded their instrumental version of Ramona in Buenos Aires on August 30 1928 (- some sources have September 3rd or 24) for Victor, released at Victor 80950 (mx BAVE-44280-1) inserted below

Unfortunately, audio quality in the inserted video is rather noisy, but the music by Les Loups is as always delicate and well performed using the well known formula with Gastón on the hawaiian steel guitar and Oscar providing rhythm support on the conventional guitar.

The Blue Diamonds

Ramona remained popular with the public for a long time, a young generation of pop musicians in the 1960s revitalized the orignal waltz version of the song' in an upbeat version similar to rock'n'roll. The shown duo named The Blue Diamonds (a Dutch-Indonesian duo) became famous in 1960 with their version of the song, which reached the American Billboard Hot 100 at number 72 in 1960. It sold over 250,000 copies in the Netherlands (the first record to ever do so) and over one million copies in Germany by 1961.

Perhaps as a consequence of the success of Ramona in an upbeat arrangement, Oscar Alemán also featured the song this way in his live appearances with Los Cinco Caballeros during the 1960s. An example of a live performance of Ramona by Alemán and the Cinco Caballeros from a radio appearance at Radio el Mundo in 1965 has been saved and is inserted below to end this

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Jo

keepitswinging.domain@gmail.com

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