Herbert Arthur Wiedoeft (22 November 1886 – 12 May 1928) was a German-American band leader in
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
in the 1920s.
Career
Wiedoeft was born in Germany and came to the United States with his parents as a child.
Wiedoeft came from a family of gifted musicians and was encouraged by his father. His brothers Gerhardt and Adolph (nicknamed "Gay" and "Ad" respectively) played as sidemen in his band, Gerhardt on
string bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...
and Adolph on
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...
and
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...
. Another brother,
Rudy Wiedoeft was a
saxophone
The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...
player during the late
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that had its peak from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its Syncopation, syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers ...
and early jazz era.
Their sister, Erica, was a pianist.[ Herbert himself played the ]trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...
.
Wiedoeft started his first orchestra before 1915.[ His band played for several years at the Cinderella Roof Ballroom at Sixth and Olive in downtown ]Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
. The band's theme song "Cinderella Blues" came from the name of this venue.[ The band recorded four songs for the Nordskog label in 1922.]
The band gained a recording contract with Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
History
1916–1929
Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing ...
, toured in Chicago and New York and earned a national reputation. Their first record for Brunswick was "Cinderella Blues"/ " Shine",[ the latter being the first recording of the song that had ]Lew Brown
Lew Brown (born Louis Brownstein; December 10, 1893 – February 5, 1958) was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States. During World War I and the Roaring Twenties, he wrote lyrics for several of the top Tin Pan Alley composers, espec ...
's revised lyrics.[
Clyde Lucas, who went on to form his own popular band in the 1930s and 1940s, started out as a singer and trombonist in the Herb Wiedoeft orchestra.]
Wiedoeft died in a car accident in Medford, Oregon
Medford is a city in and the county seat of Jackson County, Oregon, in the United States. As of the 2020 United States census on April 1, 2020, the city had a total population of 85,824, making it the List of cities in Oregon, eighth-most populo ...
, on 12 May 1928, when his car skidded off the Medford-Klamath Falls highway.[ The trombonist Jesse Stafford took over the band, and released another 13 sides on Brunswick records under the name of the Jesse Stafford Orchestra.]
Discography
A partial list of Brunswick recordings:[
]
Works
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References
Bibliography for references
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External links
Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof Orchestra
at the Red Hot Jazz Archive
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiedoeft, Herb
1886 births
1928 deaths
American jazz trumpeters
American jazz bandleaders
American big band bandleaders
Emigrants from the German Empire to the United States
Road incident deaths in Oregon