Henry Halstead
Encyclopedia
Henry Halstead was a U.S. bandleader.
Henry Halstead's Orchestra began in early 1922 and over the next 20 years Halstead's band engagements extended from coast to coast, including the Blossom Room at Hotel Roosevelt, New York City
; the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California
; the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco; the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago; and a season at "Fatty" Arbuckle's "Plantation" in Culver City where such entertainers as Al Jolson
, Sophie Tucker
, Gus Edwards
, and Leatrice Joy
were headliners on his shows. Henry Halstead had from 15 to 20 bandmembers at any given time. Halstead's orchestra appeared in numerous short subjects on the screen and has made over 100 phonograph records, mainly with Victor Records. In addition, Halstead appeared in short films released by RKO Radio.
Following their rise to national fame over the air and in the grill rooms on the West Coast, Henry Halstead and his band gained the reputation as being the "Favorite Band of Movieland". During his career as the West Coast's premier dance orchestra Hank Halstead's boys played for nearly all the movie people at their private entertainments. Among the names of those who became Halstead fans were Sylvia Sidney
, Frederic March, Claudette Colbert
, Kay Francis
, Rudolph Valentino
, Roscoe Arbuckle, Maurice Chevalier
, Clark Gable
, Norma Shearer
, Greta Garbo
, Clive Brook, Gary Cooper
, Marian Nixon
, Jack Oakie
, Buddy Rogers, and Ruth Chatterton
.
Hollywood actor Lew Ayres
was discovered in the Henry Halstead band in 1927. Ayres said "I was a member of Henry Halstead's orchestra in 1927 at the Mission Beach Ballroom, San Diego, Calif....summer. My instruments were tenor banjo, long-neck banjo and guitar. After a hiatus, I rejoined Mr. Halstead with a new group, including Phil Harris, on New Years Eve the same year for the opening night of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel... a memorable occasion." Henry Halstead is given credit for making the first Hollywood Vitaphone
movie short with Warner Brothers in 1927 called Carnival Night in Paris where Lew Ayres
was discovered playing banjo. The three music selections for the Vitaphone production where listed as follows: 1. Volga Boatman, 2. At Sundown, 3. Rosy Cheeks.
Halstead was on the cover of Billboard issue of July 27, 1935 at that time known as Henry "Hank" Halstead and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra playing at the Hotel-Park Central, New York.
Phil Harris
played drums and Red Nichols
played trumpet as they were members of Henry Halstead's band in the 1920s.
Cliff Arquette
an actor, comedian, was also a night club pianist, and joined the Henry Halstead Orchestra in 1923.
Halstead recorded for Victor Records, and broadcast on all major radio networks, such as Columbia, National, and Mutual Broadcasting Companies. Halstead led his band and played violin. The original Halstead violin still exists and has dozens of band member signatures on the violin. Henry was considered one of the best young band leaders and gave his dance patrons plenty of entertainment. His music maintained excellent rhythm and a crowded floor throughout the night stood testimony that he was playing good dance music.
Henry Halstead was born November 16, 1897 in El Paso, Texas
and died on March 19, 1984 in California
. As a young boy, Halstead learned to play violin. After studying the violin for 10 years, Hank Halstead turned professional when 19 playing clubs and hotels at the tables. In 1919, Henry Halstead played violin with 2 other men that went on to become famous Big Band Leaders, Abe Lyman
and Gus Arnheim
. The 3 young men played in a band together at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, California. Abe Lyman played drums and Gus Arnheim played piano. Roy Fox, not well known in America but later a ranking bandmaster in England, played the trumpet on occasion with them. Even early on Halstead dressed the part, a tuxedo was a must and he must have worn out a few of them over the next 20 years.
In 1923 Halstead, then director of the Palais Royal Orchestra, predicts for the coming year that even though dance steps may change, the music as far as tempo and rhythm will remain about the same as in 1922. And jazz, minus the shrieking and wailing, toned down with even a touch more of the classical than the case in the year now coming to a close, will continue to reign supreme in the popularity of dance fans. "Balance of harmony is the secret." Mr. Halstead said. "Careful selection of instruments and musicians are next in importance, but unless harmony is perfectly balanced that soft, dreamy effect so necessary in the modern fox trot is lost." The Buescher phone, an unusual instrument for a dance orchestra, is featured in the Palais Royal Orchestra.
Henry Halstead was married to blues vocalist Marjorie Whitney who sang with the King's Jesters
.
The early Henry Halstead Orchestra during the early 1920s was enormously successful at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco for about three years. This was the early days of radio, and he had the good fortune to broadcast over the very powerful (for those days) KGO in San Francisco. He was "on" for about an hour a night, six nights a week. As a consequence, his band became the best known organization in the western United States and Hawaii.
This band broke up in the late summer of 1925. Hank decided that he would go out on his own - form a new band, literally "hire a hall" and run his own enterprise.. The band consisted of: Ted Schilling, Glenn Hopkins, Ross Dugat, Ernie Reed, Chuck Moll, Abe Maule, Hal Chanslor, Zebe Mann, Phil Harris and Craig Leach. When they joined Halstead in Seattle the band was a huge success. In the spring of 1926, the Halstead band came to Los Angeles to play Miller's Lafayette. Red Nichols joined the band for this opening.
Many vocalists and entertainers performed with the Henry Halstead Orchestra. Maxine Harding with her deep-dyed blues singing was a Soloist with Henry Halstead's Orchestra. Clarence Rand's voice also was featured, so was Myrtle Harwin, Niela Goodelle, Margaret Reed, Peggy Mann.
Henry Halstead's Orchestra began in early 1922 and over the next 20 years Halstead's band engagements extended from coast to coast, including the Blossom Room at Hotel Roosevelt, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
; the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco; the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago; and a season at "Fatty" Arbuckle's "Plantation" in Culver City where such entertainers as Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker was a Russian/Ukrainian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risqué songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first half of the 20th century...
, Gus Edwards
Gus Edwards (songwriter)
Gus Edwards was an American songwriter and vaudevillian. He also organised his own theatre companies and was a music publisher.-Early life:...
, and Leatrice Joy
Leatrice Joy
Leatrice Joy was an American actress most prolific during the early silent film era.-Early life and career:...
were headliners on his shows. Henry Halstead had from 15 to 20 bandmembers at any given time. Halstead's orchestra appeared in numerous short subjects on the screen and has made over 100 phonograph records, mainly with Victor Records. In addition, Halstead appeared in short films released by RKO Radio.
Following their rise to national fame over the air and in the grill rooms on the West Coast, Henry Halstead and his band gained the reputation as being the "Favorite Band of Movieland". During his career as the West Coast's premier dance orchestra Hank Halstead's boys played for nearly all the movie people at their private entertainments. Among the names of those who became Halstead fans were Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney was an American actress who rose to prominence in the 1930s appearing in numerous crime dramas.-Early life:...
, Frederic March, Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
, Kay Francis
Kay Francis
Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...
, Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
, Roscoe Arbuckle, Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Chevalier
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was a French actor, singer, entertainer and a noted Sprechgesang performer. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including Louise, Mimi, Valentine, and Thank Heaven for Little Girls and for his films including The Love Parade and The Big Pond...
, Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
, Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
, Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
, Clive Brook, Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
, Marian Nixon
Marian Nixon
-Career:Born Marian Nissinen in Superior, Wisconsin, Nixon began her career as a teen working as a chorus dancer on the vaudeville circuit. She began appearing in bit part in films in 1922 and landed her first substantial role in the 1923 film Cupid's Fireman, opposite Buck Jones. The following...
, Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie
Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television.-Early life:...
, Buddy Rogers, and Ruth Chatterton
Ruth Chatterton
Ruth Chatterton was an American actress, novelist, and early aviatrix.- Early life :Chatterton was born in New York City, on Christmas Eve 1892, to Walter Smith and Lillian Reed Chatterton...
.
Hollywood actor Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres was an American actor, best known for starring as Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front and for playing Dr...
was discovered in the Henry Halstead band in 1927. Ayres said "I was a member of Henry Halstead's orchestra in 1927 at the Mission Beach Ballroom, San Diego, Calif....summer. My instruments were tenor banjo, long-neck banjo and guitar. After a hiatus, I rejoined Mr. Halstead with a new group, including Phil Harris, on New Years Eve the same year for the opening night of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel... a memorable occasion." Henry Halstead is given credit for making the first Hollywood Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
movie short with Warner Brothers in 1927 called Carnival Night in Paris where Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres
Lew Ayres was an American actor, best known for starring as Paul in All Quiet on the Western Front and for playing Dr...
was discovered playing banjo. The three music selections for the Vitaphone production where listed as follows: 1. Volga Boatman, 2. At Sundown, 3. Rosy Cheeks.
Halstead was on the cover of Billboard issue of July 27, 1935 at that time known as Henry "Hank" Halstead and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra playing at the Hotel-Park Central, New York.
Phil Harris
Phil Harris
Harris and Faye married in 1941; it was a second marriage for both and lasted 54 years, until Harris's death. Harris engaged in a fistfight at the Trocadero nightclub in 1938 with RKO studio mogul Bob Stevens; the cause was reported to be over Faye after Stevens and Faye had ended a romantic...
played drums and Red Nichols
Red Nichols
Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols was an American jazz cornettist, composer, and jazz bandleader.Over his long career, Nichols recorded in a wide variety of musical styles, and critic Steve Leggett describes him as "an expert cornet player, a solid improviser, and apparently a workaholic, since he is...
played trumpet as they were members of Henry Halstead's band in the 1920s.
Cliff Arquette
Cliff Arquette
Clifford Charles Arquette was an actor and comedian, famous for his role as Charley Weaver.-Early life and career:...
an actor, comedian, was also a night club pianist, and joined the Henry Halstead Orchestra in 1923.
Halstead recorded for Victor Records, and broadcast on all major radio networks, such as Columbia, National, and Mutual Broadcasting Companies. Halstead led his band and played violin. The original Halstead violin still exists and has dozens of band member signatures on the violin. Henry was considered one of the best young band leaders and gave his dance patrons plenty of entertainment. His music maintained excellent rhythm and a crowded floor throughout the night stood testimony that he was playing good dance music.
Henry Halstead was born November 16, 1897 in El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
and died on March 19, 1984 in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. As a young boy, Halstead learned to play violin. After studying the violin for 10 years, Hank Halstead turned professional when 19 playing clubs and hotels at the tables. In 1919, Henry Halstead played violin with 2 other men that went on to become famous Big Band Leaders, Abe Lyman
Abe Lyman
Abe Lyman was a popular bandleader from the 1920s to the 1940s. He made recordings, appeared in films and provided the music for numerous radio shows, including Your Hit Parade....
and Gus Arnheim
Gus Arnheim
Gus Arnheim was an early popular band leader. He is noted for writing several songs with his first hit being "I Cried for You" from 1923. He was most popular in the 1920s and 1930s...
. The 3 young men played in a band together at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, California. Abe Lyman played drums and Gus Arnheim played piano. Roy Fox, not well known in America but later a ranking bandmaster in England, played the trumpet on occasion with them. Even early on Halstead dressed the part, a tuxedo was a must and he must have worn out a few of them over the next 20 years.
In 1923 Halstead, then director of the Palais Royal Orchestra, predicts for the coming year that even though dance steps may change, the music as far as tempo and rhythm will remain about the same as in 1922. And jazz, minus the shrieking and wailing, toned down with even a touch more of the classical than the case in the year now coming to a close, will continue to reign supreme in the popularity of dance fans. "Balance of harmony is the secret." Mr. Halstead said. "Careful selection of instruments and musicians are next in importance, but unless harmony is perfectly balanced that soft, dreamy effect so necessary in the modern fox trot is lost." The Buescher phone, an unusual instrument for a dance orchestra, is featured in the Palais Royal Orchestra.
Henry Halstead was married to blues vocalist Marjorie Whitney who sang with the King's Jesters
King's Jesters
The King's Jesters began as a comic vocal trio that also played instruments along with an accompaniest. They were John Ravencroft - sax and clarinet, Francis "Fritz" Bastow - banjo and guitar, George Howard - drums and vibraphone, along with Ray McDermott - piano, accordion, and arranger. They...
.
The early Henry Halstead Orchestra during the early 1920s was enormously successful at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco for about three years. This was the early days of radio, and he had the good fortune to broadcast over the very powerful (for those days) KGO in San Francisco. He was "on" for about an hour a night, six nights a week. As a consequence, his band became the best known organization in the western United States and Hawaii.
This band broke up in the late summer of 1925. Hank decided that he would go out on his own - form a new band, literally "hire a hall" and run his own enterprise.. The band consisted of: Ted Schilling, Glenn Hopkins, Ross Dugat, Ernie Reed, Chuck Moll, Abe Maule, Hal Chanslor, Zebe Mann, Phil Harris and Craig Leach. When they joined Halstead in Seattle the band was a huge success. In the spring of 1926, the Halstead band came to Los Angeles to play Miller's Lafayette. Red Nichols joined the band for this opening.
Many vocalists and entertainers performed with the Henry Halstead Orchestra. Maxine Harding with her deep-dyed blues singing was a Soloist with Henry Halstead's Orchestra. Clarence Rand's voice also was featured, so was Myrtle Harwin, Niela Goodelle, Margaret Reed, Peggy Mann.