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American Dance Bands

The Imaginary Carl Fenton

By Allan Sutton

Note: Portions of this material are excerpted from author’s American Dance Band Encyclopedia, which is currently in development for publication in 2009.

Carl Fenton's Orchestra, from the 1924 Brunswick catalog. Although this photo was widely published for several years, the orchestra members were never named. Haenschen (piano) is identifiable. The bass player apparently is a ringer; the instrument could not be recorded adequately by the acoustic process. Tuba player John Helleberg was substituted, according to the Brunswick files.

Carl Fenton—one of Brunswick’s best-selling orchestra leaders in the 1920s—was a total fiction, the creation of Brunswick musical director Walter G. "Gus" Haenschen (1889–1980).

Haenschen had a checkered career in the music business before joining the Brunswick staff. A 1912 engineering graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, Haenschen—a skilled pianist and composer—showed little interest in pursuing an engineering career. His first success in the music field came when his “Underneath a Japanese Moon, ”with lyrics by Gene Buck, was featured in the 1914 touring edition of Ziegfeld’s 1914 Follies (the song was not used in the original Broadway production).

Haenschen was soon working as a Victrola salesman for Scruggs, Vandersloot & Barney in St. Louis by day, while directing his popular dance orchestra by night. During the summer of 1916, he took his orchestra to New York. There, he made his first recordings, for Columbia’s “personal” label in August, with the banjo section from his orchestra. ¹ A month later he made test recordings for Victor, but was not signed by the company.

After a stint in the army, Haenschen joined the staff of Brunswick-Balke-Collender in late 1919 as manager of the Popular Records Department, just as the company was preparing to launch its records in the United States. For reasons that remain unknown, he adopted the pseudonym of Carl Fenton for dance sides made by the house orchestra. The first issue credited to Carl Fenton’s Orchestra was Brunswick 2011 (“Karavan”), recorded in late 1919 and released in January 1920. Like most of the Fenton releases to come, it was a pleasant but unremarkable performance. New Fenton releases were soon appearing monthly and selling well.

The degree to which Haenschen himself was involved with the early Fenton sessions remains open to question, since the early Brunswick files no longer exist. Haenschen is sometimes cited by name as arranger on early Fenton labels. Beyond that, he seems to have served primarily as a contractor, recruiting freelance musicians to flesh out the house orchestra for Fenton dates. The core group, usually consisting of eight or nine players, was probably drawn from members of the Brunswick house orchestra. But that group was usually supplemented with outside players, as the later Brunswick files reveal. The standard orchestra photo shows eleven members, none of whom were ever identified in Brunswick literature.

From 1923 onward, the Brunswick files are largely intact. Haenschen is never shown as being present on the Fenton sessions, except as an arranger. However, the files do list the “extras” who were brought in for Fenton sessions and thus offer a glimpse of the orchestra’s personnel. Those employed most often were Bennie Krueger (saxophone) and Harry Reser (banjo). Others who filled in on 1923 sessions included Rudy Wiedoeft (saxophone), Frank Ferera (guitar), John Cali (banjo), Phil Ohman and Victor Arden (pianos), and Warren Luce (whistler).

In January 1924, a new group of freelancers began to appear regularly in the files as extras at the Fenton sessions. It included trumpeter Hymie Faberman, violinists Ruben (Rubie) Greenberg and Edmund Thiele, and tubist John Helleberg, usually in the company of Krueger and Reser. As Brunswick moved into the electrical era, however, the number of extras used on the Fenton sessions began to decline. In late 1926, pianist Frank Black served as director for several sessions. ² By that time, the only extra still being used with any regularity was Reser.

By 1927 Brunswick—now with a stellar line-up of “name” bands under contract—was releasing Fenton items only sporadically. On July 1, 1927, Gus Haenschen resigned from the company. ³ The last Fenton items issued on his watch were Brunswick 3537 (“Your Land and My Land” / “Silver Moon”), recorded on April 15, with Harry Reser present; and four accompaniments to comedian Al Bernard (Brunswick 3547 and 3553), recorded on April 25 and May 2, respectively.

A mislabeled Fenton Q-R-S from 1930. The original owner wrote the correct title
("Punch & Judy") and side designation on this rare issue.

Haenschen’s fictional creation would live on, however, in the person of violinist Rubie Greenberg, who acquired rights to the Carl Fenton name after Haenschen's departure from Brunswick. Greenberg’s orchestra—the personnel of which remains largely unknown—commenced recording for Gennett on April 28, 1927. It was originally billed as the New Yorkers on Gennett, and as Rex Gordon’s Aces on Gennett’s lower-priced sibling, Champion. In early 1929, however, Greenberg recordings began to appear on Gennett as Carl Fenton’s Orchestra.

Personnel on the Gennett-era Fenton sides has been largely a guessing game. However, thanks to Jerry Fabris of the Edison National Historic Site, we now know that Irving Peskin was the trumpeter on some of those sessions. Peskin is a name almost entirely absent from Rust's various discographies, but he was an active freelance trumpeter in the late 1920s, recording with the Picadilly Players, California Ramblers, Oreste's Queensland Orchestra, and many other groups in addition to the "Fenton" band. Peskin kept a detailed log of his recording dates and, in a 2003 interview with Fabris, he recalled the casual atmosphere at Gennett's Long Island City studio. ^3a

The Fenton name even made a brief reappearance on Brunswick during the summer and autumn of 1929, presumably without Haenschen's involvement. The last records known to bear the Carl Fenton pseudonym (aside from three unrelated 1937 Variety sides) appeared on the Q-R-S label in 1930. ⁴

It appears that Greenberg legally changed his name to Carl Fenton at some point. On April 25, 1934, a petition in bankruptcy was filed by "Carl Fenton, formerly known as Ruben Greenberg, musician, 4400 West End Ave." Fenton claimed liabilities of $6,556, with no assets. ⁵

Notes

¹ Early editions of Rust’s Jazz Records (and its many derivative or plagiarized works) erroneously cite one of these, “Maple Leaf Rag,” as recorded in St. Louis in 1910, at which time Haenschen would have been a college sophomore. The matrix numbers of this and all other Haenschen Banjo Orchestra recordings fall within a series begun for Columbia’s Personal Recording Department in 1916, and they are consistent with Haenschen's visit to New York in the summer of that year.

² Brunswick file data is from Ross Laird’s Brunswick Records: A Discography of Recordings, 1916–1931 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001).

³ “Walter G. Haenschen Resigns.” Talking Machine World (July 1927), p. 100. By 1930 Haenschen was back at work as musical director of the World Broadcasting Company, a producer of radio transcriptions. He continued to work as a freelance conductor, for RCA-Victor and other labels, into the 1950s.

^3a Fabris, Jerry. “An Interview with Irving Peskin.” Thomas Edison's Attic (WFMU-FM), September 9 (Part 1) & 23 (Part 2), 2003.

⁴ This was not the legendary jazz and blues label of 1928–29, which was made by Gennett, but a later revival produced by the short-lived Cova Recording Corporation.

⁵ “Business Records: Bankruptcy Proceedings.” New York Times (April 25, 1934), p. 39.