Albert Sandler

Introduction

On November 16, 2014, I entered an unexpected phase in my life when my now-wife introduced me to Metro-Land, a 1973 BBC TV documentary on the subject of the Metropolitan Railway and the suburbs that sprouted around it as it grew out of London. It’s a wonderful film with a wonderful screenplay, written by then-UK poet laureate and rail enthusiast John Betjeman, and an equally wonderful soundtrack. I was hooked, and with the help of a primary source — the screenplay was published as part of The Best of Betjeman in 1978 — I soon enough managed to identify and purchase every song used in the film.

That is, all but one.

An early scene features Betjeman perched atop a worn chair in the Chiltern Court Restaurant: a dining hall “built above Baker Street Station, the gateway between Metro-land out there and London down there.” Behind Betjeman’s words, you can hear the faint strains of a violin that rises briefly in the mix between his thoughts and then disappears. The recording is identified as “When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes,” by a once-popular English radio bandleader and violinist named Albert Sandler.

Where every other recording listed in the screenplay was known to Google, “When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes” was a complete enigma: ostensibly never recorded, let alone by Sandler, and but for random chance a composition headed for complete obscurity.

“All but one” proved a predictably difficult pill to swallow. What followed was a protracted exploration of the life and work of a nearly-forgotten man, and the search for the elusive souvenir from his life that may very well have come to mean more to me than it ever did to him.

Biography

Albert Sandler was born in London on June 2, 1906. He was the fifth child of seven surviving (out of 11 born) to a Lithuanian Jewish father and Russian Jewish mother. His father, a slipper maker, had led his family away from the pogroms of Lithuania one year prior and settled, like countless other Jewish emigres of the late 19th century, in a two room flat in London’s East End. It was there that Albert — Abraham in Yiddish, Aby for short — was born and raised.

Sandler grew up in poverty. Albert himself spoke of the “misery and squalor of the district in which his childhood was passed,” while his older brother Jack described a family that knew “more dinner times than dinners.” Music was a source of respite for the entire family, a “ruling passion” enabling the Sandlers to “make light of their misfortunes.” Albert began playing music by drumming with pieces of wood to accompany his father’s singing, and soon began requesting a violin. His father saved from his meager earnings for months before buying Albert his first violin — a three-quarter sized instrument purchased in a pawn shop on Commercial Road — as a present for his 11th birthday. 17 years later, Albert would reflect on his father’s “great sacrifice… in depriving himself of many small personal comforts,” stating, “that sixteen-shilling fiddle rescued me from the East End.”

Albert received his first lessons from Jack, together with his younger brother, Harold. (Harold would also become a professional musician, as would their sister, Jennie, a piano-accordion player.) The family made incremental improvements to Albert’s instrument as they were able to afford them, buying him an instrument case, then a mute, and finally proper strings. Albert soon surpassed Jack, and graduated to lessons from progressively better — and more expensive — teachers, paid for by Albert taking odd jobs and his father continuing to save. Albert would ultimately learn under two pupils of the Hungarian-born virtuoso Jakob Grün: first Hans Wessely, and later Kalman Ronay, whom he came to regard as his most important teacher. By 12 years old, Albert had secured a position in a local cinema orchestra, working from the time he got out of school in the afternoon until past ten at night for five shillings a week. The experience brought the young violinist in touch with a varied repertoire which would allow him to play to any room and become the foundation of his career as a bandleader. “I have no fixed programmes,” he would say in 1929; “I play what I think will suit the audience who happen to be present, and what I myself feel like playing.”

Sandler spent more than two years studying at the Guildhall School of Music before climbing the ladder in a series of engagements around England. He was first hired by the food conglomerate of Sir Joseph Lyons, whose company operated multiple fashionable locations about London including the Maison Lyons and the Lyons’ Corner Houses. Sandler drew sufficient attention in these locations to merit promotion to orchestra leader at Lyons’ most prestigious restaurant, the Trocadero. He remained there until Arthur Beckwith vacated the musical directorship of the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne. Management of the Grand Hotel opted to hire Sandler away from Lyons as their musical director following a recommendation from Dutch violinist David de Groot (himself a popular restaurant band leader and head of the Picadilly Orchestra), who was impressed by Sandler’s playing while dining at “The Troc.” The Grand Hotel gig — Sandler’s first as bandleader in a landmark establishment — boosted his profile dramatically, thanks especially to regular BBC Radio broadcasts of his concerts there. Indeed, Sandler later admitted “no doubt that had there been no wireless, few people would have been aware of the existence of Albert Sandler.”

Sandler’s first radio broadcast from the Grand Hotel occurred on July 28, 1925 at 9pm. While other orchestra performances had previously been broadcasted from hotel ballrooms by the BBC, these had been regional shows (such as Dante Selmi’s orchestra in Sheffield or the Clifford Essex Band in Leeds), and usually took place in the early afternoon. This July show, by contrast, represented an early “High Power Programme” foray by the BBC into simultaneous broadcasts to all of its regional markets. Grand Hotel’s primetime slot in the evening broadcast would also prove instrumental in cementing its place in British popular and family culture. Building around Sandler’s violin playing and arrangements, the Grand Hotel broadcasts would continue for nearly 50 years, with Margaret Campbell describing the program as “one of the most popular in the history of broadcasting.” Sandler himself would independently become both a celebrity and a fixture of British radio. His last broadcast would take place on April 22, 1948, with an afternoon performance as director of the Casino Orchestra. He appeared on more than 1100 BBC broadcasts in that 23 year span.

Sandler’s success at Eastbourne and early radio stardom attracted the attention of the management of London’s Park Lane Hotel, who hired him to serve as musical director of their first orchestra upon opening in 1927. During this period, Sandler signed as an exclusive recording artist for Columbia Records following brief tenures at Vocalion and Pathé. He also parlayed his celebrity into at least 5 performances on the silver screen. Following his feature-length debut in the 1930 screen revue Comets, he appeared in a “big playing part” alongside Haydn Wood (composer of “When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes”) in The Small Man (1936), a British drama concerning the plight of a group of small shopkeepers threatened by a modern chain store. His last credited appearance came in the 1945 British musical Waltz Time, in which he spends several minutes onscreen playing the orchestra leader at the Golden Lantern hotel.

When not recording, Sandler made extensive concert appearances from 1931 onwards, including a tour of South Africa in 1939. Domestically, Sandler’s music hall concerts were arranged through English impresario Harold Fielding. These performances included both featured appearances and briefer variety shows. Fielding would keep Sandler frequently engaged, including at least two instances of dual concert appearances in twin cities in the Isle of Wight, with Sandler and his trio first opening an 8pm concert in Shanklin, leaving at intermission, and arriving 2½ miles away in time to close an 8pm show in Sandown. A contract signed by Sandler for a concert in Middlesborough in February 1948 indicates that Sandler’s “usual act,” comprising 3 sets of solo and trio performances “of not less than 15 minutes each,” entitled the trio to a £115 fee and first class, round trip train tickets from London. Thanks perhaps in part to these sizeable wages, Sandler evidently maintained a productive working relationship with Fielding, coming to his defense in The Times in 1946 when Fielding was sued for breach of contract by pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch.

Sandler’s appearances on radio, film, and even early television made him a household name, and his earnings rose accordingly to a three figure weekly income. Newly financially secure, Sandler purchased a £2,000 1701 Stradivarius and a home in Goldhurst Terrace, London. He accumulated an ever-expanding record collection in order to keep up with other popular violinists, and would attend their concerts whenever he was free, particularly for such favorites as Jascha Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler. He also continued to study alongside these violinists, including noted virtuoso Henri Temianka, who placed him among the “superb fiddlers” finding fame in the cafés and ballrooms of England during the pre-War period. (Temianka noted learning, after performing a recital in Bournemouth, that Sandler had played the same concert hall the day prior, “drawing twice my audience and five times my fee.”)

Musically, Sandler expressed a lifelong preference for “light music” of both the classical and popular traditions. He was specifically conscious of any music he deemed “too heavy” for radio, telling Modern Wireless that he made a point of including “one or two items which every listener is bound to like” each time he was on air. Sandler was described by Margaret Campbell as a “powerfully-built man with large, fleshy hands” who nonetheless “disliked having to tear at a fiddle to produce tone.” He accordingly voiced a preference for violins from the old masters (such as his own Stradivarius), which he described as producing their tone easily, with “marvellous responsiveness.” Campbell contrasted Sandler’s straightforward playing style with the “tricks” and overdone portamento and vibrato often employed by other performers of light music standards to evoke unearned sentimentality. Instead, a contemporary account in The Strad described him as playing even a “trifling” composition with “as much care and preparation as if it were a masterpiece,” reflecting his philosophy that “there is beauty in the simplest thing well done.” Reflecting 30 years after Sandler’s death, Robert Lewin credited him with a “violinistic equipment nearly the equal of any virtuoso,” as well as a “limpid tone and happy phrasing” with which he “went straight to the hearts of millions in those early days of broadcasting.”

Sandler’s discography was both extensive and representative of the music he would perform live, including popular standards of the day, light classical pieces, and compositions which fell in between. One such example, 1934’s “Melody at Dusk,” featured the British composer Reginald King on piano and included a spoken introduction by Sandler, a rare example of his voice on record. His records sold well, serving to tide his fans over between evening broadcasts. They were also important to the record label: when Columbia, in dire straits since the onset of the Great Depression, began pressing Royal Blue-colored records as a gimmicky ploy to attract buyers in 1932, several of Sandler’s preexisting recordings were among those repressed to seek out sales. Sandler’s face would appear throughout the 1930s and 40s on trading cards, postcards, and sheet music covers.

To outward appearances, Sandler’s personal life was calm for many years. He and his wife Raymonde were married in 1924, and their first and only child, a daughter named Mona, was born in 1931. However, the marriage dissolved in scandalous fashion in 1935, when Albert sued Raymonde for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Her partner in the affair was Clarence Johnstone, a black singer who formed half of the hugely popular vaudeville act Layton and Johnstone. The judge in the case urged the jury to “get out of their heads any idea of vindictiveness because of colour, and consider [Raymonde’s] value as a wife and mother, and whether any provision should be made for the care of the child.” Court deliberations were prolonged and covered in detail in The Times and other prominent newspapers, where it was revealed that Raymonde and Johnstone had continued their affair after Mona’s birth, despite Johnstone’s having written Albert a letter with his “word of honor” to stop associating with Raymonde after she became pregnant. The decision was ultimately in Albert’s favor, with the judge awarding him not only the divorce, but custody of Mona and £2,500 in damages. Perhaps in part due to ongoing public speculation into his personal affairs, Sandler also broke off a subsequent engagement to a London gown shop model named Edith Bronstein; so public was their courtship, in fact, that Bronstein sued Sandler over rumors that had circulated “to her detriment,” suggesting that the breakup “had arisen from her conduct.” (The matter was promptly settled in court.) Thereafter, Sandler became involved with a clothing designer named Violet (“Doreen”) Lovett. The two were formally married in 1944 after having cohabited since at least 1939, and would stay together — along with Mona and a miniature poodle named Vanda — for the rest of Albert’s life.

Sandler was affiliated with Judaism throughout his life. He was a member of the St. John’s Wood Synagogue during his adulthood and did produce one set of Jewish-themed recordings, recording “Kol Nidrei” and “Eili Eili” shortly after the High Holidays in 1935 and releasing them as Columbia DB 1625. Sandler’s obituary in the Jewish Chronicle described him as a “regular contributor to Zionist and other Jewish funds,” and he was noted to have performed in charity concerts for a variety of Jewish charities, including the Jewish Maternity Hospital, the London Jewish Hospital, and the Jewish Orphanage of West Norwood.

Sandler’s professional life was altered by the outbreak of WWII, until which point he had been maintaining a weekly radio broadcast schedule. Sandler was associated throughout the war with the Entertainments National Service Association (E.N.S.A.), and was part of the special BBC Overseas Music Unit under Fred Hartley. Contemporary promotional materials depict Sandler as eagerly volunteering for these groups as his way of “answering his country’s call to national service.” They describe him walking home from the recording studios during the Blitz, finding his way through the dark with his violin case tucked under his arm, and improvising orchestral arrangements in the studio when other musicians were unable to safely arrive at the BBC. Whether these anecdotes are entirely unembellished will never be known. What is clear is that Albert Sandler performed at a breakneck pace throughout the war, appearing on the BBC’s Home and Overseas programs 511 times between the outbreak of war in Europe and VE Day, with combinations including the Albert Sandler Trio, Orchestra Montmarte, the London Studio Players, and the London Gypsy Orchestra. Sandler continued recording for Columbia (at a slightly reduced clip) throughout the war, including a version of “Song of India” from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko that Ralph Harvey described as “one of the most famous Columbia records of the war years.” Following an early war disruption, the BBC relaunched the Grand Hotel program under Sandler’s aegis on March 28, 1943. Though the concert format resembled his pre-war, hotel ballroom broadcasts, the new band was recorded in-studio in London and accompanied by canned applause. His show remained highly popular through April 1948, when Sandler became ill. He died of liver disease on August 29 of that year at age 42; his early demise was widely attributed to the dual strain of overwork and the residual effects of the entanglements in his home life.

Albert Sandler recordings quickly faded into obscurity following his death, with only a handful of reissues on LP and CD appearing in the ensuing 65+ years. A small number have also appeared on compilations of “light music” of the time, featuring other artists who had performed similar repertoires in similar hotel ballrooms across the United Kingdom before, during, and after the Second World War. In the digital era, a small proportion of his music has become available online, though so far nearly all of it has been sourced from the aforementioned compilations. If any Sandler recordings appeared posthumously in films outside of Metro-Land (save one bizarre appearance in the 1991 Michael J. Fox vehicle Doc Hollywood), they aren’t readily apparent.

Biography Sources

• Andrews, Cyrus, ed. Radio Who’s Who. Pendulum Publications Ltd., 1947.

• BBC Genome Project [Radio and TV listings including Sandler’s active period of 1925-1948]

• BFI profile.

• Campbell, Margaret. The Great Violinists. Doubleday & Co., 1981.

• “Cobbler’s Son Becomes ‘Ace’ of Air Violinists.” Radio Magazine No. 1 (February 1934), 42, 67.

• Eder, Bruce. “Albert Sandler | Biography.” Allmusic.

• Harold Fielding Agency. Concert programmes, 1945-48; employment contract, 10 February 1948. Author’s collection.

• Harvey, Ralph. Liner notes to Albert Sandler’s Serenades. World Records (SH 255).

• IMDb profile.

• The Jewish Chronicle 25 Feb 1938, 18 Nov 1938, 3 Sept 1948

• The National Archives of the UK (TNA): 1911 Census for England & Wales; 1939 Register; England & Wales births 1837-2006; England & Wales deaths 1837-2007; England & Wales marriages 1837-2008.

• Owen, A.W. “Music in Hotels and Restaurants. No. 2.—Mr. Albert Sandler, Musical Director, Park Lane Hotel, London, Orchestra.” The Caterer and Hotel-Keepers’ Gazette (21 January 1929), 54.

• Radio Times No. 593 (10 February 1935), 8; No. 965 (27 March 1942), 11; No. 1300 (12 September 1948), 4.

• Sandler, Albert. “Are We Getting Too Much Good Music?” Modern Wireless, February 1932, pp154-156.

• The Strad Vol. 44, No. 527 (March 1934), 447-448; Vol. 88, No. 1055 (March 1978), 1048-1049 [by Robert Lewin].

• Temianka, Henri. Facing the Music: An Irreverent Close-Up of the Real Concert World. David McKay Company, 1973.

• The Times Archive, 1926-1948.

• Upton, Stuart. Liner notes to Albert Sandler and His Orchestra at the Park Lane Hotel, London. Flapper Records (PAST CD 9732), 1990.

• Vauncez, Sidney. Liner notes to Music from the Palm Court. Columbia Records (33S 1033).

• Walker, Peter. “Evergreen Melodies.” Evergreen Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 1994): 16-24.

• Young, Kenneth. Music’s Great Days in the Spas and Watering-places. Macmillan Publishers, 1968.

The Daisy Opens Her Eyes

On March 10, 2016, I came across the website of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), operated by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council until their grant expired in 2009. Their database included listings for several Albert Sandler recordings that had long eluded me, including one disc (Columbia DX 961) comprising a medley of tunes by the composer of “Daisy,” Haydn Wood. It was an encouraging discovery: though it fell short of naming the tune I was looking for, it was my first ever indication of which disc to chase. Soon after, I found an advertisement for the record in the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times, published about 8 months after the recording session. So the record existed – it would just be a matter of finding it. Five weeks of dead ends later, I received an email from a UK record dealer who had found a friend willing to part with his copy of “Selection of Haydn Wood’s Songs.” I still had no confirmation that this disc included the tune. However, having to that point identified 136 Albert Sandler 78s that did not contain “When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes,” I felt assured my time had come and made the purchase. Thankfully, I was right: Sandler included “Daisy” in his Haydn Wood medley, closing the circle on my search for Metro-Land. The record’s details are as follows:

Side 1 (Matrix CAX-8713-1) Selection of Haydn Wood’s Songs – Part 1: Fleurette, I Shall Never Forget/Silver Clouds/It Is Only a Tiny Garden/Love’s Garden of Roses
Side 2 (Matrix CAX-8714-2) Selection of Haydn Wood’s Songs – Part 2: When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes/I Love Your Eyes of Grey/Roses of Picardy

Both selections recorded January 21, 1940. Columbia DX 961 was released in March 1940 and deleted from the catalog in March 1949.

Sandler’s recording of this Haydn Wood medley took place more than 3 years after they appeared onscreen together in The Small Man. Sandler’s medley arrangement may well have derived from a piece of sheet music published in 1920 (preserved in the Australian Library of Congress’ digital holdings): though 6 of the sheet music’s 13 songs were excised (almost certainly for time), the remaining 7 are all found on the record, in order. Medleys of Wood compositions further appeared to remain part of his repertoire after this recording, as he performed one as the last program of the day for BBC Radio on February 28, 1943.

Discography

Initial Recordings

Albert Sandler’s recording career extended from 1926 to 1947, and included sessions with orchestras and trios. Most of his early records were made for the Vocalion label, who released nine discs bearing his name between August 1926 and July 1927. In advertising the company’s first release of his recordings (X-9818), Vocalion traded on his radio fame, describing him as “at the present time the most admired of all ‘wireless’ violinists.” Vocalion launched an Australian daughter company in May 1927 and soon began pressing records out of Richmond, Melbourne, mostly from pre-existing masters. The 27th such record featured two solo violin pieces by Sandler, and was relatively unusual among its peers in seemingly never having been published outside Australia. It was the last Albert Sandler record published under the Vocalion label and comprised his last original studio recordings not to be issued by Columbia.

The Vocalion line was discontinued in Summer, 1927, as its parent company focused its attention on the “mass market.” The result was the Broadcast family, a procession of cheaply-priced record labels sold in unconventional venues (toy shops, railway station bookstalls) whose narrow grooves enabled them to pack more music into smaller discs. Vocalion released one of its Sandler discs (“Serenade”/“Rondino,” originally Vocalion X 9915) on Broadcast labels twice, first in December 1931 as Broadcast Twelve 5258, and then in January 1934, mere months before being liquidated by parent corporation Crystalate Gramophone, as Broadcast Twelve Super 3365. Despite the opportunity for longer runtimes, the Broadcast Twelve versions of “Serenade” and “Rondino” run under 3 minutes each. This together with contemporary advertising (and Sandler’s by-then exclusive contract with Columbia Records) suggests that rather than alternate recordings, Vocalion simply elected to re-release two of the Sandler songs they owned to capitalize on his commercial success for Columbia.

Contemporaneous to these recordings were 4 sides recorded for the Pathé label, a French record company with a large and active presence in the UK in the early 1920s. 2 discs were released under the Pathé Actuelle sublabel in August and October 1926. (Toselli’s “Serenade,” from Pathé 11106, and Dvořák’s “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” from Pathé 11144, were also issued together on the company’s primary label as Pathé 1944 in September 1926.)

Two Albert Sandler records were released in France by Disques Francis Salabert, the eponymous, then-fledgling record label of a theater and sheet music magnate. Most Disques Francis Salabert releases published between the founding of the record label in 1923 and the release of Sandler’s second record for the label in January 1927 comprise the musical comedy numbers and popular songs on which Salabert made his name. Of a handful of instrumental records released on the label during the period, a small proportion included violin records sold under the mid-priced, Rose-colored label, two of which were credited to Sandler. Disques Francis Salabert is noted to have republished multiple Pathé titles under its own aegis between 1923 and approximately 1926. All 4 sides released by Salabert and Pathé share titles, and though no documentation exists to prove which Pathé titles were chosen for re-release, each Salabert record almost certainly represents a repressing of sides Albert Sandler originally recorded for Pathé.

Curiously, three of the four Salabert tracks (“Serenade,” “Czardas,” and “Songs My Mother Taught Me”) also share titles with Vocalion releases. These, however, are most likely separate recordings of similar material, as at least “Serenade” is known to be a different piece with the same name (the Vocalion version having been composed by Riccardo Drigo), and there is no documented history of these two labels publishing one another’s titles.

One Albert Sandler recording – again, "Czardas" – is known to have been released on the French label Ciné-Disc. Scant information is available online regarding the label, although a handful of documented records are noted in the holdings of both the BnF and Phonobase. Film canister logos on the Ciné-Disc record sleeve suggest that the records held synchronized sound for silent film, and this is corroborated on both of these websites. Pathé is listed as one of the French corporations known to have produced Sound-on-Disc, and it seems likely this recording would have been made in 1926, predating the release of The Jazz Singer by about a year and lining up with Sandler recording "Czardas" for the Pathé Actuelle sublabel. Presumably, silent film of a solo violin performance by Sandler would originally have been accompanied by the audio disc, though there is no evidence to clearly suggest that any such footage has survived.

Core Discography

In 1927, Sandler signed as an exclusive recording artist for Columbia Records. Over the ensuing 20 years, he appeared on 182 Columbia records, forming the overwhelming bulk of his discography. Of these, 20 records released by 1930 are numbered (mostly) under the “5000” series. In 1930, Columbia changed its numbering system. Its main record line now included the “DB” series of 10-inch 78rpm records, supplemented by longer recordings released under the “DX” series of 12-inch records. Columbia released 117 Albert Sandler records under the “DB” series between March 1930 and March 1948. Sandler featured on 14 “DX” series records released between November 1931 and March 1940, including 3 cameo appearances on early compilation records. 31 more Albert Sandler records appeared under the Columbia budget-priced “FB” series between April 1936 and March 1940. These included re-releases of 5 titles previously issued under the “DB” series, published between July 1936 and February 1937.

Columbia also re-released Albert Sandler recordings as part of its “Masterworks” series. Though this series mostly comprised a monumental group of classical recording albums (each with an album number), some recordings were issued individually under the Masterworks label without a “parent” album. While the former are meticulously documented, the latter appear to have been chosen by Columbia more haphazardly, and details on releases are correspondingly scant. At least 17 sides were chosen for re-release in the Masterworks series. 12 of these sides were made into 6 exact repressings of previous records with new labels and catalog numbers (5 taken from the “DB” series, 1 from the “FB” series). 4 other recordings were chosen from Sandler’s back catalog and paired off to form Columbia 284-M and 2496-D. Finally, Sandler’s “Salut d’Amour” was combined with “Minuet Sicilienne” by the J.H. Squire Celeste Octet (formerly DB 75) to form Columbia 2393-D; this curiosity appears to be the only split single in Sandler’s discography. No Albert Sandler recordings appear to have been made exclusively for the Masterworks label.

Though he committed likely hundreds of hours of performances live to air for the BBC, none of these were recorded for commercial release. Some proportion of wartime performances for the E.N.S.A. were pressed onto records by the Overseas Recorded Broadcasting Service. Though these were most likely either recordings of known radio sessions or repeat performances of them for subsequent rebroadcasting, little is known about which sessions were recorded and how they were distributed. Few of the resulting records from any artist appear to have survived. One such record featuring Albert Sandler with the Orchestra Montmarte surfaced on YouTube in March 2020; it may be the only surviving recording of his outside of his 78rpm studio recordings and the compilations drawn from them.

A major footnote to Albert Sandler’s recording career is the full-length 1957 LP Gypsy Songs and Music – widely credited to him on the internet, but in fact, an unusual case of misattribution. Released by Mercury ‎Records roughly 10 years after Albert Sandler’s death, the album’s rear cover does show a man resembling Albert Sandler, looking much older than in his other photographs; however, all photo evidence suggests that Albert Sandler died before visibly aging. What’s more, the album’s jacket and liner notes credit only “Sandler,” stiltedly refusing to use the lead violinist’s first name.  As it happens, the similar-looking Sandler playing lead violin on the album was none other than Albert’s brother! The career of Harold Sandler (1908-1993) mirrored that of his brother rather closely: a violinist with a particular affinity for Gypsy music, he too made something of a name for himself on radio (playing with his Viennese Octet), and led the orchestra at the Grand Hotel in Sheffield before emigrating to the United States in 1940 with the outbreak of war. As revealed in The Mercury Labels 1945-1956, Gypsy Songs and Music was recorded by Harold Sandler in 1956 at Mercury Sound Studios in New York City. As far as I can tell it was Harold Sandler’s only LP as a leader. Bizarrely, it has been redistributed online more than any of his brother’s recordings, having been released digitally in 2011 as a 4-track EP of the same title, and subsequently outside the US as a differently-sequenced full album with such bizarre title variants as Leisure Time, Days to Come, Broken Colour, and Express Yourself.

One Puccini discography does list Sandler as conductor on a Parlophone recording of “La Boheme” (Parlophone E 11369), but the record appears to have been credited to the Grand Symphony Orchestra.

* * *

All available details on Albert Sandler’s recordings are presented below. Recording dates are listed in the spreadsheet where available. Annotated dates reflect release dates rather than recording dates; known release months are marked with an asterisk (*), while approximate release months are marked with a dagger (†).

78rpm Records

Notes:

• Columbia 5685: "Salut d'Amour" rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 2393 D; "For You Alone" rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 2496-D

• Columbia 9863: Sandler appearance on Albert Ketelby album featuring Ketelby on piano

• Columbia DB 362: Rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 2570-D

• Columbia DB 469: Rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 2692-D

• Columbia DB 853: "Bird Songs at Eventide" rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 2496-D

• Columbia DB 1131: Rereleased in the Masterworks as Columbia 267 M

• Columbia DB 1142: "Down in the Forest" rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 284 M

• Columbia DB 1353: "Frasquita Serenade" rereleased in the Masterworks on Columbia 284 M

• Columbia DB 1411: "Always" transferred from earlier takes on 6/21/34

• Columbia DB 1616: Rereleased in the Masterworks as Columbia 256 M, with subtitle altered to "None but the Lonely Heart"

• Columbia DB 1625: Rereleased in the Masterworks as Columbia 257 M

• Columbia FB 1411: Previously released as Columbia DB 1153

• Columbia FB 1443: Previously released as Columbia DB 752

• Columbia FB 1510: Previously released as Columbia DB 794

• Columbia FB 1537: Previously released as Columbia DB 362 (sides reversed)

• Columbia FB 1594: Previously released as Columbia DB 1223

• Columbia FB 2058: Rereleased in the Masterworks as Columbia 420 M

• Pathé Actuelle 11106: "Serenade" rereleased as Disque Francis Salabert 373, Pathé 1944; "Chanson Indoue" rereleased as Disque Francis Salabert 392

• Pathé Actuelle 11144: "Czardas" rereleased as Disque Francis Salabert 373; "Songs My Mother Taught Me" rereleased as Disque Francis Salabert 392, Pathé 1944

• Vocalion X 9915: Rereleased as Broadcast Twelve 5258, Broadcast Twelve Super 3365

Compilations

Discography Sources

• Andrews, Frank. Columbia 10” Records 1904-30. City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 1985.

  • Recording dates from handwritten notes in Frank Andrews’ personal copy, courtesy of Mr. Robert Girling of the City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society

• Andrews, Frank. “‘Daily Mail’ Mystery Record Correct Answers.” Talking Machine Review No. 12 (October 1971), 108.

• Andrews, Frank, Jim Hayes, and Michael Smith. Columbia ‘DB’ and ‘LB’ Series. City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 2010.

• Andrews, Frank, et al. Vocalion Records (CLPGS Reference Series No. 42). City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 2017.

• Bibliothèque nationale de France. “Salabert: catalogues 1927-1934.”

• Catalogue of Masterworks Celebrity Standard Popular Records. Columbia Phonograph Company Inc., 1937.

• Complete Supplement of Columbia Records Issued Since the Last Columbia Catalog (Sept. 1937). Columbia Phonograph Company Inc., 1939.

• Gana, Jacques. Encyclopédie multimédia de la comédie musicale théâtrale en France.

• Langridge, Mike. Pathé in Britain, Volume 3: Actuelle, Perfect, Henecy, Homochord, Levaphone & Dominion Label Discs. City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 2014.

  • Release information for Pathé 1944 provided in correspondence with Mr. Langridge

• Liner notes to Albert Sandler and His Orchestra at the Park Lane Hotel, London. Flapper Records (PAST CD 9732), 1990.

• Liner notes to Albert Sandler with the Palm Court Orchestra and His Trio — Music & Memories, CD (MMD 1058), 1997.

• Martland, Peter. Recording History: The British Record Industry, 1888-1931. Scarecrow Press, 2013.

• Smith, Michael. Columbia ‘DX’ and ‘YBX’ Series of 12 Inch 78rpm Discs. City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 2010.

• Smith, Michael, and Frank Andrews. The Columbia ‘FB’ Series of Variety and Dance Band Records. City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society Ltd., 2003.

• Thomas, Michael. British 78rpm record labels.