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Roaring 1920s: My Fate Is In Your Hands - Nat Shilkret's Orch., 1929

2,689 views · Published 26 May 2016 · 2:58 · Indexed 25 October 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2016 · Music

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Nat Shilkret & His Victor Orchestra, with Vocal refrain – My Fate Is In Your Hands (Razaf /Waller) Victor 1929 (USA)

NOTE: It’s one of my favorite American dance orchestras of the Jazz Age. Nat Shilkret, pinist, composer and bandleader was not only an “ordinary”  musician.  As director of the “light music department” in Victor Records, he was also one of the most influential persons in the music life in USA in the 1920/30s. He made thousands of recordings, possibly more than anyone in recording history (his sales are estimated over 50 million copies!). He was the conductor of choice for many of Victor's innovative recordings and his Victor dance orchestra members included Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Mike Mosiello. He conducted Victor's first record made by the electrical process, the first commercial Victor Long Playing record (in 1931) and was the first conductor to successfully dub an electrically recorded orchestra background over the recordings of the greatest operatic tenor in history Enrico Caruso (who was the Victor star in the acoustical recordings era). Shilkret was also one of radio's earliest stars, estimating that he made over 3000 broadcasts between 1925 and 1941. The greatest virtuoses and singers of his times all played under his direction, in that number George Gershwin, Jascha Heifetz, Andrés Segovia,  Feodor Chaliapin, Miguel Fleta, Amelita Galli-Curci, Beniamino Gigli, Lily Pons or Tito Schipa. The lists of popular singers and foreign artists that played under his direction after the 2nd World War is just as impressive. He was more than just a man and an artist: he was an institution and it’s hard to believe,  after his death in 1982 he was almost immediately forgotten and today a handful of enthusiasts remembers, who he was.  

This tune is also one of my favorites: composed by famous jazz pianist Thomas “Fats” Waller it belongs to the evergreen standards of the late 1920s. See another version recorded in 1929 by the popular Afro-American vocal duet Layton & Johnstone  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_u6UzXfjD8

The slideshow contains pictures of the “new woman” of the 1920s: an independent and strong type, which emerged from the Past in the early 20th century, and was called then “a sufragette” (in the 1900s/1910s), “a flapper” (in the 1920s) to open avenue towards today’s “feminist” (not in its “hard”, yet in the “light” version. I hope, those strong women portraits make proper background to the title “woman, who holds other’s people’s fate in her hands”.

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