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Berlin 1920s: Dajos Bela Orchester - Yes! We Have No Bananas, 1923

4,181 views · Published 24 April 2012 · 2:24 · Indexed 14 November 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2012 · Music

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Yes! We Have No Bananas, Shimmy (Frank Silver /Irving Cohn) Kapelle Sandor Józsi (Dajos Bela & His Orchestra), Odeon 1923 (Berlin; accoustic recording)

NOTE: There's no question, that Dajos Bela's dance band was one of the best and hottest dance bands in Europe, in the 1920s until early 1930s. It had its heyday  in the Goldene Zwanziger Jahre  in Berlin - then, the unquestioned capital of jazz in Europe, which was hungry for entertainment after all the atrocities of the First World War and the Bolshevic Revolution in Russia. Dajos Bela, whose family name was Leo Golzmann, was a violin virtuose who came to Berlin from Kiev. Born from a Jewish-Russian father and Hungarian mother, he established his own salon orchestra in early 1920s in Berlin, where he had signed contract with Carl Lindstroem's music empire for the salon- and promenade repertoire recordings. In a few years, his orchestra became one of the most popular in Germany and gained a high reputation abroad, along with those of Paul Godwin and Marek Weber. Between 1922 - 1933 he recorded in Germany thousands of sides for Odeon, Beka, Parlophon with a range of music, however having a special ear for syncopated novelties from abroad, Bela became one of the pioneers of American dance jazz in Europe.  As soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 Béla, started touring abroad. In 1935 he travelled to Buenos Aires, where he remained for the rest of his life. He died in Argentina, in 1978.

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