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Paul Whiteman's Orch. - Sonya, Yup Alay! 1925

1,841 views · Published 4 January 2015 · 3:00 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2015 · Music

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Paul Whiteman & His Orch. - Sonya [Yup, Alay!] Mus. F.Fisher, Text B.Schafer, HMV 1925 (UK)

NOTE: There's been quite a while since I last presented here a Paul Whiteman's piece. Here it is - the recording from the time in Whiteman's biography which I cherish most - the dawn of the charleston era and the turn from accoustical to early electrical recordings. This lovely dance tune which in 1920s was classified as the "Russian foxtrot" was one of many such hits, which were created shortly after the shock of the 1917 bloody Bolshevic Revolution which annihilated the old and sophisticated culture of the Tzarist Russia. As result of that, dosens of thousands of Russian refugees  flooded Europe in the turn of 1910s/20s, bringing with them not much more but their impeccable manners, refinement and miserable remnants of the lost fortunes. Some of them - like Yusupovs, Nabokovs, Voronoffs, Sheremetevs  - managed to recreate their high position in the Western world, however more just rolled down to poverty and oblivion. A popular anectode from those days said, the regular taxi tariffe in Paris was so and so, but you must pay extra if you want your cab by driven by a Russian prince. Many movie actresses - e.g. Azimova, Rambova, Baclanova, even a 100% Polish Pola Negri - had build their American careers on that legend, they are the "descendans of old Russian aristocracy, who miraculously managed to flee from the atrocities of the revolution". Among stories about Pola Negri one - rather ill-willed - tells about her pains to hide fact, that her Polish mother had spoken perhaps three or maybe four words in Russian. Therefore, presenting her to the party guests in her Hollywood villa, she would hurry with an explanation, that "horrors of the Bolshevic Revolution made mum deaf and dumb, therefore she can only nod her head". Certainly, also the authors of popular music had not been immune to these Russian fascinations, and released in early-mid 1920s many such hits as "U Samovara", "Bolshevik", "Sonya, Yup Alay", "Vladivostock" or the whole array of all possible musical incarnations of "Occhi Chornye".  I devote this little film to that era; in the slideshow you'll find some old photographs of the Russian society as it used to be in the "age of innocence".

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