Look Who it Was Random video

Roaring Twenties: Jack Hylton & His Orch - I Must Have That Man, 1929

3,427 views · Published 18 July 2018 · 3:14 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: 240252 · 2018 · Music

Watch on YouTube

Jack Hylton and His Orchestra – I Must Have That Man, Fox-Trot from he Broadway production “Blackbirds Of 1928” (Fields – McHugh) with Vocal Refrain (by Sam Browne), HMV 1929 (UK) 

NOTE: "Blackbirds Of 1928" was a hit Broadway musical revue that starred Adelaide Hall and Bill Bojangles Robinson, with music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. It contained the hit songs "Diga Diga Do", "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" and "I Must Have That Man" all sung by Adelaide Hall. 

The show had been designed to present the comedienne Florence Mills after the sensational success of her all-black revue “Blackbirds” in London, in 1926. However in 1927, Florence Mills died of appendicitis and Adelaide Hall was asked to replace her. The Blackbirds of 1928 started its life as a floorshow at Les Ambassadeurs Club on 57th Street, New York, the orchestra was conducted by the popular New York band leader Roger Wolfe  Kahn. The show was a great hit and it was taken as a tryout to Atlantic City. There, it achieved a great success again and in May 1928 it was opened at the Liberty Theatre in Broadway. It ran for 518 performances, becoming the longest running all-black show on Broadway. It was directed by producer Lew Leslie and the orchestra, called the Famous Blackbirds Orchestra was conducted by Felix Weir. In 1929 the Broadway production opened at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, where it became the hit of the season. In Paris it ran for three months before returning to the USA for an American road tour. 

Here, one of immortal hits from that revue is played by enormously popular British dance band Jack Hylton with the refrain sung by male (!) performer (Sam Browne). During the Jazz Age it was however quite a common practice when the song, written originally for the stage female performer, was released later on records as a dance hit and with not much concern about either male or female performer. And this is a case. Such recordings are today very much searched for by LGTB activists and often presented in anthologies as examples of the “gay culture” of the 1920s or 1930s – while the reason of that somewhat sensational “sexual ambiguity” in such performances is rather simple and not related to sexual likes of  the performer.  

Of course, a slideshow to such presentation cant’  be otherwise than photographs of several most “wanted” men of the 1920s/30s!

More from this channel