Jean Goldkette & His Orchestra - Remember, Fox-Trot (Seymour Simons - Buddy Fields) with Vocal refrain by Seymour Simons, Victor 1924 (USA)
NOTE: Jean GOLDKETTE (b. 1899 in Valenciennes, France - d. 1962 in Santa Barbara, USA) was a Frenchman and trained classical pianist who switched to jazz in the USA and became one of the most important figures of the American Jazz Era. His mother was a Danish circus performer, so Jean grew up in various countries, including Greece and Moscow, where he studied piano at the conservatory as a child prodigy. At the age of 11, his family moved to the USA, where he performed in a classical ensemble in Chicago. However, at the age of 15 he joined one of Edgar Benson's dance orchestras and soon formed his own band. During the 1920s, Goldkette led a number of jazz and dance bands, including his best-known band from 1924 to 1929, which operated in Detroit and which at various times featured Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy & Tommy Dorsey, Eddie Lang, Frankie Trumbauer, Joe Venuti, Pee Wee Hunt and many others. When Paul Whiteman recruited most of Goldkette's top band members in 1927 due to his payroll crisis, Goldkette helped organise McKinney's Cotton Pickers and Glen Gray's Orange Blossoms, which became popular as the Casa Loma Orchestra. During the swing era, Goldkette withdrew from the dance music scene and earned a living as a booking agent and managing the American Symphony Orchestra, occasionally performing as a concert pianist. He spent most of his life in Detroit, but moved to California with his wife a year before his death.