Sub-title: Is You Is Or Is You Ain't A Real Baby, Edythe Baker ?

Well, according to my research, which got flooded out two summers
ago, Edythe Baker was a real live female babe.  I had references to
all the photographs, from which artist Mark Kote made the drawings,
but are now lost.  I do not know my sources for the info but here it
is as it appeared in the show of famous female piano roll artists.

  Baker, Edythe (ca. 1905-  )
  Not only was Baker one of the jazziest piano players of the 1920's
  but she also by 1924 was a headline dancer/actor in Al Jolson's show
  "Big Boy", playing to packed houses at New York's Forty-forth street
  Theatre.

  In 1928 Miss Baker appeared in the review "One Damn Thing After
  Another".  Her jazz/blues interpretations of current hits of the
  1920's were recorded for the Duo-Art piano.  Her renditions of
  "Hard-Hearted Hannah", "Land of Cotton Blues", "St. Louis Blues",
  "Sweet Man" and "Yes Sir! That's My Baby" are favorite rolls.  At
  the time Edythe recorded these rolls she was probably  paid little
  more than $25-$50 for each hit.

  Rumors have it that once Edythe moved to England in the late 1920's
  she was a favorite of the Prince of Wales (wow!) and custom-recorded
  rolls for his pleasure.  She became a star all over again in England
  with her WHITE (Dan's sources say PINK) grand piano as a cabaret
  pianist with such songs as "My Heart Stood Still" a hit Rogers and
  Hart song in England.  Among the rare rolls by Baker that collectors
  fight for is "Sob-Sister Sadie, The Vamp Cry-Baby".


This is the end of the narrative I used for the exhibition.  Might I
suggest that some fanatic member of the Digest (are not we all) in New
York City check the New York Public Library special collections
department and see if her names appear on the playbill for the Al
Jolson's musical "Big Boy", for a start.

I am feeling, like Dan Wilson, that this was a real musician and not a
pseudonym for Marguerite Volavy or Howard Brockway or Adam Carroll or
J. Milton Delcamp or Jim Edwards or Edgar Fairchild or Frank Milne or
any other house pianist for a roll company!

As Holmes would say, "The game's a foot!"  Who can solve the mystery
with hard data and a photo?

Jim Edwards

P.S. [Update from author]  YES!  Some of the information I used for the
bio came from page 26 of "A Complete Catalog of Duo-Art Piano Rolls",
by Charles Davis Smith. It's sounding more and more like she was real !


 [ That's the way: the "scientific method !"  Banish the gossip back
 [ to the cobwebs in the music roll closet, and let the truth come
 [ forward!  (Whew...!  ;)   -- Robbie