Fighting Fire with Music

 

The brass blew some blazing heat!

And the reeds had that smoky sax sound!

And the rhythm section was red hot!

Everyone was dancing like the house was on fire.

That's because it was a Tuesday and 
the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra
was playing on KFI radio.

Whittier CA News
Tuesday, 12 April 1927

The L. A. Fire Department Orchestra
came on at 7 pm after
the Dragon Hawaiians at 5:30
and Bertha Miller, English pianist at 6:30.
Sometimes the orchestra invited Hale Hooper, a tenor,
to join them for a song or two. 
If you stayed tuned to the station
you could hear the Gattone String Quartet,
the soprano Grace Mead, and finish the evening
with the Azure Music Club, featuring Edna Cook,
a blues singer with Glenn Edmunds 
and his Collegians dance orchestra.

It was all live music,
broadcast free over the air.

Of course, most people never actually saw the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra play, not unless they could get down to the KFI studio in Los Angeles. There they undoubtedly would have been impressed by the group's brilliant white uniforms, white hats, and white saddle shoes. Instead people living beyond Los Angeles had to be satisfied with a postcard of the orchestra, offered free to anyone who mailed in a request. (And many, like me, probably wondered how hard was it to clean soot and ash from those firemen's uniforms?)   

Calling it an "orchestra" was a bit of a stretch since there were only eleven musicians and the only string instrument visible is a banjo at the back left. The reed players on the left are playing saxophones, two tenors and an alto, but extra color they can switch over to either two baritone saxophones, or three soprano saxes, or three clarinets. On the right are four brass players with two trumpets, slide trombone, and a sousaphone. At their feet are metal Harmon mutes which give a trumpet or trombone a "wow-wow" effect, a novelty sound effect popular in music of the 1920s. 

Standing center is the leader holding a baton and next to him is a piano player and a drummer, whose trap set looks very uncomplicated compared to modern drummers. However behind him is a tympani drum and a tubular bell rack for more percussion color. Basically this is a 10-piece combo band typical of the groups that played popular music in the 1920s. Their repertoire was likely taken from the latest Broadway songs and new dance music from big city nightclubs. Since the first sound films had not yet been released, Hollywood's movie musicals were not a part of America's music culture. But they soon would be. This orchestra/band's instrumentation was chosen because these instruments were the best suited for radio. In January 1922 California had just 13 radio stations in the state. By the end of the year in December there were 63 stations, most located in southern California.

The postcard was sent from Los Angeles on 2 May 1927 to Mr. and Mrs. S. M. Graux of Red Bluff, California, about 570 miles north of Los Angeles in the Sacramento Valley. The postcard's back has a small illustration of a firefighter pointing his finger—"Are you doing your duty to help reduce America's Fire Losses?" There's a printed note below, "We acknowledge with thanks, your kind message. L. A. F. D. Orchestra" The Grauxs likely heard the fire department orchestra play on their new wireless set and sent a letter or card to the station in express their appreciation of the concert. KFI station encouraged public comments as a way to measure the distance of its signal reception and the size of its listenership. This was important data for its marketing department to use in securing new advertisers.    

On a side note the postmark banner promotes Citizen Military Training Camps, a program first were authorized by the National Defense Act of 1920. Each summer between the years 1921 to 1940, these camps offered basic military training to young male citizens age 17-24 without incurring any obligation to be called up for active duty like in the National Guard or Reserve forces. 

Like many cities in America, the Los Angeles Fire Department already had a sizeable band which marched in parades and performed benefit concerts at sporting events, circuses, and fairs. One of the first radio stations in America was WLAG in Minneapolis which began broadcasting in September 1922. By December that year it announced a concert by the Minneapolis Fire Department Orchestra sponsored by the Minnesota Loan and Trust Company. This orchestra also had just 10 musicians, though it included two violinists. The size of the ensemble was due to the size of their studio's sound room as the first radio studios had very small facilities and recording technology at the time had many limitations. Getting microphones to reproduce vocal and instrumental music with acceptable sound fidelity was a big problem for radio engineers then. Check out my 2024 story, The Little Symphony Orchestra of KDKA Radio for another perspective on the early radio studios.  

In Los Angeles the fire department used the musical talent of its firefighters to form an orchestra partly to have a dance ensemble to play for banquets and benefit balls. But the advent of local radio gave the department an opportunity to use this orchestra to promote the importance of fire safety and Los Angeles' local fire fighters. The group got their start in July 1925 playing monthly broadcasts on station KFWB. Situated at the Warner Brothers studio, the station had signed on the air onl a few weeks earlier on 3 March 1925. Its call letters were assigned by the Department of Commerce in order of official application. So it was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with the "Four Warner Brothers" who operated the movie studio.

Los Angeles Daily News
9 July 1925

Musical Firemen Practicing Hard for Debut on Radio

WILL BE HEARD ON RADIO  — Here is the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra,  which will be heard on Los Angeles Fire Department programs to be broadcast monthly from Warner Brothers' Studio (KFWB).  The first appearance is scheduled for next Monday from 10 to 11 o'clock.  The personnel of the orchestra includes: Back row, left to right: S. E. Frandsen, clarinet; J. Marietice, saxophone; L. V. Parker, violin and banjo; J. C. Goodrich, piano. Front row, left to right: A. J. Kirby, saxophone; Lieut. T. F. Carler [Carter], saxophone; C. L. Yager, trumpet; H. W. Grains, trombone; Capt. D. W. Clairborn[e], in front at drums. 

When I began research on my postcard of the L. A. Fire Department Orchestra I found a perfect match to it in the vast archive of the internet. This postcard was annotated with the names of all eleven musicians. Though I won't show it here, the postcard's note matched five of the names on this 1925 newspaper report (which also allowed me to correct the newspaper's spelling in a few cases.) The other names from this 1927 postcard list were: Royal Hotchkiss, banjo; Everett C. Appleton, trombone; A. W. Grannis, sousaphone; H. S. Metheny, trumpet; L. F. Smithson, sax and clarinet; and Chief Waldemar Guterson, director.

Broadcast Weekly magazine
23 June 1929

When the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra started performing on radio in July 1925, stations initially broadcast only a few hours a day and had trouble filling the time. Radio technology was still crude and transmitters operated on relatively low power which did not carry a signal very far. And there were not many receivers listening either, as the American public had not yet found reason to buy a home radio set. Stations competed with different gimmicks to get people to listen, and music was one of the first hooks. 

The first problem was keeping radio signals strong enough to give clear fidelity so people could hear a concert on their primitive speakers or headsets. But as more new stations came onto the airwaves there was a new problem. How do you get people to tune in. The early radios used AM frequencies which could reach a surprising distance depending on the atmospheric bounce. So newspapers and magazines began publishing daily and then weekly schedules of local and nationwide radio programs. In June 1929 Broadcast Weekly, a national magazine, ran a picture of the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra above the programs for Wednesday, June 26. It shows the same musicians as in my postcard but all standing at attention and saluting.

The fire department orchestra had begun with monthly performances on KFWB, but now four years later they were playing on KFI, however they were no longer a regular on Tuesday evenings and had moved to afternoons or sometimes late night at 11:00. I couldn't find any reviews or list of music that they played, but because of their instrumentation it seems safe to say that saxophones did not play Mozart. Instead they likely cultivated a dance band style typical of other dance bands of this roaring decade. Perhaps influenced by their director, Chief Waldemar Guterson. 

Los Angeles Herald Examiner
19 November 1924 

The postcard I found on the internet clearly labeled the director of the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra as Chief Waldemar Guterson. I've been unable to find any newspaper report that connects him to the orchestra, or the fire department, for that matter, so I suspect he was an honorary fire chief and was engaged to bring a hip new dance style to the fire department's radio orchestra. 

Guterson was already a rising star in the Los Angeles music scene as he had brought his European jazz group, "Band of All Nations", to California in November 1924, after a season in London. His uncle was Mischa Guterson, a noted conductor who led the famous Grauman theater orchestra in Los Angeles. Waldemar also played piano and composed songs and instrumental music. This 1924 report in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner included a sharp photo of him which matches the man in the fire department orchestra photo.

 

Long Beach CA Press Telegram
2 June 1928

The annotated postcard I found labeled the drummer in the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra, as Capt. D. W. Clairborne, also manager of the group. I found other reports of him in regular fire department activities so I know he was definitely a career fireman. Guterson, on the other hand, seems to have been too busy performing at hotel ballrooms and night clubs around southern California to have ever had time to fight fires. How long he directed the fire department orchestra is unknown, but he seems to have gone on to a successful career conducting theater orchestras on Broadway in New York and as a music director for television and film in Hollywood. Waldemar Guterson died in March 1964, at age 61.  

The Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra was a featured group on Los Angeles radio stations for nearly nine years, from October 1925 to March 1934. After that time the group seems to have disbanded as they did not receive any further notice in newspapers. The reasons may have involved reorganization or financial cuts to the fire department. Or perhaps Los Angeles' radio stations were changing with the times. Much of America's first generation of radio stations were no longer independent and had been bought by the emerging media giants, corporations like NBC, CBC, and MBC, which set new standards and direction for the industry, that would eventually transform the radio age into the television age. For a while musicians still performed live on the air, but increasingly there would be less and less live music until, like laughter, it was canned like a commodity, an invisible soundtrack for other entertainers to talk over.     

I'll finish with a video compilation
from Wallywood Pictures YouTube Channel
of people dancing the Charleston,
THE dance that epitomizes
the crazy roaring 1920s decade.
It's taken from British Pathé shorts
but both America and Britain

shared the same cultural revolution
of jazzy pop music and radio.

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where everyone is putting out fires this weekend.