Afraid Of You + I Never Dream't (1928) Jack Smith with The Whispering Orchestra

AFRAID OF YOU { 0:00 }
I NEVER DREAM’T { 2:59 }
Jack Smith (Whispering Baritone) and The Whispering Orchestra
HMV B2718 (late-March/early-April 1928; estimated from matrix numbers)


The American baritone ‘Whispering’ Jack Smith is one of several 1920s vocalists who were quick to develop an intimate microphone-style in the days when it was still a novel device. He was contracted to Victor in the US, recording almost exclusively with piano accompaniment. His recordings crossed the Atlantic as metals to Hayes, Middlesex where HMV (commercially tied Victor) pressed and issued them as HMV.

Smith was in the UK in 1927 (see Blue Skies on this channel) and in 1928; and he did a number of sessions for HMV accompanied by a small band. Branded The Whispering Orchestra, the names Carroll Gibbons, Ambrose and Ray Noble have been mentioned as leaders. The results were sides of a depth and sophistication that Victor had not achieved. In many respects Smith is outshone by the arrangements and the musicians. A reviewer in The Gramophone of June 1928 harshly wrote “Jack Smith has one or two good songs, of which the best are accompanied by the Whispering Orchestra: ‘I never dreamed’ and ‘Afraid of you’. I am afraid I think the Whispering Orchestra deserves most of the credit.”

Now the bad news: the engineer cut the recordings at a very low level, and consequently the HMV crackle, which their pressings of this era developed over the decades, is now loud and intrusive by comparison. It is so bad on I NEVER DREAM’T that I offer this side with some light declicking and decrackling, and an appropriate EQ. Attempting to denoise just partially replaced one annoyance with another very synthetic one. Denoise algorithms respond to level and frequency content, and in the intimate style of the music in I NEVER DREAM’T one can hear it operating as Smith sings. It is rather like the audible opening-up and closing-down of the high-frequency content, with recording level, of the analogue Dolby-B noise reduction on bygone audio cassettes!

On a previous upload I expressed my sympathies for the poor blighters who had to stick the publisher’s royalty stamp on records, but it was worse on I NEVER DREAM’T. Clearly HMV had run out of right stamps and the poor blighters had to affix two stamps to get the sum right!