Herbert Arthur Wiedoeft (22 November 1886 – 12 May 1928) was a German-American band leader in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

in the 1920s.

Career

Wiedoeft was born in Germany and came to the United States with his parents as a child. Wiedoeft came from a family of gifted musicians and was encouraged by his father. His brothers Gerhardt and Adolph (nicknamed "Gay" and "Ad" respectively) played as sidemen in his band, Gerhardt on

string bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar ...

and Adolph on

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

and

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...

. Another brother,

Rudy Wiedoeft Rudolph Cornelius Wiedoeft (January 3, 1893 – February 18, 1940) was an American saxophonist. Biography Born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of German immigrants, at a young age Wiedoeft started playing with his family orchestra, first using a ...

was a

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of Single-reed instrument, single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed (mouthpi ...

player during the late

ragtime Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott J ...

and early jazz era. Their sister, Erica, was a pianist. Herbert himself played the

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

. Wiedoeft started his first orchestra before 1915. His band played for several years at the Cinderella Roof Ballroom at Sixth and Olive in downtown

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. The band's theme song "Cinderella Blues" came from the name of this venue. The band recorded four songs for the Nordskog label in 1922. The band gained a recording contract with

Brunswick Records Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. History From 1916 Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing prod ...

, toured in Chicago and New York and earned a national reputation. Their first record for Brunswick was "Cinderella Blues"/ " Shine", the latter being the first recording of the song that had

Lew Brown Lew Brown (born Louis Brownstein; December 10, 1893 – February 5, 1958) was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States. During World War I and the Roaring Twenties, he wrote lyrics for several of the top Tin Pan Alley composers, esp ...

's revised lyrics.

Clyde Lucas Clyde H. Lucas (c. 1901 – January 15, 1982) was an American big-band leader who was popular in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the leader of ''Clyde Lucas and His California Dons''. Early years Lucas grew up in Los Angeles ...

, who went on to form his own popular band in the 1930s and 1940s, started out as a singer and trombonist in the Herb Wiedoeft orchestra. Wiedoeft died in a car accident in

Medford, Oregon Medford is a city in and the county seat of Jackson County, Oregon, in the United States. As of the 2020 United States Census on April 1, 2020, the city had a total population of 85,824 and a metropolitan area population of 223,259, making the M ...

, on 12 May 1928, when his car skidded off the Medford-Klamath Falls highway. The trombonist Jesse Stafford took over the band, and released another 13 sides on Brunswick records under the name of the Jesse Stafford Orchestra.

Discography

A partial list of Brunswick recordings:

Works

References

Bibliography for references

* * * *

External links

Herb Wiedoeft's Cinderella Roof Orchestra
at the Red Hot Jazz Archive * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wiedoeft, Herb 1886 births 1928 deaths American jazz trumpeters Big band bandleaders German emigrants to the United States Road incident deaths in Oregon