Since Ms. Dardanella is the only thing keeping this blog alive just now, let’s go with it.
Wikipedia tells us that Sascha Jacobsen lived from 1895 to “1971 or 1972.” He was a violinist, and he played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 1950s. And, it seems, he was a musician of sufficient skill to command a Stradivarius. An interesting story of Mr. Jacobsen and his Strad - lost in a rain storm and swept out to sea, fortunately to be recovered and restored (the violin, not Mr. Jacobsen) can be read here.
Not much else seems available for my cursory Internet researches. Perhaps someone will blunder onto this site and enlighten us. Meanwhile, his Dardanella is an interesting addition to our collection.
Click to play, Fenster!
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August 1, 2009 at 7:28 am
Random Kath
Wow! You made it! I wasn’t sure if you were going to do one this month, so Yay!
It’s weird, but I think Jacobson plays the melody a bit faster than I’d like. He seems to be rushing through and it seems that with the violin he could have really brought out the sweetness of the tune, IMHO.
Great story about the salvage of the violin . . . I didn’t know they could reconstruct things like that. Kudos to Mr. Weisshaar!
August 1, 2009 at 11:23 am
Jerry Thomas
Yes, I made it! I almost skipped it, but then I saw the Archive links in the sidebar, and it would have made me sad if there was a missing month there. I do have ideas for posts, but not so much time just now. So the Dardanella keeps it going.
It’s not my favorite rendering of the song either. It sounds perfunctory, like, “okay, folks - here’s what Dardanella sounds like on a violin.” I wish I had more info on Sascha — if you click around the ‘Net, you’ll find a current musician using the same name, and I suspect he’s a relative.
The picture of the record label on the vid has some catalog numbers, which could be a clue as to when the recording was made.