Berlin 1930: Billy Barton Havana-Band - Why Was I Born?

Billy Barton mit seiner Havana Band – Why Was I Born? Foxtrot from “Sweet Adeline” (Jerome Kern) Ultraphon 1930 (Germany)

NOTE: William (“Billy”) BARTON (b. c. 1890 in USA, d. ? in USA) American jazz band leader and tenor sax / clarinet virtuose, also a singer. His name as a musician appears for the first time in 1920 in Shanghai (China) where he traveled possibly, to avoid the American military service. Then he moved to Australia, where he befriended Bert Ralton who was with his famous Savoy Havana Band on tour in New Zealand and Sydney. In 1925 Billy Barton traveled to London to play with Ralton’s orchestra until a year later he joined Bert Firman’s dance orchestra. In 1927 Billy Barton toured again with the Savoy Havana Band to South Africa, and after the sudden death of Bert Ralton in the same year, Barton took over his band. In 1928, when the Savoy Havana Band disbanded, Billy returned for a short time to Bert Firman’s orchestra (The Rhythmic Eight) and finally traveled to Berlin to play with the renowned German dance bands (Marek Weber, Theo Mackeben, Billy Bartholomew, Mitja Nikisch). He was very much searched for by the German bandleaders as an American “expert on jazz” and asked to play long solos on tenor and alto, but also he often led the saxophone or clarinet sections and wrote arrangements. Between 1930-32 Barton arranged his own jazz – oriented orchestra, the Havana-Band which he named after the Ralton’s band at Savoy Hotel in London (sometimes also billed as “Original Orpheans Band”). Within short time his orchestra became very popular in Germany, it recorded for Homocord, Ultraphon, Telefunken and toured in Europe. At the end of the Weimar Republicc in 1933, Barton traveled back to USA to join, as it seems some dance bands in Chicago, yet his name appears only sporadically in American music market thereafter.

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