Cocoanut Grove Ambassadors, Volume 1

Cocoanut Grove Ambassadors, Volume 1 - 10 hour set #RA070

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Enjoy an evening at the lavish Cocoanut
Grove nightclub in the early 1930s as
Radio Archives brings you forty full-
length broadcasts of "The Cocoanut
Grove Ambassadors", taken from
now-impossible to find original
recordings. In this tuneful collection,
you’ll enjoy rare performances by four
of the Grove's top orchestra leaders:
Gus Arnheim, Jimmie Grier, Phil Harris,
and Ted Fio Rito.

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List of Shows

The Cocoanut Grove Ambassadors
Volume 1

For nearly seventy years, the Ambassador Hotel at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard was a Los Angeles landmark and the home of the world famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub.

When those who celebrate the Golden Age of Hollywood reflect back on the halcyon days of the early 1930s, one particular nightspot comes immediately to mind: the Cocoanut Grove at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel. This lavishly appointed club, part of the massive 23-acre Ambassador resort that also included four restaurants, a bowling alley, a billiard room, and even a movie theater, was decorated in Moroccan style and featured full-sized palm trees reportedly salvaged from Rudolph Valentino's "The Sheik." In addition to the decor, which also offered a night sky filled with stars (thanks to about 1000 small light bulbs), an elevated stage, and both dining and dancing room for several hundred patrons, customers came for the smooth musical entertainment provided by a series of dance orchestras and their popular vocalists - many of whom would later go on to star careers in radio, recordings, and the film industry.

Thanks to the foresight of Abe Frank, the manager of both the hotel and the Grove, in the mid-1920s the Ambassador had been equipped with a small radio studio, allowing the orchestras to be enjoyed well outside the confines of the nightclub. From the late 1920s well into the 1960s, live remote broadcasts from the Cocoanut Grove were a popular feature of nighttime radio, allowing millions of people to enjoy and even dance to the music they would otherwise be unable to afford to hear in person. These broadcasts, aired live nightly for two full hours, only increased the reputation of the Grove as "the place to be" when it came to top notch West Coast entertainment.

Amid palm trees and a starlit sky, patrons of the Cocoanut Grove spent many a romantic evening dancing to the music of the many orchestras that performed there.

Amid palm trees and a starlit sky, patrons of the Cocoanut Grove spent many a romantic evening dancing to the music of the many orchestras that performed there.

From the beginning, the Cocoanut Grove's glamorous atmosphere attracted the top names in Hollywood for dining, dancing, and mingling between tables. This celebrity connection was always well-publicized by the Ambassador - and for very good reason: tourists coming to Los Angeles for a vacation wanted to see the stars and there was no place where the stars came out quite so regularly as the Ambassador Hotel. On an average evening, it was not at all uncommon to see such well-known celebrities as Joan Crawford, Jack Oakie, or Jean Harlow coming to see Bing Crosby or Russ Columbo sing with Gus Arnheim's Orchestra or dance to Jimmie Grier's band as they accompanied popular tenor Donald Novis or The Three Ambassadors (Martin Sperzel, Jack Smith, and Al Teeter). Even though there was a nationwide depression, Hollywood stars and executives still needed to be entertained -- and the Cocoanut Grove was usually their first choice.

Thanks to Transco, the Transcription Company of America, we can still enjoy many of the melodies once heard in this legendary nightspot.

Thanks to Transco, the Transcription Company of America, we can still enjoy many of the melodies once heard in this legendary nightspot.

In this collection, Radio Archives offers you the chance to hear what an evening at the Cocoanut Grove was like from 1931 thru 1934, complete with many of the musical talents that so frequently filled the floor with dancers. Thanks to Transco (The Transcription Company of America), which chose to pre-record and syndicate one hundred or so quarter-hour shows in the style of the live remote broadcasts of the time, we can here experience four of the Grove's top orchestra leaders of the early 1930s: Gus Arnheim, Jimmie Grier, Phil Harris, and Ted Fio Rito. Their smooth and melodic performances, epitomizing the "West Coast Style" that would soon become prevalent in popular recordings and motion pictures, is matched by vocal performances by Loyce Whiteman, Leah Ray, Dave Marshall, Harry Barris, Dick Webster, Jean Schock, and many others.

An impressive feature of this collection, particularly for those who associate the 1930s with scratchy old 78 RPM recordings, is the amazing audio quality of these restored syndicated broadcasts. Working with a series of beautiful 16" shellac Transco originals, these full and rich electrical recordings have required very little digital restoration to make them sound as if they were recorded just yesterday, rather than well over seventy years ago.

Aside from the obvious rarity of these now impossible-to-find recordings, another benefit is the extended length accorded to most of the musical selections they contain. Where most commercially released 78s of the period ran just a little under three minutes per ten-inch side, requiring the musicians to edit their arrangements to fit, a great many of these programs offer numbers running four full minutes or more - just as they would have sounded if you had been lucky enough to dance to them at the Cocoanut Grove.

So, put on your tuxedo or evening gown, slip on your dancing shoes, and spend a few hours dancing to the infectious rhythms of the Cocoanut Grove Ambassadors. It's a trip through time that we know you'll want to take again and again.