Hubert Berberich Revelers vocal arrangements collection , Circa 1920s-1940s

Edwin "Ed" Smalle was born November 3, 1887 in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He began his career demonstrating songs for sheet music sellers in Boston and New York as early as 1902. In 1914, Smalle was hired by Harry Von Tilzer Publishing Company as répétiteur, providing instruction to a list of prominent stage and recording artists that included Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, and Fred Astaire. His job at Von Tilzer led to an association and eventual recording partnership with famed tenor Billy Murray with whom he recorded a series of top-selling duets.

Smalle's distinctive comic tenor, voguish piano playing, and skill at arranging were in steady demand; from 1919–1925, he built a respectable freelance career recording for virtually every recording company operating in the American Northeast. In 1925, he was enlisted as pianist-arranger for The Revelers. The success of the group, due in large part to Smalle's trendsetting arrangements, resulted in a range of opportunities for Smalle on the NBC and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) networks, both as performer and music director. He became one of the most sought-after arrangers in the industry, scoring songs for singing combinations including the Leaders Trio, Seven G's, Frim Sisters, Vagabond Glee Club, and the Eton Boys.

The impetus for his departure from The Revelers in 1927 is unknown, but he continued to arrange for the group intermittently and oversaw the publication of a series of male quartet arrangement anthologies in the late 1930s billed as "successfully introduced by The Revelers." Published by Robbins Music Corporation between 1935 and 1937, the Robbins Folio of Modern Quartettes for Male Voices series does not contain any authentic Revelers arrangements, but rather simplified imitations composed by Smalle for amateur quartets.

Failing health forced Smalle to retire from radio and recording in 1940. He relocated to Westerly, Rhode Island where he remained active as a music teacher until his death on November 23, 1968.

Frank Jeremiah Black was born in Philadelphia on November 29, 1894. He began his formal musical training as a boy soprano at the historic St. Clement's Church in Downtown Philadelphia, but as early as age nine he was playing piano for a local nickelodeon. Black studied organ as a teenager and later claimed that the technique of registration greatly informed his arrangements and orchestrations. He graduated from Haverford College with a degree in chemistry, but chose instead to pursue a career in music upon landing a well-paying job playing piano in a hotel dance orchestra.

Black continued his studies under the renowned Hungarian pianist-composer Rafael Joseffy, commuting weekly to New York City from Philadelphia where he was by then co-owner and sole performer of a successful piano roll company. In 1915, he was engaged by the Fox Theatre in Philadelphia to write and arrange songs for vaudeville acts. Soon, his reputation as a gifted orchestrator and conductor was attracting the attention of larger venues. In 1916, Black was appointed assistant director of the Century Theater in New York City. There, he developed associations with many of Tin Pan Alley's brightest young stars.

Between 1921 and 1926, Black was orchestrating, arranging, and directing on- and off-Broadway musicals for George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and Rudolf Friml, among others. His affiliation with Brunswick Phonograph Company began in 1925 when he was contracted as General Musical Director. It was there that he began his affiliation with The Revelers who were recording for the company under the alias The Merrymakers. How it was that Black came to replace Ed Smalle in the group is unknown, but he assumed duties as pianist-arranger in 1927. Refining their sound and providing them with an enormous catalog of signature arrangements, he remained the "power behind the throne" for the rest of The Revelers' career. Beginning as early as 1922, Black began affiliations with the companies that would eventually emerge as leaders in the radio industry: American Telephone and Telegraph Company (ATT), Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and NBC. Positioned as he was, and being a gifted composer, conductor, and performer, Black quickly established himself as an authority in the nascent field. The success of The Revelers across myriad NBC radio programs further cemented his reputation. In 1928, he was appointed Musical Director of NBC, a post he would retain for twenty years.

Black established the NBC String Symphony in 1932 and was credited with professionalizing the NBC Symphony Orchestra, which he co-conducted alongside Arturo Toscanini and Leopold Stokowski. He was a tireless champion of classical music and took very seriously the role radio had to play in its promotion. As David Ewen summarized it, "Black devoted himself assiduously to the cause of good music over the air, and few musicians have served this cause so stubbornly. . . . As conductor of the Magic Key Hour, the String Symphony, and the NBC Orchestra, Frank Black persistently brought the greatest music of the past and the present to nationwide audiences. . . . One of his radio series, for example, was devoted exclusively to the works of young and lesser known American composers who, Black felt, deserved a hearing."

After leaving his post at NBC in 1948, Black continued to work as conductor intermittently throughout the 1950s. He served as conductor for Revelers alumnus James Melton's Harvest of Stars program, and later The Jane Pickens Show.

Frank Black died in Atlanta, Georgia on January 29, 1968.

The Revelers

The Revelers were an American quintet (four close harmony singers and a pianist) popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Revelers' recordings of "Dinah", "Old Man River", "Valencia", "Baby Face", "Blue Room", "The Birth of the Blues", "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba", and many more, became popular in the United States and then Europe in the late 1920s. They also produced the first known recording of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" in 1923.

All of the members had recorded individually or in various combinations. The quartet, organized in 1917, performed under the name The Shannon Four or The Shannon Quartet before changing their name to The Revelers in 1925.Robison, Glenn (2012). The Shannon Quartet: A Little Bit of Heaven (Booklet). Lynchburg, Virginia: Rivermont. The original Revelers were tenors Franklyn Baur and Lewis James (and occasionally Charles W. Harrison substituting when Baur or James was unavailable), baritone Elliot Shaw, bass Wilfred Glenn (who had popularized "Asleep in the Deep" on phonograph records), and pianist Ed Smalle. Smalle was replaced by Frank Black in 1926.

Information compiled by Craig Phillips and SCUA staff. Sources include articles in the Hobbies, Belvidere Daily Republican, Time, NBC, and American Music Lover magazines and news services as well as "Dictators of the Baton" by David Ewen, and "The Revelers in Their Various Guises" by Frank Bristow.