In 1920, songwriter Harry Tierney (who wrote "Alice Blue Gown") did the scoring work for the musical "Afgar" and managed to get one of his own songs included in it. The musical premiered on the London stage, and was a respectable hit.
It starred Lupino Lane, and ran for two years on Broadway (see the Internet Broadway Database
for more detail). This instrumental version of Tierney's song was performed by one of the many Hotel orchestras that recorded for Edison. This is a good example of what dance music sounded like in 1920, just before the Blues infiltrated the
mainstream. The recording itself is about as good as acoustic sound reproduction would ever get, and the disc has a nice clean surface. (More recordings by this orchestra, sampled from Edison cylinders, can be found at the
UCSB Special Collection.)
