Pianist Frank Signorelli (May 24, 1901 – December 9, 1975) started the band the Original Memphis Five with Phil Napoleon in 1917. It was one of the most prolific bands of the 1920s. They put out hundreds of records under a variety of different band names, besides the Original Memphis Five. He also played briefly with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1921 and then rejoined the Original Memphis Five until 1926 when he then played and recorded with Joe Venuti, Adrian Rollini, Eddie Lang and Bix Beiderbecke, among others.Signorelli had a light sophisticated sound, that worked well with the so called “Chamber Jazz” crowd like Lang and Venuti that played in New York of the late 1920s. This little movement in the words of Paul Whiteman, ” tried to make a lady out of Jazz.”
In 1936 some of the original members of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band tried to stage a comeback by reviving the band, and Signorelli was among them. In 1938 he joined the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He continued to play music in New York in the 1940s and 1950s.
| Frank Signorelli and his Orchestra |
Redhotjazz.com was a pioneering website during the "Information wants to be Free" era of the 1990s. In that spirit we are recovering the lost data from the now defunct site and sharing it with you.
Most of the music in the archive is in the form of MP3s hosted on Archive.org or the French servers of Jazz-on-line.com where this music is all in the public domain.
Files unavailable from those sources we host ourselves. They were made from original 78 RPM records in the hands of private collectors in the 1990s who contributed to the original redhotjazz.com. They were hosted as .ra files originally and we have converted them into the more modern MP3 format. They are of inferior quality to what is available commercially and are intended for reference purposes only. In some cases a Real Audio (.ra) file from Archive.org will download. Don't be scared! Those files will play in many music programs, but not Windows Media Player.
