Back in the 1920s and ’30s, the place to go dancing in Western Massachusetts was Cook’s Butterfly Ballroom in my home town of Springfield, Massachusetts. The resident band was the Edwin J. McEnelly Victor Recording Orchestra, one of the better-know territory bands of the time. From 1924 to 1929, the pianist and arranger for the band was Frankie Carle.
I ran across an ad for the Ballroom from The Springfield Republican that promoted a three-day engagement by the famed Jean Goldkette Orchestra over February 7-9, 1927, that included a “battle-of-the-bands” involving the Goldkette and McEnelly orchestras. The ad described the occasion as “a musical war,” stating “Nothing to compare with this musical evening anytime, anywhere in the history of the dance.”
The advertisement went overboard in claiming “Jean Goldkette’s Victor Recording Orchestra and Henry Ford are the two things that made Detroit famous,” and continuing “The only appearance in the East outside of Broadway where they have been turning dancers away by the thousands every night during the two-week engagement in New York City. So don’t be a Turnaway. Usual Butterfly prices.”
Goldkette Reputation in the ’20s-’30s
Most jazz fans have little knowledge of the stature and impact the European-born bandleader-promoter John Jean Goldkette had on the world of jazz back in the ’20s and ’30s. One j
