Ben Bernie & His Orchestra - I Love Her!

Ben Bernie (1891-1943, né Bernard Anzelevitz), was an American jazz violinist and radio personality, often introduced as The Old Maestro. Bernie was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. By the age of 15 he was teaching violin, but this experience apparently diminished his interest in the violin for a time. He returned to music doing vaudeville, appearing with Phil Baker as Baker and Bernie, but he met with little success until 1922 when he joined his first orchestra. Later, he had his own band, "The Lads," seen in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound short, Ben Bernie and All the Lads (1924–1925), featuring pianist Oscar Levant. He toured with Maurice Chevalier and also toured in Europe. Bernie's orchestra recorded throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925 Ben Bernie and his orchestra did the first recording of Sweet Georgia Brown. Bernie was the co-composer of this jazz standard, His musical variety radio shows through the 1930s, usually titled, Ben Bernie, The Old Maestro, were hugely successful, with ratings placing him among radio's top ten programs. He was heard on radio as early as 1923. His theme was "It's a Lonesome Old Town" and his signature trademark, "yowsah, yowsah, yowsah" (also spelled "yowsa" or "yowza"), became a national catchphrase. To boost ratings, Walter Winchell and Bernie, who were good friends, staged a fake rivalry similar to the comedic conflict between Jack Benny and Fred Allen. This mutually beneficial "feud" was a running gag on their radio appearances and continued in two films in which they portrayed themselves: Wake Up and Live (1937) and Love and Hisses (1937). They are also caricatured in the Warner Bros. cartoons The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) as "Ben Birdie" and "Walter Finchell" and The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (1936) as "Ben Birdie" and "Walter Windpipe". He died from a pulmonary embolism, brought on from his years of smoking his famed cigars, in October of 1943. As for this hot, rarely recorded tune, it was waxed in 1926. Vocal by the Keller Sisters & Lynch, who were a United States pop music group of singers of the 1920s and 1930s. The group consisted of Annie Catherine "Nan" Keller (1900-75), Kathryne Ann "Taddy" Keller (1909-62), and Frank Lynch (1902-92). They were all siblings born with the family name Lynch. They appeared on vaudeville, radio, and early sound films, but are best remembered by later generations for their phonograph records, including many made with top big bands and jazz musicians of the era, including the bands of Jean Goldkette (with Bix Beiderbecke), Vincent Lopez and Ben Bernie (Taddy Keller later married Ben Bernie's star saxophonist Jack Pettis). Frank Lynch had a very high-pitched voice for a man, and when singing with his sisters the siblings could easily be taken for an all-female trio. Also Frank's solo recordings have a tendency to sound more lika a woman than a man.