The First Torch Singers, Volume 2: 1930-1934
In the early to mid-1920s, female singers with big voices often portrayed women as hard-boiled Mamas who dominated men. For example, there was Hard-Hearted Hannah who ''throws water on a drowning man'' and Hard-to-Get Gertie whose ''heart is colder than an ice cream freezer.'' This was clearly a time of liberation for the female sex who, in addition to voting, took to smoking, drinking, cutting their hair short and wearing pants - inspiring an amusing novelty song calledMasculine Women! Feminine Men!from 1926, that can be heard on our 1920's collection,Wonderful Nonsense - Fun Songs of The Roaring Twenties.But by 1930, songs about browbeating mamas and hen-pecked papas had given way to sad songs about frail and lonely women, often in unrequited love affairs with men who were indifferent, insensitive, or even abusive. Fanny Brice, Ruth Etting, Helen Morgan and Libby Holman were the earliest of the torch singers and, ironically, they experienced in their personal lives the very unhappiness they often sang about. The remaining vocalists represent an all-star cast from that period.From the early to mid-1930s, the period covered in this second volume, torch songs flourished, becoming fashionable as a performance style. Three classic torch songs by women recorded in this period includeStormy Weather,When We're In LoveandNevertheless.