Biography
By 1936 Fats Waller ranked among the Victor label’s top-earning jazz attractions, prompting other companies to launch their own surrogates. Vocalion turned to Putney Dandridge for the assignment, while Decca urged Bob Howard to reshape his performances in Waller’s image. Victor itself assembled a deliberate sound-alike unit called Tempo King & His Kings of Rhythm. The singer copied Waller’s vocal mannerisms without deviation, and pianist Queenie Ada Rubin worked visibly to reproduce the keyboard style of the original. Beginning in August 1936 the group cut fifty-five sides, starting on Victor’s Bluebird imprint before moving to Vocalion in June 1937 and finishing its final session in December of that year. The ensemble is chiefly recalled today for clarinetist Joe Marsala, his trumpet-playing brother Marty Marsala, and guitarist Eddie Condon; the remaining personnel comprised bassists Mort Stuhlmaker and George Yorke plus drummer Stan King. Following Waller’s death in 1943, Victor installed Pat Flowers as its designated successor. By that point Tempo King had already slipped from public notice. Timeless reissued twenty-three of the recordings in 1991. The singer’s true identity remains unknown; Eddie Condon, who documented many of his jazz experiences in print, supplied no hints. Some have proposed Stan King, noting that the drummer had previously sung through a kazoo with the California Ramblers and that both the maintained tempo and the surname are consistent, yet the link stays conjectural. An earlier, unrelated hot-jazz group that also used the name Tempo Kings appeared briefly in 1926, drawing personnel from Ross Gorman’s Earl Carroll Vanities Orchestra and featuring vocals by Frank Bessinger along with Miff Mole, Dick McDonough, and Arthur Schutt; that unit recorded two titles for Pathe in January 1926. The 1936–37 sides issued under the Tempo King name, however, more closely resemble the approach of Willie Bryant, whose rapid, colloquial delivery fronted a swing orchestra stocked with strong soloists.
Albums