Loren McMurray (saxophone) with the orchestras of Eddie Kuhn (1920): You’re Just Like a Rose. Mike Markel (1921): I Wonder If You Still Care For Me, I Wonder Who You’re Calling Sweetheart, Say Persianna Say!, Idola, Blue Eyes Blues, Alabama Blues, Two Wooden Shoes. The Virginians (1922): I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate. Bailey’s Lucky Seven: Homesick. Lanin’s Southern Serenaders: Doo Dah Blues, Shake It and Break It, Eddie Leonard Blues. Eddie Davis: Hot Lips. Mike Markel (1922): Lonesome Mama Blues.
This starts in 1920 with a KC band where Mac got his launch. Seven tunes from Markel is maybe a slog but interesting and well recorded for 1921 from a talented society orchestra, McMurray being featured. In the second half the jazz tunes from 1922 pick up the pace. That’s Cliff Edwards eefing on Doo Dah Blues, a sample of what would become widespread two years later. McMurray expanded the paradigm for the alto as the dominant melodic instrument plus low register slap tongue. McMurray had a busy recording career for about three years 1920-1922 and then he was gone at age 25, leaving the legacy of the alto as a star melodic lead.
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