Joseph Knecht's Waldorf-Astoria Dance Orchestra "Russian Rag" (1921) George L. Cobb, Rachmaninoff

Joseph Knecht's Waldorf-Astoria Dance Orchestra plays "Russian Rag" (1921), a work by George L. Cobb.
It is based on Sergei Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor.
Joseph M. Knecht was born in 1864 in Bukovina in Southern Austria (after WWI, this region became part of Romania).
His dance bands were popular in the 1920s, but he was a much older man than such bandleaders as Paul Whiteman and Jean Goldkette.
He played violin from an early age.
Knecht arrived in the United States in September 1887.
In August 1898 he married Emelie Krafft in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In his sixties, starting in February 1925, he conducted the popular B. F. Goodrich Silvertown Cord Band on a sponsored radio show.
He worked with vocalist Joseph M White, billed as The Silver-Masked Tenor.
He died on May 30, 1931 of heart disease in Manhattan.

[@Arthur_McGowan]

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