Surprisingly little is known about this most remarkable musician. Fortunately, I finally found this biography on the digitaldelift website. Dr. Frank Black was a brilliant jack of all trades in the music world between the 1920s and 1953. Uncharacteristically versatile for conductors of the era, Frank Black's range of music interests spanned jazz to combined choral and instrumental classical works. Throughout the late 1920s to 1940s, Frank Black was NBC's Music Director. He'd launched NBC's remarkable The Magic Key of RCA hour as its music director and composed the beautiful theme music for the series. The Magic Key (1935-1939) was the NBC analog to CBS' equally historic and ambitious Columbia Workshop (1936-1947) series and featured some of the most cutting edge advancements in Radio technique and technology as had ever been heard over Radio--and for as many as 20 years later, for that matter. Equally adept at arranging for both chorus and orchestra, Frank Black's innovative arrangements regularly caught the attention of composers such as Jerome Kern, Rogers and Hart, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and entrepreneurs such as Flo Ziegfeld. Prior to his stint as NBC's Music Director, Frank Black had proven himself equally at ease with the most popular music of the college crowd of the 1920s with wax hits like The Varsity Rag, I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover, and The Best Things in Life Are Free. After Frank Black left NBC, he'd devoted most of his energy to his writing, hobbies, and occasional work on light operas, Hollywood patch ups, and Television. But it was Frank Black's brilliant, innovative work with choral groups large (The Magic Key) and small (The Revelers) that persuaded Cadillac to mount an attempt to coax Dr. Black back to Radio for Cadillac's splashy Golden Anniversary advertising campaign. As for this excellent record, it was waxed in 1928. Vocal by Frank Munn.
