Wanna (When I Wanna--You No Wanna)
The spelling is given as Wana on sheet music
Club Royal Orchestra led by Clyde Doerr
Victor 18864
January 26, 1922
Song by Cliff Friends
Clyde Doerr lived from June 24, 1894, to August 2, 1973.
In the 1920s this skilled musician helped popularize the saxophone through records, radio work, and public performances.
On July 28, 1970, he was interviewed by Cecil Leeson (1902-1989), a concert saxophonist who in the 1970s taped his conversations with musicians who had been active a half century earlier. Doerr recalled growing up in the small town of Coldwater, Michigan, and studying violin when he was eight. He took up saxophone in high school because a local Elks organization sponsored a minstrel show that included a saxophone artist who impressed Doerr.
After playing in the Detroit area in a dance band, he attended the King Conservatory in San Jose, California, training as a concert violinist. An advertisement for Buescher band instruments on page 23 of the October 1921 issue of Metronome states that Doerr directed "a 32-piece Symphony Orchestra [in] San Jose, California."
Upon receiving his bachelor of music, he settled 60 miles north, in San Francisco. He was hired to play saxophone as part of a group in Techau's Tavern, "one of the show-places of San Francisco," according to the Buescher advertisement. Art Hickman heard Doerr here and invited him, in February 1919, to play alto saxophone in Hickman's outfit.
Doerr formed with fellow Hickman musician Bert Ralton perhaps the first saxophone section in a dance band. After establishing a following at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, the band traveled to New York in 1919 and enjoyed great success at the Biltmore Hotel. Doerr and Ralton play on Hickman's early Columbia records, including "Dance It Again With Me" (A2899) and "Rose of Mandalay," made on September 15, 1919 (A2917).
Doerr made records with Hickman's band until early 1921 but received too many tempting offers from New York to remain on the West Coast. "I wasn't going to turn down any $400 a week," he told Leeson. According to Buescher advertisement, by October 1921 this "saxophone super-specialist" had "a contract with the Columbia Graphophone Company calling for his performance with every orchestra recording popular vocal or dance music for Columbia records."
With Paul Whiteman's help, Doerr soon directed the Club Royal Orchestra, which entertained at New York City's Grand Central Theatre and elsewhere.
His Club Royal Orchestra enjoyed success with its first record, Victor 18831, which features Albert Von Tilzer's "Dapper Dan" backed by Ted Snyder's "The Sheik." Both numbers were cut on November 2, 1921. "The Sheik," often known as "The Sheik of Araby" (it followed the success of Rudolph Valentino's movie The Sheik), became popular. Doerr told Leeson his relationship with Whiteman soon soured because Whiteman resented the success of the record.
