Anyone seeking a useful and entertaining time capsule filled with pre-WWI popular music might consider Naxos Nostalgia's two-volume edition of Al Jolson's complete Victor and Columbia master takes drawn from his first six years and three months as a recording artist. The second volume opens with "Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go (With Friday on Saturday Night)?," one of several melodies composed by George W. Meyer that show up in the early Jolson discography, or throughout the traditional jazz repertoire, as does Pete Wendling's "Yaaka Hula Hickey Doola." Both songs were introduced in the 1916 Broadway show Robinson Crusoe, Jr. along with "Tillie Titwillow," "You're a Dangerous Girl," and "Down Where the Swanee River Flows," all of which are included in this collection. Jolson was uncannily adept when it came to tackling topical tunes with loopy lyrics, such as Harry Von Tilzer's cheerily misogynistic "I Sent My Wife to the Thousand Isles," Alfred Bryan's "There's a Lump of Sugar Down in Dixie," Harry Da Costa's "I'm Saving Up the Means to Get to New Orleans," and Irving Berlin's "I'm Down in Honolulu Looking Them Over." Note also the inclusion of the original version of "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," destined to resurface years later as a trusty warhorse for the older Jolson, followed by Judy Garland, Connie Francis, Eddie Fisher, and Sammy Davis, Jr. These historic performances from 1916-1918 predate Jolson's high-intensity comeback recordings made for Decca during the 1940s. Here he shows off everything he learned in vaudeville and on Broadway, hamming it up but in some ways pulling it off with greater dexterity than he would years later as the living relic who served as a sort of fossil fuel for the post-WWII nostalgia machine.
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