Armenian, Pole, Italian, Pals,
Blew Their Way to Fame and Fortune
By Don Dornbrook, of the Journal Staff
"There's no business like show business."A little more than a year ago the Harmonicats were just three more guys playing mouth organs in a Chicago night club. Then they made their first record, "Peg O' My Heart," an old tune bigtime artists had vainly tried to revive for years. It was the record company's first record, too.The rest is musical history. Since then more than 1,400,000 copies of that record have been sold. When a record passes the 400,000 sales mark it's going great. The Harmonicats, now at a Milwaukee theater, have had three Hollywood offers -- plus requests for radio work and personal appearances. They went into the Oriental Theater in Chicago for a one week engagement; they were held over for four. A two week stint at New York's Roxy was stretched to five. At the Hippodrome in Baltimore they held over five days with a completely new show -- an unusual occurrence in show business.
In Echo ChamberAfter the first million records had been sold no less than 17 other record companies copied it. The Harmonicats sent every one a polite "thank you" note, pointedly pointing out that they call themselves the Harmonicats, "not the Copycats."Jerry Murad, 28 year old Chicagoan who organized the group in 1944, got the idea for making a record, even at the start. Jerry wanted to use an echo chamber -- used to create eerie effects in radio murder mysteries. He figured that if the boys played into a wall the sound would be reflected into the mic; that it would be the echo -- not the music itself -- which would be recorded. He went to a number of established record companies with his brain child, but they wanted to charge too much. At this stage Murad was willing to pay a company to record the Harmonicats as a means of getting bookings. Then he met Bill Putnam, president of Universal Transcription Co. Universal was a Chicago firm which specialized in recording speeches and radio shows for small fees. The $25 the Harmonicats had raised by pooling their resources was not enough, said Putnam, but he was willing to foot the entire $108 bill himself -- for a half interest in the receipts from the sale of the first 1,000 records. The Harmonicats then cut five records -- including "Peg O' my Heart." The hit tune took the boys 20 minutes to make.
Putnam was so enthusiastic about the record he gave one to Eddie Hubbard, a Chicago disk jockey. After Eddie had played it on his program one night, he got so many calls the first 1,000 records were sold in the next two days. Bill Putnam realized he had a hit on his hands. But he had paid an established record company, Mercury, to make "Peg." There wasn't much in that for him. If only he could make his own records like hot cakes he could sell them the same way. People were crying for "Peg." So Putnam took his $300 share of the proceeds from the 1,000 records and all the money he could scrape up and borrow from friends -- some $50,000 -- and formed the Vitacoustic Recording Co. just to make Harmonicat "Peg O' My Heart" records. He also set up three factories to press platters. Today his firm, now called Universal Recording Co., is worth $1,500,000. Putnam figures he has another hit in the Harmonicats' revival of "I Love You," from the play, "Little Jesse James." In three weeks he has sold 70,000 "I Love You" records. Plans are afoot to revive the play because of the success of the tune's revival. Putnam also will make records of the Ralph Marterie band. Marterie, former trumpeter with Harry James, Paul Whiteman and other name bands, is Putnam's idea of "the Dave Rose of the middle west." Born in TurkeyThe echo chamber technique of recording, incidentally, is being used extensively by other record companies, now. Jerry Murad started something and the echo hasn't died out yet.Murad, leader of the trio, was born in Constantinople, Turkey of Armenian parentage. He came to America at 6, learned to play the harmonica at 9. His father wanted him to be a carpet maker but at Chicago's Steinmetz high school he joined the Harmonica Club. Here he met Al Fiore, destined to become the trio's funny man. Then came the war. Jerry enlisted in the Marines; Al wanted to to join him but was refused -- he weighs 265 pounds. While stationed in New York Jerry met Don Les, who was playing with Borrah Minevitch's Harmonica Rascals. Jerry was later discharged from the Marines; he, too, joined Minevitch. A couple of years later -- in 1944 -- Jerry and Don left Minevitch. They found Al and formed a trio -- the Harmonicats. Their first booking was a St Louis burlesque house. Their reception was less than terrific. For a long time they had to disband after each booking and find other work. Jerry would go back to carpet making and repairing harmonicas; Al would take a flier at shoe making; and Don would work as a shipping clerk at Goldblatt's department store in Chicago. Held for 16 WeeksIn the fall of 1946 they wangled a four week engagement at a Chicago night spot. By then they had a neat arrangement of "Peg O' My Heart." They tried it on the customers. They were held over 16 weeks; then they made their first record.In addition to repairing harmonicas -- he fixed 'em for Larry Adler, John Sebastian, Carl Freed and Charles Newman -- Jerry designs and makes his own instruments. Al Fiore, 24, the fat boy, plays a 30 inch harmonica. Fans get quite a kick out of him making like a hungry man with a huge cob of corn on "Harmonica Boogie." He's a Chicago boy of Italian parentage. Bespectacled Don Les was born in Lorain, Ohio, of Polish parents, 29 years ago. He was born blind, but an operation restored his sight when he was 12. When he was still in grammer school a pal dared him to learn to play the mouth organ. Three months later, after nightly practice in bed (under blankets so as not to disturb his family and neighbors) he had mastered his trumpet style harmonica. Don plays the bass harmonica with the trio and takes hot jazz choruses on a small 50-cent mouth organ.
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