CD Review: I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem — The Delta Rhythm Boys

I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem
The Delta Rhythm Boys
Acrobat Music 2005
www.acrobatmusic.net

While not as well-known as their brothers in harmony the Mills Brothers, Ink Spots, and Charioteers, the Delta Rhythm Boys nevertheless appeared in many motion pictures and Broadway shows during the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, hosted a regular radio program on CBS, and sang with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Mildred Bailey, and Fred Astaire for Decca Records. Their only hit as a quartet came for RCA Victor, however: the 1947 classic “Dry Bones,” with its series of half-step modulations, a singing technique that the quartet had honed to perfection. All the same, as the Acrobat Records compilation I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem demonstrates, the Delta Rhythm Boys were every bit as talented as their more popular contemporaries.

The CD features twenty tracks recorded in 1941, before the quartet hit its stride on record, though it is evident that the quartet’s musicianship was polished and exquisite even at that early stage.

Of the twenty selections on the compilation, seven are spirituals. In those days, mixing the sacred and secular wasn’t as verboten as it would become. The Delta Rhythm Boys performed with tight, jazz-inspired harmonies and at times even added vocalizations of instruments a la the Mills Brothers.

Included among the seven spirituals are standards such as “Certainly Lord,” “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,” and “Mighty Day,” as well as an early version of “Dry Bones” that sounds very much like the quartet’s later hit. Of the secular titles, the inclusion of “Watermelon on the Vine” with its obvious roots in minstrelsy made me cringe, but it is sung with such aplomb that one can only wonder what must have been going through the quartet members’ minds while recording it.

The quality of the recordings on the CD is excellent and is highly recommended for fans of the 1940s pre- and proto-doowop sound, and for those curious about the sound of vocal groups before the explosion of doowop groups after the war.