Tracks Unwrapped
Rose Room
Exploring the stories behind the music
I want to take you to a little room
A little room where all the roses bloom
I want to lead you into Nature's hall
Where ev'ry year the roses give a ball
They have an orchestra up in the trees
For their musicians are the birds and bees
And they will sing us a song
As we are strolling along
The song Rose Room was written by West Coast drummer, pianist and bandleader Art Hickman and composer, lyricist and publisher Harry Williams as far back as 1917 (it was Williams who wrote In The Shade Of The Old Apple Tree). The number is named after the Rose Room of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco where Art Hickman was playing at the time. Two years later, Columbia took the band to New York for a recording session that included Rose Room - the recording became a best-seller for the record label and the band the following year. We can listen to the recording on an old 78 rpm record:
The St. Francis Hotel is located on Powell and Geary Streets in San Francisco. It was built in the early 1900s from the estate of Charles Crocker, a railroad magnate, as an investment for his children. Originally it was to be called The Crocker Hotel, but was finally named after one of the San Francisco Gold Rush hotels. The hotel opened in 1904 and went on to host many celebreties including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. By the 1920s, it became a favourite place for film stars - Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford .... and a young Art Hickman led the orchestra in the Rose Room where he played music similar to that of Paul Whiteman. Art subsequently moved on to New York and the Biltmore Hotel and the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre.
The St Francis Hotel in 1904
One of the visiting celebrities to the hotel was film comedian Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle. In 1921, Arbuckle and friends were staying at the St Francis and held a party for people from the Hollywood scene. Apparently, during that afternoon, Arbuckle called the house doctor to see a young actress, Virginia Rappe, who had been taken sick. A day or two later, the young woman died. Another woman, a friend of the actress, who had also been at the party claimed that Arbuckle had assaulted and raped the actress and the story hit the headlines. Later, the woman's testimony was considered to be unreliable as she had a lengthy record of extortion. Nevertheless, Arbuckle was brought to trial in 1921. After two trials where the juries were unable to reach a verdict, Arbuckle was finally aquitted after a third hearing ... but his career was ruined. There are a number of videos on YouTube telling the story of Arbuckle (e.g. here).​
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin
The first recording of Rose Room was actually recorded by Joseph C. Smith's orchestra a year before Art Hickman's recording, since then it has become a jazz standard. Duke Ellington recorded it in 1932 and used the chord changes as a basis for his composition In A Mellotone.
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The first recording with the lyrics appeared in 1928 on Columbia by the Garden Dancing Palace Orchestra - apparently collectors and historians feel this was a psuedonym for a Seattle-based group led by trombonist Jackie Souders. Souder’s orchestra was a popular Northwest group with a residency in the mid-1920s at Seattle’s Olympic Hotel, and Bing Crosby and Al Rinker both worked with the band before joining Paul Whiteman where with Harry Barris they became The Rhythm Boys. Listen here to the Garden Dancing Palace Orchestra playing Rose Room in 1928 - the vocalist here is possibly Walton McKinney.
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​When Ellington recorded the tune, it also gained a subtitle 'Rose Room - In Sunny Roseland'' and the number can be found under both titles. Here's the Ellington Orchestra playing the tune:
There is a story that in 1939, guitarist Charlie Christian came on to the bandstand one night where the Benny Goodman Quartet was playing and jammed Rose Room for 45 minutes of solo after solo. Goodman was impressed - Charlie Christian was hired. Listen to Charlie Christian soloing on Rose Room with the Benny Goodman Sextet in 1939 with Benny Goodman (clarinet), Charlie Christian (guitar), Fletcher Henderson (piano), Lionel Hampton (vibraphone), Artie Bernstein (bass) and Nick Fatool (drums).
The website jazzstandards.com says that: “Rose Room” was an unusual tune for its time when ragtime’s popularity was fading in favour of the 32-bar song and the 12-bar blues. Composer Alec Wilder, in his book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950, calls it “a good, loose, natural song, definitely ahead of its time.” Wilder’s assessment is spot-on, as the tune’s heyday was during the swing era when the open melody and moving chord changes found favor with arrangers and improvisers alike.'
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The website also says: 'Vocal recordings of “Rose Room” are few and far between, with good reason. The lyrics are very flowery, almost an early 20th century period piece. No doubt the lyrics were tacked on by a worrisome publisher knowing that instrumental sheet music sold less than songs. The title is never even mentioned in the tune, and the lyrics’ sole purpose is to relate how wonderful it is to be in “sunny roseland,” where flowers sway and breezes blow.
Lester Young recorded a 'loose' version of Rose Room in 1954; the pianist is Gildo Mahones and the others: Jesse Drakes (trumpet); Connie Kay (drums) and John Ore (double bass).​
Wikipedia tells an interesting anecdote about the St Francis Hotel: 'Part of the fame of the St. Francis was because of its legendary chef, Victor Hirtzler. Hirtzler learned to cook in Strasbourg, France, and then cooked for royal courts across Europe. According to Hirtzler, he had created a dish for King Carlos I of Portugal, called La Mousse Faisan Lucullus, a mousse of Bavarian pheasant's breast and woodcock flavored with truffles, with a sauce of cognac, Madeira and champagne. The dish was so expensive, and the King ate it so frequently, that he bankrupted Portugal twice and was assassinated in 1908, followed by the downfall of Portuguese monarchy in 1910. Victor moved to New York, became the Chef of the Waldorf Hotel, and then was persuaded by the manager of the St. Francis, James Woods, to move to San Francisco.'
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'In 1916, Hirtzler again cooked a dish which had political consequences. The Crocker family were fervent Republicans, and they hosted a dinner at the hotel for Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate for President of the United States, who was locked in a close race with incumbent Woodrow Wilson. Twenty minutes before the banquet began, the waiters, who were members of the culinary workers union, went on strike. Hughes wondered if the banquet should be canceled, but Hirtzler insisted upon it going ahead, and served the meal himself. When the Union learned that Hughes had crossed a picket line and eaten the dinner, they distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing him as anti-union. On election night, Hughes went to bed believing he had won the election. The next morning he awoke and learned that he had lost California by only 3,673 votes, and by losing California had lost the election to Wilson. The margin of his defeat was less than the turnout of union voters in San Francisco. By saving the dinner, Hirtzler had lost the election for
Hughes.'
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The Westin St. Francis Hotel is still there in San Francisco. There is now a 'Colonial Ballroom' for dancing, and the nearest reference to Rose Room is their tea room - the Compass Rose Tea Room:
There are many versions of Rose Room recordings on YouTube and you could spend all day exploring them, but we end this article with a rather scratchy video of Earle Warren and Barry Emmett playing Rose Room in 1961. It has Sir Charles Thompson on piano, Gene Ramey on bass and Oliver Jackson is the drummer.
9.2024