DESCRIPTION:
Joe Venuti, violin, Eddie Lang, guitar, Arthur Schutt, piano -- Doin' Things (Lang, Venuti), Parlophone 1928

Giuseppe (Joe) VENUTI (b. 1903 in Philadelphia -- d. 1978, in Seattle, Washington) was an Italian-American jazz musician and pioneer jazz violinist. He worked with Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Bing Crosby, Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, the Boswell Sisters and most of the other important white jazz and semi-jazz figures of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Venuti and Lang recorded a series of milestone jazz records during the 1920s. However, following Lang's early death in 1933, his career began to wane, though he continued performing through the 1930s, recording a series of excellent commercial dance records http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmgLrQVs_Mg
(usually containing a Venuti violin solo), as well as the occasional jazz small group sessions. He was also a strong early influence on swing players, not to mention the fact that Lang and Venuti were the primary influences of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSFwWyW1OSU After relative obscurity in 1940s and 50s, he was rediscovered in 1960/70s, when he he established a musical relationship with tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims that resulted in three recordings. He also recorded an entire album with country-jazz musicians.

Eddie LANG (born Salvatore Massaro) (1902 in Philadelphia -- 1933, NYC) was an Italian-American jazz guitarist, regarded as the most important Chicago jazz guitarist and the Father of the Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt. He was playing professionally by about 1918, playing violin, banjo, and guitar. He worked with various bands in the USA's north-east, worked in London (late 1924 to early 1925), then settled in New York City, where he played with the bands of Joe Venuti, Adrian Rollini, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Frankie Trumbauer and Jean Goldkette in addition to doing a large amount of freelance radio and recording work. In 1929 he joined Paul Whiteman's Orchestra, and can be seen and heard in the movie The King of Jazz. His recordings with Bix Beiderbecke on cornet ("Singin' the Blues", 1927) or series of recordings with Joe Venuti's violin are considered the milestone jazz recordings of the 1920/30s. Lang died from a sudden hemorrhage following a tonsillectomy, at the age of thirty. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYr6xCM0PDU

Arthur SCHUTT (b.1902 in Reading, Pennsylvania, d. 1965 in San Francisco) American jazz pianist and arranger. Schutt learned piano from his father, and accompanied silent films as a teenager in the 1910s. He was playing in a movie palace in 1918 when Paul Specht hired him to play in a band; he worked for Specht until 1924, including during a tour of Europe in 1923. He held positions with Roger Wolfe Kahn and Don Voorhees, and became a prolific studio pianist, recording with Fred Rich, Nat Shilkret, Frankie Trumbauer, Bix Beiderbecke, and the Charleston Chasers. From 1926-29 and again in 1931 he played with Red Nichols; he also recorded with Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey's orchestra (1928-31), and Benny Goodman. He recorded under his own name in 1929-30 as a bandleader. In the 1930s, Schutt led his own band in New York. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFcchfRfeME In the 1940s and 1950s, he worked as a studio musician at MGM in Hollywood. Schutt also composed the ragtime "piano novelty" piece "Bluin' the Black Keys" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dhCM72nzHw , considered one of the most difficult traditional, period rags ever written.