Louis Katzman

American musician, bandleader, and arranger (b. April 19, 1890 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russian Empire [now Chișinău, Moldova] – d. November 13, 1943 in New York, NY). Katzman played cornet, like his father Philip, trumpet, and violin. He emigrated to the United States in 1906, settled in Manhattan, New York, and became a naturalized citizen in 1916. Starting out as a cornetist in Vaudeville and in pit orchestras on and off Broadway around 1910, Katzman soon became known as a skilled arranger, working, e.g., for Yerkes Jazarimba Orchestra and for Sarah Bernhardt during her 1919 American tour. By 1915, he recorded for Edison Records, for whom he continued to arrange and orchestrate through 1921. From 1921-1923, he was retained by the music publisher M. Witmark & Sons as a part-time staff arranger for $10,000/year, then a staggering sum. In 1922, Katzman joined The Aeolian Company, and when The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company acquired that company's Vocalion (2) label in late 1924, he stayed on and became the musical director for Brunswick Laboratories. Around the same time, Katzman also began to work for a variety of New York radio stations, first for WEAF (1922), later in particular for WINS (1935-1941). Katzman directed hundreds of recording sessions in New York during the 1920s & 1930s, leading various ensembles both under his own name and studio orchestras that recorded, for example, as Los Castilians, The Badgers (7), and the Colonial Club Orchestra [many sessions under the latter name have been wrongly attributed to Bob Haring]. He is also said to have written the arrangements for his uncle's klezmer band, Abe Katzman's Bessarabian Orchestra, when it recorded for Brunswick in 1927. In 1934, Katzman cut thirty sides for Decca. Katzman composed "Bevo Blues" and "What's This" (1919), "Where The Volga Flows" and "Russian Love Song" (1922), "The Meanest Kind Of Blues" (1924), "Mystic Persian Winds" (1926), and "I'm Waltzing In Love With You" (1927). Father of the composer and co-founder of the rights society BMI, Henry Manners, a.k.a. Henry Manners Katzman.