Roger Wolfe Kahn

Roger Wolfe Kahn (October 19, 1907 – July 12, 1962) was an American jazz and popular musician, composer, bandleader (Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Orchestra) and an aviator.

Roger Wolfe Kahn (originally spelled "Wolff") was born in Morristown, New Jersey, into a wealthy German Jewish banking family.

His parents were Adelaide "Addie" (Wolff) and Otto Hermann Kahn, a famous banker and patron of the arts.

His maternal grandfather was banker Abraham Wolff.

Kahn began studying the violin aged six and is said to have learned to play eighteen musical instruments before starting to lead his own orchestra in 1923, aged only 16.

At the age of ten, Kahn had bought a ukulele in a Ditson Music Shop in Manhattan together with special-priced instruction on how to play; such was his keen interest in music.

The ukulele lured him away from his studies at St. Bernard's School and turned his mind toward violins, pianos, banjos and jazz orchestras.

At St. Bernard's he took no more interest in athletics than he did in studies or in social activities.

By the age of sixteen, he’d rejected studying at college.

Instead, he formed his own booking agency and organized a paying band and installed it at the Knickerbocker Grill in New York.

He could play every instrument in the outfit, all self-taught, and his favorite instruments to play were the piano and saxophone.

By the time he reached nineteen, he had eleven orchestras on his books that played in resorts and hotels from Newport, Rhode Island to Florida.

They’d netted him personally an average of $50,000 a year for the four years of their existence.

His success enabled him to pursue his passion for composing music and aviation.

Otto and Roger Kahn were the first father and son to appear separately on the cover of Time magazine: Otto in November 1925 and Roger in September 1927, aged 19.

In 1925, Kahn appeared in a short film made in Lee De Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process.

Kahn hired many famous jazz musicians and singers of the day to play and sing in his band, especially during recording sessions (e.g.) Tommy Dorsey, Morton Downey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Artie Shaw, Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Libby Holman, Gertrude Niesen, Franklyn Baur, Dick Robertson, Elmer Feldkamp and Gene Krupa.

Early on in his career Kahn made several recordings under the name Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra.

It was during September, 1925, that Joe Venuti joined the Kahn Orchestra during their residency at the New York Biltmore Hotel.

On 15 December 1925, Kahn and his Orchestra recorded four takes of the song Rhythm Of The Day for Victor Records and for some reason Victor chose not to release any of them.

Undeterred, Kahn wrote the song Following You Around, which made him money and George Whiteman went on to arrange the score of Kahn’s stage musical Rhapsurdity.

Another musical comedy Kahn wrote, (a satire on musical comedy) called Hearts and Flowers, was produced by Horace Liveright.

He made recordings for:

On 16 August 1926, Time magazine wrote: "If it is strange that Otto Hermann Kahn, sensitive patron of high art in Manhattan, should have a saxophone-tooting, banjo-plunking, clarinet-wailing, violin-jazzing son, it is stranger still that that son, Roger Wolfe Kahn, has become a truly outstanding jazzer at the perilous age of 18. Roger's ten orchestras, one of which he leads, have netted him some $30,000".

In February 1926, Kahn's recording of I'm Sitting On Top Of The World charted at #9.

It was reported in Variety, (September 29, 1926); "Roger Wolfe Kahn and his original Victor orchestra of eleven are getting $4200 for five and a half days booking commencing October 4 at the New Orpheum Palace, Chicago, which Kahn's band will headline at the opening attraction. The Kahn outfit returns to the Albee, Brooklyn, NY followed by the Palace Theatre, New York, following which they commence rehearsals for their new cafe, Le Perroquet de Paris, scheduled for opening in November".

Kahn fronted several fashionable night clubs in New York.

One of his own clubs, Le Perroquet de Paris, opened in New York in November 1926 with a five-dollar cover charge.

On 16 August 1926, Time magazine wrote: "Last week, Roger announced his purchase of Giro's (night club) in Manhattan; his partner is Rene Racover of the Perroquet in Paris (France); his resort's new name is Perroquet de Paris." Kahn spent $250,000 of his father’s money on decorating the club and installing a silver stage proscenium.

The club had a mirrored dance floor and aquariums beneath the individual tables and Kahn made a point of following the Parisian example of giving expensive souvenirs to the women that visited his clubs.

At Le Perroquet de Paris he gave each female guest a bottle of premier perfume.

Variety magazine reported Le Perroquet de Paris to be, "the last gasp in smart night clubs. Ultra artistic with an ultra 'In following' (with) the millionaire maestro's own crack dance band. Be sure to make it. $5 couvert."

In 1927, Kahn produced two Vitaphone film shorts called Night Club.

One short featured an act called the Williams Sisters (a singing/dancing duo).

Both shorts were filmed on February 14, 1927 at the Manhattan Opera House on 315 West 34th Street in New York, and the Williams Sisters were featured in the short numbered Vitaphone #469 as 'signing and dancing youngsters' performing a number titled "Thinking of You."

The Vitaphone film was an early attempt at sound movies which used both film and disk for sound.

A reviewer in the San Antonio Express, April 10, 1927 wrote: "Roger Wolfe Kahn's specialty on the Vitaphone is undoubtedly the best subject offered since the installation of the devise. His instrumental harmony is wonderful and original... and the Williams Sisters act brings the act above par for any circuit." A copy of the sound disk supposedly exits at the Library of Congress in Washington, but the film elements are missing and presumed lost.

In some respect, due to his father's prominence, Kahn’s imagined Gatsbyesque lifestyle made him a regular feature of gossip columns, although in reality he was carefully unobtrusive and shied away from company.

Were it not for his precipitous enthusiasms and precocious successes he may well have attracted little more than statistical notice.

Unlike his younger days when he took little interest in fashion, by the time he’d reached twenty, as an eligible bachelor he’d grown more debonair.