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Clyde McCoy and his orchestra swing out on "Doo Wacka Doo"

Clyde Lee McCoy[1] (December 29, 1903 in Ashland, Kentucky – June 11, 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee), was a jazz trumpet player whose popularity spanned seven decades. He is best remembered for his theme song, "Sugar Blues", written by Clarence Williams and Lucy Fletcher. The song hit in 1931 and 1935, in Columbia and Decca versions, and returned to Billboard magazine's Country (Hillbilly) chart in 1941. It was also played with vocals, by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Fats Waller and Ella Fitzgerald. Johnny Mercer had a vocal hit in 1947.

McCoy was a member of one of the families of the Hatfield-McCoy feud,[2] and was based at various times in Los Angeles, New York City, and at Chicago's Drake Hotel, where he first performed "Sugar Blues" in 1930. He co-founded Down Beat magazine in 1935,[3] and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6426 Hollywood Boulevard.

One hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1912, an African-American musician by the name of WC Handy published a song that would take the US by storm - Memphis Blues. It launched the blues as a mass entertainment genre that would transform popular music worldwide.

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician.[1] He was widely known as the "Father of the Blues".

Handy remains among the most influential of American songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to one of the dominant national forces in American music.

Handy was an educated musician who used folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. He loved this folk musical form and brought his own transforming touch to it.

Vincent Lopez (30 December 1895 – 20 September 1975) was an American bandleader and pianist.

Vincent Lopez was born of Portuguese immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York[1] and was leading his own dance band in New York City by 1917. On November 27, 1921 his band began broadcasting on the new medium of entertainment radio; the band's weekly 90-minute show on Newark, NJ station WJZ boosted the popularity of both himself and of radio.[2][3][4] He became one of America's most popular bandleaders, and would retain that status through the 1940s.

He began his radio programs by announcing "Lopez speaking!".His theme song was "Nola," Felix Arndt's novelty ragtime piece of 1915, and Lopez became so identified with it that he occasionally satirized it.