Sylvester Ahola

Sylvester "Hooley" Ahola was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on 24th May 1902, of Finnish immigrants. He began drumming at the age of six, switching later to cornet. He played professionally in various New England bands, before joining Paul Specht's outfit in New York in late 1925. In April 1926, the Specht band journeyed to London for a two-month engagement at the Royal Palace Hotel in Kensington. London made such a profound impression on the young trumpeter that he vowed to return if the opportunity arose. Hooley left Specht's outfit in February 1927, then worked in several other well-known New England and New York bands, most notably the California Ramblers, which included Adrian Rollini on bass sax.
In September 1927, Ahola joined the band Rollini assembled for the Club New Yorker, which featured some of the best white jazz musicians of the time, including Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer from Jean Goldkette's band, which had recently split up. Although he only worked alongside Bix for a few weeks, until the club shut down due to poor business, the legendary cornetist exerted a long-lasting influence on Ahola, as many of the recordings he made in Britain testify.
  While in New York with Cass Hagan's band, Ahola learned that Reggie Batten, a bandleader from the Savoy Hotel, was in New York looking for a first trumpet player. Such was Hooley's reputation that Batten signed him up straight away without even auditioning him, and Hooley and his wife Saima voyaged to England in mid-December 1927. Initially, he held the first trumpet chair in the New Savoy Orpheans, transferring to Ambrose and his Orchestra at the May Fair Hotel in October 1928, where he stayed until he returned to the USA in September 1931.
The third member of the "front line" for the first couple of sessions was another New Englander, Johnny Helfer, who played clarinet and tenor sax but about whom little else is known. He may have been recruited by Howard Jacobs, because both hailed from Boston, Massachusetts, and when the latter returned from the States in early 1927, Helfer appeared with him in the line-up of the Sylvians at the Berkeley Hotel. Helfer, like Ahola and Lally, was also part of the Firman stable at Zonophone, and also participated in New Mayfair Dance Orchestra recordings under Carroll Gibbons' and then Ray Noble's direction between 1928 and 1930.