Bert Firman

As director of light music at Zonophone (a sister label of HMV), Bert Firman already had several years experience directing dance music recordings and realised that a small jazz-flavoured band could tap into a developing market for dance records containing hot solos.
Bert Firman was born Herbert Feuermann in 1906. His mother was Polish and his father was an Austro-Hungarian musician who had emigrated to London in the 1880s. Although Bert had three elder brothers who were all musicians, he set his young heart on becoming a doctor, a professional career that would have normally been met with approval from a dutiful parent. However, Firman senior apparently responded "No!, your brothers are musicians, your cousins are musicians, your uncles are musicians, I am a musician – you will be a musician!" And so, in deference to his father's wishes, Bert followed his brothers Sam, John and Sid in their musical footsteps.
Aged sixteen, Bert Firman was one of the youngest bandleaders in the world. Later in the 1920s, he repeated his success at the Hotel Metropole with bands at the Devonshire Restaurant and at the Carlton Hotel. In early 1924, a recording scout from the Gramophone Company reported that the band at the Hotel Metropole sounded suitable for recording. The demand for dance records was burgeoning and good bands were needed. After a short period Bert was offered the position of director of light music at Zonophone.
Bert Firman directed the first Rhythmic Eight session at the Gramophone Co's Hayes, North London studios in November 1927. The band's early recordings feature the Americans Frank Guarente on trumpet and Perley Breed on saxophone and clarinet. As leader of the Georgians, a band-with-a-band established by American bandleader Paul Specht in the early 1920s*, Frank Guarente was one of the first wave of American musicians to play extended dates in Europe, capitalising on the success that the Georgians' Columbia records had enjoyed in Great Britain, France, Germany and other European countries. In 1927, after having toured much of the European Continent, Guarente joined the Savoy Orpheans at the Savoy Hotel; while in London, he also took part in a number of freelance studio recordings organised by Firman, including the first few Rhythmic Eight sessions.