Van and Schenck were popular
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D...
entertainers in the 1910s and 1920s:
Gus Van (born August Von Glahn, August 12, 1886 - March 12, 1968),
baritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek βαρύτονος, meaning 'deep sounding', music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second G below middle C to the F above middle C...
and
Joe Schenck (pronounced "shaŋk" -- born Joseph Thuma Schenck, c. 1891 - June 28, 1930),
tenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly...
. They were
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
stars and made appearances in the
Ziegfeld FolliesThe Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
of 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1921. They made numerous
phonograph recordsA gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or simply record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the centre of the disc...
for the
EmersonEmerson Records was a record label active in the United States between 1916 to 1928. Emerson Records produced between the 1910s and early 1920s offered generally above average audio fidelity for the era, pressed in high quality shellac. The fidelity of the later issues compares less...
,
VictorThe Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
, and
ColumbiaColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment, and operates as an imprint of the Columbia/Epic Label Group. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
record companies.
With Schenck on piano, the duo sang and performed
comedyComedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece...
routines. Van was especially adept at dialect humor, and could imitate any number of regional and continental accents. One of the team's typical novelty hits was
PastafazoolaPastafazoola is a 1927 novelty song written by the early 20th Century American songwriting duo of Van and Schenck....
, in praise of Italian food and sung in the appropriate style. Van's hearty baritone and Schenck's high tenor harmonized well, and the team became known as "the pennant-winning battery of songland." They performed on
radioRadio is the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
shows and appeared in early talking motion pictures, including several musical shorts -- in both
VitaphoneVitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes. The soundtrack was not printed on the actual film, but...
and
Fox MovietoneThe Movietone sound system is a sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures which guarantees synchronisation between the sound and the picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film used to record the pictures...
-- and one feature, the MGM film
They Learned About WomenThey Learned About Women is a 1930 American black and white sports drama musical film. Though this film is a "talkie", MGM also issued this movie in a silent version, with Alfred Block writing the titles. The film was remade in 1949 as Take Me Out to the Ball Game...
(1930).
During the first world war, they recorded humorous songs such as "I don't want to get well" which told the tale of a wounded soldier who did not want to recover, as he was comfortable in hospital and in love with a nurse.
After Schenck's death, Van continued to perform as a solo artist on stage, screen, and radio. He appeared in many New York-produced
SoundiesSoundies were an early version of the music video: three-minute musical films, produced in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood between 1940 and 1946, often including short dance sequences...
in 1941. Schenck was buried in The Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.
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