Roy Carroll & His Sands Point Orchestra (Ben Selvin’s Orchestra), Vocal chorus by Roy Carroll (uncredited singer) – When Your Lover Has Gone, Fox Trot (E.A.Swan), Velvet Tone 1931 (USA) NOTE: This outstanding tune is one of those rare cases, when immediately after presenting in public for the first time, and when its last notes have resounded, everyone in the audience is sure, that just participated in the birth of immortal standard. Nobody knows what decides about one tune becoming at once a standard and another one – albeit equally beautiful not less appealing – does not. As sages say, perhaps it has something to do with the magic. Perhaps one composer makes a pact with devil another does not – therefore in one case the magic trick is used, while in the other – not. So it happens in “When Your Lover…” – where a long story and all of the pain of the lovers’ parting is transferred in an abbreviated musical period: after the simple verse, in merely 32-bars of the refrain. After being featured in James Cagney’s movie “Blonde Crazy” in 1931, this song has at once been included on the list of evergreen “Songs of the Songs” of all the lovers of the world: so the bygone ones, as those yet to come. It was composed by the Finnish-American composer, bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Einar Aaron Swan. Born in Massachusetts from the Finnish parents, Swan started playing on alto-saxophone in 1924 in the renowned Sam Lanin’s Roseland Ballroom Orchestra, with such front-line American pop- and jazz-musicians as Red Nichols, Vic Berton and met Fletcher Henderson, for whom he started writing arrangements. In 1925 he switched to Vincent Lopez’ band, with which he traveled in Europe and where he had a chance to play with Mike Mosiello and Xavier Cugat. In 1930, Swan gave up active dance band playing and concentrated on writing arrangements for the radio programs and for bandleaders such as Eddie Cantor and Dave Rubinoff. His greatest hit “When Your Lover Has Gone” immediately put his name among the best American pop-composers of his time, especially when the song became a golden number of all ballroom orchestras of the world and was included into repertoire of top stage performers, such as Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Billie Holiday or Lee Wiley. In 1939 Swann composed another awesome tune In the Middle of the Dream, which was successfully presented by Tommy Dorsey and recorded by Glen Miller’s orchestra, yet shortly thereafter the rising star of the young composer suddenly fell down from his sky and he died of cerebral haemorrhage in New York in the age of 37. The Roy Carrol’s orchestra is one of Ben Selvin’s label names, and so is the singer’s pseudonym. The voice sounds very familiar to me, yet at the moment I can’t say, who he is.