Bill Challis told me that he was approached by the Handy Music Publishers to make an arrangement of their tune Sugar and try to get Paul Whiteman to record it. Bill told Whiteman they also offered Challis a bit of money if all this could happen. Bill said Whiteman was all for his men to make some extra money and it should be done !
Whiteman was able to record Sugar [ even though it was done earlier on the Victor label by Bennie Moten on 6-11-1927 using a stock by the composer; Maceo Pinkard . ] It was recorded on Victor 20855-A .
Whiteman’s Sugar was recorded on 2-28-1928 and on Victor 21464-B. Having the same pop song come out on by two big bands on the same “dance series” was pretty rare in those days…but I guess Whiteman was big enough to pull this off. [You will see regular series Victor dance series records of a song and then a RACE series recording on Victor come out from time to time]
Anyway to continue the Challis story: Bill told me that the Handy Company requested to see his score. They kept for a very long time and after many calls and no returned score, Bill had threatened some legal action to get it back [Bill at one time was considering a law practice in his early days]. He did finally get it back without any legal action.
What Bill did not know was that Millard G. Thomas [working for the Handy Company] made a stock of his arrangement that he did for Whiteman and reduced all his writings to fit to an 11 piece stock
This is how Elizalde recorded Sugar before Whiteman on 1/15/28 [according to Rust]
Before I knew of the stock, I played the Elizalde record version for him and we both were amazed of how they got this arrangement and that this came out before Whiteman’s version. I found a copy of the stock after Bill’s passing and now play it with the Nighthawks.
As far as Quealey’s solo: I’m only guessing that maybe some of the US Elizade band members heard it “live” before they left for England and were able to recreated it in England.
PS: Millard G. Thomas did some work for Harry Belafonte for his RCA Victor sides much later !