"Whoopie Ti-Yi-Yo (Git Along Little Doggies)" by John I. White

I've been working on adding some of the numerous versions of Get Along Little Dogies tonight and found a good one from the 1930s by an artist named John I. White.

However, Discogs indicates that the same song was released on no less than 7 different labels...

From Discogs

"This coupling also released on one version of Perfect (3) 12709, Perfect (3) 12712, and Royal (16) 91249.

Identically-titled sides are paired on Banner 32179, Oriole (3) 8066, Romeo 1629, Romeo 5066, one version of Perfect (3) 12709, and Melotone (Canada) 91249, but use a different recording of "Strawberry Roan" from a 16 April 1931 recording session (matrix no. 10571-)."

Is there an easy way to pick out the original here, or should I just pick one and add an editor's note about the duplicates?

This does happen with 78s, often with those labels. I am not very expert but I think Conqueror, Banner, Oriole and Romeo were labels that were sold in particular stores so perhaps pick a label that had more general national distribution if you can. The comment could even be a public one. You can usually work out all the labels from 78discography.com, using the Mx and Cross Ref columns.

From the budget labels, Melotone (122) is by far the best represented on SHS. Personally, this would be my first option, only in this case I'd pass, since it's Canadian.

So that leaves Banner (108), Perfect (69) & Conqueror (69) to choose from.

The smaller ones like Romeo, Oriole, Emerson, Jewel, I try to avoid. For obvious reasons, I pass on split singles if possible. I would also make the note about the duplicates in the public comment.

Last edit: 2018-03-17 11:35:02 UTC by walt

I often do note in the Comments multiple releases of the same performance of a work on different labels. I tend to go with a release that I can get a label shot of the performance details for. All things being equal, I tend to follow a hierarchy like Jon and Walt suggest.

Thanks for the help. I chose the Perfect release as that's the one of the three on Discogs that had national distribution (Conqueror was exclusive to Sears and Roebuck and the Melotone release was for Canada). His version has now been added Little Doggie