Tom Stacks
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Tom Stacks was the lead singer, drummer, and sound effects man for many of Harry Reser's late 1920's jazz and novelty bands that included "The Six Jumping Jacks" and "Harry Reser's Rounders" (Reser would use many of the same musicians and simply change the names of the bands so that he could work for several companies at once). Stacks' unusual voice has been described as having a "built in smile" and also as being "what a man would sound like if his voice box remained in adolescence while the rest of his body matured."
Stacks sang with joyous enthusiasm on hundreds of late 1920 recordings. His rendition of "Horses" displays his ability to make the most out of the comic elements in a novelty song while also keeping up with the rapid fire tempo of Reser's band that nearly leaves him breathless. Stacks could also sing ballads in a lovely, heartfelt tenor, as evidenced in his versions of "Avalon" and "What a girl! What a night!" Stacks was diminutive and just barely weighed 100 pounds. Stacks died in a Chinese restaurant fire in the early thirties. He returned to the burning building to try to recover his drum set and died in the inferno.
