A side: Vocal by Frank Munn (uncredited).
B side: Vocal by Paul Small (uncredited).
Both originally released in 1931 on Brunswick 6205 with black Scroll Label.
Billboard, Apr. 17, 1943, p. 66: Record Buying, Going Strong.
In 1939, CBS acquired American Record Corporation which included Columbia Records and had Brunswick as ARC's flagship label. CBS dropped Brunswick and made Columbia its flagship label. This violated the license for the Brunswick label from former owner Warner Bros. so they gained ownership of the Brunswick catalog they held before ARC took over the label. Warner then sold Brunswick to Decca Records which revived Brunswick as a reissue label and this is the earliest example found here.
One might argue that there is a difference between vintage jazz recordings and out-dated dance music, but that could be merely a matter of perspective. On the other hand, The general public, as a rule, usually doesn't have an over-abundance of perspective, so...
I had forgotten about the musician's strike. I can see how it would have given a second-wind to recordings that would otherwise have been holding up piles of dust on backroom shelves. If if had been a few years later, somebody would undoubtedly have thought of dubbing in a new vocal over the 1931 orchestra. It probably could have been done in 1943, as far as that goes, but not nearly so easily as it would become when tape got here.
Indeed, this 1931 recording must have sounded extremely old-fashioned by 1943 (the same must have been true for many of the reissues in the Brunswick Collectors Series). MusicProf78 explains very well why the record sold anyway:
"When the throngs of “Casablanca” fans eagerly visited the music stores in 1943 to purchase a copy of “As Time Goes By,” their choices were limited to only dated-sounding versions recorded twelve years earlier when the tune had first been introduced. Because of the ongoing strike against the record companies by the musicians union (aka The Recording Ban), no new recordings featuring union musicians were being made in early 1943. So Victor reissued a 1931 Rudy Vallee version, which now reached #2 on Billboard, and Brunswick reissued this Jacques Renard (#3 peak)."
It's hard to believe that Brunswick could sell records with this kind of vocal on them as late as 1943. There were plenty of what were known as "Mickey Mouse" bands still playing this style of instrumental music, but most of them had moved on in the vocal department by then. Guys and girls with rich, romantic voices were fixtures everywhere by the mid-thirties.
The label design is very similar to that of the reissues in the Brunswick Collectors Series, which were released beginning in May 1943. So the date 1943, which MusicProf78 (Rick Colom) gives for this re-issue, seems absolutely credible and I have added it above.
Although recorded in 1931, the reference to "Casablanca" clearly reflects a later release date, or possibly a later pressing of a disc that has been in the catalog for awhile.
Rust does not offer an identification of the vocalists on these sides. The ODP does offer the initials FM for "As Time Goes By" and PS for "I'm Sorry, Dear". They almost certainly stand for Frank Munn and Paul Small, who sing on Renard's sessions immediately before and after the one that produced these sides.