Long before radio, motion pictures or television came along, the main form of entertainment in America was the vaudeville stage. There you could see anything from dancing dogs to the best singers, actors or musicians in the world. From these stages came many of the performers we know and love today. Performers like Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Fanny Brice, the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and even W. C. Fields, got their start in vaudeville.

From the late 1800s to the early 1930s, thousands of these traveling vaudevillians entertained in theaters across America. One family, by the name of Gumm, performed on some of these stages. While, up to now, not much has been documented on their performances, from these beginnings the youngest of them came to be known as "the greatest entertainer in the world," Judy Garland. This recording is a tribute to vaudeville and to the Gumm family as representatives of that life and the greatness that came from it.