Trumpeter and singer Eddie Farley is best known for the mid '30s hit "The Music Goes 'Round and Around", the high point in the songwriting and bandleading partnership of Farley and Mike Riley. The two got together in the early '30s, not long after Farley's professional career began. As a trumpeter his earliest credits appear to be with Bert Lown and his Hotel Biltmore Orchestra, an outfit he began playing with in the late '20s for several years. Farley seemed to never lose his desire to produce the sort of comfortable, easy-going music expected from a hotel band, and would still be playing in hotels when his career checked out. When that is seems to be something of a mystery, as does the year of the man's birth, listed as both 1904 and 1905. Jazz calenders printed in the year 2003 still listedFarley as being alive--at close to 100 years old, that might just mean the jazz scene has lost track of him.
Drummer Will Osborne was Farley's boss in the early '30s prior to launching the group with Riley. By 1935 the Farley and Riley project was going quite well in the New York City area thanks to the previously mentioned record, but the thrill of working together only lasted until 1936. At that time both men decided to fire off their own respective combo cannonballs. Farley had success with it, adding his own pleasant vocals to the mix and holding down stints at ritzy venues such as the Midnight Club and Meadowbrooks. In the '50s his group was featured at the Ivanhoe Club in Irvington, New Jersey, Farley making his home within a short drive from the gig.
