''; "
Ramblin' Wreck" was one of the songs played that night. Arthur Murray was born in 1895 as Moses Teichman in
Galicia,
Austria-Hungary, to a family of
Jewish background. In August 1897, he was brought to America by his mother Sarah on the
S.S. Friesland, and landed at
Ellis Island. They settled on Ludlow Street, on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan with his father, Abraham Teichmann. He soon began teaching
ballroom dancing to patients from the greater
Boston area, at the Devereux Mansion Physical Therapy Clinic in
Marblehead, Massachusetts, before moving to
Asheville, North Carolina. Murray arrived at the
Battery Park Hotel November 28, 1914, at age 19 and began teaching dance there. At the outbreak of World War I, under the pressure of the anti-German sentiment prevalent in the U.S., Murray changed his last name of Teichman to a less German-sounding name. The
Asheville Citizen reported in 1920 that Murray had spent six summers teaching at the Battery Park. At that time, he had also begun his chain of dance studios and become a well-paid dance writer. He had also signed a deal to produce records for teaching dance for
Columbia Gramophone Company. Murray released many successful dance records for Columbia as well as Capitol Records, some of which included coupons for dance lessons at Arthur Murray Studios. In 1919, Murray began studying business administration at the
Georgia School of Technology, and taught ballroom dancing in Atlanta at the
Georgian Terrace Hotel. In 1920, he organized the world's first "radio dance"; a band on the Georgia Tech campus played "
Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech" and other songs, which were broadcast to a group of about 150 dancers (mostly Tech students) situated atop the roof of the Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta. He graduated from
Georgia School of Technology in 1923. On April 24, 1925, Murray married his famous dance partner, Kathryn Kohnfelder (September 15, 1906,
Jersey City, New Jersey – August 6, 1999,
Honolulu, Hawaii), whom he had met at a radio station in
New Jersey. She had been in the audience while he was broadcasting a dance lesson. ==The start of Arthur Murray Studios==