MYPWHAE's unhip Christmas, Part 2

Hello again, fellow un-hipsters! We start with a number you've heard a million times (so far this year, I mean)--Leroy Anderson's classic 1948 Christmas instrumental Sleigh Ride, which, according to the composer, was written during a heat wave (source: PBS). This version by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops is my choice for the best-ever rendition, though I have no idea of the year (my copy is a reissue, so I can't date it). I don't think it's the Pops' 1949 recording (too hi-fi), and it has infinitely more sonic punch than the Pops' latter stereo version. So, I dunno. I do know it's the best Sleigh Ride I've ever taken. Er, heard:

Sleigh Ride (Leroy Anderson), Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, from 45 RPM reissue.

Lyrics were added to the tune in 1950 by Mitchell Parish--just in time for Merv Griffin to sing them with Freddy Martin:

Sleigh Ride (Anderson--Parish), Merv Griffin, with Freddy Martin and His Orchestra, 1951. From original RCA Victor 45.

Richard Kountz' The Sleigh (a la Russe) is a choral standard from 1926. I had never heard--or heard of--it until I came upon this 1950 recording by Fred Waring. Now it's in my head forever. You can take that as a warning or an invitation! ("Ya-ha-ha-ha, ya-ha-ha-ha!!!!, etc.")

The Sleigh (a la Russe) (Richard Kountz, 1926), Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, 1950. From Decca LP.

That may not be a hip piece, but it's way cool. And I'm not talking winter weather. (Segue Alert) Which just happens to be the title of our next file, featuring Peggy Lee and Art Lund:

Winter Weather, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra, feat. Peggy Lee and Art Lund, 1941.

And here's Collins H. Driggs on the Hammond Novachord with a (most likely) Ferde Grofe arrangement of the Yuletide standard, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers. The tune--by German composer Leon Jessel--was copyrighted in Germany in 1911 as Die Parade der Holzsoldaten. I'm not sure when the words were added. Jessel, a Jew, was killed in 1942 by the Nazis, but his wonderful song lives on during Christmastime:

Parade of the Wooden Soldiers (Ballard MacDonald--Leon Jessel, prob. arranged by Ferde Grofe), Collins H. Driggs, 1940, on the Hammond Novachord. From Victor 78.

Minor by comparison, but clever and catchy, I'd Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus is charmingly sung by Judy Valentine, mother of contemporary Christian artist Ross Berkal:

I'd Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus/That Christmas Feeling, Hugo Winterhalter and His Orchestra, featuring Judy Valentine and the HW Chorus, 1958.

More Yuletide sides to come!














Our hard-working blogger reviews Christmas tracks as Wonder Woman cheers him on.

In the Navy: San Diego, 1985-86

The USS Merrill (DD-976), tied up (literally) in San Francisco.

Wow! My second and last ship, the USS Merrill, has its own Wikipedia entry! Which, for some reason, I can't successfully link to from here. Hm. Anyway, what an honor!

(And you know how I'm always singing the praises of Wikipedia. Er, ah....)

Actually, it's a good entry. Far more than anyone (including this former crewmember) might want to know. This makes up for an atrocious Wikipedia musical entry I read last night, one which had me in yell-at-the-Dell mode. Maybe W. should stick to Naval subjects.

Anyway, the USS Merrill had just gotten done with years of serving as a "testing platform" for the Navy Tomahawk cruise missile. The ship was huge, extremely top-heavy in its command, and with a crew predominantly underway-unfamiliar. During my ten months in San Diego, we made one trip--to San Francisco. That was fine with me; I'd had enough of chugging around the South China Sea. My whole reason for transferring to the states was to get any Japan-to-U.S. culture shock over prior to my end of service. Culture shock, of course, is quite a trip (which, ironically, is the only way to experience it). Part of it is not knowing whether you're there or here, and part of it is catching up with two or three years' worth of missed pop culture. Personal computers and MTV, for example, had become the rage while I was in Japan; both of them seemed like imports from outer space to me, especially the former. The first time I witnessed "Music Television," I thought it was a joke. And I was right, come to think of it.

To sum up, the ship sucked, but San Diego rocked. I loved the trollies, the thrift stores, the used book shops, and the weekend swap meet. (The street prostitutes and panhandlers, I ignored in live-and-let-live fashion. Too many of the latter, or I'd have been glad to help out.) I was happy I'd chosen to spend my final ten months there, and glad I ignored all the shipmates convinced I couldn't transfer without a minimum of twelve months. Never believe any such thing without checking it out yourself....

Here's me, next to some missile tubes, and outgrowing my uniform:













Or maybe that's the ship telescope. No, I'm sure they were missile launchers. My job was to detect such things, not shoot them and/or shoot them down. (The missiles, not the launchers.)

And here's the EW division's SLQ-32 starboard 04-level antenna. (I think we pronounced that "Slick." Can't remember.) Not only was our job thrilling as all get-out, so was our hardware. I daresay the SLQ-32 was downright "sexy":









I don't dig heights, so cleaning that thing while underway was no fun. However, we were only underway once, so I got through it just fine.

And here is nearly everyone in my division except me looking at a Russian fishing (?) boat that was actually a spy ship spying on us. It's practically invisible in the photo:

(Where's the photo?)

And it appears that the photo is invisible, too. Blogger has quit uploading images, apparently. Oh, well--can't complain. I got a lot up. And my San Diego photos are little more than "You Were There" shots, anyway. Sometime, I should post my Love Boat photos. Its seems that the Pacific Princess stopped in San Francisco while my sister was visiting. We took shots of one another standing in front of the fence separating the public from the giant cruise vessel. For legal reasons, none of the Pacific Princess post cards contained the words "Love Boat." This was confirmed by one of the gift shop employees. "Legal reasons?" I asked. He smiled and nodded. Ah-ha. In fact, my impression was that the gift shop folks weren't even allowed to mention that two-word name-phrase. Hope the guy wasn't fired for confirming, via nodding, my suspicions.

And that was San Diego. And the close of Lee's eight years in the United States Navy.

These posts have been brought to you by Get To Know Your Blogger, a program sponsored by Lee's Dell. Thanks for taking the trip with me.


Lee

In the Navy: Japan, 1982-1985

The USS Lockwood (FF-1064), my home address while serving in Yokosuka, Japan. The skies were looking a wee bit Scottish on this day.


My second Navy term put me on a ship for the first time--the USS Lockwood (FF-1064), to be precise. Homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, the Lockwood was a Knox Class Fast Frigate. I speak in the past tense because the Lockwood was decommissioned in 1993, following 23 years of service. Read all about it here.

The ship's primary mission was ASW (anti-submarine warfare), which meant rougher-than-usual motion through the water, since the sonar bell at the front of the ship limited our ability to "cut" through the ocean. This added plenty of bounce and vibration to our up-and-down rough-sea "pitching." And the sonar beeps were fun to (try to) sleep through. In spite of all this, I was good friends with the Sonar Techs.

My job was Electronic Warfare operator, which mostly involved sitting for long, underlit, underway hours in CIC (the Combat Information Center) and watching video-game-style icons appear and disappear on a PC-style screen. "False" signals, most of them. My division was made up of both EWs and ETs (Electronic Techs, not extraterrestrials), which meant that I occasionally got to pull duty as operator of our closed-circuit TV. Closed-circuit programming was provided, via VHS tapes, by the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, aka "A-Farts" (AFRTS). The programming inexplicably included Navy recruiting spots, and I wish I had taped some of the comments they inspired.

Out stops included Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, New Guinea, and a few spots in Japan, besides our home port. I also visited Tokyo, Yokohama, and a few other locations via train, and my one Tokyo rush-hour experience was the closest I've ever come to being crushed in, and by, a mob. Imagine holding a handrail, bent forward with your face nearly pushed into the newspaper of a man who's doing his best to pretend you aren't three inches away from him. I remember thinking, "No way they're going to put more people in this car." They put more people in the car.

Anyway, I snapped quite a few more photos during my second tour than I did in Scotland. We begin with three lean-Lee photos from 1982/1983. There's Lee on the USS Lockwood flight deck; Lee, about to be devoured by a temple dragon (Look behind you, dude!!), possibly in Yokohama; and Lee in the ship's Operations Dept. berthing with two snap-on Garfield toys on either side of his glasses (I think I bought them from a South Korean street vendor):















And here's another of the Lockwood from the outside, taken in Hong Kong as I was returning to the ship via boat--a more artistic view than the cluttered Lockwood innards, to be sure:










In Hong Kong, giant soda- and beer-bottle floats (?) were placed on the pier for our benefit. No one, including me, knew what that was all about. But it was sure cool:










Here are a couple more Lockwood-above-decks shots: the flight deck as it plays host to Lee and a helicopter (that's Hong Kong, again, in the background), and the quarterdeck and the POOW (petty officer of the watch), whose name I've forgotten.













Odds and ends: The friendly sign on my workspace door; the card I received after enduring the Shellback (equator-crossing) Ceremony (don't ask); me, lounging by my bunk; me, again, in an Incheon, South Korea record store (where else?), wearing my bought-in-Scotland cap.



















With any luck, these photos will remain in the order I assembled them. If not, I'll be doing some post-post-editing. Next: San Diego! Or, my unforgettable ten-month tour on the testing platform for the Tomahawk cruise missile, the USS Merrill (DD-976).

Lee

In the Navy: Scotland, 1978-1981

I served two four-year enlistments in the U.S. Navy from 1977 to 1981, and then from 1982 to 1986. My first hitch consisted of a landlocked tour as a Navy "Spook" in a little Scottish town called Edzell--which, I recall, was ten or so miles from Montrose. Or an hour's train ride from Aberdeen. Don't ask me for directions; it's been a while. Here are some shots of the Royal Air Force Base whose land and buildings were so generously provided for our use (click on photos for full-sized images):












That huge, circular fence in the first photo is an antenna--enclosed within it is the building where I worked as a Cryptologic Technican "R" Branch. We had two more antennae that looked like giant golf balls--wish I had a good shot of those. Very odd sights, indeed. I always wondered what the locals made of them. They probably said, "Those sure are strange-looking antennae they're using for Top Secret purposes, no?"

And here I am, 21 and quite lean, in my Edzell barracks room, gesturing with annoyance toward the amused photographer, who had just woken me up. To my right, buddy "Wild" Bill, looking (as always) wild:










How well I remember Edinburgh. I took the train to Scotland's capital as often as I was able--twice a week, if I could. I bought several hundred 78 RPM records at a wonderful shop called the Gramophone Emporium. I could never get a decent photo of that shop (Scotland is chronically overcast), but I managed to get a properly gloomy document of Edingburgh and Waverly train station. Gloomy but gorgeous, like so much of Scotland:










Friendly people, beautiful countryside, cool cities with sights to die for--I miss Scotland. Not its weather. But the people, places, and sights will always be with me.









The Montrose train station, where my journeys to Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow began.

Lee

Veterans Day at MYPWHAE

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Budd McCoy, 1959. From RCA Victor 45.

The Battle of New Orleans (Jimmy Driftwood), Johnny Horton, 1959. From vinyl.

Good Bye, Dolly Gray, The Columbia Quartette, 1902.

I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm on My Way, Peerless Quartet, 1917. From Victor 78.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition (Frank Loesser), Kay Kyser and His Orch., 1943.

Johnny Zero, Geraldo and His Orch., 1943.

Korea (Fighting in the Foreign Land), Gospel Pilgrims (1951)

American Salute (Morton Gould, 1943), John Williams cond. The Boston Pops, 1985. From vinyl.

So, music for and/or from: WWI and WWII, and the Revolutionary, Civil, Spanish-American, and Korean Wars. I lack musical selections of a politically neutral nature for the Vietnam or Gulf Wars (Leaving on a Jet Plane is the ideal number for the former, but I don't have it), so I've reluctantly left those musically blank. Of course, Veterans Day is also for peacetime vets, like myself. More to come on this peacetime vet's service....


Lee, former EW2 in the U.S. Navy

The promised scans; FaLaLaLaLa.com

I promised label scans, didn't I? What's with me today. No doubt, I'm groggy from having stayed up late last night to watch the bad-weather reporting. There was this big pink area heading for our neck of the woods, and I was looking out the window for any sign of pink rain. Or giant Pepto-Bismol® bottles floating in the air. ("Run! Find cover! They're about to dump!")

A girl storm, of course (pink). Blue storms are boy storms.

The promised scans:





















See? I actually have the records. In case you had any doubts. Not especially exciting labels, I don't suppose, though It's a Click is one one doesn't see very often. ("One one"?) No, one does not. This one doesn't, anyway.

And what does "It's a click" mean? Is it an alternate form of "It's a snap"? It can't be a misspelling of "clique." No, that wouldn't make any sense.

However, if you're a fan of popular Christmas music, it makes great sense to go to FaLaLaLaLa.com, a site dedicated to "preserving memories of Christmas vinyl past." Entire albums are posted there, including Ferrante and Teicher's prepared-piano Yuletide album for Westminster, a 12" title by the Golddiggers (remember them from Dean Martin's TV show?), and an LP's worth of The Caroleers which contains the two tracks Byron asked about. Byron, you will want to check that out.

Hm. I'm reading a New York Daily News article which names 1935 as the year "when record companies began bundling several 78-rpm discs in one package, with a cardboard outer jacket." Really? Then why have I seen 78 albums from the 1920s?

I'm going to run that by the folks on a gramophone message board.

That that I, of all people, ever doubt what I read in newspapers and/or on line.


Lee

MYPWHAE's Unhip Christmas, Part 1

Welcome, un-hipsters! We have one anti-Christmas novelty, two odd novelties, one campy novelty, and one Billie Holiday Verve track that meets all the standards of cool and hip, for those who care about such things. Might as well throw one of those in. Why not? We do "normal" here, once in a while.

Actually, everything here qualifies as pop-as-usual, save for the first track, one Buzzy, the Christmas Bee, which was recorded by (10 Year Old Wonder) Jeff and Sue Mitchell, the son and daughter of Duke Mitchell, who was one half of the imitation-Martin-and-Lewis comedy team featured in 1952's Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Duke also sang for Reprise and Liberty.

Duke Mitchell also shows up on a CD called The James Dean Era. It features a 1954 number called Jungle Rhythm, which has Dean, Bob Romeo, and Duke Mitchell. James plays the bongos.

No bongos on Buzzy--just a fairly over-the-top arrangement, somewhat weird lyrics and concept, and two young singers who aren't that bad--in fact, they do quite a good job for their age(s). The label is called It's a Click. Its address is/was: 1606 Argyle, Hollywood CA. When I found this at a San Diego swap meet twenty-some years ago, I knew it was something special:

Buzzy, the Christmas Bee (Feola--Mitchell), Jeff and Sue Mitchell, year unknown. (The song was also recorded by "The Duke Mitchell Family" for Verve in 1960!)

And, from 1962, here's the anti-Christmas novelty: Paddy Robert's Merry Christmas You Suckers. This showed up in a Volunteers of America box of records, stuck between two LPs. "Recording first published 1962," says the made-in-England Decca label:

Merry Christmas You Suckers (Roberts), Paddy Roberts, 1962. (Decca 11552)

And here's an odd one from Les Paul and Mary Ford: Jungle Bells (Dingo-Dongo-Day), written by Sid Bass and Roy Jordan. Sid Bass conducted and arranged for the Carlton label, and his name shows up on Merv Griffin's sides for same. I just now noticed that he co-wrote this tune--whose name I initially mistook for Jingle Bells. Imagine my surprise when I got the record home and listened to it. For anyone who thinks animal guitar effects began in the 1960s with rock:

Jungle Bells (Bass--Jordan), Les Paul and Mary Ford, 1953. (From Capitol 45)

Gee, you don't think the songwriters ever heard Mule Train, do you??

Next, some first-rate Bing Crosby camp, courtesy of 1963's Christmas Dinner, Country Style, which someone has included in a worst-of list at a Crosby message board. I don't know--it's one of my favorite Bings. So utterly unconnected with real life. Just like Christmas pop ought to be! It's odd, though, that Bing would give us such a plastic depiction of a family gathering, seeing as how Bing was quite the family man. He had two of them, after all. Two, coincidentally, is also the number of Crosby children who committed suicide (Lindsay and Dennis). And, if you multiply two times ten and add ten more, you have the age difference between Bing and second wife Kathryn. It's downright spooky! Anyway, from 1963, Amercian-family-symbol Bing with Hollywood's concept of a rural Yuletide feast:

Christmas Dinner, Country Style (R. Freed--Grace Saxon), Bing Crosby, w. Ralph Carmichael's Chorus and Orchestra, 1963.

And, finally, the cool selection: Billie Holiday's terrific Verve label version of I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm. True story: My source for this track gives no year, so I did a Google search. To narrow down the matches, I made a guess at the year--it sounded late-1950s, so I put "Billie Holiday," "Verve, "Love to Keep Me Warm," and "1957" in the Search box.

Guess what the recording date turned out to be? August 13, 1957. I must be a musical psychic.

Billie is joined by Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, and Louis Bellson. Which might explain the extremely high musical quality of this track:

I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm, Billie Holiday, 1957.

Believe it or not, when I listen to that number, my ears zero in on Oscar Peterson's piano chords. They are to die for.

More Christmas stuff to come! Plus, label photos to retro-accompany this post.


Lee

"Bacharach gives Bush no look of love"

Today is the first I've heard of Burt Bacharach's new CD, At This Time. I'm listening to the first track (the title song) right now, and I love it. Its lyrics refer to What the World Needs Now and The Windows of the World, two outstanding Bacharach-David protest songs--the first predating the Beatles' All You Need Is Love by two years.

The article "Bacharach gives Bush no look of love" appeared in today's Columbus Dispatch, and... wow. Bacharach has always been one of my musical heroes, but now he's at the top of the list. "Things are getting very bad," he's quoted as saying. "Young men and women are dying in an unwinnable war in Iraq, there's Hurricane Katrina and this president shows so little empathy. I'm scared for the future." I wish I could say so much in so few words. Fabulous!

So, of course, I've ordered the CD, even if I can hear the music for free. And I made a point to order it from Amazon.co.uk, since the American edition has copy protection that makes it impossible for people to get a decent facsimile on their hard drive (or, in some cases, any at all). I know little about portable digital devices, but apparently that move has really screwed things up for listeners. And has hurt the promotion of Burt's work. So I decided that the responsible parties don't deserve my business. The British copy cost me about nine quid, but so it goes.

A few years ago, I saw Burt and his musicians live on stage in Zanesville, Ohio. It was one heck of an entertaining show--I don't know that I've ever seen anything that rehearsed-to-the-last-detail in my life. They even performed The Blob (with Burt providing the finger-in-the-mouth pops) in a medley with The Story of My Life (Marty Robbins) and Magic Moments (Perry Como). Worth the hour's drive each way, and then some. Plus, Zanesville is a cool town.

And it looks like I picked up some spyware from the Bacharach download. My Spykiller® software displayed three items I haven't seen before, anyway. They are no longer with us. Aloha, I said to the spyware. Auf wiedersehen. Von voyage. Adios. Au revoir.

"How do you like that? He didn't even say 'goodbye'!"--The spyware's final words.

Just cookies, maybe. Who knows. They're gone, so it doesn't matter. Spykiller® loves cookies. Munch, munch. Yum, yum. If only it would eat up the Japanese ladybugs that are all over the house....


















Lee

Christmas comes but once each year

We hear that all the time, but can you think of a single holiday that happens more than once a year? There aren't two Easters. Or two Halloweens. So, why should there be more than one Christmas?

And all of this good-will-toward-all stuff is pretend. I hate to break it to you, but mankind, as a unit, has never united once in its history. Not one day a year, not ever.

Boy, am I in the Christmas spirit. Good grief. Who tinkled in my Grape Nuts Flakes?

My apologies. I will strive to get in "the holiday." At the moment, I'm feverishly assembling Yuletide tracks. It helps, in that regard, that I'm highly sinus-inflamed today. The weather is doing it. At any rate, I thrifted for Christmas records yesterday after a few days of staring, mouth agape, at insane prices on eBay. For example, an auction in progress for Bing Crosby's White Christmas on Decca, 78 RPM, was up to $20.00 (four bids)!!! Bing's White Christmas is widely regarded as the single most common record in existence--and it probably is. What do people think they're doing? And Jimmy Boyd and Gayla Peevey 78s are going for too much, while dirt-common Christmas LPs are fetching prices far in excess of the buck or two one would pay at Goodwill. I guess, with our booming economy (so insists the news, over and over), people have money to waste. I don't know. I know that I didn't assemble the collection I have by paying ten times what each item was worth. So, to heck with eBay.

Well... not totally. At the Bay, I landed what looks to be a terrific XMas novelty for $1.99. The dealer doesn't take PayPal, and I find that such ads are often for the taking. Rather, the items in them. Hell, I don't mind mailing a check. It's kind of... nostalgic. Charmingly old-fashioned. A check. Snail-mail. Details of a distant, nearly forgotten past. I savor the opportunity to relive those moments. In fact, I think I even walked to a mailbox at a shopping strip to mail the letter containing the check. Yes, I did. I'm sure I did. It was like a dream, but it did happen. I have witnesses.

I found a number of LPs I can use tracks from. Stuff so middle-of-the-road that it disappears into the asphalt. I find that my weirder XMas tracks mix well with material that's insanely conventional. The two are amazingly in the same league. Logic dictates that they would have nothing in common, but I often can't tell the two apart. How about you?

Silly question. You wouldn't come to this blog if you didn't share that perception....


Lee, doped on painkillers (to cope with a migraine/sinus headache combo)