Things to do on New Year's Eve (decking the halls, wassailing)

Kay Kyser and His Orchestra ask, What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? We'll let them pose that interrogative sentence, and then we'll provide a couple of suggestions:

What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? (Frank Loesser), Kay Kyser and His Orchestra, 1947.

Well, that's a good question. We could do what millions of Americans do--i.e., party intensely while getting progressively more tanked. An older version of this ritual is chronicled in the following number:

Here We Come Awassailing, The London Symphony Brass Ensemble, 1993.

Hm. Catchy tune, but it could use some words. We'll take care of that:

Wassail Song, The Ambrosian Singers, directed by (Line Material's own) John McCarthy, 1989.

Yup, the same John McCarthy who provided the choral sounds for those Line Material Christmas records, most probably. Weird, no?

Or we could opt for a more sober, but just as lively, activity. I refer to decking the halls. With boughs of holly. Fa la la la la, la la la la. The words to this song mention both Christmas and the New Year, though this version has no words--just plenty of brass:

Deck the Halls, The London Symphony Brass Ensemble, 1993.









That's pretty much it--wassailing, or decking the halls. Or you can stay home and watch TV. Read a book. But, whatever you do, have a Happy New Year! ("From Line Material....")

Lee

Auld Lang Syne; Ringing in a Brand New Year; Happy Birthday

I think I've covered all of the New Year bases here--not sure.

In 1799, Scottish poet Robert Burns adapted the traditional song Auld Lang Syne. The complicated history of the song is told in this excellent article. 150 years later, Roy Kral and Jackie Cain did a shoobie-do-wah version of Burns' effort. This is from an original Atlantic 45 of same:

Auld Lang Syne, Roy Kral-Jackie Cain Sextet, 1949. From an original Atlantic 45.

This next one is for Byron, whom I thank for reminding me about this track. Turns out I had it on cassette tape. And here it is:

Ringing in a Brand New Year, The Dominoes, 1953.

And we close this post with Happy Birthday wishes for 2006. Or should those wishes go to the Old Year, 2005, which is about to turn 1? Hm.... Problem is, the moment a year turns 1, it becomes the next year. Which makes throwing a Birthday party all the harder, as if fitting two-thousand-plus candles on the cake weren't enough of a headache.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to one of the two years in question. Take your pick!

Happy Birthday to You (Mildred J. Hill, Patty Smith Hill), Brunon Kryger and His Dance Orchestra, from 78 on Harmonia label, 1945.

Happy Birthday to You entered the world in 1893 as Good Morning to All, its melody by Mildred J. Hill and its words by Mildred's sister, Patty Smith Hill. For years, the song was used without any credit (or dough) going to the Hill Sisters; in 1934, Happy Birthday was finally copyrighted. See snopes.com for the whole interesting tale.

People take simple songs like this one for granted, but not me. I think it's remarkably well-done, and I suspect it wouldn't be around after 100-plus years if it weren't a pretty good tune.















From my 1933 copy of The American Hymnal, edited by Robert H. Coleman.

Happy Birthday, Old Year! Or New Year! Both, maybe.


Lee

A New Year Carol

This anonymous poem was collected by British novelist and poet Walter de la Mare for the famous anthology Come Hither (1923). The tune was written by British composer Benjamin Britten around 1934. Info on the traditions described in the lyrics can be found here. A musical masterpiece for your New Year's Eve/Day:

A New Year Carol (Benjamin Britten, 1933-35), The Cathedral Quartet, 1992.

Here we bring new water from the well so clear,
For to worship God with, this happy new year;
Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,
With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine;

Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her toe;
Open you the west door and turn the old year go;
Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,
With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine;

Sing reign of fair maid, with gold upon her chin.
Open you the east door and let the new year in!
Sing levy dew, sing levy dew, the water and the wine,
With seven bright gold wires, and bugles that do shine.

(Words found at http://www.red4.co.uk/ebooks/welshxmas.htm)

Lee

Finding Stuff, Part 5--Will the Circle Be Unbroken

I'm nearly positive that this is part 5. I'm even willing to go on record as saying that I am practically certain of same. Of course, if this turns out not to be part 5, I will deny having made any claim along those lines. In fact, I can't even remember making the claim. (What claim?)

Anyhow, a short while back, I posted Charles D'Almaine's 1905 Medley of Old Time Reels, an excellent example of country fiddling that predates even Don Richardson's terrific sides for Columbia. I just found a much better copy, and, not surprisingly, was able to produce a much better-sounding MP3. The only problem: my new copy (a later pressing) credits the side to one John Taylor. It's the exact same performance that was credited to Charles D'Almaine on the earlier pressing, so I don't know what to think. Except that John/Charles was one heck of a fiddler:

Medley of Old Time Reels, John Taylor (or Charles D'Almaine?), Victor 16393, 1905.

This year, I was lucky enough to replace another chewed-up 78 RPM classic, Scottish evangelist William McEwan's version of Will the Circle Be Unbroken? That 1913 recording was this blog's inaugural file, in fact. (File in fact?) So it's good to have a better copy. And I forgot to take a digital photo of it. Dang it. (Intermission)

O.K.--photo taken. A tad out of focus, but not bad. This song exists in two versions, by the way--the original, by Charles H. Gabriel (music) and Ada Ruth Habershon (words), and the swiped version by A.P. Carter, which features words about a hearse, a cold and cloudy day, etc. Since the 1907 Gabriel-Habershon version predates Carter's by more than 20 years, I consider it to be the authentic one. There are excellent versions of the 1907 Circle by Eddy Arnold, The Blue Ridge Quartet, The Stewart Family, Pat Boone, and Burl Ives, to name five folks. (1,2,3,4,5. Yup, five.)

Please click photo to get to file:


















William McEwan sounded like Homer Rodeheaver after ten cups of coffee. I love his intense, heartfelt style! To have heard this man in person--that would have been something. I wish these gifted evangelist-singer types would be taken more seriously, but gospel is considered so uncool....

An interesting contrast to the Carters' comparatively sedate presentation.


Lee

Counting--as easy as 1, 2, 4.

Well, for the second time, I've skipped part 4 in a series. Which means, at least, that I'm consistent. Consistency is a virtue to be proud of. Thanks, Myron, for bringing this sequential lapse to my attention.

Oh, well--to err is robotic. I mean, human. Problem is, when I'm writing a post, I can't see the previous entries, so I have no way of double-checking. (That's a pretty good excuse, no?)

Which brings up an interesting fact o' our species--the ability to count is not innate. How about that? Kids don't instinctively go "1, 2, 3, 4, etc." on their fingers and toesies; they learn to do so. There are, in fact, "pre-counting" cultures in which counting, as such, is conducted in ways that make little sense to those of us trained in 0,1,2,3.... And we all know that only recently in human history did zero come to have its modern function: 1, 10, 20, 30, etc. I read somewhere about the function of zero before it became zero as we know it, but the details escape me. Especially if there were five (I mean, four) of them....

In other news, my R&B-expert friend knows of no black versions of I'll Step Aside, which makes Toni Arden's performance (see previous post) all the more interesting. Face it--R&B-style singing had found its way into pop before Elvis made his mark on/at RCA. And you learned it here.

So, five more days until New Year's Day. I mean, four! What is today, anyway? (Ah--the 28th.) Hey, if I'm going to lose my mind, I may as well go for the complete experience.

All I know is that New Year's Day is coming. As in, soon. And that I will, inevitably, at some point, write "2005" on a 2006 check. And send it.

Aren't you glad we had this talk? Let's see--is there any more news? Um.... Oh, yeah. The Little Drummer Boy expose (wish I knew how to make accent marks) that I promised will have to wait. It occurred to me, moments after I announced same, that it's going to take some time to get all the sordid facts together. All I know is (Repeat-Information Alert) that the song began its life in 1941 as Carol of the Drum. Allegedly a traditional Czech carol, it was transcribed (or, as many suspect, created) by Wellesey one-time Person of the Week Katherine K. Davis. The Trapp Family Singers recorded Drum in the early 1950s--we heard that very performance at this blog. In 1957, Jack Halloran wrote a choral arrangement of the piece and recorded it for Dot Records. A year later, Harry Simeone, using the same singers and the same arrangement (only slightly revised), recorded it as The Little Drummer Boy. On Simeone's Sing We Now of Christmas LP, the song was credited to Simeone. The 45 RPM version credits Simeone, Davis, and someone else--hopefully, my copy will come out of hiding so I can verify the third credit.

Anyway, the question is, how did this 1941 Katherine K. Davis classic become a "Christmas song from 1958"? (Wikipedia--who else?) My theory is that Simeone assumed the song was in the public domain and hence felt free to affix his John Hancock to it. Of course, it was not a p.d. song. Hence, Katherine's name was quickly "added" to the credits. At which point, Simeone's should have been removed.

The bottom line is, the story continues to be told that Harry Simeone wrote the song in 1958. You'd think that, after 47 years, maybe the facts would be commonly known, but guess again. Hey, this may be the Information Age, but no one said it was the Accurate Information Age.

Mainly, I want to find out if legal action was taken in 1958 to get Katherine K. Davis' name back in the credits, because I strongly suspect that was the case.

Ha! I just noticed--Wikipedia sez (of Little Drummer Boy), "It is also known as Carol of the Drums." Folks, please--don't use Wikipedia. If people stop using the thing, maybe it will go away.

In Columbus, Ohio, temps nearly reached 60. There's a word for this kind of weather: weird.













"Yo, dude--why didn't you tell me about all the munchies?"

Lee

Finding Stuff, Part 4--The Mod Moppets

"We're mod! Mod! We can't help it, but we're mod!"

You know, I've always wondered why kiddie titles tend to turn up in hammered condition--and now I know why. Look at the records scattered all over the floor. I mean, what did that teach kids about the proper handling and storage of sound recordings?

Anyway, neat picture of the Mod Moppets. They produced a surprising amount of sound for two musicians, especially two who were barely out of Kindergarten. You've got to love the underrehearsed clunkiness of these performances--just the sort of tackiness we expect, and love, from Pickwick (here masquerading as Happy Time). I found a year of 1966 for this on the Net, and that sounds right. Worth every penny of the 59 cents I paid (at Goodwill).

The Shake (Farmer in the Dell), The Mod Moppets, 1966 (?)

The Swim (Row, Row, Row Your Boat), The Mod Moppets, 1966 (?)

Kind of a cross between Dave "Baby" Cortez and The Dave Clark Five, these tracks. They should have included My Bonnie. No, wait--the Beatles had already done that one....

Lee

A Good Year for Finding Stuff, Part 3--"Alice's Restaurant"

"Original words and music by Hap Palmer," states the cover of Learning Basic Skills Through Music, Vol. III: Health and Safety. Far out! And I thought Arlo Guthrie wrote Alice's Restaurant, which appears, sans credits, on Side 2 as Track 3. Guess not.

While it's not very countercultural, this version is quite fun, Leethinks:

Alice's Restaurant, Hap Palmer, 1970.

From the same LP, a plea to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. Actually, a catchy number about keeping others from catching what you got. Words and music by Arlo Guthrie (just kidding)....

Cover Your Mouth, Hap Palmer, 1970.


Lee

A Good Year for Finding Stuff, Part 2

We begin with one of my best 2005 thrifted-vinyl scores, a beat-up copy of The Gants' Road Runner. This find found its way into my collection a mere few weeks ago at, I believe, the Goodwill on Hamilton Rd. (in Columbus, Ohio). Something told me I would get a decent file out of it, but I had no way of knowing just how decent. It sounds absolutely fantastic for a piece of vinyl with 2/3 of its grooves play-removed. The Gants were covering Bo Diddley, of course, though I don't think the Telstar chord sequence (which first occurs at the start) comes from Bo's original. Those don't quite fit, harmonically, but they work, which is all that matters. Nearly anything worked on garage band records when infused with the right amount of gusto and volume. Click on the photo to get to the file:


















Not a side that you (probably) won't hear anyplace else, but a very nice find, especially for 49 cents. It looks like a 49-cent record, doesn't it?

This next one, however, you (probably) won't hear anyplace else, blogwise. It's another "Roots of Elvis"-type side--i.e., a pop recording with plenty of R&B feel, attitude, and style from the period before Elvis allegedly introduced those three qualities to the pop charts. It's interesting that the white pop singers who sounded most like Elvis in the days before 1956 were female. I imagine this is because bluesy "torch" numbers--the type that Elvis often recorded--tended to be performed by women. In spite of what we're always being told, sex was all over post-WWII pop culture (think Marilyn Monroe); what was new was male hootchy-kootchy of the Elvis variety. And the fact that Elvis' performance style was highly African-American sure didn't help r&r gain easy acceptance, given the far less than perfect race relations of the day.

There's much to love here. Toni Arden's aggressive, highly-R&B performance was more typical of the time than Rock History would want you to believe; and Hugo Winterhalter's equally aggressive, pounding-triplets chart isn't surprising, coming as it does from a former big band arranger whose clients included Count Basie. And the song itself is even more noteworthy--I knew there was something special about it the moment eight bars had ticked by. Sure enough, it turns out this gospel-style, I/I7/IV/IVm tune was cowritten by Claude A. (Bennie) Benjamin, a Virgin-Island-born songwriter who also gave us The Ink Spots' I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire, Kay Starr's Wheel of Fortune, and the 1965 Animals hit, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.

I'll have to write my friend Pete, an R&B expert, to find out whether or not Toni and Hugo were "covering" a black performance here--that's certainly possible, given the sound and feel. But my Google search mostly turned up an I'll Step Aside recorded by Ernest Tubb and, apparently, written and composed by Johnny Bond. Which is to say, I don't have the patience to sift through a few hundred entries to find what I need....

(Please click on the battered label to get to the file):


















Yes, things were so sedate before Elvis rescued pop music from The Ames Brothers. No triplets, no gospel or blues feel, no black stylings of any kind. Toni Arden, along with Jaye P. Morgan, June Valli, and Patti Page (remember her marvelous cover of What a Dream) never existed. We must believe what Rock History tells us.

Lee

Bobby Helms on Little Darlin'

"Anonymous" asked if I know the year that Bobby Helms recorded I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. I did some Google research and this is what I found out:

The various CDs that feature this track include KRB, Collectables, Pilz, Forum, Creative Sounds, and Mistletoe. As far as I can determine, it first appeared on the 1970 Certron LP Jingle Bell Rock.

The complete track list for that Certron LP:

Jingle Bell Rock
Here Comes Santa Claus
White Christmas
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Winter Wonderland
Silver Bells
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Christmas Time in My Hometown
The Old Year Is Gone
I Wanna Go to Santa Claus Land
Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

(UPDATE, 12/30/11): I was completely wrong in the following paragraphs--the Little Darlin' version of Jingle Bell Rock is a different version than the Certron/Mistletoe 1970 recording. Oops!)

These are most likely numbers recorded for the Little Darlin' label between 1967 and 1969, all of which have been reissued on a CD called A Little Darlin' Christmas (which also includes Johnny Paycheck XMas sides). Helm's I Wanna Go to Santa Claus Land and Jingle Bell Rock were released as a Little Darlin' single in 1967.

The short answer: the stereo Bobby Helms Christmas sides that keep showing up on cheap-label CDs are probably late-'60s Little Darlin' sides, including I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.

I'm guessing that the Little Darlin' reissue offers the best sound quality. KRB and Pilz are terrible labels, and even Collectables has put out some junk, sound-quality-wise. Mistletoe specializes in remade material, including post-Columbia XMas sides by Gene Autry. Don't know much about the Autry sides, except that they suck. Bravo (Pickwick) is one of the labels they have appeared on. They may have originated there, in fact. If anyone has info on the Autry remakes, please drop me a line. I've always wondered where that stuff came from....

Lee

I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas

That's what we're getting here--rain and fog. And high humidity. Wet. But no snow.

What am I saying? Actually, there's still a fair amount of snow and ice on the ground out here in the country, where things don't melt so fast. So we're having a white and wet Christmas. And temps in the 40s. I can live with that.

I have yet to play with my new toy, an Alesis Photon 25 USB/MIDI controller. With it, I can enter MIDI data into my music program (the one I have yet to buy; it's still in trial mode). Instead of mouse-clicking notes and note-values, all I have to do now is click in the values. And I can now enter stuff polyphonically. This is good.

16-channel MIDI input and output! Wow! Digital Audio Workstations--what are those? I got some learning to do, here.

And we have some sounds left over for Christmas (or Cat, Mouse, and Wheel Day, according to Google). Most are pop-instrumental, but not all. Enjoy:

The Jolly Coppersmith (Carl Peter, 1891-92), from Christmas Music Box Favorites, 1962. (Audio Fidelity AFSD 5982)

Skaters' Waltz (Emil Waldteufel, 1882) The Melachrino Strings, from the Vocalion LP, The Sound of Christmas.

The Angel on the Christmas Tree, The Melachrino Strings, from the Vocalion LP, "The Sound of Christmas."

Twelve Days of Christmas, Merv Griffin TV Family, 1966. From Merv's MGM Christmas LP.

Yule Medley (Jingle Bells, Up on the Housetop, Jolly Old St. Nicholas), The Hollywood Pops Orchestra.

Last, but hardly least, a Golden Records version of my favorite Christmas song, Jingle Bells. I'm not copying Ernie's recent posts, by the way--this one has been on hold for a bit, ever since I came upon it a few weeks ago. This is my kind of Jingle Bells.

Jingle Bells, Dick Byron and The Sandpiper Chorus, dir. by Mitch Miller.

I can only imagine the reaction if I proclaimed the above after hearing JB on TV or the radio: "That's my kind of Jingle Bells!" People might conclude that I started my Yuletide celebrating early, or something.

Anyway, have a merry, jolly, holly, blessed Christmas, all day, every day.













"You guys left this seed here for me, right?"

Lee