78s for Saturday: Riff-athons, echo-athons, and 1937 lounge.

Such excitement. 78s for Saturday! Yee-haaa!!

Sorry. Got carried away.

At the moment, I'm working on a bunch of other 78s, and it's kind of weird, because the copies are in very good to excellent condition. For a welcome change! I'd forgotten how easy it is to restore sides that aren't semi-wrecked. I mean, I love a challenge as much as the next guy, but I'm a bit weary of spending half my tweaking time on upper-end hiss. And who isn't tired of spending half of his or her tweaking time on upper-end hiss?

I'll bet that, if you sent a survey around with that question on it, people would say, "Huh?"

Guy on bus: "I'm tired of spending half my tweaking time on upper-end hiss. You know?" Person next to him: "Uh-huh. (Moves to other seat)"

And the following tracks required a good deal of sonic surgery. O, Ya Ya had needle-damaged lows, and the the other two dance titles had troublesome hiss. And Lew White's Liebestraum was... a mess. A total mess. I almost gave up on it, but listening back the next day, I discovered that my EQ was more than adequate. Problem is, I'd tired my ears out arriving at that EQ, and everything was sounding like mush. My ears are going to sue me, at this rate.

Enough fascinating technical talk. Let's start with one of my favorite Paul Whitemans, a Cole Porter ditty called I'm in Love Again, as lovingly arranged by Ferde Grofe. Just listen to what Grofe does with the melody--it's like an endless riff-athon. (An endless what?) Riff-athon. Bing Crosby shows up, off-key, in the vocal chorus, his high note being a bit too much so for him. Maybe he had a cold that day--he sounds it.

I'm in Love Again (Cole Porter), Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1927. From Victor 78.

Domenico Savino arranged this next one. Savino wrote A Study in Blue for Paul Whiteman, led a dance band in the 1920s, wrote some hit songs, arranged a ton of sheet music, and made easy-listening LPs for RCA Camden and Kapp. He also wrote the music for the 1929 reissue of Phantom of the Opera. Busy guy!

O, Ya Ya (Klages-de Markoff--Arr: Savino), Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1928. From Victor 78 rpm reissue.

Now for Lewis James with Nat Shilkret and His Orchestra, from 1927. I love the engineering on this one--Victor was experimenting with microphone placement in 1926 and 1927, and some of the Shilkrets and Whitemans are so echoey, you have to wonder if the technicians were sticking the mike(s) in an adjoining room, or in a stairwell, or...? Awesome effect, but odd.

Wherever You Go--Whatever You Do (I Want You to Know I Love You), Nat Shilkret and His Orch., with Lewis James, vocal. 1927. From Victor 78.

Here's Lew White's hokey but highly effective "musical dramatization" of Franz Liszt's Liebestraum. Even without the treble reduced, there's no way to make out most of the lyrics--so we aren't missing much, save for some highs that were compromised by hiss. 1937 lounge, Leethinks. Forget all you've read about space age pop:

Liebestraum (A Dream of Love) (Liszt), Lew White, organ, with violin, harp, and chorus, 1937. From Victor 78 rpm reissue.

Olbermann rocks!!

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offered a magnificently written--and delivered--commentary last night, and, in the event you missed it, here's the transcript. Olbermann's essay puts the "all" in "says it all":

Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

A Google search reveals that Keith's words hit a nerve. Good.



Lee

Rachmaninoff, Weber-style

Marek Weber, that is. For years, I've been passing up this German orchestra leader's 78s, and now I'm thinking I should kick myself. Because Weber's orchestral rendition of Sergei Rachmaninoff's ultra-well-known Prelude in C-sharp minor (1892) is... awesome. Downright awesome.

The label credits Rachmaninoff and a "C. Morena." On the 'net, Morena shows up as an arranger on some sheet music transcriptions of Classical works, so I guess we can guess he provided the orchestration. Or... that Morena adapted the prelude, after which it was arranged. I dunno.

I also don't know when this was recorded, though I'm guessing about 1926. It's a 12" Victor Orthophonic 78, catalog no. 68865, with the matrix Cw 843. Neither number has helped me find a date, to date. Date it. I mean, dang it.

Update: Thanks to Kai, we now have the recording date, label, and original catalog no.: March 7th, 1927; German Electrola E.H. 51. Thanks, Kai!

Prelude (Rachmaninoff, Op. 3--C. Morena), Marek Weber and His Orchestra, 1927, recorded in Europe. From 12" Victor 78.

I'm hoping the flip side is even half as good....


Lee

Al Cernik with Carmen Cavallaro, 1948

Al Cernik stopped using his real name when he signed up with King. Al Grant, he became. Shortly thereafter, he ended up at Columbia, where Mitch Miller decided "Guy Mitchell" sounded better than Al Grant or Al Cernik. And that's the story of how Al Cernik became The Brady Bunch.

The Braaaa... deeee Bunnnnnnch!!

I mean, how he became Guy Mitchell. Not to be confused with actor Guy Madison, whose real name was Robert Ozell Moseley. And who, unlike the other Guy, had no hit records.

Anyhow, here's Al/Guy with Carmen Cavallaro and His Orch., from 1948. This is smooth/sweet/hotel big band at its smoothest/sweetest/hoteliest. "The best of all the flashy, society-music pianists," George T. Simon called Carmen. I agree. And I call Al Cernik one of the smoothest singers to show up just after the big days of the big bands.

The song was co-written by J. Fred Coots, who also gave us Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, You Go to My Head, and Love Letters in the Sand:

Encore, Cherie (J. Fred Coots, Alice D. Simms), Al Cernik (Guy Mitchell) with Carmen Cavallaro and His Orchestra, 1948. From Decca 78.

Listening too much into this recording?

Maybe I'm listening too much into this record ("listening too much into" being the aural version of "reading too much into"). Because I hear a moody pop ballad in the modes of Ebb Tide and Theme from A Summer Place. And we're talking about a recording made in 1926. And music written in 1902! So... I must be nuts.

But that's what I hear. Maybe you'll hear something along those lines, too. All I know is that the clink-clink-clink business at the end is so much like pop music of decades later, I'm tempted to submit this post to Unsolved Mysteries. And have Robert Stack explain it. Of course, Stack is gone, and his show isn't even in repeats at this point in TV time, as far as I know. So we'll just have to forget about that.

Now, if Till I Wake were the only such moody and sustained Ebb-Tide-style ballad of its general period, I'd attribute it to some glitch in the Time Flow--1949 colliding with the early 00's. But I can think of some others off the top of my bald head--Forsaken, for example. And Absent, for another. Both a bit more conventional in flow than this one, but just as smooth and sustained. And what do I mean by "sustained"? Um....

Right. Well, here's Till I Wake, as performed by Jacques Jacobs' Ensemble in 1926. By whom, you ask? Precisely:

Till I Wake (Amy Woodforde-Finden), Jacques Jacobs' Ensemble, 1926. From Columbia 78.

Again, maybe I'm listening too much into that one. What do you think?

The flip is THE perfect lounge rendition of Kashmiri Song, but a bad needle wasted the upper portion of the music--either that, or the pressing is one of the worst in the history of shellac. I suspect the former. If only someone could have prevented the damage.

Wait a minute. I forgot--I have a time machine. Be right back.

(Time travel sound effects.)

"Um--excuse me, sir, but please change your needle before.... Never mind."

(Time travel sound effects.)

Nothing like traveling all the way back to 1926, only to miss the moment by seconds. Is that ironic, or what?

I guess that, no matter how hard we try, we can't change that which was meant to be. Sci-Fi Cliche 4,789, version 65.



Lee

(Insert some pun about horns)

Beware of the Blog has a piece about HornMassive, a massive "steel and aluminuim horn sound system" created by artist Matt Hope. At www.hornmassive.com, we learn that HornMassive is "designed to be the ultimate monophonic sound projector intended to catalyze social activities in multiple settings."

Well, it's about time someone designed the ultimate monophonic sound projector intended to catalyze social activities in multiple settings.

Way past time, as far as I'm concerned.



Lee

Let's see if it uploads this time....

Didn't work before. Ahhh--here we are:


















"Wow! There goes the Moon! Goodbye, Moon!"

Just your usual 1953 family-in-a-bubble-watching-the-Moon-blow-up illustration. I can't remember how I was going to work that into the last post's text, but it's a pretty cool image. I think, at least.

And I forgot to post Gene Rodemich's 1921 version of Margie. So sorry:

Margie (Robinson-Conrad), Gene Rodemich's Orchestra, 1921. From Brunswick 78.

Dig the xylophone. Brian Rust lists a banjo, double-bass, and drums, percussion-wise, but no xylophone. But it's there, louder than life, 85 years later.

Lee

78s from the 10-or-so-types era

Here are some selections from the days before popular music acquired five thousand made-up-on-the-spot labels. We start with four by Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra, featuring Teddy Brown's always-remarkable xylophone arpeggios. Here's a good Teddy Brown site, though the pop-ups are a pain in the mallet.

Oddly enough, Brian Rust's American dance band discography claims that Teddy Brown showed up "sometime during the latter part of this band's existence." Hm. Sure sounds like him from the first sides on. Anyway, all four sides are in less than perfect shape, especially Cold Turkey and its flip, so thank God for my 31-band equalizer. (Hey, God--thanks.) Cold Turkey is credited to "Donaldson" (Walter?), and it liberally employs the verse from Septimus Winner's 1855 hit, Listen to the Mockingbird. I don't know why. I'd love to see the sheet music to this one. The breaks are downright weird. The whole thing is weird. I love it:

Cold Turkey (Donaldson), Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra, 1917. From Columbia 78.

Texas (David Guion), Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra, 1918 . From 12" Columbia 78.

Oriental (Vincent Rose), Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra, 1918. Flip of above.

12th Street Rag (Euday Bowman), Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra, 1917. Worn-out flip of Cold Turkey.

And here are two by "Wilber" C. Sweatman (the same guy as Wilbur), both wild and crazy and as badly recorded as all the other Wilber/Wilbur Columbia jazz numbers. They're terrific, regardless:

The Darktown Strutters' Ball, Wilber C. Sweatman's Original Jazz Band, 1918. From Columbia 78.

Good-Bye Alexander, Wilber C. Sweatman's Original Jazz Band, 1918. Flip of above.

From 1919, a huge hit for Ben Selvin--Felix Bernard and Johnny Black's Dardanella. Brilliantly arranged, ilo (in Lee's opinion). From a copy in O.K. (good-) condition:

Dardanella (Bernard-Black), Selvin's Novelty Orchestra, 1919. From Victor 78.

And, now, a pair of classics from Joseph C. Smith, kicking off with Art Hickman's Rose Room, the How High the Moon of its day with its chords that refuse to stay put:

Rose Room (Art Hickman-Harry Williams), Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra, 1918. From Victor 78.

Smiles (Lee Roberts), Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra, 1918. Vocal by Harry Macdonough. Flip of above.

My copy of Japanese Moon credits the performance to the Continental Dance Orchestra, but it's really by Nathan Glantz and His Orchestra. Now we know. Cool record, in O.K.- condition. Starts out rough, gets better:

Japanese Moon (Austin Huntley), Nathan Glantz and His Orchestra, 1922. From Imperial label 78 (U.K.).

We close with a track I've featured twice before, but never in such a quiet file--this is Scottish evangelist William McEwan's 1913 recording of Will the Circle Be Unbroken. You know, the song that allegedly didn't exist until The Carter Family recorded it many years later:

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? (Gabriel), William McEwan, 1913. From Columbia 78.

McEwan was no crooner, as you can hear. An anti-crooner, perhaps! Love his voice. Killing the hiss without killing his vocal was a task, but worth every minute.


Lee

From 1956: Concert Hall Society Binaural (Stereophonic) Tapes

Wow. What will they think of next? (Click for large image, then again for even larger one.)
























Lee