Christmas continues at MY(P)WHAE!

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Yes, Christmas continues at MY(P)WHAE. And, by a big coincidence, that happens to be the title of the folder containing all the tracks below. (Click here to get to same)

Contents:

Buzzy, the Christmas Bee--Jeff and Sue Mitchell

Candy Land Parade--Art Mooney and His Orch. (1950)

Christmas Choo Choo Train--Art Mooney and His Orch. (1950)

Fountain of the Bells--Jeff Mitchell and his Dad, Dude

Here Comes Peter Cotton Claus--Alex Houston and Elmer (1972)

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus--Mervin Shiner (1952)

I'd Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus--Judy Valentine with Hugo Winterhalter (1958)

It'll Be a Merry Christmas--The New Cristy Minstrels (1963)

The Jolly Coppersmith--From music box LP (Audio Fidelity 5982) (1962)

Merry Christmas You Suckers--Paddy Roberts (1962)

Parade of the Wooden Soldiers--The Sandpipers with Mitch Miller (1951)

Santa's Coming--MacMillan Sing and Learn Program (1987)

Sing a Kris Kringle Jingle (J. Fred Coots)--Bobby Stewart

Sing Along with Santa--The New Cristy Minstrels (1963)

Sleigh Ride (Anderson)--Boston Pops Orchestra, cond. by Arthur Fiedler

Snowy White Snow and Jingle Bells--Mervin Shiner (1952)

The Sleigh (a la Russe) (Richard Kountz)--Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians (1950)

The Stingiest Man in Town--The Four Lads (1956)

White Christmas (Berlin)--Robert Conrad (1959)


Lee

Now for this word from your blogger....

(A cool XMas photo would have been right here in this spot, but Blogger won't let me post pictures! Wahhh!)

At one of my Christmas, 2005 posts, someone (just now) left a comment telling me that I have a great blog and that he or she has been searching for the "full version of This Year's Santa Baby for AGES....without success." Would I be willing to repost the file and/or contact the person so I can send it to him/her?

Well, I don't know about the full version, but eBay has two copies of the record, and Amazon.com has six copies (starting at $2.00) of the Laserlight CD Bah! Humbug, which contains the track. Now, maybe the full version is another issue altogether--dunno. But I've had similar requests for very common titles that people have been trying, without any luck, to track down. And, of course, I find myself wondering where they've looked.

As far as taking the time to repost the file (or send it, special-delivery, to an individual), the answer is no. I'm not a music service--I'm a music blog. Er... in fact, THIS is a music blog; I'm a blogger. (Hello.)

Anyway, it takes a lot of time to put this blog together, because all of the tracks--with rare exceptions--are from my collection. Most material comes from vinyl or shellac sources, and it takes time and work to equalize, de-click, etc. the source recordings. I also compose original pieces from time to time. And I write about various topics. I'm not about to to turn my blog into a handy stop for people cruising Google in search of free mp3s. Sorry, but that's the way it goes. If I had time left over from blogging, it would be no problem. But I don't.

Think about it. Someone asks to to repost (or special-deliver) an mp3. That means finding the CD-R that contains the track. Then ripping the track to my computer. Then labeling it. Then attaching it to an e-mail. And how am I being compensated for this time and effort? And who's supposed to keep my blog going while I'm answering requests?

Because there's so much file-trading happening on the 'Net, I can see why some folks mistake my blog for an extension of same. It's understandable, and I'm not angry at anyone--frustrated a little, but not angry. However, this blog isn't about trading or providing music. In fact, I, myself, am not much interested in that scene--I've never once been to any of the Napster-type places. ITunes, whatever. I have some idea of what they look like, but only because, years ago, a coworker brought up an mp3 list he hunts from. (So, technically, HE went there, not me.) I'm sure the technology has evolved vastly since 2000 or so.

If I weren't so busy hunting down and "ripping" (capturing and skinning?) sound recordings, I might be able to get into the hunting/trading aspect of the 'Net. But I'm old-fashioned--I do those things in real life. With real recordings. For instance, between yesterday and today, I spent four or five hours cleaning up 12 78s for this blog. That doesn't leave me with very much time to dig out that special recording that I put up last year but whose link has now expired.

I wish the best of luck to the mp3 collectors hunting the Internet for cool, free sounds. I almost envy you--it seems like a more relaxing alternative to what I'm doing. But the free-music aspect of the Internet isn't for me--I'm too busy making my own playlists. I'm thrilled to be able to share some of them by way of this blog, but please don't treat my site like an mp3-on-demand center. Hate to sound hard-hearted, but even if you've been Searching for (such and such a track) for Eighty-Seven Years, it's not my job to supply that track. I know what it's like to search and search for something. I've been 20 years or more landing some records. But I did so on my own effort.

That's not meant in a "hard knocks" or "Back in my day..." spirit, but look at it from my point of view. I haunt thrift stores, flea markets, and the like, and I buy stuff from eBay when all else fails. If I can do it, so can everyone else.

Anyway, bottom line--I won't let this blog come to a halt because some people expect me to take time I don't have. Fair enough? I think so. If I don't have it, keep searching. This isn't the end of the road.

There's life and hope beyond MY(P)WHAE. I think, anyway. (I hope!)

More Christmas sounds coming up....

Lee

More Thanksgiving music

I just added a number of tracks to the Thanksgiving folder: Click here for the Thanksgiving folder.

Jerome Hines' wonderful version of Bless This House is nowhere to be found, though. I must have misplaced the disc during the move. It's someplace. Unless the cats dragged it off or something. Not likely--they don't even have a player.

However, to the list has been added these musical blessings:

Blest Be the Tie That Binds--London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

Bringing in the Sheaves--Salvation Army Band & Singers.

Count Your Blessings (Oatman-Excell)--Artists not listed.

For the Beauty of the Earth--Artists not listed.

For the Beauty of the Earth--London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

Now Thank We All Our God--London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

We Gather Together--Great Plains Chorale.

We Plow the Fields Together--London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir.

Enjoy!


Lee

Thanksgiving at MY(P)WHAE

Happy Thanksgiving!! We've got five Thanksgiving selections to go, with (hopefully) two more on the way.

Click on this link to get to the Thanksgiving folder.

The selections are:

Bringing in the Sheaves (Shaw-Minor), Burl Ives.

Come Ye Faithful People, Come (Alford-Elvey), Temple Quartet, 1927. (From Columbia label 78.)

Count Your Blessings (Cy Coben), Merv Griffin with Hal Mooney Orch., 1962. (From Mercury 45)

God of Our Fathers (Roberts-Warren), Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, 1953. Arranged by Livingston Gearhart. (From MCA LP.)

Thanks Be to God (O'Reilly-Brahe), John McCormack, 1923.


Lee

Hard-headed blogger, HP, first snow (to stick)

I wish I knew what was going on. In general. But, specifically, I wish I knew why my computer keeps disconnecting from the Internet every... five minutes, maybe? There must be some way to set/reset that. On Tools. (Or maybe it's a matter of Internet traffic? I'll bet there's been a pile-up someplace.)

Which doesn't mean there IS a way. Just that there SHOULD be one. Then again, maybe it's Alltel doing this.

Did I type "Alltel"? I meant, Windstream, my new ISP. Windstream has a wonderful Help site on which the search box takes you to Internet sites related to the subject of your inquiry. In other words, someone forgot to set up an actual Help site. Oops. The old "lights are on, but nobody's home" routine.

But the things that have given me the most aggravation to date, new-computer-wise, are the built-in cons. Such as the "register with Rhapsody" window that kept popping up at my free, bundled music program. I almost fell for it ("Sure, I'll register. Why not?"), until I saw that I was signing up for a $10-a-month service I wouldn't want in a million years. Sure, I want to pay $120 a year to sample all the thudda-dump-CRASH! hits coming down the line, all aimed at people 1/2 my age. Suuuuuure, I do.

I figured out how to make the box go away. Then I eliminated a second Rhapsody notice. Meanwhile, I uninstalled the "order Norton now" feature. I have my own anti-virus, HP. But, thanks. So, things are quieter now.

The bottom line is, it's O.K. if they want to sell me stuff, but what's with this deception? Why make it seem as if I HAVE to go to such-and-such a site and order some useless service? How about honest advertising?

Oh, wait--there's no such thing. I forgot. Hello.

So, I've survived my first several days on this PC without buying crap I don't need. Take that, HP.

In other news, Bev's headboard fell on my (irony alert) head. WHAM! I was drilling holes in order to connect it to the frame, and the battery-powered drill wasn't doing squat. So Bev brought up the plug-in drill--three seconds, and I was through the wood. What a difference.

However, in the meanwhile I had set the board up fairly straight (to get more oomph, drilling-wise). As I bent down to change the drill bit, the board yielded to gravity's lure, and... WHAMMO! Boy, did it hurt. We were sure lumps and/or bruises would form, but...

Not a mark.

My head's a little sore, sure, but no marks of any kind. The next time anyone refers to my "thick skull," I'll say, "Yes, it is."

But the real news--we got our first snow. And I managed to photograph some of it before it melted away. The window wasn't very wide once the sun arrived. Wish I'd gotten some earlier shots, but these tell the cold, cold story:














Our snow-covered Windstar, with Perry posing on the grass. It was completely covered at one point. The pre-sunrise point, to be specific.

Here's another view of the Windstar:














Are these shots exciting, or what? And here's my Taurus, which got a slightly thicker dusting:













About 20 minutes later, it was all gone. As if it had never been there.

Ah, but these photos bear digital witness to our first snowfall. Or the first one to stick, anyway.

This blog-witness account brought to you by... Rosie.













"Melt, snow, Melt! I command you!"--Queen Rosie


Lee

"Jingle Bells"-athon, Part 3!! ready to go

Why this tune, you wonder? Of all the songs I could have picked for "A Million and One Versions of..." honors, why did I pick this one?

Well, because it's probably my favorite XMas jingle of all. (Get it? XMas jingle? Ha, ha, ha, ha!) Seriously, I love the song. Therefore, I can handle hearing it over and over. I cannot, of course, speak for everyone else.

More importantly, Jingle Bells lends itself to all sort of interpretations--it begs to be arranged and rearranged. it's a highly transformable tune (for want of a better, hipper phrase). In theory, all songs can be run through the interpretation wringer, and to equally good effect, but the reality is that few songs hold up well with extreme repetition. Jingle Bells does. To my ears, it's amazing what can be done with this song. One of the (near-pun alert!) miracles of Bells is that the melody survives anything it's subjected to. I'm sure that someone, given enough time, could ruin the song, but it would take a lot of work. In most instances, the song would win.

"I... I tried to... defile it. I..... (Clunk!)"--Arranger's last words. "Ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaa!"--Jingle Bells sheet music.

Anyway, here's an utterly Jingle Bells-unrelated photo from 1928 or 1929, to be followed by a bunch of JB versions. The link leads to a folder, meaning that all 20-some files should come up on one page. It will be convenience such as you've never known. If it works out right....













I like that ad. It has lots of period charm, as the expression goes.

And just click on this link for the 22-song "Jingle Bells"-athon, Part 3. All should come up on a single page, with play, download, and something else options. I forgot what the third option is.

The artists are:

Arthur Godfrey (1953)
Artie Shaw (1943)
Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters (an out-take that must be heard in its entirety. Buwa-ha-haaaa!)
Count Basie
Ferrante and Teicher (1962)
Gene Krupa Trio
Gisele MacKenzie
Glenn Miller (from 1941 radio broadcast)
Glenn Miller (1941 studio recording)
Sammy Davis, Jr. (Reprise label version)
Morton Gould
Prissy Reed, Margie Singleton, The Jordanaires
Ray Price
Sammy Davis, Jr. (Again, with Columbia label version)
Sammy Kaye
United Choral Singers
Benny Goodman (1935)
Dinah Shore (1960)
Les Paul (1951)
Tony Harper (1950)
Les Paul, Mary Ford (Jungle Bells, from 1953. Awesome guitar feedback)
Santa and Johnny (Twistin' Bells, 1960)

My favorites: The Bing Crosby/Andrews Sisters 1943 out-take; Les Paul and Mary Ford's Jungle Bells (a combination of Jingle Bells and Mule Train, tune-wise!); Glenn Miller's wonderful version (in studio and radio-broadcast versions); and Tony Harper's 1950 rendition for the Columbia label, which may have influenced Patti Page a tad.

Anyway, I've got a lot to do--set up my stereo, build a radio for Christmas, feed the cats.

No, wait--I already fed the beasts. Cross one off the list. (Cross, cross.)

We close with another dumb me-photographing-myself-in-the-mirror shot, by now a blogging cliche....

Er, maybe not. Blogger seems to have stopped uploading. Well, you didn't want to see it, anyway.

Maybe Blogger.com has had enough of the photo-taken-in-mirror routine.


Lee

More Christmas stuff

For the listener who can't get enough. All of these are well-well-well-known, save for four titles--Santa Claus Is Flying Thru the Sky, Christmas Card, Peppermint Stick Parade, and Christmas Polka.

So, actually, fully half of this playlist consists of obscure titles. So, forget about the "all of these/save for" parts. I never wrote these things. I'll deny it from now until Christmas.

O.K. From the same LP that gave us Dicken's (sic) Christmas Carol, we have the classic "awww" song, All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. This version has a lot of, um, bite. I wonder if the singer heard the Spike Jones version?

All I Want for Christmas Is My two Front Teeth--Santa's Helpers. From Design LP.

I can't remember if that was in actual stereo or whether I had to mono-ize it. I should keep a log of these things.

However, I remember for sure that these next three tracks (by the could-have-been-anybody group The Caroleers) were mono-ized from the crappiest fake stereo ever unleashed upon mankind. I had to splice out sections for volume-leveling, on account of the engineer kept turning the gain up and down in one or both "channels." Why? Why???

My favorite is the lethargic version of Deck the Halls:

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, The Caroleers. From Premier label LP.

Deck the Halls, The Caroleers.

Twas the Night Before Christmas, The Caroleers.

This next one is from the Treasure label LP, Merry Christmas! No artists are credited--not even the Caroleers.

Santa Claus Is Flying Through the Sky, by someone. From Treasure label LP.

We move on to Bunny and Buddy Burden. From sentimental to, um... sprightly.

Toe-tapping, even.

Christmas Card, Buddy and Bunny Burden. From LP.

Christmas Polka, Buddy and Bunny Burden. From same place.

We finish with Bobby Vinton in Hello Dolly! mode:

Peppermint Stick Parade, Bobby Vinton, 1964. From Epic label LP.

Oops. One more. Calling all Harmonicats:

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, Don Les' Harmonicats.


Blogger isn't letting me upload any photos at the moment. Blogger is having one of its moods.

More stuff to come!

Lee

I can't... take it... anymore....

So, I've tried I-don't-know-how-many times to get my Windows reboot CD to work on my old Dell--no way. It refuses to allow it. The version on my computer is newer than the one on the disc, so... to heck with me.

And the Add/Remove menu has no option for "Remove Windows XP."

Some reboot disc. Anyway, four times I've followed instructions given in the "details" section of the big-red-x box. That is, I've restarted with the hope that the disc will boot and I'll be allowed to install Windows from the disc. Each time, no go.

I thought it would be nice to refresh my slow-moving Dell for the sake of the new owner, but it's beyond my ability. She has a tech brother, so hopefully he can make Windows reinstall.

If Bela Lugosi were here, he could do it: "Reeeeeeee-in-shtalllllll!!!!" No computer would dare defy Bela Lugosi.

Just deleted Noteworthy Composer, and I didn't even think to save my files onto disc. Oh, well--I have recordings of the things. That, plus the scores weren't coming out right. Everything was entering a half-step too high from my MIDI controller. Very weird. I'm hoping that was some aberration of my slower-than-slow Dell.

So, in not saving the printed scores, I've lost little. None were edited, anyway, so they'd have been hard to follow.

If I ever had to redo any them, score-wise, I could do so by ear. After all, I'm the one who composed them.

Apologies for the hassles of Savefile, which I'm using because the monthly downloading bandwidth at Box.net is limited. I've run into equally cumbersome services at other sites, and I've concluded that uploading/downloading are complicated things. They're beyond me. I'm still trying to reboot Windows XP.

I'm close to literally booting my Dell. Out the window....

(The Unoriginal Pun Police are coming for me.)

I'm O.K. Really, I am. I'm fine. Hee, hee!

Ha, ha! Ho, ho!!

Lee

New computer, old stereo

And, so, new technology meets old.

HP Pavilion: "Hey, what's up?" Sony amp: "Same ol', same ol'." Dual 1229: "What in the heck are you?" HP Pavilion: "I'm called a PC." Dual: "Do you play records?" HP: "No, that I don't do." Dual: "Loser."

Anyway, here's my stereo as it waits for me to set it up:














The MY(P)WHAE music machine. Pretty humble, no?

And, yes, that's a penny taped to the cartridge top.

Lee

Dickens' "Christmas Carol"

From the Design LP All I Want for Christmas... comes a moving version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. If you thought you knew Scrooge, just wait until you meet Design's version thereof. You'll feel as if you've traveled into the man's brain. Viewed the world through his eyes. Walked in his soul. As if you've been reborn with him. You'll come away from this vivid and compelling audio performance swearing that you know each and every character of the story. You'll insist to family and friends that you're good friends with Bob Cratchit. That you're wondering where he is. You'll be searching for Bob, for Tim, for Jacob. You'll become increasingly distressed as each search turns up nothing, as the library Help line hangs up on you ("You must have records on an Ebenener Scrooge. He lives just down the.... Hello? Hello?") , as those dear to you stare at you in helpless, tongue-tied confusion. And you will become angry.

And men in white coats will come to your home and escort you away. And you will go with them quietly, because you will know that they are your friends. And that they only want to help you.

I have no idea who's on this. The Design label credits "Santa's Helpers," but I don't think it's them. I can't be sure, of course....

Dicken's (sic) Christmas Carol, Artists unknown. From Design LP, All I Want for Christmas...
















"I'm Charles Dickens, and I disapprove of this post."


Sorry, Charlie....


Lee

"Jingle Bells"-athon, Part 2!!

The "!!"'s denote excitement, of course. And there's much to get excited over in Part 2 of our playlist (Click here for Jingle-Bells-athon, Part 2):

Jingle Bells Mambo (Rugolo)--Pete Rugolo and His Orchestra, 1954. From Columbia EP.

Jingle Bells--Patti Page, 1955. From Mercury LP (pictured above).

Jingle Bells--The Caroleers. From Premier label LP.

Jingle Bells (Burns)--Homer and Jetrho, 1968. From RCA LP.

Massachusetts Mixture (Jingle Bells)--Lawrence Joy with Wilbur Waite's Pokeberry Promenaders, 1951. From Columbia 45.

Jingle Bells Fantasy (Arranged by Rosario Bourdon)--RCA Victor Salon Orch. From Victor 78.

Jingle Bells--Shannon Quartet, 1925. From Victor 78.

Jingle Bells--Santa's Helpers. From Design label LP (picture above).


More to come!


Lee