Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite in Dance Tempo--Freddy Martin Orch. (1942)

One of the great "Yeah, right" titles ever, but it's actually superbly done. Just as superb is the recording quality, which sounds more like 1952 than the actual recording date (1942). This was the kind of thing Martin did especially well--he was the big band era's answer to Paul Whiteman in that regard.

As I type this, our excuse for Net service isn't even working at dial-up speed. Utterly beyond belief.

We pay for a fast connection. We don't get one, but we pay for it.

While I'm slowly counting to one hundred, you should be downloading this delightful 1942 performance, as ripped from a superbly-transferred 45 rpm EP set. Meanwhile, I'm going to take a break from our Blockedstream "service" and think nothing but nice, happy thoughts. Cue Napoleon XIV.

Click here to hear the music: ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

PLAYLIST

OVERTURE MINIATURE
MARCH
DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
RUSSIAN DANCE
ARAB DANCE
CHINESE DANCE
DANCE OF THE REED FLUTES
WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS


Lee

finally it's Christmas--The Singing Angels (1977)

Finally,it's time to share 1977's finally it's Christmas, one of the very best collections of its type, in the opinion of this blog. Just delightful stuff, and what a group of talented kids. Read all about The Singing Angels here.

The LP jacket essay mentions TV appearances with Bob Hope and Wayne Newton, and on Today--none of which surprises me an ounce.

The record was produced by founding director Bill Boehm. The orchestral arrangements are by D. Wooley.

Click here to reach zip file: ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

PLAYLIST

SLEIGH RIDE
COVENTRY CAROL--Kathy Wolfe, soloist
WE NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS--Soloists: Mary Beth Marquard, Charles Brown, Jeanne Marquard, Bill Boehm
MERRY CHRISTMAS, DARLING--Bill Boehm, soloist
WHITE CHRISTMAS
LET THERE BE PEACE ON EARTH
CHRISTMAS WAS MEANT FOR CHILDREN--Kathy Wolfe, soloist
WINTER WONDERLAND
STILL, STILL, STILL--Robert Crawford, soloist
CAROLEER MEDLEY
WE WISH YOU THE MERRIEST


Lee

Winter Song

I needed a winter image, so I used msn's Live Search. I chose from the "Top images for winter." Only the top images for this blog, you understand.

Not that I know what the devil top winter images are supposed to be--did some international panel look at all the winter images and take a vote?

The Internet is like a TV commercial--everything's focused on the best, the top, the elite. Nothing less than absolute will do. Excellence or nothin'. But what do we do if we're not completely thrilled with the best stuff? Seek out another Internet?

Ah--I've just predicted the future. Competing Internets!

Hanover Winter Song was written in 1898. More info is contained here: More info.

But only the top info, mind you.

I discovered that I have three versions of the number in my vast, unkempt collection. The Shannon Quartet 78 was my introduction, and I thought it was pretty elaborate for a quartet number. But turns out it was intended for a glee-club-sized group. And, when we think of glee clubs, we think college glee clubs. Right? Sure enough, Winter Song is officially categorized as a "college" number.

If none of this is making sense, it's because--unlike me--you don't spend lots of time with old 78s and 1904 songbooks. See what you're missing? (You do, and it's fine with you? Okay. Be that way.)

What I love most about the hardy-fellows-passing-the-mug genre is how divorced it is from the modern (Sinatra, Bennett) tradition (and vice versa). At some point, smoking and drinking became private, intimate, and sophisticated. No one knows how. For my money, the older, hardy-toast stereotype is closer to the realities of drinking. But no one asked me.

By the way, when you're listening to the 1925 Victor Male Chorus recording, ask yourself just how new the Sing Along with Mitch concept was, after all.

Click here to hear Winter Song in three different readings: Winter Song.

PLAYLIST

WINTER SONG (Hovey-Bullard)--Shannon Quartet (1922)
WINTER SONG--Victor Male Chorus (1925)
WINTER SONG--Norman Luboff Singers, 1956.


Lee

The "Christmas Shows on TV" portal at TV Worth Watching

All you have to do is go here and then scroll down about halfway (to your right), and there it is--the Christmas Shows on TV box. As we speak, Diane Werts is working tirelessly to keep us up to date on the subject. There's one link apiece for specials, episodes, and movies.

We're talking the complete Christmas-on-TV experience. We'd expect nothing less from Diane.

And... looks like Savefile is back to saving files! Hurrah!

Christmas ads, Christmas music posting, Christmas TV, Christmas shopping. Put them all together, and you have Christmasads,Christmasmusicposting,ChristmasTV,Christmasshopping.

Hm. Looks better with the spaces.



Lee

Christmas posting will start sometime, hopefully

I've got all sorts of stuff ready to go, but neither Box.net and Savefile.com are accepting files for upload.

Whether or not any Christmas posts happen at this blog is up to Box and Savefile. It's out of my hands, and I'm sick of worrying about it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Savio meets Mr. Turkey.

So, we've got some Thanksgiving sides to put us all in Thanksgiving mode. The whole idea of this day, as I noted last time, is to get the thanks and blessings and extended-family stuff out of the way so that we can get into the proper Christmas spirit of getting and giving presents at home. Not very elegantly put, I don't suppose, but popular rituals aren't elegant. I mean, ain't elegant.

Just call today Getting the Blessings and Thanks Out of the Way, or Bring on Christmas!! Or be really conventional and call it Thanksgiving. It's your call.

I'll be dining on ham today, because I don't believe in eating turkeys. Which is to say, I'm not fond of turkey meat. However, I can't tell other people what to believe.

Don't be alarmed by the four Count Your Blessings titles--they're all different songs. Er, unless that's reason for alarm in itself. The Word label CYB is the classic Sunday School song; the Merv CYB is a Cy Coben number (please ignore the "Grean" credit on the file); the Will Osborne Orch. song is a Ferde Grofe number from the movie Palooka; and the Tammy Wynette CYB is from White Christmas (1954). Now you know.

The Thank You Song, by Kate Smith, appeared on the 1969 Smith LP Songs of the Now Generation, which hipsters like to ridicule because 1) it's Kate Smith and 2) the LP title contains the phrase "Now Generation," of which Kate was not. Please note that fact. It's very important that we note that Kate Smith wasn't a member of the Now Generation.

Quiz: Was Kate Smith was a member of the Now Generation?

A: Yes.
B: No.
C: No. (Wild laughter.)
D: Hey, c'mon--there's a very nice Bacharach tune on that album.
E: Kate was way past the "Now Generation" point--and stout, too! (Wild laughter)
F: All of the above.
G: None of the above.
H: Some of the above.

Kate was not a member of the Now Generation. She was so Then. Whether or not she could sing is of no importance, because who buys record albums for the dang music, anyway? Only squares.

God Bless us All is a cheap label (Waldorf) cover version of a 1953 Jimmy Boyd record.

Over the River and Through the Woods--from the 1844 poem by Lydia Maria Child--is from a Chipmunks album. I hate the Chipmunks, but this is the only version I have. If I had the Bing recording, I'd feature it. I would.

Thanks Be to God features words by P. J. O'Reilly and a very memorable tune by Australian composer May Hannah Brahe (as "Stanley Dickson"), who also wrote the music for Bless This House. The 1923 recording thereof features the extraordinary tenor voice of John McCormack.

Click here to reach Thanksgiving zip file: Thanksgiving 2008

PLAYLIST

BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES (Shaw-Minor)--Parker and Dodd, 1932 (From 78.)
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Oatman-Excell)--Unknown Word label artists.
BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES--Burl Ives.
GOD OF OUR FATHERS--Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, 1953.
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Guest-Caesar-Grofe)--Will Osborne O., 1932. (From 78.)
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Coben)--Merv Griffin, 1962.
BRINGING IN THE SHEAVES--Salvation Army Band, Singers.
COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Berlin)--Tammy Wynette.
THANKS BE TO GOD--John McCormack, 1923.
COME YE FAITHFUL PEOPLE, COME--Temple Quartet, 1927. (From 78.)
OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS--The Chipmunks, 1962.
GOD BLESS US ALL--Davey Piper.
THE THANK YOU SONG--Kate Smith, 1969.

(Whew.) Oh, well--we got the blessings and thanks stuff out of the way. On to Christmas!!!!


Lee

Thanksgiving--the forgotten holiday

Forgotten holiday? What, you ask, am I talking about? People get together and eat lots of food, people travel, people shop like crazy, etc. Workplaces let people off for (usually) two days, and last-minute thoughts about thankfulness are aired. So what can I possibly mean by "a forgotten holiday"? Doesn't sound very forgotten, does it? What am I getting at?

Hm. I forgot. Dang it.

No, wait--I remember. Oh, and--before I say another word--let it be noted that I have a folder at Box.net called "Merv Holding Tank." Really. Just to let you know.

Anyway, I call Thanksgiving a "forgotten" holiday because, really, it's just a warm-up for Tree/Present Day. Halloween is, too, sort of. It wouldn't surprise me, for instance, if there were places that sold stuff for Christmas ON Thanksgiving, and not just the Friday after. I'm thinking one of those we-don't-care-if-our-workers-have-a-life/open-375-days bargain stores, or the like. Indeed, Thanksgiving is barely a blip on the holiday radar, whereas Tree/Present Day takes up most of the viewing screen. BLIP BLIP BLIP, as opposed to BLIP BLIP BLIP....

Font size. How did people communicate in the days before it?

No, we haven't literally forgotten what Thanksgiving is about (turkeys, family, putting miles on our cars, listening to MSNBC people go on about consumer "confidence"). It's just that it's a brief stop en route to Christmas. Er, I mean, Tree/Present Day. It's a stopover. In some ways, we use the day to get the main Present/Tree Day requirements out of the way--giving thanks, hugging family, starting the consumer rush, practicing lines like "Boy, it's colder than (insert metaphor) out there!" That is to say, we formally recognize Tree Day on Thanksgiving so that, when Dec. 25 gets here, we've gotten the formalities out of the way. It's cheating, sort of.

It's not only practice for the big, vastly more important day, it's a get-stuff-out-of-the-way day. Which sounds more awkward than "Thanksgiving," certainly.

So, what's the point of my essay? I don't know. I guess I don't have one.

Thanksgiving music coming up. And have a great Warm-up-for-Christmas Day! Then charge out and charge. You have your orders.


Lee

Steele vs. Sagan

Pale Blue Dot, a bestselling book by the late Carl Sagan, seems to be extremely popular with Internet atheists. At YouTube, we can find a video of the same title, with a narration by Sagan, in which he describes our planet as "a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos." And we see footage taken by one of the Voyager spacecraft that shows the Earth as a mere point. Specifically, a pale blue dot.

Internet atheists urge all of us to think about this, to have our minds blown by the realization that our world doesn't count for squat in the cosmic scheme.

Where else would we encounter such wisdom? Certainly not in the past. Not in, say, textbooks of the nineteenth century. Here, for example, is a quote from Joel Dorman Steele's very popular text The Story of the Stars: New Descriptive Astronomy, copyright 1869 and 1884. Try to bear with the antiquated point of view:

"We are humbled as we gaze upon the infinity of suns, and strive to comprehend their enormous distances, and their magnificent retinue of worlds."

Steele goes on to make the following claims about Earth--that the planet "is in motion, flying through its orbit with inconceivable velocity; that it is not fixed, but hangs in space, held by an invisible power of gravitation which it cannot evade; that it is small and insignificant beside the mighty globes that so gently shine upon us in the far-off sky; that, in fact, it is only one atom in a universe of worlds, all firm and solid, and all, perhaps, equally fitted to be the abode of life."

Ha! Hilarious, isn't it, the contrast between 19th and 20th-century views of the cosmos, no? And Steele was a believer, no less--his text contains many mentions of God and creation.

How far we've come. From the Earth as "one atom in a universe of worlds" to "a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos." How far we've advanced in our understanding of Earth's place in the scheme of things.

Again, it's easily explained--Steele was a believer, Sagan was not. Hence, "one atom in a universe of worlds" vs. the infinitely more enlightened "mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos."

It's a good thing we evolved past the 19th century, what with the silly popular notions people labored under.

We close with a hilarious illustration called "Earth in Space," from the Steele volume. How comically this contrasts with Sagan's image of a small, insignificant body in the loneliness of things:
















Lee

Fans of pop, jazz, and celebrity vocals...

...check out Kenny Harrelson's Music for Every Mood blog.

Sunday morning gospel: The Primitive Baptist Radio Singers

Some truly amazing music by the Primitive Baptist Radio Singers of The Baptist Bible Hour. This LP was released on the Sovereign Grace Recordings label, and, though I no longer have the vinyl, I saved the tracks to cassette years ago for my foster parents. It's a good thing I did. From that cassette come today's tracks, all recorded (when, I have no idea) at the Cincinnati Primitive Baptist Church. The LP jacket contained no info in that regard, or else I'd have recorded it on the cassette insert card. (Remember those? I think the Henry Ford Museum still has some examples on display.)

I really like their mission statement, which I quote from their website: "We place our emphasis on praise rather than programs, Scripture rather than sentiment, love rather than law, and compassion rather than competition." Who can argue with that?

Pictured above is my copy of their hymn and tune book, though mine appears to not be the current one in use. Yes, those are shape notes.

The Singers are unaccompanied, and the gorgeous playlist includes a fuguing tune (When I Can Read My Title Clear) straight out of the all-time great 19th-century tunebook, Southern Harmony. Just as old is Brethren, We Have Met to Worship (a.k.a. Holy Manna). The rest are unknown to me, but I plan to learn more about them. Let's just say these songs have enjoyed their share of performances over many dusty decades.

I've always wanted to type "many dusty decades."

Meanwhile, the page setup has gone to pot--arggggh. I'll have to fix the spacing in Html mode. Meanwhile, all you have to do is download today's superb playlist by clicking on this link:

Primitive Baptist Radio Singers.

(To Our Redeemer's Glorious Name mislabled as Glorious Love on mp3--sorry!)

PLAYLIST

BAPTIST BIBLE HOUR INTRO--Singers, Lasserre Bradley, Jr.
WHEN I CAN READ MY TITLE CLEAR
TO OUR REDEEMER'S GLORIOUS NAME
A FEW MORE YEARS SHALL ROLL
SING OF HIS MIGHTY LOVE
THY PRAISE OH LORD
CAST DOWN BUT NOT DESTROYED
THE LAND OF BEULAH
THE BRIDE OF CHRIST
BRETHREN WE HAVE MET TO WORSHIP
THE LORD JEHOVAH REIGNS
IN MERCY LORD, REMEMBER ME
THY PEOPLE LORD
CEASE YE MOURNERS
THE DOXOLOGY
GRACE IS FREE


Lee