The Freddy Martin Show, w. Merv Griffin (1951)

The late, great Merv sings How About You; Toot, Toot, Tootsie; I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts; and more.

Many thanks to Diane Werts and Walt for sending this cool link.

UPDATE: Since upgrading the blog, this player has ceased to work. I'll try to figure out why....


Lee

Allison's Sacred Harp Singers

We'll be hearing samples from a 2004 County label CD featuring (J.T.) Allison's Sacred Harp Singers. At the moment, Savefile is (once again) not accepting uploads, so... Box.net to the rescue. These 1927-1929 recordings sound (to me, anyway) very much like some later (LP-era) quartets I've featured in my Sunday posts--groups like the Rock of Ages Quartet, the Southern-Aires Gospel Singers, and the Valley Voices. As I suspected, these later groups were carrying on an earlier style, and very faithfully. Until I got this CD, I had no examples of quartet singing in the shape-note style to compare them against.

Well, actually, I now realize that I did--namely, Smith's Sacred Singers, many of whose 1926-1930 78s I've featured at this blog. They were as Sacred Harp as they came, turns out. As I suspected they might be.

I took stanzas from a number of tracks and edited them together--enjoy. If you like what you hear, I strongly recommend ordering the CD, which can be gotten at Amazon (and probably many other fine spots).


Click here: Allison's Sacred Harp Singers (samples from CD).

And, to follow up, here are four examples of the same kind of quartet singing, only thirty to forty years later. The Rock of Ages Quartet is especially like the group we just heard:

Sacred harp quartet style--1960s and 1970s


MY HOME IN GLORY--The Rock of Ages Quartet
HEAVEN IS MY HOME--The Southern-Aires Gospel Singers
WHAT WILL YOUR ANSWER BE--The Valley Voices
I AM ON THE ROAD--The Valley Voices

Lee

Comments... we get comments

Someone just left this link at my Snake Charmer post: http://ihasahotdog.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/funny-dog-pictures-go-on-forever.jpg

I'm soooooo insulted! You know, I just may give up blogging. I mean, this guy's (gal's?) comeback was SO devastating. I'm crawling under my desk as we speak.

(Clunk!) Ouch!! Unfortunately, I'm tall, and my desk isn't.

Anyway....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ten great tracks for New Year's Day: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

PLAYLIST

AULD LANG SYNE (Old Scotch Melody)--Evan Williams, 1909.
A NEW YEAR CAROL (Britten)--Cathedral Singers, 1992.
RINGING THE OLD YEAR OUT--Descriptive (L. Currie)--Prince's Orch., 1911.
AULD LANG SYNE--Roy Kral, Jackie Cain Sextet, 1949.
HAPPY BLUE YEAR (Stevens)--Ray Stevens, 1960.
BOBSLED (Clebanoff, Robinson, Giovannini)--Clebanoff and His Orch., 1962.
SNOW TIME (Felix Arndt)--Columbia Quartette, 1911.
ONE OF THESE DAYS (Carmichael)--Jimmy Durante, Ralph Carmichael Orch., 1967.
RINGING IN A BRAND NEW YEAR--The Dominoes, 1953.
SEASON'S GREETINGS--Pete Pontrelli Orch., voc: Larry Noble, 1959.


Lee

TIME's Person of the Year for 2008

End of year gems, Part 3: Leroy Anderson

Great stuff often comes in crappy packages. Or, more often, it doesn't. But this time, it did. And I have no idea what I just typed.

Anyway, please forgive my so-so photo of the monumentally tacky Beautiful Instrumental Mood Music from the Pen of Leroy Anderson record jacket. I'd taken a much better digital photo, but I can't find it. So I dug out the album and re-took it, to middling results.

Such cheap packaging. And a mediocre pressing, to boot. What could possibly save the day? Two things: astonishingly good high fidelity and excellent performances.

Fidelity, of course, is a separate issue from record-surface quality, at least in book. As a 78 collector, I'm forever running into superbly-recorded sides that had the misfortune of being preserved on noisy surfaces. Which is what we have here. What a joy it would be to hear the master tapes, in the unlikely event they still exist. But things sound awesome enough, just the same. This is not what I expected from such a chintzy label. But, of course, they were leasing material recorded in Europe, so it's all about the quality of the original recording, not their cut-rate presentation thereof.

Now that we've gotten that vital background out of the way, here are familiar Leroy Anderson melodies beautifully presented in the best kind of vintage high fidelity--a testimony to how good mono could sound. Anderson, you might know, was born 100 years ago. If I'd failed to feature anything by him this year, and if someone ever asked me 'So, what did you do, posting-wise, for the Leroy Anderson centennial?" I'd have to respond "Uhhhh...." Besides, I've been planning to put this up all year, and somehow it never happened. So, late in the evening of Dec. 31, here's beautiful instrumental mood music from the pen of Leroy Anderson, in the form of Beautiful Instrumental Mood Music from the Pen of Leroy Anderson:

Leroy Anderson

TRACKLIST

THE SYNCOPATED CLOCK
PENNYWHISTLE SONG
BELLE OF THE BALL
WALTZING CAT
HORSE AND BUGGY
BLUE TANGO
THE TYPEWRITER SONG
PLINK-PLANK-PLUNK!
FIDDLE FADDLE
JAZZ PIZZICATO

Kurt Jenson and His Pop Concert Orchestra (Audition Supertone High Fidelity 5921).


Lee

End of year gems, Part 2: Nobody else sounded like Scott. Except Ben Pollack, for instance.

As many of us have already been told--er, I mean, as many of already know, bandleader/musical director/songwriter/composer/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott wrote highly-organized concert jazz that sounded like no one else's. We're talking roughly 1934-1940, concert-jazz-wise. A number of famous people have pointed out that his stuff was utterly unique--and radical, to boot.

In fact, to hear music that sounds like Scott's, one has to dig out sides by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra, Red Nichols, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Larry Clinton, Morton Gould, and Alec Templeton. Save for these people (and probably a number of others), it's absolutely true that Scott's music sounded nothing like anyone else's, and vice versa. So who are we to challenge the myth?

We're a music blog, that's who. And here, submitted for our amusement, is the latest Scott-esque example from the mainstream of pop and jazz music--Ben Pollack's recording of The Snake Charmer, from 1937. There's a rule of scholarship that concerns the making of broad, sweeping claims--namely, don't make them. Not unless you want your claim to run smack dab into the cruel, unyielding face of historical evidence. But when it comes to pop music history, no one follows that rule. And myths live on, no matter how often they're debunked. Pursuing truth in a plugged-in, mass-mediated society is less risky, health-wise, than shouting into a snowstorm, but it can be just as frustrating. Enjoy.

The Snake Charmer--Ben Pollack's Pick-a-Rib Boys, 1937. Ripped from worn Decca label 78.

Nothing Scott-esque about that? I didn't think so. The myth is safe.


Lee

End of year gems, Part 1

This set starts with two magnificent 1940 duo-piano sides by Pierre Luboshutz and Genia Nemenoff, straight off a Victor Red Seal 78. Luboschutz' arrangement of Cesar Cui's Orientale may be the finest treatment of the exotica staple this blogger has ever heard, and the LOUD rendition of Mussorgsky's Coronation March (from Boris Godunov) has a power a mere orchestra can't match. The I/#VI routine happens all the time in music--Bernard Herrmann's Day the Earth Stood Still prelude, the opening bars of Percy Faith's 1949 arrangement of Deep Purple, the first movement of Grofe's Niagara Falls Suite, and so on. We hear the progression a zillion times in our lives, and every single time it sounds weird and wrong and wonderful.

Our third 78 rip--the Band of the H.M. Grenadier Guards' 1939 recording of Entry of the Gladiators--sounds great, I'm just now realizing. Just after I'd edited and EQ'd it, I wasn't sure if it sounded any good--my ears were too tired to make a judgment. My rested and refreshed ears hear remarkably realistic sound from this very clean 1939 78 (not a dirty word to be heard). As far as Entry versions go, this is pretty reserved, but it's all the more interesting for it. I love the tempo acceleration at the end. Does this piece (by Czech composer Julius Fucik) evoke images of ancient Rome for you? I didn't think so. Like you, I see clowns and elephants and a big tent.

String Beans is a very jazz and bluesy dance side with a strong 1924 feel. I can say that because I know it was recorded in 1924. Amazingly, the 1911 Slippery Place Rag, featuring the Victor Military Band is a faster, livelier and more supple performance. That's not supposed to happen, especially since the earlier example is by a marching band. But I don't explain 'em, I just feature 'em. And leave out the th.

Our last end-of-year gem is from a 45 on the 49th State Hawaii Record Co. label. (Say that twenty times, fast.) It features Genoa Keawe, who passed away in February of this year, and Her Hula Maids. I usually refrain from describing anything in music as pure, but this performance is so unbelievably pure, what else can I call it? Purely beautiful, too. I guess I once regarded Hawaiian music as lightweight. Frivolous, even. Then I heard this record. Gone forever was that silly idea.

End of year gems, Part 1.

PLAYLIST

ORIENTALE (Cui, Arr: Luboshutz)--Luboshutz and Nemenoff, piano duo, 1940.
CORONATION SCENE from Boris Godunov--Same, 1940.
STRING BEANS--Vincent Rose and His Montmartre Orch. of Hollywood, 1924.
SLIPPERY PLACE RAG (Hacker)--Victor Military Band, 1911.
ENTRY OF THE GLADIATORS (Fucik)--Band of the H.M. Grenadier Guards, 1939.
LITTLE BROWN GAL--Genoa Keawe and Her Hula Maids.


Lee

Super-duper macho-man biologists (and comedians) dawkins and myers

I'm majorly impressed by the tough-guy talk in p.z. myers' assessment of the brilliant Roman Catholic theologian John F. Haught. I haven't heard such rugged, regular-guy talk since my high school days in Toledo, Ohio. Myers, of course, is putting us on--no one that reading-challenged could possibly function as a biology professor. So, really, all I can figure is that myers is assuming an educated-fool persona by way of conveying, in a performance-arty way, what a fool Haught is. It's myers' Barat moment. Except that Haught is anything but a fool, and no one smart enough to teach biology at a university level has any excuse for regarding him as one. Which means that myers can't possibly regard him as one, so why would he...

Um.... Hm.

But I sure love myers' super-duper macho tough-guy talk! I read somewhere that some major studio is considering a series of mega-manly action films featuring biology professors performing various forms of serious whoop-ass on chowder-headed dawkins critics, especially the theology profs who dare to foolishly assume that role. I can't believe men of religion embarrassing themselves the way they do, especially when it involves the risk of getting ass-whooped. Um, dude. (Adding "dude" helps lend the right atmosphere to virile and blustery utterances of the type made by tough-guy biology profs.)

dawkins, in case you didn't know it, humbly refers to his critics as "fleas." Fleas. Isn't that cute? I guess that makes dawkins a dog? Anyway....

Haught recently penned God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, which, while a "slim" volume, isn't an easy read. Unless you can't follow what you're reading, in which you might breeze right through it. I've sparred with many folks on line who are well-read but don't read well.

Music coming up, and soon. My apologies to Keith Olbermann for my steal of the "comedian" tag.

Twenties-something mood music

Here's the latest batch (as small as it is) of vintage mood/easy/lounge/Bachelor Pad music. As I'm always preaching, the popular instrumental music we associate with the post-WWII period had its start well before hi-fi sets and space-age album jackets.

To help make this point in the most audio fashion possible, I added concert-hall texture and reverb (or was it echo?) to the two 1927 Louis Katzman sides we're about to hear--the results (in spots) are straight out of Fifties "library" music, early-Forties Kostelanetz recordings, and the soupy, reverb-y sound of Mantovani. I have a weird theory that the Dave Clark Five used Monty's recording engineer, though I'm probably completely in error. That never stopped me before, though.

Hopefully, you'll hear what I'm jabbering about. Otherwise, just assume I'm mad. (I am, you know! Hoo hoo, haa haaaa!)

I've included the Katzman sides in both their original, undoctored state and their Mantovani-ized versions. We also get to hear Ippolitov-Ivanov's 1894 classic March of the Sardar (with an s added in error) from that composer's Caucasian Sketches, as recorded in 1928 for Brunswick's "Mood Accompaniment Library" series. And I'm just now Googling that phrase. Looks like there's a lot to be read. Check this out: The Sampler, Nov. 9, 2004. As I thought--motion picture and/or theater accompaniment. The modern term is "production music." Far out.

The matrix number is 230 L, which likely means it was recorded around July 1928 in Los Angeles.

Added treat: Paul Whiteman's electrical-era re-recording of Cho-Cho-San (melodies by Puccini arranged by Joseph C. Smith's brilliant Hugo Frey). The disc has the usual damage in the louder spots, but I de-noised it pretty effectively. Just a terrific arrangement, originally recorded in 1921.

I'd close with a "mood"-related pun, but I can't think of one. To the music, all ripped and burned from 78s in my collection:

ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

PLAYLIST

ALLAH'S HOLIDAY--Louis Katzman and His Salon Orch., 1927.
KASHMIRI SONG--Same, 1927.
MARCH OF THE SARDARS (sic)--Brunswick Mood Accompaniment Library (1928)
ALLAH'S HOLIDAY (Mantovani-ized)
KASHMIRI SONG (Mantovani-ized)
CHO-CHO-SAN (Puccini melodies arr. by Hugo Frey), Paul Whiteman Orch., 1926.


By the way, the Brunswick Mood Accompaniment Library label is white, not pink. The lighting came out wrong, is all.

Lee

Sunday Morning Gospel: The Haitian Gospel Quartet--Victory in Jesus

(THIS POST AND MUSIC FILE ORIGINALLY APPEARED LAST NOVEMBER. TEXT HAS BEEN SLIGHTLY MODIFIED, WITH PERMISSION FROM ME TO MYSELF.)

The Haitian Gospel Quartet's Victory in Jesus LP tells us nothing about the group--beyond the fact they're called The Haitian Gospel Quartet (or, on the cover, the "Haitian Quartet"). The back jacket is blank--no track listing, nothing. Luckily, the titles show up on the label.

And that's the whole story. Nothing on/at Google for the "Haitian Gospel Quartet." That's the way it goes, sometimes.

Great stuff. Four tracks are accompanied, the rest are a cappella. An accordian is used in one instance. A minority of titles are sung in English--the rest are in French, or so it sounds to my language-discerning software. Best non-English track of all--Power in the Blood. Followed closely by Charles Gabriel's Since Jesus Came Into My Heart. Best English-language track--probably In the Garden. I just love the way they do it.

Four or five volume surges show up on this LP (a short in the mixing board?), and I carefully volume-leveled each occurrence by splicing the files and lowering the bar thingie on the MAGIX display. The bar thingie comes in handy for that purpose.

This LP is a treat, and not only for those dying to hear Power in the Blood sung in French by a Haitian quartet. It's fun for anyone who appreciates unadorned sound documents. What do I mean by "unadorned sound documents"? Download these documents and find out. The Haitian Gospel Quartet from, um... er.... From sometime. At some church. On the Paradise Records label.

Click here to hear: Haitian Gospel Quartet--Victory in Jesus (Paradise Records 1002)

TRACKLIST

Bells Ring the Gospel
There Is Power in the Blood
In the Garden
What Shall the Harvest Be
Victory in Jesus
Pass Me Not
Master the Tempest is Raging
We Will Walk to Heaven
Since Jesus Came Into My Heart
Oh How I Love Jesus
There's Sunshine in My Soul; Amen-Amen

Some months after originally posting this, I received this very cool comment:

"This was a real treat! By the way the reed-y sound is an accordeon. I know this because I play accordeon. The bass progressions kind of sells it. Groups like this one are still very popular and can be found all over Haiti. They go about from churches to churches singing concerts on Sabbath or Sunday afternoons. Haitian is a poor people but we go through life singing; we sing with our souls, we sing about everything, mostly we sing about our creator and redeemer. Thank you for this post."

To say that it was my pleasure is an understatement. Download-wise, the original file received 840 before being deleted by Savefile (for lack of activity!).

Lee