When cats hide....

It was raining cats and d....

Er, I mean, rain was pouring down hard, and the local weather had announced a tornado warning. Four of our cats--Angelo, Tommy, Lily, and Cookie--knew where to go. Namely, right under the bed. MY(P)WHAE is proud to premiere the two-photo set, Cats Hiding from the Storm:

Saturday concert--Paul Nero, Peggy King, Percy Faith, Carmen Cavallaro, and more!

Ace-Hi--yet another budget cover label of the 1950s.

MY(P)WHAE asks: Have you ever tried to turn on the TV with your wireless phone? Or answer the TV remote? Just wondering. Not that I've ever done these things.

Anyway, what a deal--the fancy fiddling of Paul Nero on no fewer than three sides, an improved copy (and, ergo, a better file) of Peggy King's magnificent Zero Hour (from the 1957 film parodied by Airplane!), 1920 Ted Lewis, pre-Columbia Percy Faith, and a 1940 track called If I Could Be the Dummy on Your Knee. And, oh, so much more.

Notice the chord changes in Call Me, played here by Martin Denny--prior to the hook ("Call me, Don't Be afraid"), we have the harmonic skeleton of How High the Moon. Neat, no? I don't remember when I first noticed that. And, while we're at it, we ought to notice the lift from Madame Butterfly midway though Oh! (I've always wanted to type that.) Notice, also, that Freight Train Breakdown, tune-wise, is Ida Red, a.k.a. Maybelline. And notice, finally, how much the faux Weavers (The Tops Choristers) sound like the real item on Woody Guthrie's So Long (It's Been Good to Know You). Sometimes the Tops label hit the mark with its cheap covers. Such as, with this one and with their rocking version of Honky Tonk (Track 12).

Oh, and notice the incredible technique of Carmen Cavallaro on the Grieg number. The arrangement is astonishingly good, too.

If you promise to notice these things, then you may proceed to the zip file: ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE

PLAYLIST

IF I COULD BE THE DUMMY ON YOUR KNEE--Bobby Byrne O.; Vocal: Dorothy Claire, 1940. RUBY--Neely Plumb and His Orch., feat. Paul Nero, violin, and Neely Plumb, alto sax. APRIL IN PORTUGAL--Same. CALL ME--Martin Denny, 1967. ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT--Percy Faith Orch., 1947. TIA JUANA--Same, 1947. ZERO HOUR--Peggy King w. Frank De Vol's Orch., 1957. NO SLEEP TILL DAWN--Same. ANITRA'S BOOGIE (Wright/Grier/Grieg)--Carmen Cavallaro, His Piano and Orch., 1947. FREIGHT TRAIN BREAKDOWN--Eddie Kirk, 1951. BALLROOM BABY--Pee Wee King and His Band, 1956. HONKY TONK--Lew Raymond Orch. (Tops label) O (OH!) (Byron Gay)--Ted Lewis' Jazz Band, 1919. BEVERLY HILL BILLY (Nero)--Paul Nero and His Entourage, 1950. SO LONG (IT'S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YOU) (W. Guthrie)--The Tops Choristers.

Lee

Random offerings

I love Obama, but press conferences are boring.

I'm doing last-minute CD-making for my foster mom, Bev, whose Birthday is Friday. This involves transferring stuff from gospel cassettes I made for her years ago--cassettes that she set aside for that purpose. I'm listening to bluegrass gospel by Carl Story right now. You can never go wrong listening to Carl Story.

I'm never been a get-to-it sort of person. I'm a procrastinator. And like all procrastinators (we're about 75 percent of humanity, as close as I can figure) I feel terrible about being one. Well, at least I didn't wait until the last few hours.

Organizing tasks is my main problem. If I have a number of things that need to be done, I obsess over when and how to start. Next thing I know, it's dark outside.

I would never confess any of this on a job interview. I.... Just a second--an email just came in. "Hey, Lee, you just put it up in cyberspace, so now you won't have to admit it during an interview. It's there for anyone to read." Oh. Good point.

I'd better delete all those past posts about my career as a chainsaw murderer.

Actually, for all my talk of coming in at (on?) the wire, I'm actually well ahead of things at this blog--I've burned enough material for the next three weeks, at least. Just a matter of posting it. Another best-of-Earl-Fuller is coming up, another "Budget Covers and Barbershop," an LP rip, and a number of 78s waiting to find their way into a playlist. I never post everything I burn--more like 80 percent.

My sinuses? Worse than ever. The rain has lowered the pollen count, but it seems to generate other allergy-causing things. Like mold, probably.

The cats are fine. Savio, Fidel (our little black cat), and Tommy (our big black cat) are our constant pests--er, helpers--in the yard. Savio, in particular, wants to be where the action is.

Stuff the cats have killed lately: a bird (which they were devouring in the kitchen when we arrived home yesterday), a mouse which I'd tried unsuccessfully to save, and a frog. The frog didn't end up in the house, I'm happy to say.

What else? Oh, I've been watching Ryan's Hope on SoapNet. Seriously. I'm hooked. The last (and sole) soap opera that did this to me was Dark Shadows. I feel a kinship with Rosie O'Donnell, whose favorite soap this is. I started watching because I recognized all the late-Seventies details (in an "Oh, my God" kind of way). I think there was even a Dual turntable in one of the scenes.

Ryan's follows the standard soap opera formula, wherein the writers let good things pile up just so they can torpedo everything with a major tragedy. Hence, the recent death of baby Edmund and Jillian Coleridge's serious injuries following a house explosion. And we'd just been treated to Tom trying to kill Faith during a series of seizures (his, not hers). Faith really loves Pat, but she feels a duty to Tom--whom, after all, she's married to.

Bev thinks an MRI might determine what's wrong with me. Maybe, maybe not.

Budget covers; Barbershop

A recent survey that I just made up reveals that 4 out of 5 Internet music fans choose this blog for their budget covers and Barbershop needs. It makes sense that this would be the case, even if I'm making it up.

Budget covers--the best kind. Today we'll be hearing some superior copy-cat hits on Gateway Top Tune, Prom, and Royale, beginning with a superb cover of The Diamonds covering The Gladiolas (Little Darlin'). Then, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (orig. Guy Mitchell), A Guy Is a Guy (orig. Doris Day), A Penny a Kiss, A Penny a Hug (orig. Tony Martin, Dinah Shore), and Mocking Bird Hill (orig. Patti Page).

The Pittsburgh cover, by the way, is the best Guy Mitchell cover I've heard to date, and on any label. Those Mitch Miller productions for Guy Mitchell couldn't have been easy to emulate, but Enoch Light was up to the challenge.

Then, a Goodwill-found xylophone 78 on Columbia by George Hamilton Green of the Green Brothers (I've always wanted to type "a Goodwill-found 78 on Columbia by George Hamilton Green of the Green Brothers"), who also composed these selections. Dance of the Toy Regiment is credited to Green and Shilkret, who I'm guessing is none other than Nat.

1940 Barbershop quartet singing follows in the person of the Beacon Four. Great stuff, though less than a great specimen, shellac-wise. Still, I got decent enough files.

Things close with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra's magnificent Wang Wang Blues of 1920, as arranged by Ferde Grofe. I wish they'd done more like this.

To the sounds: Budget covers; Barbershop

PLAYLIST

LITTLE DARLIN'--The Four Jacks w. Herbie Layne's O., 1957.
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA (Merrill)--Loren Becker w. Enoch Light O.
A GUY IS A GUY (Oscar Brand)--Sally Coe w. Enoch Light O.
A PENNY A KISS, A PENNY A HUG--Elliot Everett O., w. Vocal Refrain.
MOCKING BIRD HILL--Same
DANCING STARS (Green)--George Hamilton Green, Xylophone solo, 1926.
DANCE OF THE TOY REGIMENT (Green-Shilkret)--Same.
HONEY THAT I LOVE SO WELL; SWEETNESS--Beacon Four, 1941.
MANDY LEE; SOMEBODY STOLE MY GAL--Same.
WANG-WANG BLUES (Arr.: Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Ambassador Orch., 1920.


Lee

The Return of... Sacred Shallac!

Perhaps you've been wondering when or if my Sacred Shellac series is going to return. Well, wait in suspense no longer--it's over! I mean, it's here. Fifteen sacred selections ripped from 78s, edited and filtered, turned into a zip file, sent through cyberspace to storage, and linked from here to there so that you may download, unzip, and enjoy the zip file, and I forgot what I was typing, hello.

So many steps. Whatever happened to technology reducing steps? That was the theory. But theory and fact can be two completely different words. In fact, they are.

The Sunday Evening at Seth Parker's sides, from 1929, are from the radio show Sunday Evening at Seth Parker's. (You would never have guessed.) Seth Parker was played by Phillips Lord, who wrote the two high-quality gospel songs featured on these sides.

Speaking of songs that were written by someone, Whispering Hope--which we'll hear in a 1919 duet--was composed in 1868 by Septimus Winner and remains very popular. It's one of the all-time "Do you know anyone who has a copy of...?" songs. It's also way up there on the "They played it at our/my (name of family function)" list. Number 5, I think.

Shake the Hands of a Stranger either features Thurl (Tony the Tiger) Ravenscroft or someone who sounds exactly like him. I'm ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine-percent sure it's him. And that's as close as you can get to being certain without being sure.

The 2500-member (!) Billy Sunday Chorus sings Charles H. Gabriel's wonderful Sail On, the tune that got me interested in Gabriel and, really, in gospel music. You might wonder whether or not the recording technology of 1917 could possibly capture the essence of a 2500-member chorus, and the answer is, fat chance. But it's fun, anyway. Balancing things out dynamically, especially with the periodic blasts of sound--not easy. But I got everything sounding not horrible. Sometimes that's the best a sound-restoring maverick like me can do.

Army of the Lord is metaphorical. It refers to spiritual conflict. If it seems a little jaunty for the occasion, remember that it was written by Stuart Hamblen, who, as far as I know, never wrote anything frown-inducing.

I love the noise that happens at the close of On the Glory Road (Bush Brothers, 1928), though I have no idea what caused it. It was something captured just after the closing note, and my best guess is a chair or table being moved. Or maybe the accordion was conking out. We'll never know.

ZIP FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE


PLAYLIST

SAIL ON (Chas. H. Gabriel)--Billy Sunday Chorus (Mixed Chorus of 2500 Voices), Dir. Homer Rodeheaver, 1917.
LAYING MY TREASURE UP THERE (Gabriel)--Homer Rodeheaver, 1922.
SUNDAY EVENING AT SETH PARKER'S--GATHERING WITH THE LORD TODAY--Phillips Lord and Company, 1929.
SUNDAY EVENING AT SETH PARKER'S--JESUS IS MY NEIGHBOR--Same.
SHAKE THE HANDS OF A STRANGER--The Prairie Choir w. David Rice's O., 1955.
ARMY OF THE LORD (Hamblen)--Same.
JACOB'S LADDER--McCravy Brothers, 1929?
WHEN THEY RING THE GOLDEN BELLS--Same.
WHEN THE GATES OF GLORY OPEN--Bush Brothers, 1928.
ON THE GLORY ROAD--Same.
THERE'S SUNSHINE IN MY SOUL--Welling and McGhee Trio, 1930.
HAVEN OF REST--Same.
WHISPERING HOPE (Winner)--Rosa Ponselle and Barbara Muriel, 1919.
SAVED BY GRACE (Crosby-Stebbins)--Seth Parker Trio, w. Organ, 1934.
THE OLD RUGGED CROSS (Bennard)--Same.


























Lee