Stairway to Easter (Lee Hartsfeld, 2007)

I forgot all about this until my cyber-friend Chris reminded me. I couldn't place it until I'd located the track, though I did remember writing it. Or thought I did.

I like it. Give it a listen, why don't you. Squeaky-Toy Bunny® commands you: Stairway to Easter (Hartsfeld, 2007)


Lee

Grofe's Birthday, Part 8--Wang Wang Blues, Who Do You Love, Lonely Eyes, more!

I never grow tired of 78s. Well, not until after I've ripped a bunch of them for days on end--then, maybe. But then it's only temporary. In fact, I'm already back to loving them. I doubt I spent more than an hour, just now, wishing the things no longer existed.

Less than an hour, probably. How they feel about me, I have no idea. I wonder if they sit in their rows, talking to each other--"Oh, no. He just took Fred. He put him on that machine that spins us around. I'm next--I just know it." By the way, I have not been sniffing glue.

Okay, we'll pretend a normal introduction just happened, and we'll talk all about the playlist items to come. Two versions of Wang Wang Blues, for one--the 1920 original on the Victor label, and the 1945 redo on Capitol. The difference in fidelity is analogous to the recording-quality leap that occurred when the phonograph was invented versus before. Brilliant Grofe arranging, I think. These are all Grofe charts, in fact, except for Harry James' recording of Daybreak (from the Mississippi Suite's Mardi Gras movement), which has Bob Eberly on vocal, whom I forgot to list. Seven more personal-favorite Grofe arrangements for Paul Whiteman (from 1926-1931) complete the list.

You will love these. I love them. In fact, I love 78s--did I mention that?

To the Grofe: Grofe's Birthday, Part 8--Wang Wang Blues.

PLAYLIST

LIKE YOU--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1927. (Victor 20684)
WHO DO YOU LOVE?--Same, 1927. (Victor 20784)
I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER YOU--Same; vocal: Austin Young, 1927. (Victor 20784)
DAYBREAK (Grofe-Adamson)--Jimmy Dorsey O., feat. Bob Eberly, 1942.
WANG WANG BLUES--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1945. (Capitol 10026)
WANG WANG BLUES--Same, 1920. (Victor 18694)
LONELY EYES--Same; vocal: Wilbur Hall, 1926. (Victor 20418)
DANCE OF THE LITTLE DUTCH DOLLS--Same; vocal: The King's Jesters, 1931.
SHANGHAI DREAM MAN--Same; vocal chorus: Jack Fulton, Chester Gaylord, Austin Young, Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, 1927. (Victor 20683)
MA BELLE--Same, 1928. (Victor 21315)


Lee

Grofe's Birthday, Part 7--Kentucky Derby Suite (!!!)

"Modern music couldn't get along with Ferde Grofe"--hey, I'll buy that.

And we have a rare--dare I say, suite--treat today: Grofe's brilliantly arranged and orchestrated Kentucky Derby Suite, from a high-quality (if crackly) recording originally made either for or from the radio. Either way, it sounds great. This file is courtesy of the talented and highly knowledgeable Grofephile Kevin R. Tam, a concert band arranger who shares my obsession with Paul Whiteman's leading man. By the weirdest (and best kind of) timing, he contacted me mere days before my planned Grofe-athon, and maybe this was destiny. The Grofe Appreciation gods have smiled on this cyber-enterprise. They're cool guys and gals.

Once again, we put the "won't hear anyplace else" in the blog title, with that cautious parenthetical caveat ("possibly") on standby in case we need to resort to it.

Click here to hear: Kentucky Derby Suite (Grofe)



Lee

Blogging on Topeka

For April Fools' Day, Google is now Topeka. They switched names with the city! You know, as an April Fools' joke. For April 1 (today)!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!

HO HO HEE HEE HAA HAAAAA!!!

HEE HEEE HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Darn. Ran out of font size. Anyway, Google and Topeka SWITCHED NAMES!!!! That's a riot!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, etc.!!!


Lee, unable to stop laughing

Ferde Grofe's Birthday, Part 6--Count Your Blessings, Wonderful One

The Birthday bash continues with seven hard-to-edit shellac rips. Included: two songs by Ferde Grofe, four of his best Paul Whiteman arrangements, and one superb Jimmy Dorsey version of On the Trail (from the Grand Canyon Suite, of course). These edits required multiple levels of filtering, a trick I use to bring out the good and minimize the bad. It requires making a bunch of settings, saving them, and then starting over. Great way (not) to keep your hard drive from getting cluttered. Just as driving for miles on end saves gas.

Three of these are electrical-era remakes of Paul Whiteman acoustical-era hits. By the Waters of Minnetonka uses the original arrangement, which is great to hear in post-recording-horn fidelity--Whispering and Japanese Sandman, however, feature new ones. I'd have loved to hear the original charts for those, but the updates are so good, I can't complain. Grofe brings both tunes into the Challis-Bix-Trumbauer era with his usual considerable ingenuity.

Grofe's over the top, 9/10-symphonic treatment of Moonlight on the Ganges is pure joy, and the Tchaikovsky quote is so cleverly and subversively managed, I can only bow in honor to this pop master of musical interpolation. Or I would, except I'd conk my head on the computer desk.

Wonderful One is a fine 1923 recording of the extremely good Paul Whiteman-Ferde Grofe waltz standard, and Count Your Blessings is a contemporary (1933) recording of a Grofe tune with words by Irving Caesar and Edgar Guest. It was featured in 1934's Palooka, starring Jimmy Durante. Jimmy Dorsey's flawless big band treatment of Grofe's On the Trail is... flawless. Anyone not familiar with the piece might conclude it was written for Dorsey's orchestra, it's that well-adapted for the band. Whoever the arranger was, I'd have paid him top dollar to keep him on....

To the Grofe: Ferde Grofe's Birthday, Part 6.

PLAYLIST

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (Guest-Caeasar-Grofe)--Will Osborne and His Orch., vocal: WO, 1933. (Oriole 2807)
WHISPERING (Arr. Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1928. (Victor 21731)
THE JAPANESE SANDMAN (Arr. Grofe)--Same.
BY THE WATERS OF MINNETONKA (Lieurance-Grofe)--Paul Whiteman Orch., 1928. (Victor 21796)
MOONLIGHT ON THE GANGES (Arr. Grofe)--Paul Whiteman, 1926. (Victor 20139)
WONDERFUL ONE (Whiteman-Grofe)--Columbia Dance Orch., 1923. (Columbia A-3859)
ON THE TRAIL (Grofe)--Jimmy Dorsey and His Orch., 1940. (Decca 3395)



Lee

Grofe's Birthday, Part 5

Today's Grofe photo is courtesy of Kevin R. Tam (thanks, Kevin!). He sent me a gorgeous photo of Grofe and his kids, but Blogger won't let it upload. Size, title, type are all fine, but it won't go.

We start with my latest rip of Grofe's stirring March for Americans, as recorded in 1941 by Meredith (Music Man) Willson. This recording is a proud MY(P)WHAE regular, and there's nothing like getting a clunky 12-inch Decca 78 to sound smooth. I recently came across a radio recording of the work, but it isn't nearly as effective. And we have two other concert works--Blue Nocturne (from a radio broadcast) and the fabulous Trylon and Perisphere, as performed at Paul Whiteman's Christmas, 1938 Caregie Hall concert. The rest are first-rate arrangements for Paul Whiteman, including two versions of Rimsky-Korsakov's Hymn to the Sun--the first from the 1925 studio recording and the second from a 1936 radio broadcast. Grofe's To a Wild Rose treatment, featuring (from 1929) Paul Whiteman's Chester Hazlett on saxophone and sub-tone clarinet, isn't exactly edgy, but it's a mood music milestone. The man could arrange.

To the Grofe: Grofe's Birthday, Part 5

PLAYLIST

MARCH FOR AMERICANS (Grofe)--Meredith Willson and His Concert O., 1941.
BY THE WATERS OF MINNETONKA (Lieurance-Grofe)--Paul Whiteman, 1924.
MEDITATION FROM THAIS (Massenet-Grofe)--Same.
HYMN TO THE SUN (Rimsky-Korsakov)--Paul Whiteman Orch., 1925.
TO A WILD ROSE (MacDowell; Arr. by Grofe)--Chester Hazlett, saxophone and sub-tone clarinet, 1929.
DEEP NOCTURE--Radio broadcast, possibly 1947.
HYMN TO THE SUN-- Paul Whiteman O., radio broadcast (NBC, 1936).
TRYLON AND PERISPHERE--Paul Whiteman O., Caregie Hall, 1938.



Lee

Grofe's Birthday, Part 4--Metropolis (1928)

I don't know from where I swiped this marvelous photo of Grofe--I'd cite the source if I could remember. Auction item, maybe? University collection?

So... Metropolis. 1928. Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra. Two 12-inch 78s, fairly worn. Is a good rip possible?

Yes. My rip is more than adequate. Sounds great, actually. Let's call it a tribute to the 1928 Victor engineering, but of course what I'm really doing is bragging. The surface noise has not only been adequately minimized, but there's plenty of oomph to the lows. I'd get more technical, but I really can't. The day I figure out what I'm doing will probably be the day I lose my 78-saving touch. I go almost solely by ear, which means, among other things, that I had to have my keyboard redesigned.

If you want to, check out my analysis of this piece in the last post. I recall it was a pretty good one. But I would, wouldn't I?

(A Blue Fantasie) (Ferdie Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch., 1928.

METROPOLIS (Grofe) Parts 1-4 (One per zip file).



Lee

Health; Grofe; weather

I was loving our spring weather. Then it went back to cold. But not too cold. Still, cold is cold.

That last paragraph will live forever in the Hall of Profound Utterances (echo, fade).

Health-wise, I'm better, despite a slightly nasty cough and continued congestion. Which gives you some idea of what it was like before it got better. Prednisone (the anti-inflammatory of choice for respiratory bugs) and antibiotics are saving the day, though it would have helped a lot had my primary doc taken my word the first time and gotten help to me sooner. So it goes.

The Grofe posting will continue through the week. It's happening slowly because Prednisone has my head going "Who? Wha...?" I mean, moreso than usual.

Next up: 1928's Metropolis, and nothing officially to do with the Fritz Lang movie. It's Grofe noodling around with some donated musical themes, stringing them together in the form of various treatments and settings. It's like the ultimate Grofe chart for Paul Whiteman. Those many critics who pan it as a pretentious hodgepodge might be missing the theme-and-variation aspect of the composition. Yes, it sounds underdeveloped--because it is. But if you regard the work in terms of skillfully connected episodes, many of them kin to the previous one, it starts to seem damned clever--because it is. But this is all just my opinion. (Or is it Prednisone's? Ooo-weeee-ooo.)

Music, soon.

"Three Shades of Blue" re-do

Greetings, fellow Grofe fans. I just listened back to last night's rip of Blue and decided I overdid the treble suppression. So I went back and changed my settings (which, luckily, I hadn't saved to the hard drive). Here is the track with the needed treble restored (i.e., unsuppressed) and sounding good, in my estimation. I retitled it Three Shades of Blue-2 and have it up at the previous post, too. I have all the bases covered. (Bases? Treble?):

THREE SHADES OF BLUE (Treble restored)--Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch., 1927.

Three Shades of Blue: Indigo--Alice Blue--Heliotrope (Grofe)



Lee