And now, the Hoover-Schrum Grade School Band of Calumet City, Illinois--and Diane says she didn't gift this to me, so I must have found it in a local thrift. And the sole reference I found on line is this 2016 YouTube post, It gives priceless info on the LP, including the all-important detail: the year (1969). But--and I hate to say it--the YT transfer is over-filtered. Digital filtering can easily remove part of the audio to avoid hiss, and that's a trade-off I work hard not to make. So, you have two rips to choose from--YT's, or the one I'm offering here.
I was tempted to sum the left and right channels for mono, but there's very slight stereo happening here, so I kept it. Some privately done LPs have this very type of narrow-width stereo, and I'm not sure how it happens. Maybe it's in the mastering stage, or maybe the microphones are too close when the tape is first rolling. I'm not knocking the sound overall--it's very good--but there isn't much stereo. But I didn't want to eliminate the slight depth by going stereo to mono.
The YouTube post mentions the hot temperatures and missing band members, but the band is nonetheless extremely good--preternaturally so, in some places. Listening to this, I had to keep reminding myself that this is a grade school band, especially on Original Dixieland Concerto and the 76 Trombones portion of Music Man. I wonder if the superb trumpet soloist on the Manhattan Tower track went on to a music career.
Why the first side of this holiday concert is made up of non-holiday material, I don't know. And why would "a musical tribute to the uplifting of the spirit of all mankind," use Everything's Coming up Roses as its musical theme? Roses shows up, not only at the start, but in a piece called Roses Rhapsody. Maybe it symbolizes the band's successful concert streak that preceded the making of this disc (except the program was arranged prior to that streak, so I guess that can't be). Though I like the number, I could have lived without Roses--Christmas and Kate Smith would've been fine, but Christmas and Ethel Merman? Nahh. I could lived without Havah Nagilah, too, just because I don't like it. I got lost during the Rhapsody, and my mind wandered away on my second listen, so I quit while I was a head, as the awful old joke goes. When arrangements wander, so does my brain. Well, my brain often does so without any outside aid, I have to admit.
I liked this LP a lot, more for the remarkable musicianship than the weirdly conceived program. The fact that everything held together so well is, of course, a tribute to conductor Michael Landes and the gifted young ones. I just wish things hadn't musically stalled out during the Christmas part of this Christmas concert. And it's because these kids are so gifted that they shouldn't have been pushed past their ability the way they were with these charts. But reaching too high is a choral and school band norm, and I have no idea why. These musicians are amazing, but we're talking grade school....
Musicians: A+. Program: Not A+, but a fun listen overall.
DOWNLOAD: Hoover-Schrum Grade School Band, c. Michael Landes
Curtain's Coming Up--Everything's Coming up Roses
Music Man
Joshua
Gershwin
Original Dixieland Concerto
Manhattan Tower
Christmas Party
Roses Rhapsody
Winter Wonderland
Havah Nagilah--Exodus
Jingle Bells Rhapsody
Hoover-Schrum Grade School Band, c. Michael Landes--Holiday Time--U.S.A. (No label name WFC-859)
Lee
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