I'm redoing my Earl Fuller post

Greetings.  In a day or so, I'll be putting up brighter, better-sounding files to replace the Earl Fuller files I featured last post.  Those did not come out very well, imo.  Long story, but I had created and saved an equalization page template on the program I use to rip my vinyl and shellac--VinylStudio. Because I had modified a VS preset to create the template, I figured the preset's inverse RIAA curve would be saved along with my eq.  But it wasn't.  And so the files I gave you contained the RIAA (or LP) curve, which doesn't go well with most 78s--early ones, especially  I had wondered why I was getting such heavy audio and why it took so much work to coax brightness from the files--and now I know why.

The redone versions, so far, are sounding a lot better--lighter, brighter, but still boasting some needed low end.  So, tomorrow or Monday, I'll have the replacement files up and ready to download.  But if you have no problem with the files I put up, then no need to replace them, I guess.

There's no way I could have anticipated this problem--namely, that my saved template would not include all the features of the modified response curve--but I should have investigated matters before putting up the post, because things just weren't sounding right.

I find it odd that my modified and retitled preset only retains the revised equalization and not the inverse RIAA curve, and I guess I could ask the software makers (they're very good and quick at answering), but I'm not sure I could word it in a way that makes sense.

Sorry if this post was less than crystal clear.  Bottom line: new and improved Earl Fuller files are on the way!  Hooray!

Meanwhile, could somebody please tell my allergies to give me a break?  The record-breaking amounts of rain in these parts have things blooming much earlier than they normally would, so I'm suffering like it was late May.  And you don't want a stuffy head and body aches when a deadly virus is making its rounds....


Lee

Earl Fuller, 1917-1921--Cold Turkey, More Candy, Down Home Rag, Howdy, Singapore, Mummy Mine!

All but two of these tracks are not available on CD, so I'm making them available on blog.  So to speak.

The fun and fascinating Rector Novelty Orch. sides by Earl Fuller (1885-1947) make for a nice distraction from COVID-19 tension, to the extent that distraction from COVID-19 is possible.  The band recorded for Columbia from 1917 to 1919 (there's a great pic below), and it was apparently a totally separate unit from his "jazz" band, which recorded for Victor, and which gets all the attention (though few reissues).  His "jazz" sides don't do much for me, and they don't fit even my open-minded definition of jazz--they're like inept imitations of Dixieland, if you ask me.  Just a group of guys playing in different directions in a wild fashion.  Not uninteresting, but not jazz.  His often amazingly lively novelty sides, however, are of considerable jazz interest, in my view, and they're musically superb, in terms of incredibly solid playing.  Select examples, like Cold Turkey and Pork and Beans, even verge on weird.  Good-weird, I should note--innovatively weird. Of course, if you've never heard the earliest modern dance sides, such as these, then they all sound pretty weird, but Cold Turkey, in particular, sounds downright experimental no matter how many times I play it.  I'd love to have the words.  Of my six (!) copies, I chose the best-sounding copy.  I have no idea if Cold Turkey had the John Lennon meaning back in the late 1910s.

After working on these transfers for a week or more, I'm convinced the Columbia acoustical engineers weren't quite sure how to arrange these guys around the recording horn, because the equalizations vary quite a bit.  And pre-electric 78s did have eqs--emphases on different portions of the frequency range, which were often the result of placing one instrument or section closer to, or farther from, the horn.  And engineers must have had dampening methods--some ability to suppress a given portion of the frequency range.  Say, the bass.  The final selection in this playlist, from 1921 on the lesser-quality Olympic label, required a big boost in the rougly 1,000-2.000 Hz range to get any body in the sound.  I did much tweaking, and re-tweaking on all of these.

For some reason, I always assumed "Rector," as in "Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orchestra," referred to a hotel, but it was a New York City restaurant.  Now we know.  As far as I'm aware, only two of Fuller's Rector sides are commercially available (hm--I already said that, I notice), and a handful of his "jazz" sides.  It's the jazz sides that get the attention, because of the word "jazz."  But people have to get over this childishness of expecting early examples of a style to arrive with a label--common sense tells us that, in the early stages of a style, labels are evolving along with the music.  And many no-"jazz"-in-the-description dance sides from the period just before and after the 1920s are, in my opinion, jazz.  I refer to two or three sides by Harold Veo, many of Paul Whiteman's early efforts, select numbers by Frank Westphal, Jan Garber, the Benson Orchesstra, Gene Rodemich, and so on.  Arranged jazz is fine by me, and I think those seeking high degrees of formal improvisation in the earliest jazz efforts are practicing wishful thinking.  Formal improvisation isn't something that could have crawled otu of the woodwork--at the very least, a system had to evolve that allowed solo space.  When you've got nine or ten guys playing at the same time, there has to be a game plan.  Incredibly, some jazz fans continue to believe that jazz is and was something that just happened.  Guided by some higher hand, I guess.  I'm not an Intelligent Design believer, myself, so....

The Red Hot Jazz site, where I typically go to get info on dance and jazz band line-ups, seems to be down, maybe even dead.  And Brian Rust's American Dance Band Discography gives me the names of only two members of the Rector orch.--Bill Scotti on clarinet and alto sax, and, "during the latter part of this band's existence," the amazing Teddy Brown on xylophone and drums.  Meanwhile, Wikipedia indicates that Brown was featured on these sides as a rule, though it tells us the equally amazing George Hamilton Green, Jr. was also used "in this role."  I've discovered a reliable-seeming source which credits Green with the dizzying, swirling xylophone arpeggios that appear on the 1917 waltz recordings One Fleeting Hour and Castle Valse Classique--the latter a 3/4 version of Dvorak's Humoresque.  To say that Valse drags is quite an understatement, but we have to remember that this is modern dance music getting its start, back when the role of dance music was to accompany all the weird ballroom steps, slides, and spasms of the day.  At least come the 1910s, ballroom dancing was not the sedate, soporific affair presented in movies set in that period--too many of these selections are more uptempo and (for the dancers, certainly) acrobatic than we'd have thought. Or I'd have thought. Or someone would have.

And here is the background on Castle Valse Classique and its connection with Irene and Vernon Castle and Earl Fuller and George Hamilton Green--the source I mentioned.  I think we can assume it's George on the two 12" Columbia waltz sides.  I don't know if the quotation from Old Folks at Home is part of the original arrangement or something Fuller or his arranger stuck in.  Just picture people stop-gliding across a ballroom as you listen to Castle Valse, and just relax with that vision, and soon you will hear only my voice, and nothing but my voice, and then you will steal for me all the TP I command you to.

I'd been assuming for years that the personnel of Fuller's Ted Lewis-dominated jazz outfit was the same as on these, but it doesn't look that way.  This would explain why Lewis' sour clarinet tone is nowhere to be heard on the Rector sides (no knock on fellow Ohioan Lewis, whose corny style I dig), though busy drumming, similar to the percussion on the jazz sides, crops in and out.  In some cases, the percussion comes through loud and crisp--in others, more like mud behind the rest of the orchestra.  The equalizing challenge on these was to maintain a decent low end plus clarity in the "highs."  Not as easy as it may sound.

Apparently, Ted Lewis took off with Fuller's orchestra when a much better offer was given, and I'm guessing it was the jazz band that Lewis took with him, not the Rector band.  Again, I do find the Rector sides to be jazz--orchestrated jazz, but with a decent degree of looseness in the parts, with the xylophone free to roam where he wishes, though on some numbers, he clearly has a designated support or melody-doubling function.  There's a loose, semi-worked-out-on-paper sound to these sides, whether they were tightly arranged or no.  Less freedom to ad-lib than offered by Art Hickman, but enough to make things fascinating.

The strange Cold Turkey (too bad I don't have a decent sheet music cover image) is credited to "Donaldson," and for a long time I figured it must be Walter Donaldson.  Not.  It's Will Donaldosn, who wrote his share of hits, but who may be most famous for co-composing the 1917 ragtime number Rialto Ripples with a 16-year-old George Gershwin.  The extent to which Will did or didn't contribute to this rag number is unknown, but Will got Gershwin published.  I remember learning of this piece way back around 1978, when I was stationed in Scotland and had locally bought a book of ragtime classics.  Never got the original, which has a really cool cover (directly below).  At any rate, at that time, I was able to sight-read the piece, but my piano chops were way above where they are 42 years later.  Doubt I could sight-read it now.

Conditions vary on these, with Russian Rag (by George--Alabama Jubilee--Cobb, not Cobbs, as indicated on the original label) the most worn.  But most are average or well above.  The sort of odd but beautifully conceived Pork and Beans is by famed African American pianist Luckey Roberts, whereas the "Roberts" who gave us the famous Smiles is Lee S. Roberts, whose ragtime march Ching Chong I have on a 12-inch 78 by Prince's Band.   "Mary Earl," composer of Ruspana (a take-off on Rachmaninoff's ultra-famous Prelude in C-sharp minor) as well as Sweet Siamese, was a pseudonym for Robert A. King. Now you know.  I talked about Texas (and Texan) composer David W. Guion in a previous post--in fact, today's file is a re-rip of Texas, and hopefully one with more audio body.  Here he is at Wikipedia.

I had no idea Missouri Waltz (Missouri's official state song since 1949) had a minstrel show origin, and the composer credits on Fuller's side are a bit of a mess.  John V. Eppel (as "Eppel") is credited, though the melody was actually composed by Lee Edgar Settle.  Columbia can be forgiven for not knowing this, but the "Knight, Logan" part of its song credit is a typo--they meant Frederic Knight Logan, the man who did the sheet music arrangement, and who probably didn't use a comma between his middle and surname.  Sounds like a lot of fingers were in this pie, which is one of our many polite descriptions for white-collar theft.

I forgot to include the Graveyard Blues composer on the mp3 tag, so please don't confuse the song with the John Lee Hooker recording that bears no relation.  This 1916 number was by Clarence Woods and John S. Caldwell, and the sheet music shows us the Rector Novelty Orchestra, with Earl himself on drums.  Which is more info that the Brian Rust discography yielded:

Dig the string bass.  And I can't imagine a recording horn picking up an acoustical bass, but who knows?  Note the make-up of the orchestra--more a string band than a "proper" jazz unit, though again I suggest that "proper" has little meaning when applied to a genre still in formation.  In addition to the almost complete Columbia Fuller line-up (I'm short one 78), I have an Olympic label side (a label as cheap as it sounds): Ain't We Got Fun and Just Because.  These two required a major boost in the 1 to 2 kHz range, which is usually overkill for an acoustical 78, but not when they're as under-recorded as on these numbers.  And I included the lone non-jazz Earl Fuller's Orchestra side to be released on Victor--While the Incense Is Burning, from 1917.  This orchestra recorded a number of unreleased takes for Victor, and I wish I could hear them all, but they're long gone, I'm sure.  The Victor and Olympic sides are xylophone-less, for those of you wishing for some relief from the mallets.

Some amazing sounds here, and I hope I did some justice to them, and I hope you enjoy!  I'm offering them in two zip files of fifteen tracks apiece.  Be sure to click on both links!







DOWNLOAD: Earl Fuller, 1917-1921--Part One  Part Two






All Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orch., unless otherwise credited

Cold Turkey--One-step (Will Donaldson)
12th St. Rag (Bowman)
Pork and Beans (Luckey Roberts)
More Candy--One-step (Mel B. Kaufman)
Ida!  Sweet as Apple Cider (Eddie Munson)
One Fleeting Hour (John Stepan Zamecnik, as "Dorothy Lee") (12-inch)
While the Incense Is Burning (Walter Smith)--Earl Fuller's Orchestra
Castle Valse Classique (Dvorak, Arr. by Ford T. Dabney) (12-inch)
Smiles (Lee S. Roberts)
Graveyard Blues (Woods-Caldwell)
Sweet Emalina, My Gal --One-step (Creamer and Layton)
I Ain't Got Nobody Much (Graham-Williams)
Down Home Rag (Wilber C.S. Sweatman)
Mickey--Medley (Williams and Moret)
The Missouri Waltz (Lee Edgar Settle, Frederic Knight Logan, as "Knight, Logan and Eppel")
Here Comes America--Medley One-step (Jack Glogau)
Texas (David W. Guion) (12-inch)
Oriental--One-step (Vincent Rose) (12-inch)
Singapore--Medley (Gilbert and Friedland)
Out of the East--Oriental Fox Trot (Joe Rosey)
Sand Dunes--Oriental One-step (Byron Gay, Arr. Henri Klickermann)
Spaniola (Joe Rosey)
Egyptland (James. W. Casey)
Mummy Mine (Vincent Rose)
Ruspana--One-step (Robert A. King, as "Mary Earl")
Sweet Siamese (Robert A King, as "Mary Earl")
Ain't We Got Fun (Kahn-Egan-Whiting)--Earl Fuller's New York Orch. (Olympic 15116; 1921)
Just Because (Stevens-Frosini)--Same

Lee

The Beetle Beat--The Original Liverpool Sound: The Buggs (The Coachmen V; 1964)

It just occurred to me that putting up an LP by "The Buggs" might not be in the best taste, given our current health crisis.  But "The Buggs," of course, is a phony name (you'd never have guessed)--the group's real name was the Coachmen V, and it included Spooky Tooth member Gary (Dream Weaver) Wright.  Info (save for the Spooky Tooth detail) courtesy of Brian McFadden's terrific Rock Rarities for a Song: Budget LPs That Saved the Roots of Rock 'n' Roll.  (I know that it's also at Discogs.) The Coachmen V thought they were getting their big break and were shocked to discover their tracks had been released under different titles, with a fake credit, and without so much as their real group pic on the jacket.  This is what you get for trusting the Coronet label, I guess.  Maybe the weirdest feature of this LP is the inclusion of the Doris Troy/Hollies hit Just One Look, only under the title Soho Mash, believe it or not.  It seems that Aaron (Goldie) Goldmark, the head of Premier Albums Inc.'s publishing wing, had published the song, and so it was up for LP-filler use.  (Coronet was a Premier Albums, Inc. label.)

The tracks are fun and well performed, but I would have thought the Baiao beat in these numbers, a staple of the Invasion sound (a feature straight from Brill Building pop and R&B), might have alerted the group to the actual intentions of Coronet.  That, and the "Yeah, yeah, yeah"s.  Maybe it's only in retrospect that these tracks sound like surrogate Mersey beat items, though.  And a lot of U.S. groups were being pushed toward a Beatles sound on account of the Fab Four's massive fame.  Some groups, like the Buckinghams, were even adopting Brit-sounding names, of course.

Another piece of weirdness: A single from this LP was released on Coral and credited to another nonexistent group, The Pacers.  It featured You Got Me Bugged and Sassy Sue, obviously the real titles of Mersey Mercy and Big Ben Hop.

In my thrifting, this is the fake Beatles LP that shows up most often, but this is the first near-mint copy I've landed, so I just had to post it.  For stereo fans, sorry about the mono, but the stereo quality probably wasn't much to rave about.  All these decades later, I'm feeling bad for the Coachmen V, who must have been beyond bugged over this betrayal, and who certainly didn't deserve to be derailed in this fashion.  (Had to make a terrible pun--sorry.)  I would hope that modern record contracts forbid this kind of name, title, and image hijacking....

To the Coachmen V....





DOWNLOAD:  The Beetle Beat--The Coachman V (The Buggs)--Coronet CX-212 (1964)

Lee

Sunday evening gospel: The Songsmen Quartet--Coming Your Way

Or, The story of why an all-male quartet sounded like a mixed one.

No idea on the year--no Discogs listing for this.  Plus, there's at least one other group by this name--an all-male quartet.

Speaking of all-male quartets, when I was editing these files on MAGIX (to catch any surface noise not silenced by VinylStudio and to space and number the tracks), I thought I was listening to an album by the Brothers Quartet, which is (obviously) four men.  So I couldn't understand why I was hearing two female voices.  I figured the Brothers Q. must have had an amazingly high tenor and lead.  Once I realized my error, I had to do the jacket scanning and photo editing anew, which is time-consuming.  And I was already up too late and starting to doze off--hence, the delay.

This can happen when you're doing two projects at once.  When the files export into MAGIX, they're not labeled, which doesn't help.  No loss, since I was going to put these guys up, anyway.  The liner notes, by Gospel DJ Jerry Tope  (of WLGN Radio in Logan, Ohio) only give first names for the singers--Penny, Janet, Steve and Larry, and I suspect their last name isn't Songsmen.  Going by the song credits (on the back cover), Janet and Steve could be Janet and Steve Peters, and Penny could be Penny Meade, and Larry's last name could be Leach.  But I don't want to assume.  Oddly enough, the "musicians" (i.e., accompanists) get full-name listings.  The quartet was based in Pleasantville, Ohio, which is very close to here, and the recording was made in Cincinnati, which is not nearly as close.  The performances and production are highly professional, especially for such a small label.

Some familiar songs, and four which are very possibly group originals.  The all-time classic On the Jericho Road, given the "P.D." treatment on the jacket, was by Donald S. McCrossan. Year:1928.

I'd place the Songsmen's style between Southern quartet (aka. Southen gospel) and country gospel.  The former took on more and more of a country sound as time went on--which is to say, more of a modern country sound.  The quartets always operated in the realm of country, but initially in the old-time mode of, say, Smith's Sacred Singers.  Some of the earliest recorded quartet music hearkened back to "shape note" (or "shaped note") singing, which is a wonderful tradition going back to the late 1700s, as far as printed music goes.  It's related to solfège, and other systems were tried, too, including numbering the noteheads and writing out the syllables (do/doh, re, mi, etc.).  I have a Methodist hymnal of the latter type.

Dee Gaskin's Come Morning appears to be from 1979, so that likely places this in the 1980s, which is what the cover photo has me suspecting.

And the rain is starting again.  We absolutely do not need more of the stuff after the recent local flooding....




DOWNLOAD: The Songsmen Quartet: Coming Your Way




First Day in Heaven (Bill Gaither) (Stuart Hamblen)
I'm in This Church (Joel Hemphill)
Beulah Land (Squire Parsons)
I Find Pleasure (Words and Music by Penny Meade)
My Best Friend (Words and Music by Janet Peters)
On the Jericho Road (Donald S. McCrossoan)
He's Still Working one Me (Joel Hemphill)
Consider the Lilies (Joel Hemphill)
He Cares (For a Nothing Like Me) (Words and Music by Steve Peters)
Singing and Shouting (Words and Music by Larry Leach)
Come Morning (Dee Gaskin)
I Want to Be Like My Lord (Jimmy Jones)



Lee

Top Six--The Teenager's Choice: Beatlemania (1964)

DOWNLOAD: Beatlemania--Artists Unknown (Top Six TSL 1; 1964)


Fake Beatles tonight.  (That sound like the title of a Broadway comedy.)  Why fake Beatles tonight?  Because fake Beatles are fun, and faked Fab Four records were pretty much an industry unto themselves, so they're a big part of sound recording history.  A big part of the underground thereof, anyway.  And because it's giving me a break from stressing.  Hope it can perform that feat for some of you, too.  This 1964 British LP, titled Beatlemania (no attempt at exploitation there), has its expected bad moments (and bad tracks, like Please Please Me), but considering the rushed nature of the product, it's fairly amazing.  As in, legitimately good overall.  It captures the George Martin production sound with much skill--maybe by accident; I don't know.  But it is by far the best Beatles copy I've yet heard--and it's a whole LPful, which is not a word, but so what.  I read someplace the name of the group that allegedly did these tracks, but of course I've been unable to re-find that info.  It may not even be true.  But I can say without Google confirmation that these guys are good--the lead guitarist, especially.  This very used copy played amazingly well with my entry-audiophile cartridge and stylus at 1.5 grams (which I did not expect), and VinylStudio did superbly on the many clicks.  The sound is bright and full.

The front jacket says (I believe) eleven shillings and one pence, which was a little over half a pound.  That was for twelve hits.  Top Six singles (with six hits, of course) were six shillings and eight pence.  In pure junk-label fashion, there are no liner notes, and the back cover contains only an unpunctuated track listing and an ad for Top Six singles.  My kind of LP!

I wonder what the L in "TSL" stood for.  "Top Six...?"  Lemons?  Laugh riots?  Hm.  Probably "Limited."  At any rate, if you can forgive the absurd moments, I think you'll find it a remarkably good effort.  And, if you don't, I still will.  Note how the mystery studio group messes up a line (actually, two) in the first number.  It's supposed to be, "When I'll say that something: I want to hold your hand."  Even as a kid, I got that, except I thought "I'll" was "I."  As did these guys, too.  Anyway, they sing it, "When I say that someday, I want to hold your hand."  Huh?  The singer is expressing a present desire, not a future one.  "I assure you that someday I'll want to hold your hand.  But only after this pandemic is over."  Anyway, the Beatles were known for doubling words: "something" shows up twice in the first verse.  It's as if these underpaid pros were rushing to junk-label deadline.  Come to think of it....

Money is maybe the finest fake of the bunch, in good part because the lead singer sounds uncannily like John Lennon.  This LP is the definition of fun.  And proof that fake hits sometimes transcended the awful-to-medium curve.  Enjoy!

UPDATE: Apparently, the drummer on this LP was Jimmy Nichol, who subbed for Ringo with the Beatles in an international tour when Ringo had tonsillitis.  Read about it here.  Some info on Top Six, too.  I'd read about this before at various sites but suspected it was an urban legend.  I guess not!

Lee