Mixed Bag No. 3--Arkansas Traveler-athon, Barkin' Dog, a 1913 "Aloha Oe," and hoo boy....

Besides this one, how many essays have started out with, "I was sure I had a year for Polka Bum-Cyk-Cyk"?  Few, in all probability.  And I was certain I had a year for it, but I guess not.  Or I did at one time, but not now.  But, based on where the catalog number falls into Victor's ethnic cataloging scheme, I know it's from around 1912.  Or 1913, or 1914.  Thereabouts.  Will it have you Polka Bum-Cyk-Cyk-ing?  I'd say the possibility is there.  People will, of course, ask what you're doing.

And we get 3.3 versions of Arkansas Traveler in its various spellings, with the early-1900s version on Columbia a clone of the Victor version I previously posted, only spoken more slowly.  The Kessinger Brothers, from 1928, give us a purely instrumental version, while the Tennessee Ramblers race through a variation on the question/response format, with this listener not quite getting the humor.  Great playing, though.  The .3 version is part of the Jazzarimba Orchestra's 1918 Turkey in the Straw rendition.  We've got you covered here.

As I noted in the first installment, since I'm out of traditional Halloween fare (I've posted most of what I have), I've turned to novelties, highly old-fashioned hillbilly and polka fare (all original), and tracks that can only be described as efforts that haven't aged as well as they might have.  In that latter category, we must include the Happy Organ version of Ob La Di (aka Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da), which sounds like they used the step-recording software I bought with my Macintosh 512K, way back when.  The track probably seemed, not only current, but a bit ahead of its time--at the time.  Whereas My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean probably sounded old-fashioned even when the Leake County Revelers were waxing it in 1927, and I love those "Have we started yet?" type of beginnings that occur with groups new to 1920s recording studios.  I'd hate to hear these guys when they weren't reveling.  ("Hello?  Anyone there?")  But I like it.  It's honest--whatever I mean by that.  Yes! We Have No Bananas is a typical ethnic slur from the ethnic-slur heyday that was the 1920s, and I would have sworn the singer was not Billy Murray.  And I would have been wrong--it is.  What a versatile vocalist.  On Cal Stewart's "laughing record," And Then I Laughed, Cal laughs.  What else?  Obviously, the listener is supposed to get caught up in the mood and laugh along, and maybe that worked in 1907.  It might help if there wasn't a century and twelve years between then and now in the humor department.  We all know Aloha Oe, but do we all have a 1913 version of it?  We do now.  Barkin' Dog is a superb old-time jazz novelty with lots of instrumental effects, mainly supplied by clarinetist/leader Ross Gorman, the man who innovated the famous opening glissando in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  This 1919 disc is famous as one of the earliest examples of a closing fade-out.  How it was accomplished, I can only guess.  Did Gorman slowly step back, or did an engineer close a sound vent (is that a term?), or....  I once had a cabinet gramophone, and the vents could be adjusted to provide some control over the volume, so.... dunno.

Maybe the recording horn was pivoted away from Gorman as he played.  Or maybe he was lifted by wires from the ceiling, or....

Sorry.  Sinus meds getting to me.  The 2.500-voice Associated Glee Clubs of America do a marvelous early electric (and live!) version of  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's 1911 Viking Song (Clang, clang, clang on the anvil, There are steel ships wanted on the sea), and I've been told this once-famous (especially in England) number inspired "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam" on Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Could be.  I can't find it, of course, but I read someplace on line about how this was transmitted via phone line and recorded in a radio studio.  Which is one way to successfully record 2,5000 voices in 1926.  Don't quote me.  What I know for sure is that the engineer was doing some manual audio limiting/clipping (you can hear the input dip at two of the louder moments).  I'm picturing a primitive mixing board.

I knew a lot about Little Nell (first selection) at one point, but that was then, and this is later.  I can tell you there was a 1933 British version by Lew Stone and that I have the sheet music lying around someplace.  Mainly, we need to know that it's a take-off on 19th century stage melodramas, and that the last line--"Tomorrow night we'll play East Lynne"--refers to a popular 1861 novel and its many stage, radio, TV, and movie adaptations.  I don't know that anyone is doing Little Nell these days....

1924's Tuning in on the Radio, while not so easy to follow (or, in some spots, hear), is a comic essay on radio stations fading in and out--or, possibly, a depiction of someone changing the radio dial, with stations overlapping.  My radio-history knowledge is not what it should be, though of course I do remember when people actually turned a knob to get stations.  This was back when these guys called "attendants" filled people's gas tanks.  Anyway, on a board I used to visit, someone suggested this was a rip-off of the famous Happiness Boys novelty Twisting the Dials, from 1928.  An obvious problem there, since, at least in our multiverse, years flow forward.  Fascinating historical piece, if more than a little creaky.

Open the Door Polka is a repeat from January of this year, but I won't tell if you don't.  Old, old polka recordings, hillbilly classics, farces on farces, ethnic slurs, a tribute to the British shipbuilding industry, and Ob La Di on a happy organ.  And where does that road go, anyway?  Why, it don't go anywar.  It just stays where 'tis.  Haw, haw, hawwwww!

"Don't blame me.  He didn't tell me what was in the bag--he just had me tote it for him."--Frankie.  Now, no one's blaming you, Frank.....










DOWNLOAD: Mixed Bag No. 3






Little Nell--Eliot Everett (Joe Haymes) and His Orch., 1932
Aloha Oe (Farewell to Thee)--Hawaiian Quartette, 1913
By Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean--Leake County Revelers, 1927
Yes!  We Have No Bananas--The Great White Way Orch., v: Billy Murray, 1923
Polka Bun-Cyk-Cyk--Okr. Wtoscianska Karola Namystowskiego, c. 1912
Barkin' Dog (Fiorito-Gorman)--(Ross) Gorman's Novelty Syncopators, 1919
And Then I Laughed (Laughing Song)--Cal Stewart, 1907
Violin Mimicry--Charles Ross Taggart, Violin, 1914
Barnum and Bailey's Favorite (King)--American Legion Official Band, Dir. James A Melichar, 1926
Bolshevik (Jaffe-Bonx)--Waring's Pennsylvanians w. vocal chorus, 1926
Arkansas Traveller--Kessinger Brothers, 1928
Arkansas Traveler--The Tennessee Ramblers--Banjo, Fiddle and Dialogue, 1931
The Arkansaw Traveller--Descriptive--Talking (Harry Spencer?), early 1900s
Turkey in the Straw (Introducing A. Traveler and The Preacher and the Bear)--Jazzarimba Orchestra, 1918
Tuning in on the Radio (Comic Novelty)--Broadway Comedy Players, 1924
Applesauce--The Columbians, 1923
The Wedding of the Birds--Nat Shilkret and the Victor Orch., 1930
Barcelona--Nat Shilkret and the Victor Orch., v: Billy Murray, 1926
Viking Song (Coleridge-Taylor)--Associated Glee Clubs of America (2500 Male Voices w. piano), 1926
Me-Ow (Kaufmann)--Jockers Brothers, Violin and Piano, 1918
Thunder and Blazes (Fucik)--American Military Band, 1931
Polka Lubka (Lively Polka)--Polska Orkiestra Tancowa, 1918
Where Do You Work-a, John?--Waring's Pennsylvanians, w. vocal chorus, 1926
Ob La Di (Lennon-McCartney)--The Happy Organ
Open the Door Polka--Larry Fotine and His Orch., dialogue by Maralyn Marsh and Johnny Goodfellow, 1949


Lee