8 Top Hits (Hits... Hits... Hooray!)--Waldorf Music-Hall DC-105; prob. 1957

Before I forget, dig the original Woolworth price sticker in the upper right-hand corner (99 cents).  Waldorf was "exclusively sold in Woolworth stores from 1954 to 1959," to exactly quote Wikipedia, though I'm fairly sure some of their stuff was mail-order.

Everything seemed too simple, too straightforward with this rip.  No conflict between jacket and label information, with the track count (eight) corresponding to the EP title ("8 Top Hits"), and few condition issues.  Granted, "Music-Hall" gets a hyphen on the label and not the jacket, and "78 RPM Standard Speed" (jakcet, upper right) is a little confusing, since 78 RPM was becoming old hat in 1957--unless the phrase was referring to the "standard" speed of 78 in the sense of "Not 79, and 77, but 78."  Except that makes no sense.  Oh, well.

But this time around, we don't have the usual collection of confusing or clashing details, and the disc gave me no hassles, editing-wise.  And the sound is very good.  It's Full Dynamic Range, after all.  Dig the full dynamics.  (I gave the bass a little boost, regardless.)

1957 would seem to be the year for island rhythms--the year of Calypso. I recall seeing a musical short, made around this time, which treated Calypso as the logical successor to rock and roll.  Boy, how prescient.  Exactly how it happened.  Meanwhile, Wringle Wrangle has always been a favorite of mine, and I don't know why.  Maybe because Merv Griffin recorded a very pleasant version for Decca.  It is weird that the song, being from a Disney flick, would have the very mildly suggestive lyric of "Got a woman to cook and wash... and things," though I suppose that would go over the heads of 1957 young people.  Not sure.  Never underestimate what kids of any era were aware of--all that stuff they weren't suppose to know about.

I took some sleep meds last night that worked too well, and I'm doped even at this hour.  This explains why I just entered "Enoch Light w. Enoch Light and His Orch."  Umm, no.  And when I think of Banana Boat Song, I hear the Belafonte version (and Stan Freberg's hilarious, and brutal, parody), but this is a copy of the Tarriers' version--hence, the "Hull and Gully Driver" part.  And I move on to the next paragraph, fully confident that what I just typed made total sense.

The fun Artie Malvin fake of Young Love totally misses the boat, stylistically, and this was the rule, initially, for Waldorf when it came to rock and roll--the label made the stuff sound more like big band.  This accounted for many fun but weird tracks--like Too Much, which tries hard to capture the feel of the original (singer Joe Pryor makes a halfway decent fake Elvis) but winds up sounding like a proposed chart for Frank Sinatra.  Blue Monday has some fabulous electric guitar, but the beat is pure Peter Gunn-style jazz, and Loren Becker sounds less like R&B than Pat Boone.  Actually, I suppose Boone didn't do as badly as critics maintain--it's just that, despite his great pipes, he was no Elvis.

I think it was Waldorf's initial failure to capture the sound of r&r that gave rise to the false notion that the sound-alike labels never adjusted to the new style--they did, of course, and they produced their share of fine fakes.  This EP is almost definitely from 1957, and it would only be another year before Waldorf, perhaps realizing that r&r was more than a passing fad, began producing very r&r-sounding rock and roll fakes.  A fun EP, but I still can't get over the lack of weird lapses.  These cheapos almost always contain one or two memorable disconnects.  But not this time.  Very strange.





DOWNLOAD:  8 Top Hits (Hits... Hits... Hooray!)--Waldorf Music-Hall DC-105; 78 rpm EP

(Blank back cover--hence, no back cover scan.)

Lee