The Haunted Victrola, 2020

My Halloween shellac post from last year, for anyone who may have missed it.  I was listening to my rips, and I was impressed (in a humble way, of course), and I thought I'd give this a second, um, life.  (Can I say that during Halloween?)

Carl Fenton's Spike Jones-esque recordings of Animal Fair and Go 'Long, Mule aren't Halloween offerings of the traditional type, but their treatments are so over-the-top nuts, I think they belong here.  Er, in this playlist, I mean.  Edward MacDowell's wonderful 1884 piano piece Witches' Dance (Hexentanz) starts the hearse rolling, and Leopold Godowsky could sure play the piano.  From a Brunswick 78 made in either 1921 or 1922.  Eduard (no relation to Gustav, afaik) Holst's Dance of the Demon is also superbly performed, though it took two guys to manage it--Victor Arden and Phil Ohman, piano partners who became bandleaders.  For some reason, I gave the Polydor label Brownies' Parade a probable recording date of 1928 the last time I posted it, and I must have had a reason, though I can't remember it now.   Maybe clues from a vintage publication that's no longer on line.  It's driving me mad, trying to remember.  Or, to borrow from a Spike Jones record, it's driving me sane.  Cool electrical-era sound quality.  Chopin's Funeral March, played by Prince's Band in 1909, is by Chopin.  I know this, because the label actually lists "Chopin" under Chopin's Funeral March.  It's from his 1839 Piano Sonata No. 2, and imagine how rich his descendants would be if  there were royalties coming on the march.  Murder is a very clever Byron (The Vamp) Gay number about the way jazz bands were murdering "wonderful" songs--totally destroying them, but in an irresistible way.  Sophisticated concept, excellent melody--why is poor Byron forgotten by song buffs?  Big Movie Show in the Sky has lyrics by an anything-but-forgotten lyricist--Johnny Mercer.  Not his best work, and there's something that really creeps me out about the song and this performance.  Which only means that it works all the more as a Halloween track.  Ironic, no?

Halloween is a rite of reversal.  Good is bad, bad is good.  Kids chow down on stuff that's bad for them--sugary stuff packed in rip-off "snack" sizes.  Using a holiday as an excuse to charge more--that's totally American!  It drives me sane, just thinking about it.

Which Hazel is a clever, if slightly oversold (by Al Herman) comic number composed by Abner Silver (real name, Silberman), with lyrics that include, "The guy who wrote Witch Hazel is in a padded cell," and here's that theme, 45 years before Napoleon XIV hit the charts.  That line also places the song in the song-which-refers-to-itself category, the kind of self-reference which normally happens in songs about dances (Charleston, Locomotion, Monster Mash, The Creep, etc.).  Strange--and very Halloween.  And how to describe John Tilley's The Loch Ness Monster, from 1934?  Or John Tilley, for that matter?  I hear a strong Monty Python edge to/in this satirical piece, recorded in England--I suppose it's the cheery but cynical tone, the sophisticated references, and the mild misogyny--that, and more.  The evidence is all there--the Loch Ness monster claim was known all along to be a hoax (and a tourist lure) by thinking people, and note how Tilley makes fun of the Nessie believers' habit of searching for clues--any clues--of past Nessie sightings.  And the Nessie nonsense continues to this day.  The complicated but cool Abominable Science! makes a great case for 1933's King Kong as the main inspiration for the Nessie legend we know.  If that sounds unlikely on the surface (no pun intended), it won't after you've read what the authors have to say.

Delirium is a sophisticated instrumental by Red Nichols pianist Arthur Schutt, and speaking of delirium, I originally labeled the track Derilium.  Which sounds like a substance H.G. Wells would have made up to get his characters to Mars.  The magnificent novelty Ah-Ha! (Sidney Clare-James V. Monaco) shows up three times in our list, though I didn't have time to rip the best version of all--the 1925 Grofe arrangement for Paul Whiteman,  But it's very possible that's up someplace at the blog.  We close with 1916's Spooky Spooks (great sound effects), and Zez Confrey's Greenwich Witch, played by Confrey himself, and brilliantly.

To the treats!  All ripped from shellac housed in my cluttered Media Room.  And it's interesting that the new Blogger retains the HTML versions of older posts in their original form--which is to say, not in the extremely annoying rectangular clump that shows up for the new posts.  Since the new Blogger is forcing us to do more HTML work, I suppose it just had to make the task harder on the eyes.  I don't recommend that children trick-or-treat this year (the notion that it can be done safely is too bizarre to even contemplate), but otherwise I'd be recommending that kids considering going as New Blogger.  "Here!  Take all the candy!!!!"  (Door slams, porch lights go off.)




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Witches' Dance (Hexentanz) (MacDowell)--Leopold Godowsky, Piano (1921 or 1922)
Dance of the Demon (Eduard Holst)--Victor Arden-Phil Ohman, Piano Duet (1922)
Animal Fair--Carl Fenton's Orch. w. vocal chorus, 1924
Go 'Long, Mule--Same
Chopin's Funeral March--Prince's Band, 1909
Brownies' Parade (K. Noack)--Polydor Brass Band Orch., c. Joseph Snaga, c. 1928?
Me-ow--One-step (Mel B. Kaufmann)--Joseph C. Smith's Orch., 1918
Magic Eyes (Brown-Fiorito)--Oriole Orchestra, 1923
Murder (Byron Gay)--Plantation Jazz Orchestra, 1920
Mystery!--Medley--Paul Biese and His Novelty Orch., 1919
Jabberwocky--Joseph Samuels' Jazz Band, 1921
Ah-Ha!--Freddie "Schnickelfritz" Fisher and His Orch. w. vocal chorus, 1940
Which Hazel (Abner Silver)--Al Herman, 1921
Eccentric Rag (J. Russell Robinson)--Oriole Orchestra, 1924
Big Movie Show in the Sky (Dolan-Mercer)--Blue Barron and His Orch., v: Bobby Beers and the Choir, 1949
Ah-Ha!--Hollywood Dance Orch., v: John Ryan, 1925
Ah-Ha!--Oriole Orchestra, v: Mark Fisher, 1925
Midnight Fire Alarm (Lincoln)--Prince's Orchestra, 1920
The Loch Ness Monster (Tilley)--John Tilley, 1934
Delirium (Schutt)--Carl Fenton's Orch., 1927
Spooky Spooks (Claypoole)--Prince's Band, 1916
Greenwich Witch (Confrey)--Zez Confrey, Piano Solo, 1922



Lee