Yet more Christmas 78s! Shep Fields, William Jennings Bryan, Bob Grabeau, Arthur Pryor, Organta Trio

 

This post was a slightly long time in preparation, since these are all fresh rips, and because photo fixing-up takes a while.  And I seem to be moving more slowly this year.  Maybe I've become more reflective with time.  Perhaps I'm becoming wiser in my not-young age.  (That would be nice.)  Maybe I have iron-poor blood.  It could be a million different things.  Well, not a million--maybe 100,000.  No, not 100,000--maybe 10,000.  Maybe 5, 000.  Will you take 2,000 if I toss in my Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves comic book collection?  Lots of cool Steve Ditko art..

So, today's festive shellac covers the period 1908-?.  I have to use ?, since I don't know the year for Bob Gleason's side on the Another Broken Record label (seriously, that's the label name), and I'm almost sure that the two Eddie Unger songs are from 1951, but I'm not totally sure.  (Near-certainty is just another term for "I don't know.")  Unger's big number was Put Christ Back Into Christmas, and we'll be hearing what's probably the original 1951 version--the same song made famous by George Beverly Shea and Red Foley.  Privately produced, it would seem, as it's on the Unger Music label.  If the matrix is an RCA custom one, then the year is 1951, for sure.

But, back to the beginning, with the Columbia Mixed Quartette, from 1926, singing the still-popular Christmas concert piece The Holy City, written by Michael Maybrick under the nom de plume Stephen Adams.  Very nice version.  The Temple Carol Singers of England give us cool 1915 renditions of The First Noel and While Shepherds Watched, and then Thelma Gracen croons a very nice number called The Christmas Symphony with Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm Orchestra (1950).  My copy has some condition issues, but not on a scale that ruined anything.  Ambrose Haley is back with 1947's Old Timey Christmas (he was included in one of my sackfuls of singles, but this excellent Western Swing number deserves a second rip), Jack Allyn sings Eddie Unger's Put Christ Back Into Christmas--again, the version made famous by George Beverly Shea and Red Foley, though this predates their cuts by two years (Well, IF the matrix number is an RCA Custom number, which I strongly suspect it is).  The flip, Unger's I'd Like to See My Mom for Christmas certainly meant well, I'm sure, but it just hits me as a tad creepy...  It's almost like the potential plot for the old Thriller series, hosted by Boris Karloff.  R.H. Bowers' delightful The Kiddies Christmas Frolic of 1919 (I combined the two sides into one file) is beautifully played by the Columbia Orchestra, as led by the composer, R.H. Bowers.  And the title has me wondering about the possessive apostrophe, one of my punctuation stumbling blocks.  I'm always wanting to use it for things like "Children's Concert," but apparently it's often not necessary.  

And now's your chance to start the zip file download while reading on...

DOWNLOAD:  Yet More Christmas 78s.

Then, a 1923 Christmas message from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. President Haley Fiske, and dig the almost surreal difference in tone between a 1923 corporate report to employees and the sort of thing we'd hear today.  In place of "We made such-and-such million," Fiske talks about the good work the company has done for the people it serves--work God would approve of.  Boy, is this thing dated.  The flip is the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Glee Club singing Silent Night.  Glee clubs were still a big thing at the time.  In fact, come to think of it, they're making a comeback today, or so I read.  Then, two acoustical Arthur Pryor renditions from The Nutcracker (or Casse Noisette), dated 1911 and 1912, followed by the International Concert Orchestra's marvelous 1928 rendition of Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, one of the all-time great holiday novelties.  Not to bring anyone down, but I always feel the need to note that its German composer, Leon Jessel, died in 1942 at the hands of the Nazis.  But his joyous, priceless light masterwork lives on.  It was originally titled Parade of the Tin Soldiers (Die Parade der Zinnsoldaten).

Then, from 1923, William Jennings Bryan reciting The Lord's Prayer on a Gennett 78 with a great holiday label.  Next, Sleigh Ride Polka (helpfully identified as a polka on the label), a superbly lively 1941 Columbia side.  This is followed by two 1908 German carols sung by a children's choir (Kinderchor)--Ihr Kinderlein Kommet (one of my favorite carols/hymns) and a very obscure holiday song called O Tannenbaum, which of course was popularized in 1965 by Vince Guaraldi.  (My idea of humor at this time in the morning.)  Then, Bob Grabeau very pleasantly croons Old New England Christmas and That Christmas Waltz on a label called Spartan.  1949, maybe?  Click on the link for a long tribute to Bob.  I already linked to the touching obituary for Bob Gleason, but here's the link again, and I have to say this is one of my favorite pop Christmas sides, and I think because it's done with so much feeling--so much warm, honest feeling.  And it's cool to have a number called Santa Claus Is Coming that doesn't end with "...To Town."  And the label title, Another Broken Record, has to be a pun, a "broken record" being both a new high score or, literally, a damaged disc.  (I have one of those, from a car accident about 20 years ago.)  Certainly not your everyday record label name.

Merry shellac-mas!!

Lee