Three Shades of Blue; Mississippi Suite (Grofe): Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch., 1928 and 1927

 

From the original 78s (are there any other kind?), the premiere recording (from 1927) of "Ferdie" Grofe's  charming Three Shades of Blue, written in 1927 and recorded in 1928.  Plus, Grofe's "other" concert work (re Grand Canyon Suite), Mississippi Suite (A Tone Journey), written in 1926 and recorded in 1927.

I last posted these in 2020, using Wokeupload.  Meaning, those files are now in Workupload Heaven (and having a great time, I hope).  Who knows how long that link had stayed active, anyway--prior to the banning of my shares, I mean?  And Blogger is refusing to play nice, and so my 1933 image of Ferde will have to go here, instead of above:

Ripping shellac with VinylStudio has seemed like a long journey, but it's probably only been a couple of months.  Yet, we don't always measure time in terms of hours or days.  And I have no idea why I typed that--it seemed appropriate.  It just tumbled out of my Bag of Cliches.  But, yes, VS is such an incredibly fussy program (unlike MAGIX, which almost runs itself), it required any number of attempts, including test CD-Rs, until I have started to feel as if I know how to use the program.

Much--maybe most--of the problem is that VS is (to put it lightly) not designed for what I'm doing with it.  Despite all the handy 78 rpm response curves included in the software, the general template presumes that the user is digitizing his or her 1960s and 1970s rock vinyl collection.  Hence, I'm pushing the software into areas it doesn't want to go.  And that glitch I reported to VinylStudio, which VS told me it would fix?  I have no idea whether or not it has been.  But, to the music...

Three Shades of Blue consists of "Indigo," "Alice Blue," and (on side B) "Heliotrope."  As ever, Grofe makes superb use of PW's expanded "concert" orchestra, and I'm blessed with a fine copy of the single 12-incher (as opposed to the less-than-fine but serviceable Mississippi Suite shellac).  I don't have the sheet music handy (Lord knows which stack it's sitting in), but I recall that the clever shifting meters of Heliotrope were accommodated within 4/4--no Burt Bacharach-esque time-signature shifts.  Grofe was working well beyond Zez Confrey, then famous for his polymetrical tricks--Kitten on the Keys, in particular.  In spots, the band seems slightly confused, but overall an expert presentation.  And accomplished in only 2 and 3 takes (I forget the distribution, side-wise).

Mississippi Suite (A Tone Journey) was composed in 1926, and recorded on 9/7/1927.  The first movement, "Father of the Waters," was cut (to fit things on a single 12-incher, probably), so things start with the fun, cartoonish "Huckleberry Finn," then proceed to the languid "Old Creole Days" (well, almost languid, had the session not been rushed), then (after flipping to side B) the justly famous showstopper, "Mardi Gras."  I'm guessing Henry Busse provides the muted trumpet for the second movement--it really sounds like him (we hear the famous "sour" Busse tone), though I can't be sure.  Of course, the song standard Daybreak was adapted from the middle section.

Years ago, a friend listening to the full-orchestra Mississippi Suite had only one gripe about the piece--the drawn-out climax.  Maybe he had a point, but at this rapid tempo and in a smaller setting, the closing doesn't seem at all padded.  And I've always wanted to type, "at all padded."  Now, at last, my wish has been fulfilled.

Mississippi must have made quite a splash in 1926, given that portions of it were interpolated into the 11/15/1926 Fred Rich and His Hotel Astor Orch. recording of George and Ira Gershwin's Do-Do-Do.  Around that time, there was also a British recording of either the entire suite or Mardi Gras alone.  And I don't recall what that record was, or by whom, and it's probably because I've blocked out the painful memory of receiving that 78, years ago, in pieces: The eBay dealer had packed the 12-inch disc so incompetently as to leave a portion uncovered.  By no small coincidence, that exposed section didn't survive.  She gave me a prompt refund, insisting that she'd never before broken a 78 during shipment.  I figured she was either unusually lucky or prone to embellishing her USPS past.

Oh, and since I started with the weird and wacky OneDrive cloud service, Microsoft has made at least one major design change.  Not sure why--All was well prior to the alteration.  In Cyber-Land, program tweaks are often made simply for their sake...

DOWNLOAD: Three Shades, Mississippi.zip

Lee

Happy Easter, 2025 (actually, 2024)!

 

I decided I can't improve on last year's playlist, so...

Happy Easter!

DOWNLOAD:  Easter 2025  (Please ignore the "2024" on the zip title...)

Peter Cotton Tail--Meadowlarks (Irene Records)

Old Rugged Cross--Mac MacFarland--(Same)

Easter Parade--Eddie Brandt and (His) Hollywood Hicks, V: Ruthie James (Same)

Christ Arose--Collegiate Choir, 1920

Easter Bunny Polka--Eddie Brandt and (His) Hollywood Hicks, V: Eddie Brandt and Ruthie James (Irene Records)

Jesus Died for Me--Smith's Sacred Singers, 1929

Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb--Smith's Sacred Singers, 1929

Power in the Blood--The Cincinnati Baptist College Quartet, c. 1971

How Great Thou Art--Jerome Hines, 1965

The Old Rugged Cross--Jerome Hines, 1965

Unknown Choir, Word Records--He Lives

He Arose--Haydn Quartet With Orchestra, `1908

Victory in Jesus--Church of the Nazarene Male Quartet, 1959

Bunny Hop--Peter Pan Orch. and Singers, Dir. by Vicky Kasen (1955)

Love Led Him to Calvary (Webster-Gabriel)--Mrs. William Asher-Home Rodeheaver, With Pipe Organ, 1925

Funny Little Bunnies--The Cricketts, Feat. "Hoppy" the Bunny, Peter Pan Orch.

Reapers Are Needed (Charles H. Gabriel)--A.T. Humphries and Lee College Choir, c. 1959

Awakening Chorus (Charles H. Gabriel)--Same

Peter Cottontail--Ray Heatherton (The Merry Milkman), 1951

Eggbert, the Easter Egg--Same

Lee

Shellac Attack for April, 2025! Victor Military Band, Paul Whiteman, Blue Steele, Van Eps Banjo Orchestra, Ted Lewis, more!

The thing I love most about this kind of post is that any number of typos are possible.  It helps make music blogging an exciting adventure...

This is a set that I carefully ripped with my VinylStudio program--as in, completely ripped with that program.  For years, I've been exporting my VS tracks to MAGIX after establishing the response curve and utilizing the amazing VS declicker filter, with the fine-tuning accomplished on  the latter program (because of its more user-friendly design).  But, since my old MAGIX software has finally stopped working usefully (that it works at ALL in Windows 11 is astounding), VS has become my all-in-one program.  Its more complicated design has so far proved to be more than worth the learning curve.  (Until I encounter my next snag...)

Nineteen rips, with a number of them new to the blog, and others making a repeat appearance after five or more years.  New rips, all intended for my YouTube "Shellac City" channel, but not likely to show up there for a while.  What happened was that, after a period of channel inactivity, YouTube decided to provide less "support" for my channel.  It sent me a notice to that effect.  My best guess: The platform is providing less visibility--i.e., sending my stuff to fewer user feeds.  So, I'm getting views, but far fewer than I'm used to.

I can't improve on my previous (2020) description of the two Ted Lewis Jazz Band numbers: "..two weird 1920 Ted Lewis sides--the Ted Lewis Jazz Band, no less.  Fair One, a hit song by Lewis and George Mallen, comes first, and it frankly sounds like something dying.  That's my best description of the side.  It has a Dixieland sound, but it's all treble and mid-range--either 1/3 of the band missed the gig, or the engineer screwed up.  The saxophone work is awful, and I suspect it's Ted Lewis on alto sax--the pointless flourishes and the ascending chromatic runs sound like Ted's notion of clarinet playing transferred to the sax...The sax is less destructive on Gypsy Moon, on which Lewis mostly plays fill-in phrases when he's not stating the melody." 

The Lewis sides aren't that painful, and they do (far as I'm concerned) qualify as Dixieland jazz, but the editing of individual passages turned both sides into a "When will this be over?" ordeal.  Much of the problem is that the sharply-defined playing style of, say, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band or Paul Whiteman's subgroup The Virginians, is epically absent.

The (Fred) Van Eps Banjo Orchestra sides, from 1914, couldn't offer more of a contrast to Lewis' sides.  The acoustical audio is incredibly sharp, and the dynamics are anything but soupy.  Speaking of soupy, Soup to Nuts (the title almost obliterated on the label) contains, not only some brilliant sound effects, but wonderful (and easily heard) drumming.  With horn recordings, percussion could be clear as day, or buried someplace in the background.  Naturally, smaller groups had the advantage in this regard.

And we have the Victor Military Band, which had been presenting music in a dance-band style as early as 1911, from the very start of the Joseph C. Smith/Art Hickman period--1918--with Indianola, written by arranged by Domenico Savino, and the entertaining rural-style (for its day) Long Boy-Medley, and both graced by superb, up-front percussion and expert sound effects.

And... the blog premiere of the 1941 Misirlou version by Harold Grant and His Orch.--a very MOR (middle of the road) rendering, but quite well cone.  For unknown reasons, IA gives the "publication date" for this side as 1922.

Two more repeats: The Ferde Grofe-arranged Got No Time and Sonya (vocal: Billy Murray), from 1925, two of my favorite Paul Whitman "shellacs."  And two premieres: The 1915 Pigeon Walk and the Irving Berlin Watch Your Step medley, as expertly performed by the Victor Military Band--again, in more of a dance-band than a military-band fashion.  Directed by Henry T. King.  How I managed to get halfway decent sound from a G+ copy, I can't explain.

And my two favorites: Earl Fuller and His Rector Novelty Orch., from 1918, with Spencer Williams' I Ain't Got Not Nobody Much, a song most often associated with Louis Prima, and Wilbur Sweatman's timeless Down Home Rag.  My rip managed to capture the percussion on the latter, which (by acoustical-recording standards) is only slightly muddy.  I suspect that, minus the up-front xylophone, the drums would have registered more clearly.

And, with both Fuller and Yerkes Jazarimba Orchestra (the latter not in this playlist), the xylophone(s) and marimba(s) are very much a part of the harmonic texture, and thus not present merely for the sake of novelty.  Well, except in the sense of "novelty" as defined in pre-Spike-Jones days: As "new" or "latest."  And so we have to try to imagine a time when the Rector Orchestra's sound was the latest thing.  Exactly when "novelty" came to mean "cornball" or the like, I'm not sure, though I have a long and boring theory which I'll skip.

And the highly enjoyable 1915 Medley of Indian Songs features popular Tin Pan Alley Indian-themed numbers like Red Wing and Silver Heels.  Hardly actual Indian music, but terrific tunes, nonetheless.  Far as I know, all of them are by Charles N. Daniels, better known as "Neil Moret."  But DAHR is taking years to respond, and my patience just clocked out...  Let's just call this a medley of Neil Moret titles.  The flip is a cool survey of "familiar" tunes, 1915-style.  It's always fun to encounter old collections of "old" songs.  That's when we fully ken the relativity of "old."  And, if we're in the mood, we can extend that to the relatively of "now," and then we can start wondering things like, "Am I really existing in the NOW?" and other fun metaphysical questions.  ("If pigs could fly, would they get airsick?" etc.)

DOWNLOAD: Shellac City 3 25.zip

Indianola (Savino, Arr: Savino)--Victor Military Band, 1918

Long Boy--Medley--Same

That Certain Feeling (Gershwin, A: Grofe?)--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 12/24/1925

Misirlou--Harold Grant and His Orch., V: Frank Knight, 1941

"Gimme" a Little Kiss, Will "Ya"? Huh?--Jean Goldkette and His O., V: bandmembers, 1926

Got No time (A: Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1925

Sonya (A: Grofe)--Same, Vocal: Billy Murray

Pigeon Walk--Victor Military Orch., c. Edward T. King, 1915

Watch Your Step--Medley--Same

In Alabama, Dear, With You--Medley--Conway's Band, 1915

I Want to Go to Michigan (Irving Berlin)--Van Eps Banjo Orchestra, 1914

Soup to Nuts (Felix Arndt) --Same

Sugar Babe, I'm Leavin'!--Blue Steele and His Orch., V: Blue Steele, Kenny Sargent, Pete Schmitt, 1927

I Ain't Got Nobody Much--Earl Fuller's Rector Novelty Orch., 1918

Down Home Rag--Same

Fair One (Mallen, Lewis)--Ted Lewis Jazz Band, 1920

Gypsy Moon--Same

Medley of Indian Songs (Moret)--Prince's Band, 1915

Bouquet of Familiar Melodies--Same

Lee

 

Johnny Douglas and His Orchestra: "Dance Party Discotheque" (RCA Camden CAL-833; 1965)

 

Not quite what I expected, but after a little research, it seems to me that British discotheques of the 1960s--or even the U.S. kind--might have provided music which potentially could have appealed "to EVERY member of the family," as the liner notes claim.  Certainly, in providing music for the many dances presented on this LP--twist, pony, hitch-hiker (yes, hitch-hiker), mashed potato, and so on--discotheques (those which utilized recordings) could have placed the needle down on a Vicki Carr, Si Zentner, Wayne Newton, OR Rolling Stones platter.  Instead of Satisfaction, dancers might have been greeted with Frank Sinatra's 1964 Somewhere in Your Heart.  Or Barbra Streisand's insufferable People, though I'm not sure what dance might go with same.  ("Hey, gang!  Let's do the People Who Need People!!")

Since AM radio was mixing "adult" fare with the Stones, Beatles, Beach Boys, Manfred Mann, et al., it's not inconceivable that latter-day big band music might have been heard in 1960s dancing clubs.  This is just speculation.  I was there, but I was very young, and I wasn't going to dance clubs.  But I vividly recall hearing Red Roses for a Blue Lady on my mother's car radio around 1965, and since I didn't know that "blue" meant "sad," I thought the title was hilarious. 

And there's one track in this list which I was sure could not have been a 1960s hit--The March of the Mods.  No way.  But it was, in fact, a big hit 1965 hit for Joe Loss and His Orchestra.  Oh, and apparently the Finnjenka is either a Finnish dance or based on one.

This LP has me thinking of that wonderful "Dance Time Discotheque" side I featured (in February) from the Columbia Special Products set, The Unforgettable Years, which has five teen Top 40 hits in charming big-band-ish arrangements.  So, were such sounds really happening in discotheques, or were the major labels reinventing popular music trends on the spot, as opposed to after the fact?  Like, for example, Rolling Stone has done with the late 1960s and early 1970s, presenting these years as a time dominated by Bob Dylan, protest numbers in general, and Eric Clapton?  I sure as heck don't recall every second hit sounding like Bob, and I remember B.J. Thomas, The Ides of March, The Carpenters, Glen Campbell, The Beginning of the End, The Royal Guardsmen, The Buckinghams, and Gary Puckett.  Rolling Stone remembers an infinite number of Dylan wanna-bes, and maybe in their multiverse that was the case.  But not in mine.  But I'll check again, just to be sure.

And just to make the point that received memories of the popular past are often... lacking.  Sparse.  Reductionist, even.  Products of wishful thinking.  We might remember an era as we'd have wanted it to happen vs. having to admit, for example, that Gimme Dat Ding was a monster 1970 hit.  Or that Tiny Tim was burning up the charts starting in 1968.  No, it was all British blues-rock.  And people trying to sound like Bob Dylan.

This was recorded in England, with vocals by "The Eagles."  The material doesn't especially move me, but it's opened my mind to the possibility that discotheque music of that period may have been more varied, more generationally inclusive, and whatnot than Shindig or Hullabaloo could lead us to believe.  Or, maybe Enoch Light's discotheque LPs weren't as far off the mark as I thought.  (And I wish I'd kept those.)

Oh, and the only written-for-this-collection number is We Got a Good Thing Going.  My favorite track: Downtown--wish there'd been more like it.  And don't miss the clever but hilariously dated liner notes.

DOWNLOAD: Dance Party Discotheque.zip

Rock 'n' Roll Music (Twist)

We Got a Good Thing Going (Pony)

Somewhere in Your Heart (Fox Trot)

Popeye (Hitch-Hiker)

Hawaii Tattoo (Merengue)

The Huckle Buck (Huckle Buck)

Call Me (Fox Trot)

The Loco-Motion

Downtown

The March of the Mods

Dance Party Discotheque--Johnny Douglas and His Orch. (RCA Camden CAL-883; 1965)

Lee

Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters Do "The Twist" (Grand Prix K-187)--this time, in true mono!

 

A re-up, by request, from Aug. 22, 2022.  I've revived most of the original text:

Today's budget twist-ploitation offering is a surprisingly entertaining Grand Prix (Pickwick) LP by Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters.

Or, if you'd prefer, Tyler King and the Twisters; Robby Robber and His Hi-Jackers; Big Bill Twister and His Minters; Tiny Doolittle and the Twisters; Barry Norman and the Toppers; Beep Bottomley and His Twisters; Ray Gunn and His Blasters (my favorite!); Mickey Mocassin; Jerry Long and the Teen Twisters; or The Five Diamonds.  Take your pick: all or some of these tracks were also issued across the budget spectrum under these fake group names.

There's a common link here: Record producer and exec Ed Chalpin, who penned every one of today's selections (save for The Twist) under the nom de plume Ed Dantes.  The fine folks at the excellent Facebook page Brand "X" Records helped me in tracking down the alternate band names, though the priceless Ed Chalpin/Ed Dantes info is courtesy of my friend Brian McFadden, a journalist and pop culture expert whose books Rock Rarities for a Song and Rare Rhythm and Blues on Budget LPs I've plugged before at this blog--and I'm plugging them again.  They're great, highly informative reads, and both manage to provide a very useful budget-label overview.  

So... Ed Dantes; real name: Ed Chalpin.  (Be sure to read the terrifying story of  Chalpin and Jimi Hendrix at the Wikipedia link.)  A very busy provider of sound-alike hits to a variety of jobber-rack record labels during the early 1960s, but were his own compositions any good?  Well, in this case, they're highly derivative, and they display every sign of having been churned out in a hurry, but they genuinely rock.  (Or, rather, twist.)  And, whoever these anonymous singers and musicians happened to be, they're more than adequate.  

And, back to the present (March 28, 2025), this rip was made with VinylStudio from a monaural copy, whereas my previous post was channel-summed from the fake stereo edition, which required a good deal of volume normalizing, thanks to the endless r/l panning by the engineer (presumably, to enhance the stereo effect, I guess).  So, true mono this time.  Whether or not these tracks even exist in true stereo, I don't know.

DOWNLOAD: Tubby Chess and His Candy Stripe Twisters Do The Twist.zip

The Twist (Hank Ballard)

Oh This Is Love

Swinging Papa

Yes, She Knows

My Baby Couldn't Dance

I Need Your Love

I Just Couldn't Take It

Hey, Little Girl

Take a Chance

Loving You

(Selections 2-10 by Ed Chalpin)

Lee

Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin' (1958)--Bob Bain and His Music, with the Jack Halloran Singers!

 

From 1958, a very interesting--and surprisingly good!--LP by guitarist Bob Bain, who had worked with Bob Crosby, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Nelson Riddle.  Naturally, he took easily to rock'n'roll, being a professional on a par with Al Caiola and George Barnes.  Which is to say, he had approximately 500 times the "chops" of Scotty Moore (no offense intended).  And, even with the Jack Halloran Singers in the background, most of these tracks rock nicely.  Or nicely rock--whatever.  When I saw "with the Jack Halloran Singers" on the back cover, my first thought was, "This will be a campfest."  It isn't, however--save maybe for Strollin' Home, a take on Antonin Dvořák's  Goin' Home.  That's getting just a little too silly.

And an interesting feature of/from this period of popular music--Namely, dances taking precedence over song titles--hence, the album name, Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin'.  And with each selection tethered to a current dance step.  This might provide some insight into the 1960-1962 twist craze, in which that particular dance was hyped as a new era in popular music.  Never mind that the twist is nothing more than old-fashioned eight-to-the-bar boogie-woogie.  With a backbeat.  Some of these would easily qualify.

Some of the tracks, including (not surprisingly) The Stroll, are offered up in a slow tempo, but there are plenty of brisk numbers, too.  And, many years ago, I met someone whose two chief categories of music were slow and fast.  It depended upon his mood.  Anyway, four numbers written and/or co-written by Bain, including Keen Teen, written in collaboration with Bain's old friend Freddie Slack.

And the jacket is pretty cool, though few of the young models look all that excited.  And... a surprise at my "Shellac City" YouTube channel, which is getting so few views, I'm not sure why I bother.  A new subscriber, and one with nice words for one of my restorations: The famous audio engineer Steve Hoffman.  Nothing like a compliment from one of the best.  And a couple days back, I blog-posted three shellac rips which pleased me a lot, all made on my VinylStudio program alone (my old MAGIX program, alas, is finished).  No response, so I deleted the entry.  Well, Steve Hoffman likes my work, anyway.

Oh, and the The Rock N' Roll March, as listed on the cover, shows up on the label as The Rock 'N Roll March.  Just what in the heck is so hard about 'n' as the contraction for "and"?  ("What are you doing?"  "I'm n'rollin'!")  N'rollin' to The Big Doowah.

DOWNLOAD: Bob Bain--Rockin' Rollin' and Strollin'.zip (Capitol T965; 1958)

The Stroll

Night Train Guitar

Keen Teen

At the Hop

The Rock N' Roll March

The Great Pretender

Raunchy   

Yeah Yeah

The Rock and Roll Waltz

The Big Doowah

The Dipsy Doodle

Strollin' Home

(With the Jack Halloran Singers)

Lee

Various artists for March, 2025--Vic Damone, Ray Ellis, Bobby Vinton, Tom Jones, Lester Lanin, more!

 

Seventeen tracks, ripped from both stereo and mono LPs, with (alas) no provision for a stereo-to-mono change for individual tracks.  Hence, the mono tracks aren't channel-summed, but life can be like that.  I'm now using VinylStudio as my stand-alone ripping and editing program (since my "ancient" MAGIX software has ceased to operate properly), and after a couple hours of learning the basics, I experienced a complicated glitch--one which had both me AND the AlpineSoft (makers of VS) help person puzzled.  And, somehow, I was the first to figure out the problem.  Namely, I had "cut" several sections of the audio project file, but upon saving/exporting the tracks, those deleted areas remained (not being "recognized" as deletions, which threw off my track indications).  I communicated my theory to the tech, he confirmed it, and he promised that the issue would be fixed.  How about that?

Meanwhile, I went to extra trouble to rescue these tracks--Namely, by burning them to CD-R (directly from VS), then RE-burning them and labeling everything in Mp3tag.  For some reason, the ripping software initially auto-identified the project as a Lena Horne album.  Yeah, no one sounds more like Carmen Cavallaro than Lena, I must say.

As ever, my "VA" collection hosts no theme, beyond an emphasis on fun and interesting tracks.  (I think so, anyway.)  We start with Lester Lanin's Salute to the Beatles, one of the earliest Fab Four acknowledgments in the post-teen-listener realm.  (Other "pioneers" in this regard include Henry Mancini, Herman Clebanoff--who is in this list--, and the Johnny Mann Singers.)  And, no offense to Arthur Fiedler, but his ridiculous take on I Want to Hold Your Hand turned me off to any and all Boston-Pops Beatles treatments.  Pretentious in a truly obnoxious way, that performance is sheer middlebrow junk.  A portent of "Pops" to come.  (No, I'm not a Pops fan.  How did you guess?)

Lanin's Salute to the Beatles, by contrast to Arthur, is great fun--and surprisingly effective.  It rocks!  Clearly, composers Lowe (?) and Lanin set out to faithfully capture the Invasion sound, and they did fine.  Carmen Cavallaro's 1951 Deep Night will always be one of my most favorite cuts, and though it's not technically exotica, it sounds very much like same.  So, in that regard, it is exotica.  Gimmick-free exotica, its impact owing to genius musicianship from all involved.  Andre's You and the Night and the Music is, to my ears, perfect mood music, and it dates back to at least 1950, if not earlier. Then, Clebanoff's terrific 1964 EZ-ized "P.S. I Love You," credited to "McCartney-Lennon."  From the conductor's Teen Hits LP, which unfortunately contains too few genuinely "teen" numbers.

Day Dream is from the amazing 1957 Joe Reisman LP, Door of Dreams, and it was penned by Irving Joseph and Joseph (Psycho) Stefano during the latter's brief songwriting stint.  Joe went on to write the brilliant screenplay for Hitchcock's Psycho, and he produced the first season of the best sci-fi show in TV history, The Outer Limits (as in, the original; don't get me started on the reboot).  Hard to believe that it's already 17 years since Joe's passing!  Stefano's least celebrated (but highly-rated) effort was the TV movie, Snowbeast.  I've seen it, and it's bad.  I hope JS got a Bigfoot-sized paycheck, anyway.

Joey's Song (did somebody say "Joe"?) has Joe Reisman presenting his own song in an especially catchy version.  On to Bobby Vinton, still with us and an unusually talented teen-idol singer whom I saw in person at the 1965 or 1966 Lucas County Fair.  The big surprise was that my Dad, a jazz musician and highly vocal nonfan of rock and roll, was pleased by Vinton's performance.  And we have 1965's Tina, co-written by Vinton and gorgeously produced, plus the Burt Bacharach-conducted (and redundantly titled!) Forever Yours I Remain, miscredited to "David Bacharach."  Hm.  One of Burt's brothers?  Anyway, one of the finest little-known Burt numbers.

                                                                                                                      Above: Vic Damon Sings

Vic Damone's superb 1959 The Night Has a Thousand Eyes is not the equally memorable Bobby Vee number, and unfortunately we're hearing it in faux stereo.  Which takes nothing away from the expert performance and score, of course.  Probably my favorite Damone side, and sometimes I think this fabulous vocalist don't get enough respect.  Then, speaking of Bacharach-David soul/R&B, we have Tom Jones' excellent 1968 rendering of I Wake Up Crying.  I recall it was sometime during the 1980s that I realized I love Tom Jones.  His singing, that is.  This great talent is still with us, and I'll never forget his NPR interview in which Tom demonstrated a razor-sharp sense of humor and humble sense of self.  Talk about a "real"-person celebrity.  Then, some extremely well-done 1961 Ray Ellis (and Chorus) renderings of School is Out, Pretty Little Angel Eyes, and Little Sister (forgive the slightly early cutoff).  Ray Ellis, sounding in 1961 like the musical director for Grease.  Uncanny.

1954's Stomp and Whistle is an expertly performed rock and roll side by David Carroll, of all people.  (Harry James also covered this number.)  And the Ray Charles Singers' 1968 Windy is pure "EZ" Top-40 as it once existed on FM.  Lovely nostalgia.  Great jacket, too.

More EZ, courtesy of Horst Jankowski, with a fine cover of the Jimmy Webb classic, Mac Arthur Park (or, if you're Richard Harris, Mac Arthur's Park), and a Jankowski-co-written instrumental And We Got Love (Ein Hoc der Liebe), which I found irresistible.  And it was in the mid-1980s that EZ radio stations suddenly dropped the classic, relaxing Jankowski/Kostelanetz/Conniff style in favor of an annoying thump-a-dump variety clearly designed to please my generation's love for what I term "thump-thump."  The change seemed to occur overnight--weird.  That's when I gave up on EZ.  (A good book title, there.)

To the music...

DOWNLOAD: Various Artists March 2025.zip

Salute to the Beatles--Lester Lanin, 1964

Deep Night--Carmen Cavallaro, piano with orch. and female sextette, 1951

You and the Night and the Music--Andre Kostelanetz and His Orch., 1950 or earlier

P.S. I Love You--The Clebanoff Strings and Orch., 1964

Day Dream--Joe Reisman and His Orch., 1957

Joey's Song--Same

Tina--Bobby Vinton, Arr. and Cond. by Charles Carello, 1965

Forever Yours I Remain--Bobby Vinton, Arr. Burt Bacharach, 1965

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes--Vic Damone, Glenn Osser Orch. and Cho., 1959

I Wake up Crying--Tom Jones, 1968

School Is Out--Ray Ellis Orch. and Chorus, 1961

Pretty Little Angel Eyes--Same

Little Sister--Same

Stomp and Whistle--David Carroll and His Orch., 1954

Windy--The Ray Charles Singers, 1968

Mac Arthur Park--Horst Jankowski, 1968

And We Got Love (Ein Hoch der Liebe)--Same

Lee

Downbeat didn't "make this" at all, man. "Original Dixieland Jazz in Hi-Fi" (ABC-Paramount ABC-184; 1957)

 

Back in 1957, Downbeat reviewer "D.C." wrote, "This was a monumental labor of love, but for the life of me, I can’t see the point at all."  Um, did he not read the title--"Original Dixieland Jazz in Hi-Fi"?  Did he skip the notes?  By itself, the title describes the point of this LP.

The reviewer continued: "If jazz is creative, and I’m sure it’s agreed that jazz is just that, then this record must fall into the classification of a curiosity. It seems so pointless to me that musicians with the ability to recreate would rather do that than make something of their own and out of themselves."  Painstakingly recreating 1917 performances in hi-fi IS an act of creativity.  How could it not be?  The reviewer failed to clarify the precise nature of his objection(s), and so we can only guess.  I'm inclined to think he was asserting that jazz, to qualify as such, must be improvised.  And it's possible (no way to be sure) that his concept of improvisation leaned toward the false construct wherein five or more musicians simply "blow" whatever's in their head at the moment.  I hate to ruin anyone's delusions, but a successful jazz performance is more than not a thing of deliberation.

But I can't read minds, and so I can't be sure why this cat was unable to "make" this LP, since "jazz is creative" fails to account for his summary dismissal of this amazing effort.  Plus, given that I've never much cared what Downbeat thinks, I'm inclined to dismiss the review as meaningless.  Imagine a jazz performance in which no one had agreed on 1) the key, 2) the tune, 3) where and when to repeat the verse, if included, 4) the tempo, 5) who plays which solo, and so on.  It would be total cacophony.  That is, unless the players were telepathically united.  Simply put, there's no way to recreate the ODJB's sound without writing it down.  Duhh.

Oh, and there's also the myth that "written-down" jazz isn't jazz.  Right.  Which explains why jazz arranging is a requirement for a Berklee degree.  A for-real cool cat has to know how to write down notes-aroony, dig?

And, my first time listening to these amazing recreations, my reaction was, "They're putting too much of a modern spin on things."  And I figured that it was probably an unconscious "move" on their part.  Then it struck me that the original performances, heard in "modern" fidelity, would inevitably sound unlike the original acoustical 78s in many regards.  In terms of inflection, dynamics, and the soundscape in general.  We're hearing more, simply put.  And, listening to these tracks side by side with the originals, my revised verdict is that these guys did one hell of a fantastic (and worthwhile) job.

The five brilliant musicians are Don Fowler on cornet, George Phillips on trombone, Earl Jackson on clarinet, George Ruschka on piano, and Darrell Renfro on drums.  And it was Fowler who did the astounding task of notating each 1917 "head" arrangement. 

I have no trouble "making this" LP (Daddy-o, cat, man), and in fact it's one of the great, swingsville, can-you-dig-it thrift finds of my "career."  From before Goodwill went nuts and over-priced its vinyl, only to stop putting out vinyl altogether after it stopped selling.  (A major "landmarks in marketing" moment.)  What a shame.  I mean, any cool cat can dig that selling items at 50 cents to a buck means turning a profit.  Whereas, no sales=no bread.  Dig?  Well, clearly someone ain't makin' that scene.  

Anyway, fabulous stuff! 

DOWNLOAD: Original Dixieland Jazz Hi-Fi.zip

The Original Dixeland One-Step

Livery Stable Blues

At the Jazz Band Ball

Ostrich Walk

Tiger Rag

Skeleton Jangle

Sensation Rag

Bluin' the Blues

Clarinet Marmalade Blues 

Mournin' Blues

Fidgety Feet

Lazy Daddy

(Original Dixieland in Hi-Fi; ABC-Paramount ABC-184; 1957)

Lee, real gone

1974 and Windows 11

 I'm about to post a wonderful LP.  But first I want to note that I fully agree with musicman1979 and Ernie (and based, in part, on the former's notes re CSP label designs) that, in all probability, that 1974 set I sampled (below) likely came out in 1965 or 1966, not 1974, as stated at Discogs.  Problem is, the catalog number for the set doesn't seem to fit any scheme, and so I was unable to number-compare in guessing the year.

And, in attempt to delete an incomplete upload, I deleted something else.  What, I do not know.  This is thanks to Windows 11 and its epically wonky operation.  So, if you come across a recent share which has vanished, let me know.  With Windows 10, I always knew "where I was" on a page.  With 11, not nearly so much.

Lee

(Tracks from) The Unforgettable Years, Young and Warm and Wonderful (1968, 1974)

 

This is an augmented 2020 repost (I added three more numbers) featuring six selections from the 1974 J.C. Penney box set, The Unforgettable Years (specifically, the "Dance Time Discotheque" side--which, like the rest of the set, features '60s-era material), and 18 from the 1968 boxed set Young and Warm and Wonderful, another Columbia label mail-order set (This time, "a product of Columbia Musical Treasuries").  

And my main reason for reviving this post was my nostalgia for (and wish to reshare) the "Dance Time Discotheque" selections: Delightful big band treatments, much like Enoch Light's on Command and Si Zentner's on RCA, only minus any credit.  My favorite: Downtown, whose arrangement pleases me to no end, with Satisfaction's a close second.  Despite the 1974 release date, it's hard to imagine this session not occurring during the '60s.  As to what Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (Goodbye) is doing here, I can't begin to guess, but it's well done, so what the heck.  The remaining 114 (!) Unforgettable Years selections didn't make the cut, though I almost included Blowin' in the Wind and Mr. Tambourine Man from the "Folk Festival" disc.  However, those are done in a silly, sing-along "hootenanny" style--plus, they're in rough shape.  No great loss.

Next, from the seven-disc Young and Warm and Wonderful, we start with the New Dance Band, which gives us Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, This Guy's in Love With You, Yesterday, and three more.  I'd have included California Dreaming, but that track is marred by distortion (either an instance of needle damage or a pressing flaw).

And I ripped all but two of the eleven selections by the In Group (I banished Misty, which--imo-doesn't belong with Land of 1000 Dances and Respect, while I can live without Hang On Sloopy in any version), and they are very much in the "fake" hit/sound-alike category (we could call them authentic fake hits)--and each very well done.  Light My Fire, it should be noted, copies the excellent Jose Feliciano version, though an imitation-Doors knockoff might have been interesting.  All would work nicely for my "Lee's Fake Hits" YouTube channel, except that they're not contemporaneous knockoffs.  That's one of my rules.

There's also the International Hits Orchestra (another likely-sounding appellation) with the world's worst fake of It's Not Unusual, along with superior sound-alikes of Don't Sleep in the Subway and Downtown.  Winchester Cathedral is an instrumental cover--and quite good.  As opposed to the Starlight Strings' Alfie and Strangers in the Night, two of my all-time favorite numbers, but rendered (even by easy-listening standards) indifferently.  Both seemed like can't-miss tracks, but... they missed.

A nice mix of fake hits and instrumental hit parade covers--all from Columbia House.  A mail-order special.

DOWNLOAD:   The Unforgettable Years, Young and Warm and Wonderful.zip

UNKNOWN ARTIST

Downtown

I Want to Hold Your Hand

I'm Telling You Now

Satisfaction

She Loves You

Toot, Toot, Tootsie! (Goodbye)

The Unforgettable Years: Dance Time Discotheque (Columbia Special Products CSS 375-84; 1974)

THE NEW DANCE BAND

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In

This Guy's in Love With You

Yesterday

The Sound of Silence

What the World Needs Now

Up, up and Away

THE INTERNATIONAL HITS ORCHESTRA

It's Not Unusual

Don't Sleep in the Subway

Winchester Cathedral

Downtown

THE IN GROUP

The "In" Crowd

(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay

Land of 1000 Dances

Respect

Both Sides, Now

Mrs. Robinson

Anyone Who Had a Heart

Those Were the Days

Light My Fire

Young and Warm and Wonderful (Columbia Musical Treasuries P7S 5114; 1968)

Lee

Top Six--The Teenagers (sic) Choice: Beatlemania (1964)

A return post from 2020. Its link still works, and I recall that the audio quality is quite good, considering the much-played condition of the U.K. vinyl.  By now, I've probably heard 80 percent of the budget Beatles knock-offs--from dreadful to adequate--of this period, and this my pick for the jewel of the fake-Beatlemania crown.

 Lee

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

Back to the blog!

 And what a journey it has been.  It started with the sudden demise of my HP laptop in the midst of Christmas blogging.  Then, the challenge of a new laptop (a lovely Samsung Galaxy, on sale, and minus an instruction manual), Windows 11 (which I've nicknamed "Let's see--how can we make 10 worse?"), a new audio analog-to-digital interface (nice enough, but no Roland Duo-Capture), an external keyboard (I hate typing on a flat one), an four-jack USB extension hub, and... the return of my big and superb Omen monitor.  I'd have stuck with the Samsung display, which is gorgeous, but the cause of too much eyestrain when I'm editing images and audio.  An aging-vision issue?  Very possibly.

And some glitches too complicated to explain.  Or too boring to describe, at least.  For instance, my Behringer U-Control interface has no internal volume control, and the VinylStudio program, sensing the lack of an internal volume adjustment, shuts off its OWN.  AND, though my MAGIX software has an auto-adjust feature for the (very loud) Rec Out signal from my vintage Sony amp, stereo input is channel-summed to monaural.  I have no idea why.  I've studied the settings, but no clue.

Oh, and despite what the Best Buy Geek Squad assured me, the data-retrieval process (from my old tower to my Samsung) went poorly, with many C-drive items lost--and ALL of the D-drive data--kaput.  Meaning, any number of this blog's ZIP files.  Truth is, I had tried to move D-drive data to my whatever-it's-called Microsoft cloud storage.  (Oh, yeah--OneDrive.)  But I couldn't figure out how to do it.  The ways of OneDrive are strange.  I was happy, though, that my C-drive data all went into the cloud quickly and automatically.  Meanwhile, the Geek Squad managed to retrieve C-drive data I had long ago deleted.  It's all too complicated.

Anyway, a post in progress, and--meanwhile--a repeat of a 2020 offering whose ZIP somehow still remains at Box.com.  It is, in my fake-hit-authority opinion, the very best Fab Four knockoff of all time.  The LP dates from a period when U.K.-to-U.S. postage rates were still reasonable.  Stay tuned.

Wolf: I just can't explain it, Dr. Hood.  This drive to gobble up grandmothers--I just can't control it.  You must think pretty badly of me.  Especially since I just ate YOUR grandma.

Dr. Hood: I'm here to listen, not to judge.

Lee