Halloween LeeWorks for 2020!

 

A late bonus post for Halloween--nineteen of my own spooky compositions, most written between 2009 and 2011.  At the time, I had a Casio CTK-551, which sounded better than you would think, especially with all the MAGIX effects I added.  I have some more recent pieces I wanted to add, but finding the CD-Rs would take hours, so...

I don't remember when I wrote my Halloween Fugue, or what it was originally called.  It dates back to 1989 or so, though the recording is from 2011.  Pieces like Poker Night in Dracula's Castle are experiments with extreme applications of echo delay, accomplished with multiple saves.  Throughout this set, there's a lot of track overlapping and speed manipulation and other fun.  Most of these are me "live" at the keyboard, with all multi-tracking accomplished in a primitive fashion (often with me unable to hear the part I was dubbing over), and the really virtuosic-sounding numbers were accomplished with my old Noteworthy Composer program, using step-time sequencing.  I think I got nice results on these with such low-budget means.  Or by them; whatever the right preposition happens to be.

I did some editing on these, paring things down.  Many have gone through multiple versions over the years, so, for some titles, these can be considered the latest editions.

My Toccatica was my attempt to redo Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor in an Exotica vein--and it almost works.  Anyway, that explains the title, at least.  My Hauntovani Waltzes were written... who knows when?  Actually, I had a single waltz I'd written (back in 2000 or so) in a Hauntovani mode, and, for this track, I pulled two waltzes out of storage to make a trio.  Not sure if the other two had names.  Funeral Disco is my Disco version of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, and The Haunted Choir Room features a ghostly choir made up of... me.  I was multi-tracking in my primitive MAGIX-to-MAGIX fashion, trying to do some four-part harmony.  It didn't come out that well, but with the effects piled on, I made an excellent ghost choir.  So... enjoy!

I'll just let New Blogger double-space my playlist this time...

DOWNLOAD: LeeWorks Halloween 2020

ALL COMPOSITIONS WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY LEE HARTSFELD

Halloween Fugue (c. 1989)

Poker Night in Dracula's Castle

Junk Mail at the Deserted Manor

(You Don't Want To) Get on Board the Ghost Train

Morbid Moments

Toccatina

Food Fight in Space

Dracula's Doorbell

Halloween March

Funeral Disco (Gounod, Adapted Lee H.)

Piano in Outer Space

Galaxies in Collision

Missile in the Moon

The Dead Sitcom Zone

Slaytude in A minor

The Haunted Radio

The Haunted Piano

Haunted Choir Room

Three Hauntovani Waltzes

Lee

Frankie presents... Horrifying Halloween instrumentals!

 

I found this fine Frankenstein monster collectible at (where else?) Goodwill, and I had a pair to choose from.  Tough choice, as both were in nearly dead perfect shape.  But I grabbed this guy, and he grabbed back, and so I knew I had the right one.

He's not all that happy with the design--he thinks it makes him look like Fred Flintstone at Halloween. And heads are for storing brains, not cookies, he insists.  Frankly (get it?), I think the real problem is that I keep calling him "Frank-Tin-Stein," which must get get his stiches in a knot, but my needling is purely affectionate.  He needn't get hairy about it.  That's my job:

.

But enough seriousness.  Today's slaylist features mostly resurrected sections--er, selections--with only three numbers new to the blog, but you get mostly new rips and a higher bitrate, so it's a good deal, I think.  (Well, of course I'd think so.)  We get three versions of Morton Gould's The Deserted Ballroom, including Gould's own solo piano recording from 1940; the Lawrence Welk orchestra playing Hush... Hush Sweet Charlotte; Ferde Grofe's Cloudburst in the original 1931-or-so orchestration (in which version it makes ideal spook music); a second dose of Grofe, courtesy of his 1924 arrangement of The Hoodoo Man; Wayne King performing the theme from 1957's Man of a Thousand Faces, which is Chopin's famous E-minor Prelude, as ruined by Frank Skinner; three Dark Shadows selections; a third helping of Grofe with Trick or Treat; a second Gould piece--a wonky number called Robot; Vic (The Addams Family theme) Mizzy with his theme for William Castle's The Night Walker, as performed by Sammy Kaye's orchestra; and the Ferrante and Teicher composition Try Again, which was used as the music for Rod Serling's 1973-74 radio program, Zero Hour (aka, Hollywood Radio Theatre), on which Mission: Impossible's Peter Lupus got five days of starring roles.  Among many, many other TV actors famous at the time.

Speaking of spooks, I served as one in the Navy.  I don't know if that term is still used for those of us who did spy work.  

Since the holiday is a classic rite of reversal, I think it's fitting that I wish you all a !ИƎƎWO⅃⅃AH YꟼꟼAH

Mummy back, if not totally chilled.

DOWNLOAD: Horrifying Halloween Instrumentals, 2020

The Deserted Ballroom (Morton Gould)--Montovani and His Orch., 1956
Satan and the Polar Bear (Rose)--David Rose and His Orch., 1957
Deserted Ballroom (Gould)--Elliot Everett and His Orch. (Varsity VLP6041)
I Want to Dance with You (Robert Cobert)--The Charles Randolph Grean Sounde, 1970
Quentin's Theme (Cobert)--Mantovani, 1969
Try Again (Theme from Hollywood Radio Theatre)--Ferrante and Teicher, 1973
Robot (Morton Gould)--Hal Herzon and His Orch.  (No idea on the date)
The Night Walker (Vic Mizzy)--Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra, 1965
Trick or Treat (Ferde Grofe)--Andre Kostelanetz, 1976
Theme from Man of a Thousand Faces (Chopin, Adapted by Frank Skinner)--Wayne King Orch., 1958
Cloudburst (Grand Canyon--Suite; Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orch., 1932
Fire Dance (Manuel de Falla)--Hollywood Bowl Orch., c. Eugene Goossens, 1928
Funeral March (Chopin, Op. 35)--Mark Andrews, pipe organ solo, 1928
The Hoodoo Man (Nacio Herb Brown, Arr. Grofe)--Paul Whiteman and His Orch., 1924
In the Hall of the Mountain King (Grieg)--Victor Symphony Orch., 1926
Hush... Hush Sweet Charlotte (Frank De Vol-Mack David)--Lawrence Welk, 1965
March of the Marionettes (Gounod)--Ray Bohr, pipe organ, 1956
Deserted Ballroom (Gould)--Moron Gould, piano, 1940.
Haunted House Polka--The Cavaliers (RCA Victor 53-9327)

Lee

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.)




DOWNLOAD: The Haunted Victrola is Back!









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

More Top Hit Tunes

 

This is a follow-up to my previous (Oct. 10) Top Hit Tunes offering, which seems like a very redundant point, especially since I designated this as "More..."  I haven't been myself lately.  I'm not sure who I've been.  Maybe my driver's license will give me some clue...

In fact, back in June I did an even earlier Top Hit Tunes post which featured sides from the Enoch Light period.  Today's post is post-Enoch.  These six-selection EPs were all pressed on junk vinyl, and while the EPs from the Light period (Waldorf Record Corp., 18 Top Hits, early Top Hit Tunes) weren't pressed on prime vinyl, they were far less noisy than these.  Have I thoroughly confused myself yet?

Todays' fakes are from 1960 and 1961, a period I don't remember firsthand, as my earliest Top 40 recollections are from 1962.  Therefore, many of today's numbers were unknown to me until now.  But some were already familiar as oldies: Little Egypt (originally the Coasters), Little Devil (Neil Sedaka), Last Date (Floyd Cramer--country), You Talk Too Much (Joe Jones), Mother-in-Law (Ernie K-Doe),  Crying (Roy Orbison), the King-Goffin gem Halfway to Paradise (Tony Orlando, but which I first heard on a Bobby Vinton LP), and Don't Be Cruel (the version by Bill Black's Combo). For some reason, I thought I knew Summer's Gone, but I don't--I must have been thinking of some other Summer title.  Summer's Gone is the disaster of the set, and I have no idea why the fidelity is suddenly so pinched at the close.  It's nothing that I did.  At any rate, while "Arthur Poem" is a better singer than Paul Anka (who did the original), he's almost definitely under-rehearsed, and of course the audio disaster at the end ruins everything.  Otherwise, a classic cover.  (Cha-dunk, crash!)

I still haven't decided whether or not I'd heard New Orleans before.  Or, if so, when.  I'll get back to you if I figure it out.  Ta Ta; When We Get Married; Let Me Belong to You; Let's Go, Let's Go; and Bobby Rydells' Good Time Baby (I neglected to capitalize 'Time' on the ID tag), Don't Worry, and Please Love Me Forever were all news to me.  Never on Sunday, however, falls into the melody-everyone-has-heard category, and Dedicated to the One I Love and A Little Bit of Soap seem like hits that would be universally familiar, if only by their titles.  I find the playlist, as experienced in one sitting, pleasant but drab, though there were some superb pre-Beatles rock and roll hits of the 1960s, especially in the 1962-1963 period.  The Top 40 was just slouching a bit when these particular fakes were faked.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor, as many of you know, was a "skiffle" version of the 1924 Does Your Spearmint Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight, and this fake doesn't sound all that different from the real hit.  Oh, and I'm just now (10/28, 12:14 AM) remembering that I wanted to mention the extreme fuzz tone on Don't Worry, which is a surprisingly good approximation of the distortion that occurs on the Marty Robbins original.  Thanks to RobGems68 for mentioning it.  Buzzsaw guitar tones probably go back to the 1940s (just guessing)--that is to say, distortion of its type must be as old as amplified guitar technology.  Each "legendary" instance of same is accompanied by a similar tale--loose vacuum tube, damaged amp, defective fader in the studio, etc.  Famous recordings feasting the sound include Howlin' Wolf's 1951 How Many More Years (lead by Willie Johnson), Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88 of the same year (lead by Willie Kizart), and the guitar sound on The Johnny Burnette Trio's 1956 The Train Kept A-Rollin' and Link Wray and His Ray Men's 1958 Rumble.  I'm sure there are many more instances.

Again, post-Enoch Waldorf sides here, his Waldorf labels having been purchased in late 1959.  I've previously established a post-Enoch Pickwick-Waldorf connection (say that twenty times!), and in fact the first five numbers in the set are from a Bravo EP--an EP which I'm assuming had a corresponding Top Hit Tunes release.  A pretty safe assumption, I think, but still an assumption...

These were evidently all originally sold as sets, and the numerical suffixes tell us the disc number.  For instance, Top Hit Tunes THC--11-3 was the third disc in (I guess) set 11.  If any of these came in envelopes (which is likely, since these were almost definitely mail-order items), then I've yet to see a Top Hit Tunes envelope, though I have plenty for the Bravo label.

Fun stuff, even if a little mild musically, and lovingly restored by me.  Took some work.  A lot, actually.  And whoever came up with "Sunny and the Moonlighters," "Bernie Bridges," "The Star Glazers," and "The Up Beats" should have gotten an award.

DOWNLOAD: More Top Hit Tunes

A Little Bit of Soap--Unknown (Bravo PEP-210-6)
Let Me Belong to You--(Same)
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor--(Same)
Crying--(Same)
When We Get Married--(Same)
Please Love Me Forever--Sunny and the Moonlighters (Top Hit Tunes PH-603)
Baby Blue--The Up Beats (Same)
Mother in-Law (sic)--Gary Mitchell (Same)
Never on Sunday--The Tonalaires (Top Hit Tunes THC-10-1)
Ta Ta--Elliot Sweeney (Same)
I Feel So Bad--Bert Summer (Top Hit Tunes PH-70-3)
Every Beat of My Heart--The Calumets (Same)
Little Devil--Bernie Bridges (Same)
Halfway to Paradise (Goffin-King)--Matt Marina (Same)
Little Egypt--The Freckles (Same)
You Talk Too Much--Freddie Freeman (Top Hit Tunes THC-11-2)
Summer's Gone--Arthur Poem (Same)
Let's Go, Let's Go--Phil Regano (Same)
To Each His Own--The Dreamers (Same)
Diamonds and Pearls--Eddie and His Friends (Top Hit Tunes THC-11-3)
Good Time Baby--Pete Studer (Top Hit Tunes PH-60-1)
Don't Be Cruel--Happy Harry (Top Hit Tunes THC-11-3)
New Orleans--The Southerners (Same)
Last Date--The Star Glazers (Same)
Dedicated to the One I Love--The Bleecker Street Regulars (Top Hit Tunes PH-60-1)
Don't Worry--Jerry Frankman (Same)

Lee

8 Top Hits, or Hits, Hits, Hooray! (Waldorf MH 3319; 1954)

 

Yet another budget LP which can't decide what its title should be.  A cool Waldorf ten-incher--a quick listen, needless to say.  At least Waldorf didn't go the six-track route here.  The cover promises eight, and by golly...

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure, but I think Synthetic Plastics Co. also used the Hits, Hits, Hooray title.

Waldorf's 8 Bottom Hits used the same jacket, only upside-down.

DOWNLOAD: 8 Top Hits (Waldorf MH 3310; 1954)

Lee