Rhythm Masters Quartet--More About Jesus (Scripture Records 106)

 

DOWNLOAD: More About Jesus--Rhythm Masters Quartet

Recorded in Newark NJ, but the group hails from Birmingham, Alabama.  That would explain the accents!  Expertly presented Southern Gospel, with a good number of standards--Leaning on the Everlasting Arms (or "Arm," according to the record label and jacket), At the Cross, Unclouded Day, Love Lifted Me, and other numbers which, even though they age, never grow old.  And I just have to mention what used to be a standard parody of At the Cross--namely, At the Bar.  "At the bar, At the bar, Where I had my first cigar."  Can't remember the rest.

So, these guys are at the top of their game, and the group portrait is professionally done, and... I wish I had the year for this, but Discogs isn't telling.  For some reason, the front jacket came out all wonky when I did my four-part scan, so I had to fix the white border.  The front cover art is ever so slightly off-center, but my scan had everything off by about 20 degrees.  Sometimes, the stitching function gets confused or something.  My photo software is quite old, and it hasn't been supported for quite some time, but its a great program, so I still use it.  At one point, I bought a new photo-shopping program, and it wasn't half as versatile as what I have, which was bundled in with my (now antique) Epson scanner.

Feeling like I have a fever--I'm still reacting to my second Covid shot, which happened on Friday.  I thought I was on easy street, since my initial reaction was quite mild.  Then, driving home, I felt a little woozy.  That evening, I needed aspirin and Benadryl to help me sleep.  Woke up today with the shot site hurting like (does anyone use this term anymore?) the dickens.  But nothing "concerning" so far, and I'll probably be up to playing the ol' solid state Thomas organ at church tomorrow.  I hope so.

Meanwhile, some very fine quartet singing--and I almost forgot to mention that it's a thrift gift from Diane.  Thanks, Diane!

Now to discover whether I actually have a fever or whether I simply feel like I have one.  I suspect the latter.

Lee

#1 Pop Hits (Nashville Sound 1011; 1971?); or, Lee talks down "classic" rock

DOWNLOAD: #1 Pop Hits (Nashville Sound 1011; 1971?)

This is a first.  Never before have I posted a fake-hits LP that I can barely stand.  Boy, do I hate these selections.  I know I'm a rogue Boomer, given that I'm supposed to be in love with CCR and stuff like The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down, but I frankly don't think most of these numbers even qualify as songs.  Rock was moving into its cellular phase about this time (probably 1971), with mind-numbing repetition of the needle-stuck-in-the-grooves type.  For instance, Never Ending Song of Love does the genius, Beethoven-level bit of going from C, down to G, then back up to C, then down to G, then back up to C, then down to G, etc.  Inane lyrics atop a single chord change are about as exciting as Bubbles in the Wine played backwards, if that much.  But the song that earns bottom-of-the-list honors would have to be the stupid Do You Know What I Mean.

Naturally, this LP had all kinds of little nicks that required file-splicing--even VinylStudio's incredible declicker feature didn't catch them all (it leaves clicks and pops alone if removing them would affect the music).  And so I was having to replay short sections of songs which are already milestones of monotony, and only my devotion to bringing you the history of fake hits--only my dedication to this proud mission could have compelled me to clean up this entire LP.  That, plus I was already about halfway done, so I figured why not suffer through the rest.  There are about four songs I like here, but Nashville Sound (Spar) sure managed to find most of my least favorite Top 40 stuff from this period.  It's almost as if... as if they planned it.  As if they looked ahead 50 years into the future and said, "Lee's going to HATE this!  Buwa-ha-haaaa!"

Memory tells me that 1971 was about the time I tuned out the Top 40 and focused on my piano lessons--rock was going places I didn't want to follow it to.  Yet, there are songs from this period that I like.  That Now Generation LP I put up (Spar, again) has a number of things I dislike, but that playlist was balanced out by stuff I didn't mind (and probably even liked, in a few instances).   So, posting that was a more positive experience.  But... these are all merely my opinions, and feel free to totally disagree.  There's no right or wrong when it comes to taste.  It's just that I've been on boards where people break out in sunspots if they discover you don't like, say, Pink Floyd or Cream (and I don't).  "But, that... that's not allowed!"  None of us signed a contract promising we would like what everyone else likes.  I never did, anyway.

My favorite thing is, "How can you not like (name of group/singer)?"  These are people who don't realize that they are not the prototype for every other human in our species.

Even Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves and Take Me Home Country Roads were like sweet relief from the fake CCR and fake Rod Stewart--they both function as songs, at least.  They're professionally written.  I realize that most rock tends toward simplicity, and that much early rock and roll (my favorite) is just three or four chords.  But the early stuff moves.  It has energy, with one chord going to another--like chords should.  CCR-style songs, during the early rock and roll era, would have had teens wondering what on earth they were listening to.  Part of the problem is the awful country-rock period which arrived in the late 1960s.  I never, ever understood the country-rock fetish that happened with rock journalists--I mean, if you love country, then listen to country.  That's always an option!  I know of no corresponding weirdness from that period--say, Downbeat critics demanding polka sets from Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock.  It would be like me saying, "This Irish group is fine, and jigs are okay, but I like the big-city blues sound of 1952. Can these folks totally switch gears for me?  Thanks."  The birth of jig-blues.

Anyway, disagree with me at will, if you wish, and give these mostly competently done fakes a chance--you may be amused, surprised, or both.  Brown Sugar (a song I like) gets a pretty good counterfeit treatment here--and, really, since I don't like most of the originals, I can't complain about any of the fakes which fall short.  I'm certain that Nashville Sound knew that I'd find this LP and that I'd feel a duty to rip it for my blog.  Somehow, all those years ago, it knew...  I don't know how, but it did.

UPDATE: I had meant to add a few points, but they got lost in the post revisions.  Never My Love is from 1967, and Spar was clearly using it as filler, probably having run out of 1971 material.  It's one of the four or so tracks that I like here, though it's not my favorite Association song.  And this LP's version of the excellent Goffin-King hit Go Away Little Girl (Spar didn't bother with a comma) is Spar's 1962 version by Fred York, originally released as a 45 on Hit Records No. 43, which (going by the YouTube posting) was pitched slightly lower.  York does a decent job, but he's no Steve Lawrence.

Lee

The Castles return to Europe (1914)

 

The Castles were loaded--they could have afforded weekly trips, had they wanted.  I decided to redo my 1914 James Reese Europe file from the last post--I really liked the sound of my first try, but I decided the lower end needed just a little more body.  I think I've succeeded, though it took precise EQing to prevent distortion.  This is The Castles in Europe, which was an incorrect title that, for some reason, Victor gave to Europe's Castle House Rag, at least on some copies.  So, this is The Castles in Europe, but it's really Castle House Rag.  By either name, the percussion is just as amazing.

Despite the woodwinds and brass, Europe's orchestra has (to my ears) a string band sound.  It's the harmonic texture as much as anything else--a texture that I'd describe as "busy," though polyphonic or heterophonic would be the more formal term(s).  It's the texture that happens when a large group of stringed instruments are playing en masse.  Much of the earliest jazz has that busy sound, and it was precisely that cluttered sound (which to some ears sounded like cacophony) that Paul Whiteman and Ferde Grofe smoothed out so superbly in Paul's jazzy dance sides--the "symphonic jazz" which journalists of the day hailed as a step up from the "crude" music of blacks.  Whiteman had "tamed" the music.

And I love Whiteman and Grofe, anyway, because their polite jazz is brilliant.  When it comes to the arts, I like to refrain from politicizing things.

But we're talking about James Reese Europe and his amazing ragtime/jazz band, and I think it's one of the all-time toss-ups as to whether this side, and other Reese recordings like it, were jazz or ragtime (or both).  Since ragtime seems to have been the form that carried over into jazz--the style which somehow, almost invisibly, mutated into the ODJB, King Oliver, and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, I think the "Is it jazz?" question might be irrelevant here, if only because ragtime and jazz, at this point in the evolution of black music, were at times so close in style and feel as to be... the same thing, essentially.  And if anyone knows what on earth I just typed, please send me a polite email and explain it.  Thanks in advance.

The Castles in Europe (Castle House Rag)--Europe's Society Orchestra, 1914  (with extra bass)

Ripped by me from my eBay copy.  Flat curve--i,e., 0.0 Hz bass turnover, O.O dB treble rolloff, with 300 Hz bass turnover added, along with 60 Hz LF shelf.  Then a lot of EQing.

Lee 

Gustav Holst, Carl Michael Ziehrer, Julius Fucik, Victor Herbert, Coleridge-Taylor--Shellac City, U.S.A. (1900-1938)

 

DOWNLOAD: Holst, Ziehrer, Fucik, Herbert, Coleridge-Taylor, more

(Left: Europe's Society Orch.--image swiped from Red Hot Jazz Archive)

Today, the fourth movement of Gustav (The Planets) Holst's St. Paul Suite in a 1938 recording by The Jacques String Orchestra; James Reese Europe's Castle House Rag recorded in 1914 by Europe's Society Orchestra, mistakenly released by Victor as The Castles in Europe; Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's famous Viking Song, (almost definitely the source for the Monty Python "Spam song") in the 1918 Vicrola label version by baritone Emilio de Gogorza; Julius Fucik's Entry of the Gladiators (as Einzug der Gladiatoren) and Austrian composer Carl Michael Ziehrer's Kinderlieden Marsch (a famous piece I'd never before heard) in amazingly high-fidelity ca. 1926 German recordings from a 12-inch Brunswick 78; and such old, old "pop" titles as Hot Time in the Old Town, Rag Time Skedaddle, Swanee (Gershwin), Cocoanut Dance, Sand Dance, and Dardanella Blues, the last title a cash-in on the smash hit Dardanella, and by two of the same writers, which was handy, since I imagine this closed the door to any charges of theft.  I was expecting something far more clever, though--maybe a song about someone who's got the blues from hearing Dardanella all the time--a cool kind of satirical self-reference.  Instead, the lyrics have something to do with the songwriter's sweetheart not being willing to marry the songwriter until he, um... does something.  Until he changes the bass figure to the song, maybe?  Someone dashed off those words in a hurry, and too bad--this could have been a memorable parody, or least a meaningful one.  By the way, the Dardanella bass figure was appropriated by Jerome Kern for his song Ka-Lu-A (1921), which resulted in a lawsuit and a small fee.  It's always possible that Kern simply came up with a similar figure, and by accident, though I doubt it.  That's in the same probability zone as Buddy Holly having just happened to sound like Bo Diddley on Not Fade Away.  Not buying it.  When you have a big hit, and it's followed by something which sounds like a copy-cat version, either in whole or part, coincidence is the least probable explanation.

So, you might wonder, is the 1900 Sand Dance an example of early exotica (as in early, early exotica)?  The answer, unfortunately, is no--and, even if there was even the slightest trace of exotica, the arrangement's use of Arkansas Traveler would kill the mood.  Cocoanut Dance--which, despite the title, sounds more minstrel than island--was ripped from a considerably less than mint copy, and the ca. 1903-1908 date range likely means that it sold a ton of copies, requiring virtuoso banjoist Vess Ossman to return to the studio and do new waxings over a five-year period (as the masters wore out, due to demand).  That's my best guess, unless the recording date stretched out to half a decade, with endless retakes until the Columbia Disc Record folks felt things were just right.  That seems far less likely.  Spending five years on a single is something invented by the rock era.

Rag Time Skedaddle is a piccolo solo (with piano accompaniment), and nowadays no one, as far as I know, associates rags or cakewalks with the piccolo, but things were different in the early 1900s--I know of at least several other piccolo-solo ragtime recordings.  Maybe, once upon a time, aspiring ragtime performers were advised to take up the piccolo. The big, bassy 1927 dance band sides (Art Landry and Johnny Hamp) may be a little jarring to the ears after the ten acoustical sides that precede them--they're apt to sound quite lifelike at first, if only because they're electric, and also because Victor liked its dance sides loud. 

A lovely 1920 side by John McCormack, possibly my all-time favorite singer, may be a bit out of place in this collection of light music, showtunes, piccolo rags, and 1927 dance numbers, but it sort of fits in with the general lack of scheme, I think.  A few repeats in the playlist: The Red Lantern, one of my all-time favorite dance sides (1919, when big bands consisted of nine or so players), Lanciers Figure 5 from Victor Herbert's Dolly Dollars (Prince's Orchestra, 1906--a "lancier" or "lancer" being very much like an American square dance), and Hello, My Dearie, by Prince's Band (as opposed to his orchestra), which was a number from Ziegfield Follies of 1917.  The Follies were inspired by the Folies Bergère, which was an actual music hall in Paris, whereas the Ziegfield Follies were performed in multiple locations.  And I hate phrases like "multiple locations," because "locations" is already plural.  It's like, on the nightly news, when an announcer talks about an accident involving "multiple cars."  Um, as opposed to a single cars?

If you don't know Hearts and Flowers by name, you'll recognize it a few bars into it.  I think most of us first heard it in a Looney Toons cartoon or as background music in a silent-film compilation.  You'll quickly discover you that know it by flower.  I mean, by heart.  Well, except for the dramatic bridge.  As used in the media, Hearts and Flowers is only a fraction of the whole.  Like the love theme from Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.  How many people know that past the first eight bars?

Narcissus is one of my favorite light instrumentals of all time, and I first heard it in a bitonal (in two different keys) version as part of the background music for the 1962 Thriller episode "Cousin Tundifer." A terrific episode, though the special effects (a room gradually changing from the present to the past) seemed less impressive after I'd figured out how they'd been done (by creative matte work).  It was years before I heard the piece as written, and it may have been from a sheet music copy.  This Arthur Pryor recording is quite nice, and, as far as the 1908 and 1913 dates go (see playlist), Arthur must have re-recorded it in the latter year, using the same catalog number.  I probably have the 1913 version, as the Online 78 rpm Disco graphical Project says, "5=6/17/13."  And, sure enough, there's a tiny "5" in the dead wax.  Can we assume 1913?  Yeah, I'll go with that.

To the shellac...

PLAYLIST

St. Paul's Suite (Holst)--The Jacques String Orchestra, c. Reginald Jacques, 1938
The Castles in Europe (Castle House Rag) (Jas. Europe)--Europe's Society Orchestra, 1914
Viking Song (Wright/Coleridge-Taylor)--Emilio de Gogorza, 1918
Einzug der Gladiatoren (Fucik)--Georg Scharf's Brass Orchestra (Prob. 1926)
Kinderliedermarsch (Ziehrer)--Same
Hot Time in the Old Town--Medley March--Victor Military Band, 1917
Rag Time Skedaddle (George Rosey)--Frank Mazziotta, Piccolo Solo w. Piano (Victor 4033; ca. 1903-1910)
Swanee (I. Caesar-George Gershwin)--Peerless Quartet, 1918
Why Did I Kiss That Girl (King-Henderson)--Jos. Samuels' Music Masters, 1924
A Smile Will Go a Long Long Way (Davis-Akst)--Lanin's Arcadians, 1924
Cocoanut Dance (Andrew Herrmann)--Vess L. Ossman, Banjo Solo w. Orch. (Columbia Disc Record No. 1705; ca. 1903-1908)
Sand Dance (L. Childers)--George Schweinfest, Piccolo Solo (Lakeside Disc Record 70207; re. Columbia 195, 1900)
Hearts and Flowers (Tobani)--Victor Orchestra, 1908
The Red Lantern--Medley (Fischer, Cowan, Monaco)--Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra, Dri. Joseph Knecht, 1919
Narcissus (Ethelbert Nevin)--Arthur Pryor's Band (Victor 16029, 1908 or 1913)
The Whisper Song (Cliff Friend)--Art Landry and His Orchestra, w. vocal chorus, 1927
One O'clock Baby (De Sylva-Brown-Jolson)--Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders, V: Franklyn Baur, 1927
Dardanella Blues (Fisher-Black)--Billy Murray-Ed. Smalle (1920)
Wonderful World of Romance (Simpson-Wood)--John McCormack, Tenor with orchestra, 1920
Miss Dolly Dollars--Lanciers Figure 5 (Victor Herbert)--Prince's Orchestra, 1906
Golden Sunset Waltz (Hall)--Same
Hello, My Dearie--One-step--Prince's Band, 1917
Ching-chong--One-Step (Roberts-Strictland)--Same

Lee

Tops Top Hit Tunes (Tops 45-S61/62; 1960, and Tops S-67/68; 1961)--Hal Sherman, Ace Checker, The Toppers, Chubby Davis

 

DOWNLOAD: Tops S-67-68; Tops S-61-62 (1961; 1960) 

(Note: The track marker between Dream Baby and Norman was in the wrong place; I've corrected this as of 5:12 pm.)

We're back to the "modern" world of vinyl, and so today's offerings are only seven decades old.  Someday, I might risk getting even closer to the present--say, 30 or 40 years.

1960 was the year that Bob Blythe took over Tops, and you definitely want to follow the link to the Wikipedia entry on Bob, which reads like a comedy short.  About three years later, Tops was sold to Pickwick.  So it goes, sometimes.  There was obviously quite an art to succeeding in the junk-label market, so no shame in bombing out. I didn't have time to do track comparison on these, but I'm almost sure Baby Sittin' Boogie and Blue Moon are the same masters used by Promenade (SPC) and the Hit Parader and Song Hits labels (Charlton Publications).  Also, probably, the Canadian Arc label.  In fact, all twenty of today's tracks may have shown up in the catalogs of these three or four outfits, as there was a lot of crossover happening between them.  Somehow, though, I don't feel like spending two hours testing my hunch.  Maybe later, when I'm in a properly obsessed mode.

I was surprised by how fun and catchy most of these numbers are (I'm sure they're even moreso in their original versions), since I guess that, at some point in my life, I digested the standard narrative that the period between Elvis and the Beatles was a kind of Top 40 Dark Age.  It's true that 1960 and 1961 was a time of same-sounding clinking-triplets ballads and twist numbers, not to mention some especially dumb novelty sides (Pop-Eye, anybody?), but these are fun, lively sides, and anyone who denounces Pony Time or Duke of Earl as too dumb for rock--that person has apparently forgotten about such classic-era gems as Hang On Sloopy, Mony Mony, The Jolly Green Giant, and Bread and Butter.  I mean, can something like Pop-Eye possibly out-dumb those numbers?  A great subject for a serious (and intense) debate.

Anyway, I had looked at the tracklists (most of the titles being "before my time"), and I thought, "Uh-oh.  Too many twist numbers."  An exact quote.  So I'm very pleased by the variety and energy.  Some of these are especially well done (well-faked?), while others miss the mark with weak lead vocals, but then you're getting ten songs for a buck (a dime a track), so stop complaining.  In fact, this was part of a set for which I paid $9.99, so for once I got these for something lower than the original cost (if we consider the disc-by-disc cost of the group).  And I love that ridiculous pose at the top--it has a "Look happy, or else" quality to it.

The before-the-Beatles period was packed with great stuff, of course--I'd hate to be without Duke of Earl and the Marcels' Blue Moon (Richard Rodgers' opinion aside).   Interesting numbers, in that nearly everything hinges on bass-voice riffs.  These two are part of a genre regarded by some as a second doo-wop wave--as something not authentic.  "Authentic" is too relative a concept to bother with, imo, but I can understand the purists' concern in regard to this brand of R&B vocal singing, insomuch as it has formed the public impression of the form--as opposed to, say, the early-1950s work of The Clovers, The Dominoes, or the Harptones.

Anyhow, today's stand-out tracks, to me, are The Watusi, Duke of Earl, Break It to Me Gently (great job!), Blue Moon (uncannily good cover), I Don't Want to Cry (which I first heard in the excellent 1970 version by Illustration), and What's Your Name.  (There was actually a hit called Dear Lady Twist??)  These are from a very interesting transitional period in pop, and one that still operates in the shadow of the Brit Invasion, which is too bad.  I mean, the Beatles followed, in part, from Carole King (in their songwriting), the girl groups (in many of their vocal harmonies), the basic "Ringo" beat (which is present in much pre-1963 rock), and so on.  The Fab Four obviously liked Burt Bacharach, too, or they wouldn't have recorded Baby It's You, but you had to be Brian Wilson to even halfway succeed at going the Burt route (as with Brian's I Guess I'm Dumb, a magnificent song which went nowhere).  Brits loved Burt many years before the U.S. caught on.

The 1960 tracks (set S61/62) all feature "The Toppers," who are at the top of their game.  At least, no one got goofy and dubbed them the "Cake Toppers" or something.  They were strictly a play on the label name.  Who were The Toppers?  Whoever they could get for a given session, I'm sure.

By the way, I loved the chance to type "Tops Top Hit Tunes."  It looks like a typing error, which is cool.  Er, well, typing errors aren't cool, but it's cool when something looks like a mistake but isn't.  And, the more I think about it, I'm not sure why.

These are all "Vocals & Orch.," in case someone was expecting a string quartet.

You'll be a new person after listening to this.  In terms of cell regeneration, I mean.

PLAYLIST

Tops S-67/68 (1961)

Duke of Earl--Hal Sherman
The Wanderer--Ace Checker
Dear Lady Twist--Timmy Bonds
What's Your Name--Sandy Mitchell
Pop-Eye--Huey Drake
Break It to Me Gently-Brenda Scott
Love Letters--Patsy Williams
Slow Twistin'--Mary Marlowe
Dream Baby--Roy Smith
Norman--Barbara Parker

Tops S-61/62 (1960)

The Watusi--Paul Wilson and The Toppers
Blue Moon--Bill Burnette and The Toppers
Good Time Baby--Bobby Warwick and The Toppers
Once Upon a Time--Dick Thomas and The Toppers
Apache--The Toppers
I Don't Want to Cry--Chuck Wallace
Baby Sittin' Boogie--Buzz Crawford and The Toppers
Please Love Me Forever--Sunny James and The Toppers
Pony Time--Chubby Davis and The Toppers
Where the Boys Are--Connie Samuels and The Toppers

Lee