WE'RE BACK IN BUSINESS!!!!

I just this very night got the word that the hard drive that puked got restored, and all the archive files, as far as I can tell, are intact! So, this means that you now can peruse all the musical files you thought were gone forever. Don't feel bad, I thought they were gone, too.

A Great Big Shoutout goes to Duane & Diane for getting the drive restored intact... Duane is the connection between myself and the hosting site, and Diane is a veritable wizard when it comes to network and site admin. Massive Blessings to both of you for the assistance!

The bad news: I am back on the night shift for 6 weeks, so new material may be slow to happen, but there'll be some great stuff coming! I have boxen and boxen (inside joke) sitting in here....

And to all of you, THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE, as well as thanks for your kind offerings on the PayPal front.

Cheerios!!!

HOSTING SITE DOWN!

If you're wondering where everything went, the box that hosts all of the pic and sound files has taken a massive POOP and will be down for a while. I don't know when it will return, but it should some time soon.

Pray that it wasn't the hard drive....

Marino Marini - Pop della Italiano

I was debating whether or not to put this one here, or over on the MoodieToonz site, but since I already have a couple of 10-inch EPs here, I decided that this Italian EP was strange enough to merit being here instead of there.

Apparently, according to my very lousy Italian, Marino Marini has worked with people like Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, and Charlie Ventura, and his guitar playing is not bad, even on the attempts at covering American pop and early rock'n'roll tunes. It may come out a bit comedic, but pop there was a whole lot different than pop here at the time...

This is a cute EP, and note the label... yes, it says "Durium". the 78 collectors reading this will find that eyebrow-raising...

Full size scans are here:
front
back
a scan of the Durium label

So, here we present a slice of Italy from 1955, Marino Marini ed il suo Quartetto.

And, yes, the ALF record went away. I'll repost it later when I can get a better encode of it.

A Parent's Worst Nightmare!

It's a Small World After All.

You may now run screaming into the hills.

This is actually an early version, perhaps even the original (gonna do research to see if this is the case)... it is the actual souvenir record from the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. Disney teamed up with Pepsi-Cola and had their ride around a large mobile (told about on the jacket cover). The audio quality is typical Disney, but I think you can get the idea...

An interesting side note, the "It's A Small World" attraction is no longer in existence, at either the Los Angeles or the Florida Disney parks! Do I hear cheers of Huzzah! or do I sense a little pang of remorse.... there's a great site about what's there and not there anymore at DisneyWorld, you'll have to Google it, because I lost the URL. Silly me.

Click on the link for full size scans of the front and the back... if you want 'em.

A repost of some (mostly) european 45s

OK, I absolutely blew away a posting, so now I'm gonna try and re-create it.......



Starting with Jesse Crawford on a Parade 45... yes, one of THOSE. The red-brown 45 EPs with the horrendous audio quality. The first cut had a groove dig so bad it was.... sadness, but I think I reconstructed enough of it to make some sense...

Jesse Crawford made a LOT of recordings, from the 78 era up into the early 1960s. And, yes, most all of them sound like this. Some of his theater organ recordings are worth finding though!

Some Enchanted Evening
Bali Hai
Just One Way to Say I Love You
Let's Take An Old-Fashioned Walk



We go now to Europe, and a 1961 German Philips EP of some hymns and chorales, performed by Uwe Rohl... As you can see, I put up the back of the sleeve that has the German lyrics, in case you are motivated to sing along :) If you want the full size scan, click here.

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden
Jesu meine Freunde
So Nimm denn meine Hande
Jesus meine Zuversicht

Some nice work in the church, of where I know not.... but one thing about churches in Europe, most all have organs, they all have their own personalities, and they're all brilliant, in their own way.



We move from the sacred to the secular, to be exact, some volkslied, sung by a rather good Austrian boys choir, the Wiener Sangerknaben, recorded in 1959 on German Philips. I'll let you go to the full size sleeve back for all the soloist info and lyrics here.

Wohin?
Das Echo
La Gironetta
Heidenroslein
Bruderlein fein



Moving now to 1960 and another kind of modern volkslied, we present a German Polydor EP of 4 popular tunes about life in Berlin. These pop tunes were known as schlagers, or, more precisely on this EP, Schlagerbrucke nach Berlin.

Das Cornel-Trio - Wer mal am Kurfurstendamm
Bully Buhlan - Ich hab' noch einen Koffer
Friedel Hensch und die Cyprys - Ich kauf mir ein Grundstuck
Bully Buhlan - Lieber Leierkastenmann

Again, more orchestral credits can be found on the full size scan of the back of the sleeve.

Enjoy these, because the next posting will be one of those things that you won't be able to get out of your mind for a lo-o-o-o-ong time.

:)

A Quick Commercial Message...

I know, keeping up (kind of) three shares blogs is a lot of work, and I think I get a couple of you that check out one or two of the other blogs, but please take a moment and check out my other two sharesites, you may find something you like!!

The moodietoonz site has more tiki-jazz-lounge-mood type stuff from the post-shellac era, and The Shellac Shanty site has lots of pre-vynil-era 78rpm goodness, mostly jazz and swing, but sometimes some classical and other fun stuff.

As usual, comments are always welcome, and if you link to any one of the blogs, your link will show up in all three of the audioshare blogs.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programme....

The Red Hot Needles, and "Blow Your Top"

I had meant to encode this and post it some time ago, but finally got around to it this afternoon... we have here some young ladies doing a comedic radio play called "Blow Your Top", a parody of radio quiz shows. It gets cute and funny in this ten minute program, originally broadcast on Denver radio station KFEL on May 28th, 1951. This is from a 78rpm 12" acetate disc that I found in a thrift store, and, as I do with all acetate discs, bought it.

There is a cast list, and it is given at the end of the recording by the announcer.

It celaned up really well, so here it is, without any further ado... here is the Safeway Show Broadcast containing the first and only episode of "Blow Your Top".

Now, where did I put my aeroplane...

Some Minnesota Dinner Show Humour, he says...

This is gonna be a quickie, but I found this interesting LP at the thrift store, in really really cruddy shape, only in a record inner sleeve, no jacket, no nothing. So, I says, I think I'll take a flyer on this one... and boy am I glad I did.

The Betty Rydell Trio was a lounge act that played through the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota area in the late 60s, and that's about all I know about them. A friend of mine from Minnesota says they were hilarious and that he has seen them several times back there, and I can, after listening to this while getting all the pops and clicks out, concur!

This was released on the "United Audio Recording" label, with a very familiar looking UA logo, but it is from a local Minneapolis record pressing house. The track numbers are a little different than the label, because I have split out some of the comedy bits from the music. Oh yea, for a trio, they play pretty darn good stuff. Here's the LP then, without further ado:

Betty Rydell Trio - Setting the Pace at Paul's Place

Zorba The Greek
Jerky Jerry
It Must Be Him
The Chicken Song
Ob La Di
Midol
Folsom Prison Blues
Midnight Cowboy
Twelfth Street Rag
Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In
The Impossible Dream
He Taught Me How To Yodel

Enjoy this little comedy audio-oddity, there'll be more coming soon!

It's just...... Dinner Music!

I was debating just WHERE to post this album... first of all, CURSES BE TO MY DIGITAL CAMERAS!! I can't seem to get EITHER of them to get a pic so I can post the very bland and generic cover of this LP for you to gander in amazement at, or to get a shot of the label, which tells you even less.

So, I'll tell you what this collection is: Dinner Music. That's ALL the cover says. No artist info, nuttin'. Oh, yes, it is on a 10-inch Pontiac label 33 1/3 rpm disc. There's the clue! THese were sold for 79 cents each, made of some kind of polystyrene/shellac combination, and usually very very BAD. Or at least very very BORING.

As Peter Schickele once said: "These pieces were performed by an orchestra, under the direction of a conductor with a baton."

I didn't know whether to mar the mood of MoodieToonz with these exercises in blandness, or to stick them in the Oddities blog (this one)... I figured they were a little off-kilter, enough to put them here instead of there, and DEFINATELY not in the Shellac Shanty.

So, have some dinner music....

A Dream Of Love
Dreams
On Wings Of Song
None But The Lonely Heart
Calm Is The Night
Serenade
I Love Thee
I Love You Truly

Well, after listening to these terpsichorian trepidations, one wonders if this is music for dinner, or music to make you run from the dinner table into the Room of Relief. In some of these cuts it sounds like the orchestra is actually trying to get to the vomitorium.... but hey, whadd'ya want for 79 cents in 1952, rubber bisquick?

OK, here's a lousy pic of the cover....



and here's an even lousier shot of the label... I'll fix these as soon as I can get the damn camera to do what I want it to do...



I hate technology...

While we're at it, here's another wonderful Pontiac 79 cent record, Songs of Ireland. Yep, that's all it says, "Songs of Ireland". See for yourself...



Now, as you will all note, the tracks on the cover do NOT match what is on the label! Here's the label to prove it:



Here are the tracks as noted on the labels:

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen / Irish Washer Woman
Believe Me / Wearin' Of The Green
Come Back To Erin / Fisher's Horn Pipe
My Wild Irish Rose / An Irishman's Heart to the Ladies
Killarney / The Teetotaller's Reel
The HArp That Once Through Tara's Halls / Stack of Barley
The Last Rose of Summer - St. Patrick's Day in the Morning

The recordings themselves are, again, pretty pedestrian, but there are a couple of flashes of brilliance... we're not talking high-fidelity here, considering this is 1951 for this disc, and again a 79-center, but hey, not bad once you get the shellac noise out of these, and the discs were in pretty good shape, too.

I need to go to bed.

I still hate technology...