Spider metaphor, it’s the one about deceiving. This is a great sounding record—like it’s from another time, which I guess it is—even though 1953 seems like yesterday. I know… I always say that, but it’s true—the world changes a lot faster than I age. But I’ll catch up, I’m sure. “Ramona” is about Ramona—it starts out sad, she’s gone—but then the tempo picks up, and there’s some crazy backup singing and organ. I’ve never heard of The Gaylords, yet I’ve got like four of their 45s—though who knows when I’ll get to the others—when their magic number comes up. Okay, they were a vocal trio—at least of couple of them from Detroit—Italian guys, from Detroit—and some of their songs with a little Italian. So says the Wikipedia… we’ll see. It also says they were originally called The Gay Lords—but that might be a good story. Anyway, they released a bunch of records in the Fifties, and some were hits. My only experience with “Gaylords” was when I was working a third shift warehouse job, my supervisor instructed me to put my finished work in a “Gaylord.” No internet back then, so I was confused. I swore I looked this up before, to no avail, but I just did again, and there’s a whole page explaining their history—they are a type of shipping box—named after the Gaylord Container Corporation, from St. Louis! Mystery solved—but this vocal group are still a bit of a mystery. I’ll look for the documentary.
Posts Tagged ‘1953
Quite by chance, this record came up on my random pick system, and today happens to be the day after National Coffee Day, and the before International Coffee Day—so I’m hereby naming THIS day: 40 Cups of Coffee Day. Song is written by Danny Overbea, a Chicago rhythm and blues musician who also wrote “Train, Train, Train.” Ella Mae Morse had hit singles going back to 1942—and this one is from 1953—so I guess she was needing all that coffee to keep up. Not that she was old—let’s see, in her late twenties when she recorded this? From the sound of her voice, you might think older, actually—she has a very full, confident, weathered sound. I might have guessed it was later, too, as it’s essentially rock’n’roll—a bluesy pop song. The other side, “Oh! You Crazy Moon” is a standard from 1939 (I think?) by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke (though, the version I know is Sinatra’s, from his moon record in 1966). But I bet people were paying more attention to the “40 Cups of Coffee” song—because that’s a lot of coffee. And we all get the sentiment. Some people called her the first rock’n’roll singer—I suppose due to her hits in the Forties, which I haven’t heard—and I read that she was performing R&B, and crossing over to Black audiences. The record credits “with Dave Cavanaugh’s Music” as the accompaniment—he was with Capitol Records—did everything but make the coffee. Well, I shouldn’t assume that. Somebody made the coffee. This 45 is on a purple Capitol label—and someone played this one A LOT. It gets through the A-side without skipping, at least, and there is an ocean of beautiful scratchiness, almost as if it’s playing along—a fifth (or 45th) member the band—and the more coffee you drink, the more perfectly that works—and the more beautiful it sounds.
This is a novelty record from 1953. First side, “Red Canary,” there’s a vocal singing “red canary” and then a violin impersonating a canary—I guess. It’s quite convincing. The other side, “April in Portugal,” a more straightforward version of that song, but then there’s some plucking—the violin sounding like a zither. At least that’s how I interpret it. I refer to it as a novelty record because there’s a comic element, and it’s not dance music. My dream is to find an old record that I can find nothing about on the internet. How exciting would that be? It’s not the case this time. I’m not going to paraphrase the Florian ZaBach bio—anyone is welcome to look him up, easy to find as fried eggs. I’m not going to take the ZaBach deep-dive, at this point in time. Maybe I should—maybe he made his violin sound like all kinds of things: a wood masted sailboat, people having sex in the next room, ibis migration, the trolly. He has a bunch of records and was on TV a lot—mostly in the Fifties. I don’t remember him—I guess I’m too young—but I don’t remember most of the performers I saw on TV, anyway—at least until I started seeing rock music acts, who were in retrospect, some of them, pretty bizarre. I kind of wonder if there was a time when it made sense to be somewhat more strange than the next guy, or to have a gimmick, or otherwise distinguish yourself that way. The thing I particularly like is that I ended up with this nearly 70-year-old record—it’s a 45 with the black DECCA label—says “unbreakable”—though we know that’s not exactly true. But it is somewhat indestructible—it looks like it’s been used as a frisbee, or been patching holes, or poundin’ nails—it’s weathered. But I put it on the record player and Florian ZaBach came alive, like a sci-fi hologram. The red canary perched and sang, and I was in Portugal at bit. Though it’s May.
A 1953 live Dave Brubeck Quartet record, recorded at Finney Chapel in Oberlin, Ohio. It’s on the Fantasy label, and is on red vinyl. The quartet includes Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Lloyd Davis, and Ron Crotty. This is a fine record, and I can listen to it any time, day or night. I guess it’s considered “cool jazz,” but also, in places, Brubeck on piano, to put it in technical terms, plays some “crazy shit.” It’s a live record, but nicely recorded—my crude ear couldn’t tell it from a studio recording, and the polite applause doesn’t get in the way and, more important, no one is bantering between songs, or saying stuff like, “How many of you like to take a taste of alcohol?” This is an early Dave Brubeck record, I guess, and he kept putting out records for about six decades. Also, signifiant, according to the liner notes, is this concert was a catalyst for jazz being a big deal at Oberlin, which known for its music education. I grew up a bike ride away from that college, and sadly, never considered it for studies; my grades probably weren’t good enough, and it’s one of the more expensive schools around there—it’s akin to Ivy League in a lot of ways. This performance was held at the renowned Finney Chapel, where I did see a concert once (Michael Stanley Band)—though probably the only connecting threads with that show and this Brubeck one was that I attended with a bota bag filled with grain alcohol fruit punch. Years later, a band I was in, The Chanel Masters, played live on a radio show in Oberlin, which is a musical, and lifetime, high point for me. Finally, I may as well take this opportunity to announce that I intend to move to Oberlin in the not so distant future.
I don’t know who Dick Lee is, and I’m in no mood to check the Old Internet in order to find out—so I’m going to let the two song 45 RPM single do the talking. I think it’s from 1953, it’s on Essex Records from Philadelphia, and both of these songs are with an orchestra, with Dick Lee belting out syllables in a hyper-dramatic, old-fashioned style—as if it pre-dated microphones and needed to project from the stage. It’s the kind of singing that you might find some older people love with fondness and nostalgia—for me, it make my ears bleed. The somewhat sick thing about this record—and I don’t know if this is accidental, or if someone had a pretty good sense of humor—is how the A and B side songs work together. “All I Want Is A Chance” is a desperate plea to a possible lover—you can imagine it. He just wants a chance to hold him/her in the morning and then, naturally, at night—to make this person love him as much as he loves this person. The B side, then, is decidedly less optimistic. “The Show Has Ended” is, surprise, not about a show, but a relationship. “The show has ended, I know that we’re through—you just pretend that your love is true”—it’s pretty harsh, really—“the curtain is falling, and so are my tears.” The show has ended, and all he has left is the memory. So it goes from “faint hope” to “distant memory” in two songs—no aspect of the actual relationship is documented here. I’m kind of surprised, though—after listening to the record a couple of times—I kind of like it. I guess it’s not so weird after all that it was pressed on vinyl and preserved for eager listening 66 years later by some asshole with nothing better to do than write about what listening to scratchy old records makes him think about.
An old 45 that must have been bouncing around in that Easter basket—I’m not sure if I have any Tony Bennett albums—there are so many!—I’ve never gotten a handle on which are the best—but I did see him live, once, years ago, in an old theater in Portland—and it was a great show. It feels like a big deal to have seen him live (never saw Sinatra live, or the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Mott the Hoople, or Elton John). This is a record that’s so scratchy, I’d highly recommend it for a scratchy record effect in a movie (you can fake those things, but faked things are never as good). “No One Will Ever Know” was, I guess, a country hit, recorded by everyone and his/her cousin, but here, with an orchestra and strings, it sounds like a Tony Bennett song. With that title, if it had been, say… a Dean Martin song, you might think the “no one” in question was her husband—but this isn’t that kind of song—and the sentiment is that he’s got a broken heart and and no one will know that he was in love with his true love (at least, of course, until this song comes out, and then it’ll be quite obvious—at least to those who know who the “you” in the song is).
The song on the other side, “I’m The King OF Broken Hearts,” is another proclamation of a broken heart, this time beating to death the whole royalty metaphor—even to the extent of beginning and ending the song with a corny horn fanfare, which is just annoying. A similar title could have a very different sentiment if it was by, say, a cad, a ladies’ man—running around, breaking hearts. But this song is about a guy whose heart has been broken, so technically it should be singular. I guess he’s so sad he doesn’t stop to think about that, or how dumb the royal theme is (“my castle’s a room where each night I’m alone.”) I guess once you establish that as the song’s game, there’s nowhere much else you can go with it, and you end up getting lines like: “the scarf that you left is now my royal cloak.” It’s pretty bad, but still, I like hearing Tony’s voice. I’d probably enjoy hearing him sing “Hotel California.” That was a joke, but he has sang so many songs, it could exist! I’m not going to look it up, though, because I don’t feel like revising these last few sentences.
DJ Farraginous 
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