Lots and lots of old, old recordings

In case any of you missed, as I did, the NYT article on the University of California's Cylinder Digitization and Preservation Project, I'm giving you all a heads up, trying to spread the word. Apparently the U. of C. has managed to accumulate an audio library consisting of about 6000 wax cylinder recordings made between 1890 and about 1924 or so. And they just put all of it online. Pretty fascinating stuff!

You can, and should, go browse their collection. All the songs are available as free downloads as both compressed MP3 files and, if you prefer that sort of thing, as gargantuan WAV files.

Also, big gratitude to for giving me a heads-up on this one.

If You've Got Leavin' On Your Mind

Sometimes I just start making playlists for no discernable reason, until a hazy theme begins to emerge. With this one, most of the songs had to do with a dissatisfaction about one's relationship. I'm not actually in a relationship right now, so I don't know where that came from, but the songs are still good.


The Orchids - Mr. Scrooge

Christ! How could I not have posted the Orchids already! They're so good. And yes, that is really them. In 1963, three fifteen year old girls from Coventry won a talent contest in the local Orchid Ballroom, and one thing led to another and pretty soon they're cutting singles for Decca. They had a microscopic career, only recording a handful of singles in England, but pretty much every one of them is gold. They sound a little like the Crystals, and a lot like a twentysomething girl group of black chicks, instead of some mousy Brit girls barely old enough to date.


Richard Hell & the Voidoids - Betrayal Takes Two

I can't say that I'm a huge huge Richard Hell fan, but I do seem to wind up listening to him an awful lot. Mostly it's because he wrote a handful of songs that I really, really like, e.g. "Blank Generation," and, of course, this broken Bowery take on infidelity.


Buddy Ebsen - Your Cheating Heart

Halfway through uploading this song, I realized I was actually uploading Buddy Ebsen's cover version, not Hank Williams's. I thought it was funnier and more interesting that way, so I let it finish. You all probably own the Hank Williams version anyway, right?


Prince - New Position

My affection for Prince waxes and wanes, and it's currently at a lower ebb than usual, but this song's still pretty awesome.


Peetie Wheatstraw - No Good Woman (Fighting Blues)

"Peetie Wheatstraw" is, in old negro folklore, the evil half of a good/evil set of twins, the "High Sheriff of Hell" vs the "Lord God Stingerroy." You know that old meme of a southern black blues player at a crossroads selling his soul to Satan for musical skill and success? That's mostly due to this guy here (born William Bunch, although he took the name Wheatstraw at a young age), as he actually claimed that he had sold his soul to Satan for just such a bargain.

Deep in the night of his 39th birthday, he decided to drive to the liquor store to get some more booze. At a crossroads, he tried to beat an oncoming train across the tracks. He didn't make it.


Patsy Cline - Leavin' On Your Mind

My friend's boyfriend broke up with her the other day. By text message. Classy, right? I did break up with a girl once over the phone, I admit, but that was a long time ago, and it was kind of an accident.

Tell me about your terrible break-up!

Guess the Theme of This One, Folks

**DOWNLOAD** Bobby "Blue" Bland & B.B. King - Three O'Clock Blues

**DOWNLOAD** Frank Sinatra - I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night

**DOWNLOAD** The Go-Go's - You Can't Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can't Sleep)

**DOWNLOAD** The Kinks - Just Can't Go to Sleep

His Excellency, Sir Sidney Poitier

Today's heaped serving of whaaaaa? comes from this recent post of the very strange but occasionally awesome Bent Records Blog. It's an entire record of Sidney Poitier reading Plato over a cool hipster jazz band! Not kidding here! Who wouldn't want that? I don't have much info on it, other than that it was originally put out on Warner... in the late 1960s (?)

Also, once, Mordicai, Kromelizard, Dantelong, Tough Lad and yours truly wrote a whole novel together in which Sidney Poitier was a major character. So we're all kinds of fascinated by him now.

Sidney Poitier - Poitier Meets Plato

btw, the files are zipped in the WinRAR format (which all the kids seem to be using nowadays), so if you don't have it already, you should go download WinRAR.

Moondog!

Like Daredevil, Moondog (b. Louis Hardin, Kansas, 1916) lost his eyesight in an explosion when he was 16. Unlike Daredevil, he did not get super powers, martial arts skills and a string of psychopathic girlfriends. He did learn to read music in braille and become a self-taught composer, however. In 1944 he moved to New York, picked up some jazzy accents and attitudes, hung out with Charlie Parker, Benny Goodman and Toscanini, and also started performing his weird and wonderful music on the streets of Manhattan, in the getup pictured above. The costume worn by the 'Viking of Sixth Avenue' was an attempt to distance himself from Christianity. He moved to Germany in the 1970s and lived there until his death in 1999.

The list of Moondog's admirers is long and crosses borders of genre and era, and includes Lester Young, Igor Stravinsky, Artur Rodzinski, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Elvis Costello, who (as far as I know) is the only one of Moondog's admirers who has ever played alongside him.

The first track I've got uploaded here, "Lament 1," is a little like Sun Ra meets Frank Zappa. The other two a little more like Harry Partch recording a Sun Ra tribute album to be played by marching band. All three are terrific, wild, but startlingly accessible stuff; "Lament" in particular (which is one of the few Moondog tracks that feature musicians other than an overdubbed Moondog) I have not been able to stop listening to since I first downloaded it from...someone else's blog. I can't remember who now (sorry, I read a lot of blogs). But whatever, listen. This is some of the most seductively brilliant new music (new to me, I mean) I've come across in a long time.

[Zombie Mom reminded me that it was Some Velvet Blog that originally posted these tracks. Thanks ZM!]

Moondog - Lament 1 "Bird's Lament"

Moondog - Symphony 1 "Timberwolf"

Moondog - Rabbit Hop

Getting It On

Patience & Prudence - Tonight You Belong to Me

First up has to be one of the biggest Lolita singles of all time, Patience & Prudence's ethereal, innocently sexy "Tonight You Belong to Me." At the time of recording, they were age 9 and 12, respectively.

Patience and Prudence McIntyre were the daughters of Mark McIntyre, who had played piano for Frank Sinatra during his last few years at Columbia Records. McIntyre recorded his two daughters doing a version of the song while he was cutting it as a demo for some cabaret singer or other. McIntyre played their version for a musician friend of his, who played it for a musician friend of his, and one thing led to another and the song was actually released as a single on Liberty Records, hitting #4 on the charts in 1956. The two girls actually recorded a few good singles after that (and had a "reunion" on some Dick Clark show in the 1970s), but they mostly disappeared from the charts into one-hit-wonderland.

Wynonie Harris - Keep on Churnin'

Note to self: remember to remind everyone that Wynonie Harris was fucking AWESOME. If you've never had the pleasure of hearing his extraordinary hollering or sample his glorious tales of boozing and whoring, your life is fundamentally incomplete. Prurience aside, he made some of the catchiest and most raucous 1950s R&B you're ever going to hear. There will be a post exclusively devoted to Wynonie some time in the future.

And this song? Well, no need to reprint the lyrics when you can just listen, but they have to do with... churning butter... 'until the butter comes,' and how frothy one's paddle can get during such activities.

Butterbeans & Susie - Elevator Papa, Switchboard Mama

Butterbeans and Susie was the performing name on the black vaudeville circuit of husband and wife team Joe and Susie Edwards. They were mostly a comedy act (Butterbeans being the incompetent, inadequate husband, and Susie the capable but sexually frustrated wife), but they cut a bunch of blues sides like this one for Okeh from the late 20s to early 50s, most of them of a similarly comic/raunchy nature. Suffice to say, this song's all about elevators papas looking to help you 'go down' and switchboard mamas who need their dials twiddled.

The Dominoes - Sixty Minute Man

This is from a great compilation that everyone should own called Risque Rhythm: Nasty 50s R&B. All the songs are primo slices of good rockin' & rollin' 50s raunch.

The Dominoes actually started out as a gospel group in the 1940s, and for a little over a decade met with great success, while also enduring numerous lineup changes and a shift to secular R&B. At the point this song was cut...I'm not really sure who's singing the lead here. Clyde McPhatter (who went on to form the Drifters, pre Ben E. King) and Jackie Wilson (who's, you know, JACKIE WILSON) both sung with the Dominoes for a few years. But I don't think this is McPhatter singing, and it's definitely not Wilson. I don't have the liner notes handy, either. Anybody know?

[edit: I have been informed that this is Bill Brown singing]

Bo Carter - My Pencil Won't Write No More

And here we have the most incorrigible of pre-war blues double-entendreists, Bo Carter, author of such classic sides as "Don't Mash My Digger so Deep," "Pin in Your Cushion," "Banana in Your Fruit Basket," "Ram Rod Daddy," "Pussy Cat Blues," and this here melancholy meditation on the sad event of, you know, one's pencil being all out of lead. Not that I would know anything about that.