January Records
Unlike Columbia, which has cached its master records of early jazz, Victor has thrown away all its popular discs made before 1925. Among the records Victor junked were 4,000 by one man: broad-faced Billy Murray, balladeer and comic.
In the crank-it-up days of the phonograph, Tenor Murray's brothy voice was one of the great sellers. With a nasal lilt he sang songs like If You Talk in Your Sleep Don't Mention My Name; It Takes the Irish to Beat the Dutch; Oh, You Beautiful Doll; I'd Rather Be a Lobster Than a Wise Guy. Lately Victor gave 63-year-old Billy Murray a chance at a comeback, on Bluebird records. Last week his voice, no longer a broth but a rich Irish stew, was to be heard in The Guy at the End of the Bar. Mock-boozily he caroled: Who says that his missus just gave him the air, And left with the kids and the car? Just give him a nod and he'll climb in your hair--The guy at the end of the bar.
Billy Murray was brought up in Denver, ran away at 16, sang in traveling medicine shows and San Francisco honky-tonks. He made his first records in San Francisco in 1896--wax cylinders for which he was paid $1 a batch by an Edison dealer. Soon Victor was calling him the "Denver Nightingale." In 1907 Lee De Forest, experimenting in a Manhattan office building, played Billy's record of College Life. The broadcast was accidentally picked up by the chief electrician at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It scared the daylights out of him.
> Several years ago metropolitan record sales shops grew a little tired of what the recording companies sent them, began issuing a few discs themselves. Last week a customer grew a little tired of what both the record companies and the salesrooms were offering him, put out his own recordings. The customer was a rich young Manhattan game-chicken and hot fan named Colin Campbell. Campbell's combination, released under a Commodore Music Shop label, includes Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, Guitarist Eddie Condon and, most notably, Fats Waller. Because of his Victor contract, Waller uses the nom de piano of Maurice, his nine-year-old son. His improvisations and ad lib choruses have much more sound invention than he ordinarily waxes for Victor. Of the four sides of jam and jazz classics, Georgia Grind provides most Waller, most listening fun.
Other records of the month:
POPULAR
Ethel Waters does four of her songs from Cabin in the Sky for Liberty Music Shops, unfortunately with the pit orchestra from the show. Honey in the Honeycomb sounds best.
I Hear A Rhapsody (Jimmy Dorsey; Decca). B. M. I.'s sweetest (see p. 57).
Ethel Merman does four of her Panama Hattie songs for Decca. Fielder's choice.
The Lonesome Road (Will Bradley; Columbia), for those who like a well-scored, well-recorded ride number with lots of drums (Ray McKinley's).
SYMPHONIC, ETC.
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Bruno Walter conducting; Victor; 20 sides; $10.50). A vast, brooding, world-weary work by a composer who, 30 years after his death, still starts critical dogfights. Mahler's friends say that he stormed heaven; his enemies, that he was a frustrated bootstrap-lifter. The friends will welcome this recording of a beautiful concert-hall performance.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 ("Pa-thetique") (All American Youth Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski; Columbia; 12 sides; $6.50). Conductor Stokowski makes Tchaikovsky's well-recorded heaves, sighs and tears sound like super de luxe movie music.
Strauss: Don Quixote (Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting, with Cellist Emanuel Feuermann; Victor; 10 sides; $5.50). In this tone-poem the Don is a cello, and the adventures are complete down to the last bleat (muted brass) of the sheep he fancies are an army. The Philadelphians and the soloist do a top-notch job.
Morton Gould: Foster Gallery (Boston "Pops" Orchestra, Arthur Fiedler conducting; Victor; 4 sides; $2.50). One of radio's bright boys, 27-year-old Composer Gould, gives Stephen Foster tunes a harmonic whirl, leaves Susanna and Jeanie with a light black eye. But good fun.
Beethoven: Quartet No. 14 in C Sharp Minor (Budapest String Quartet; Columbia; 10 sides; $5.50). Among Beethoven's last and loftiest musings, faultlessly recaptured by the Budapesters.
An Yves Tinayre Recital (Baritone Yves Tinayre, with the Dvonch string ensemble; Columbia; 8 sides; $4.50). Frenchman Tinayre, an eminent musicologist, makes troubadour songs and church airs a glowing tapestry.
Bizet: Symphony No. 1 In C Major (London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr; Victor; 7 sides; $4.50). A crisp, tuneful work by a then 17-year-old composer, with a hint of his later Carmen. It got its first U. S. performance only last October, here gets its first recording.
Bach: Piano Pieces (Pianist Grace Castagnetta; Victor; 8 sides) and The Life and Times of Johann Sebastian Bach (a book) by Hendrik Willem van Loon (Simon and Schuster). A new stunt in packaging: the two items, by a pair who have collaborated in other musico-literary ventures, sell for $5 boxed. Miss Castagnetta plays the music not too warmly. Mr. van Loon is probably the off-dashing-est of Bach's many biographers (best: Julius August Philipp Spitta, 19th Century German scholar; Dr. Albert Schweitzer, organist and missionary in Africa), illustrates the mighty J. S.'s life with his usual hen-tracky pen drawings.
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