Nu-Grape is one of my favorite pieces, too -- I never tire of listening to it. I just can't figure out the thought processes of the people in charge of recording it. I have the same problem with "Mairzy Doats." I'm too old to have ever listened to the Polka Dot Bikini song, so I can't comment on that. If there was a novelty tune genre that the A&R men recognized, there must have been some failed examples. Like the Mute Inglorious Miltons buried in the country churchyard, I suppose I never would have run across them.
Hi all, Maybe I should add that I think the kindergarten teacher approach is appropriate--in a kindergarten. And I take it as a given that we get to like what we like and not like what we don't like. I just feel that if I say I like everything I'm patronizing the music and the people who made it. All best, Johnm
Quill Blues is incredible! I do agree that the third song from Big Boy Cleveland may have been odd indeed though. He has what must be one of the broadest and most fascinating two-track repertoires in this music.
I'm embarrassed to say it but there once was a time when I couldn't understand how Sam Collins or King Solomon Hill got recorded. Some music takes a little investment of time. I'm not a fan of that ice-cold nu-grape though.
Another good example is Noah Lewis' Jug Band's "New Minglewood Blues". Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachel, and "Hambone" Lewis(?) are all playing in B natural, Noah also sings in B, but his harp is a jarring B-flat! Perhaps he picked up the wrong one?
« Last Edit: February 13, 2017, 03:50:15 PM by frailer24 »
Hi all, Re Moses Mason, I think it is almost unbelievable that "Molly Man" is a commercial recording, i.e., somebody thought they could make a buck selling a recording by a tamale vendor doing his sales rap with incidental musical accompaniment! It is the kind of recording I would expect some heavy duty ethnomusicologist to make, not a company in the business of trying to sell records. I'm very thankful that the companies often had no clue what would sell. We ended up with some great music as a result. All best, Johnm
I do think that some of the A&R men of the pre-war era were not entirely immune to folkloristic tendencies, and that somebody like Art Laibly was capable of saying, "It isn't commercial, but it should be preserved somehow."
Henry Johnson And His Boys' Blue Hawaii/Hawaii Harmony Blues, Freeman Stowers' Sunrise On The Farm and Jazzbo Tommy Settlers' Big Bed Bug.
Tommy Settlers was the first name that came to my mind when I read the OP. It sounds like he was a one-man band and his appeal would have been mainly visual. "Unaccompanied vocal with kazoo and occasional traps" was never a selling point, either in 1929 or any other time.