Topic: How did that get recorded?

[Lyle Lofgren]

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.

Lyle

[bnemerov]

hey Lyle,

what's thought got to do with the Music Bizness? 

bruce

[Johnm]

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

[Prof Scratchy]

Too much sensible stuff here. Spoils a good argument!

[bnemerov]

Prof. S---

Oh yeah? Sez you!

 

[Lyle Lofgren]

Harmonica Frank's "Swamp Root" should certainly go on the list.

Lyle

[tenderfoot84]

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.

David

[frailer24]

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?

[btasoundsradio]

Every song by Blind Gussie Nesbit is sung in the wrong key from what he plays except "I'll just stand and wring my hands and cry",

[Lastfirstface]

I haven't heard a ton of Gussie Nesbit but he seems to be singing in the right key on "Canaan Land," though "Motherless Children" is decidedly weird.

[Gilgamesh]

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."

[Gilgamesh]

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.

[Thomas8]

John Lee Hooker with some out of nowhere and out of context organ.  

[Prof Scratchy]

Well, thomas8, that organ certainly fulfils the promise of the song title....


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[Thomas8]