Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 2:10:42 PM

1

With Pi Guy not showing up, we lost the tradition of posting this.

Since OR did so in the daytime thread, I'll repeat it here

This Week In Pictures

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 5:11:52 PM

2

So I found the 45 with a parody of election coverage, supposedly from 1956. I have not found anything about it on the internet.

It has reporters like Walter Sickness (Krankheit means illness in German), and Edward R. Tomorrow, and an election prediction by a Looneyvac computer which  gives college football predictions instead. It is meaty with puns (when I post it you will understand)

Lines like  "My opponents have been robbing you long enough. I say give me a chance!"

I'll get it digitized tonight, but won't be able to upload it until tomorrow.

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 5:12:34 PM

3

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 2:

"I won't appear on television with my little dog by my side, because I ain't after the Rin-Tin-Tin vote"

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 5:27:03 PM

4

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 6:30:02 PM

5

Who wants to take over the pub thread? We could go to one daily thread.

lucius septimius 6/19/2021 7:20:08 PM

6

@PBJ3 6/19/2021 7:33:22 PM

7

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 1:

I always loved "This Week in Pictures".  Thanks.

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 7:36:17 PM

8

In #4 Kosh's Shadow said: And they don't make songs like this any more

Nice one.  And one I've never heard.  

When I first came to NYC and met my first friend/neighbor---a 78 collector, like myself---he was praising Crosby up one side and down the other.  I was not then really familiar with Crosby's early oeuvre, and sort of dismissed him, at which point he pulled out a couple of Crosby's early sides. These two were instant favorites of mine:

One More Time

This song is featured in a pre-Code film called "Five Star Final" (though not done by Crosby in the film), about a scandal-sheet tabloid which rakes up an old murder on the eve of the wedding of the acquitted murderess's daughter.   The woman cannot take the new notoriety, and kills herself; when her husband, who had married her despite the scandal, discovers what his wife has done, he kills himself too---as the radio plays an instrumental version of "One More Time" as an ironic comment on the film action.   This was a common thing in older films: for example, in the scene in "International House" where WC Fields and Peggy Hopkins Joyce, each unaware of the other's presence, are undressing for bed, the radio plays an instrumental of "Look What I've Got."  In "Casablanca," the Spanish singer in Rick's (intended to symbolically represent the Spanish Loyalists) sings a song in Spanish which has a line about "la locura de la amor," i.e., the madness of love.  Maybe OR, whose Spanish is surely better than mine, can translate the lyrics of the entire song some time.  The song "Avalon" is also played as incidental music in the cafe just before Rick and Ilsa re-engage.

Reaching For Someone and Not Finding Anyone There.

For that matter, Crosby's version of You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby is pretty swell, too.  And it seems to connect nicely with "Little Lady Make-Believe."

@PBJ3 6/19/2021 7:37:16 PM

9

Reply to lucius septimius in 6:

I just finished doing yard work.  Our yard is a disaster so I've been working at least an hour each evening to try and clean it up.  I hate elm trees but they do give us a lot of shade.

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 7:38:19 PM

10

In #6 lucius septimius said: Just got finished watching Topkapi for the millionth time.  I love that movie.

Is that the Istanbul caper movie?  Saw it ages ago, but don't remember much about it; I should probably see it again.  

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:07:25 PM

11

Just in case everyone hasn't had quite enough "Juneteenth" yet, here is Louis Jordan's "The Juneteenth Jamboree."

And, just so we're properly "intersectional," here's the version by Gladys Bentley, famed black lesbian chanteuse, with slightly different lyrics.

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 8:23:37 PM

12

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

Still going through the 78s and 45s in the basement.

Lots of "DJ Use only - not for sale" including a 78 of street noises.

My father was a carpenter at BU, and got a lot of stuff WBUR threw out. The fake campaign coverage, including Walter Sickness, is so labeleld.

So, if it is marked not for sale, what if someone wanted to buy it today? I have no idea when it was recorded; can find NOTHING on the internet.

Will put it on youtube Sunday, I think. ("Why does the delegate from Alabama rise? Some Yankee put a lighted cigar stub on my chair")

@PBJ3 6/19/2021 8:25:03 PM

13

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 11:

Thanks for posting those!

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 8:27:59 PM

14

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:32:02 PM

15

In #12 Kosh's Shadow said: So, if it is marked not for sale, what if someone wanted to buy it today? I have no idea when it was recorded; can find NOTHING on the internet.

As I think I said to you in a post last week, or thereabouts, these are all "old-law materials."  

Consequently, it depends on when the thing was recorded; if/when the underlying work was copyrighted at all, and if/when, if it was copyrighted, the copyright was renewed.   

The sound recordings for all of these are almost certainly public domain, as sound recordings were not covered by federal copyright until relatively recently.  The material that was recorded is a different matter, and that can get a little complex.

If you send me a list of the recordings/artists/dates as far as you know them, names of authors (if listed on the labels), and any reference on the label to either ASCAP or BMI, I may be able to clarify some of this.  

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 8:33:26 PM

16

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 8:35:59 PM

17

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 15:

For this one, I have no idea when it was recorded. It is spoken word comedy. My guess is that it was before 1960, as it is a parody of 1956 campaign coverage. I can find NOTHING on the internet on it.

As for a full list, I am working on software to put it all together based on the dates I could find. (Slowly, though)

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:36:01 PM

18

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 14:

There was a famous bungalow court in '20s/'30s Hollywood, built by the dancer Alla Nazimova, which was called "The Garden of Allah," punning on her name. 

Many writers and actors stayed there; I believe SJ Perelman and his wife, when they were working as scenario writers, were tenants there for a time.

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:37:44 PM

19

In #17 Kosh's Shadow said: For this one, I have no idea when it was recorded. It is spoken word comedy. My guess is that it was before 1960, as it is a parody of 1956 campaign coverage. I can find NOTHING on the internet on it.

The obvious recording date from the '50s is enough to leave the sound recording in the public domain; the question is whether there is author or ASCAP/BMI info on the label.

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 8:41:45 PM

20

The more I listen to these old recordings, dating to the 30's and '40's, the more I understand why Buzz thinks that was the greatest era in music..

Very beautiful.

I still say that Bach and Beethoven are better, as well as some other of at era, but I would consider these in the same order of magnitude of great music. (OK, I realize I have to Handel my opinions with care; Mozart of may eras is quite good; I can't be Haydn my opinion)

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:46:49 PM

21

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 20:

Jig Time

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 8:48:28 PM

22

Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 20:

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 21:

Actually, this was the version I was looking for.

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 9:03:03 PM

23

In #20 Kosh's Shadow said: The more I listen to these old recordings, dating to the 30's and '40's, the more I understand why Buzz thinks that was the greatest era in music.. Very beautiful.

The song lyrics are great; the musicianship is superb---and remember that these bands were often, or at least began as, bunches of kids in high school or thereafter.  Cab Calloway was fronting his superb band in his mid-20s; Louis Armstrong, Bix Biederbecke, and lots of other also began very young.

Two other things to remember; the popular songs of this era were played and recorded by everyone; there were "hot jazz bands," and there were "sweet bands," but the difference was the arrangements of the songs, not totally separate songs for people who liked this, that, or the other.  Lots of jazz arrangements were also done to hymns or spirituals;  there was a continuum of music which, despite differences in style appreciation, unified the entire society.

To that I will add that the music of the first half of the 20th century was one of the great things that worked against Jim Crow; the white musicians were mad for the "black sound" of the early jazz bands.  Scott Joplin, the king of ragtime, was black; Irving Berlin, Jewish immigrant, created a hit song called "The International Rag," which helped popularize ragtime to a broader audience.  Benny Goodman had Lionel Hampton playing with him in his famous Carnegie Hall concert; Barney Josephson, who opened "Cafe Society" in Times Square, brought Harlem acts downtown (he also arranged Alberta Hunter's comeback in the late-'70s in his then-nightspot in Greenwich Village).

The orchestra backing Marlene Dietrich in the "Hot Voodoo" number in "Blonde Venus" was probably Nat Finston's Paramount Orchestra (the hottest studio orchestra of the early '30s), but the film showed merely a black bandleader waving a baton.  People yap about the "stereotypes" and "discrimination" in the movies, but the films, and the bands, of the first half of the 20th century were, in the context of the time, in the forefront of breaking down the color barriers.

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 9:03:05 PM

24

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 15:

No ASCAP or BMI

But I have a lot of records that were supplied to radio stations on the condition they were not for sale. 

My question is, does that contract still hold today, when the records are no longer current, and they were given to me as surplus?

I understand this isn't copyright law, but contract law.  Does the contract to the radio station still apply, many years later, to someone who obtained them legally?

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 9:26:45 PM

25

In #24 Kosh's Shadow said: No ASCAP or BMI But I have a lot of records that were supplied to radio stations on the condition they were not for sale.  My question is, does that contract still hold today, when the records are no longer current, and they were given to me as surplus? I understand this isn't copyright law, but contract law.  Does the contract to the radio station still apply, many years later, to someone who obtained them legally?

It's a little bit of contract, a little bit of copyright.  The contract to the radio station doesn't apply to you any more than if you'd found the material in a dump.  The issue is, what is copyrightable?  NOT the sound recordings---and therefore you can sell them/transfer them to whomever or however you will.  It's like buying a book; you can read it and throw it away, or give it to your friend, or sell it to the used-book store or at a stoop sale.  That's the object.  But you can't set up a publishing company to start reproducing and distributing the content of the book.  

In this case, what happens to the object---the old records---is immaterial.  You've got 'em, you can listen to 'em, you can sell 'em.  The question is, is the content embodied on the records---NOT the sound-recordings themselves but the material being uttered IN the sound recordings---protected by law in a way that you need permission to reproduce/distribute/license them yourselves?  Have to look at the info.

Kosh's Shadow 6/19/2021 9:45:44 PM

26

Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 25:

Thanks. So the audio and objects are separate, and should I want to sell the objects marked as not for sale, I can now.

And good night

buzzsawmonkey 6/19/2021 9:50:23 PM

27

In #26 Kosh's Shadow said: So the audio and objects are separate, and should I want to sell the objects marked as not for sale, I can now.

Yes.  Absolutely.