Hi-In secure times music is usually more progressive - after the "War To End
All Wars" followed by the stock market crash and the Dirty Thirties then
WWII the music industry flashed back to the Gay 90's - Songs like 'Don't Sit
Under The Apple Tree' is very similar in feel to Daisy Daisy - 'On a Bicycle
Built for Two'. You can hear the Euro influence with some of the vocals such
as 'Cruising Down The River' with its' over-simplified harmonies, and the
honkey-tonk piano records from the fifties with very little inventiveness
and interest. Give me Frank Banta over these any day-Mickey Clark
-----Original Message-----
From: Clark Johnsen
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 7:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] A bit more evidence Re: [ARSCLIST] anyone know about
Decca L.M. 78rpm records with handwritten titles?
And let us not forget the great “Mairzy Doats”. lol
On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 9:01 PM, David Lewis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Brewster,
>
> you wrote:
>
> P.S. i can not even imagine a time when "Skip to my lou" would have
> been a best seller as "Personality Series" not a children's record :)
>
> You'd be surprised. In the immediate postwar period there was a lot of
> simple, innocuous material that went into, and did well, in the mainstream
> pop market. With the war over, and all of the unspeakable tragedy linked
> to
> it still much in the minds of Americans, the simple and familiar became
> popular in a widespread way, and record companies did what they could to
> furnish the demand. In 1950-51, Gordon Jenkins teamed up with the folk
> group The Weavers and recorded Leadbelly's tune "Goodnight Irene," the
> Israeli folksong "Tzena. Tzena, Tzena" and "On Top of Old Smokey," any one
> of which could pass muster as a "children's song" today. But these records
> were huge, and sold in the millions as fully adult pop hits; you still
> find
> copies of them everywhere. On the other hand, in 1950 the song "Rag
> Mop" --
> with its bouncy beat and nonsense lyrics -- was somewhat controversial and
> even complained about in some circles as unmusical and childish. It
> contained a tiny germ of what would become rock 'n roll in five years, and
> that would really blow the audience for records like "Skip To My Lou" out
> of the water.
>
> I couldn't find a chart placement for "Skip To My Lou;" but Decca was
> still
> marketing it as an evergreen disc -- or a "steady sell[ing] standard" --
> to
> record buyers in the March 11, 1950 issue of Billboard, page 23 -- a full
> page ad. So it must've done pretty well, and was still doing so for some
> time after it was released.
>
> Uncle Dave Lewis
> Sperryville, VA
>
|