This is my blog where I write about music, jewelry, and myself. Vaudeville, burlesque, blues, jazz, songs about baltimore, novelties, and whatever else I feel like posting. Mostly from my own LPs and 78s. Subscribe via any of the methods in the right-hand column. Please do not link directly to the mp3 files.

Erskine Hawkins and his Orchestra
Baltimore Bounce
1938





This is the kind of song I can never have too many of. It's nothin special but nice background music for when the mood strikes. 1938... just on the cusp of when this kind of music loses my interest. Erskine Hawkins doesn't get much action on Wikipedia and Sammy Low doesn't have an entry at all. Sorry dudes. I'll try to get more songs of theirs to keep the flame alive.
The brief alien cellphone interference at the beginning of the song is left in to convey the ambiance of my surroundings a bit.

Labels: baltimore, jazz era

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/23/2008  (0) comments

Esmereldy and Her Novelty Band
Slap Her Down Again Paw
1948




As much as I tend to avoid encouraging negative stereotypes against hillbillies, hicks, yokels, etc., this song is a bizarre piece of "comedy" that must be heard to believe. This song is about the singer's sister Bessie, a hussy who has been cavorting with a traveling salesman with "City slickin' ways." As for the rest, the title says it all.
Internet searching leads me to believe it's from 1948. If you really love the song and want to share it, there's a better quality version to be found here. Don't ask me why I made my own mp3... I guess it just felt like stealing otherwise.

Labels: comedy, country, ethnic

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/16/2008  (4) comments

I aim to please.
I guess the writer of this intriguing classic movie blog found my site while searching for a recording of Barbra Stanwyck singing "Take It Off The E String (Play It On The G String)", as seen and heard in the movie "Lady of Burlesque"(1943).
For those of you who aren't familiar, the movie is an adaptation of the novel "The G String Murders" by the one and only Gypsy Rose Lee, eloquent stripper turned mystery writer.
Stanwyck sings this saucy number and flaunts her goods in the burlesque tradition, in the beginning of the movie before the shit goes down. (By that I mean the aforementioned murders of course)
The song is credited to Sammy Cahn and Harry Akst.
I can only guess that it would be this Sammy Cahn and Harry Akst, each relatively successful and acclaimed showtune writers on their own.
If I'm correct that would make it the same men who brought us such songs as "Dinah" (Akst) and "Until The Real Thing Comes Along"(Cahn). Hell.. Cahn partnered with various people on a whole slew of familiar songs from "Love and Marriage" to "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow."
I copied this song from the "Ladies of Burlesque" compilation LP. I posted another song and mentioned this one 2 years ago. Which of course led to this request.
Anyway, I'm glad someone looked at my blog. I'm glad I could be of service delivering this legendary burlesque-related recording to someone who seeks it. Enjoy. Sorry my record player sucks. I'm working on that.

Take It Off The E String (Play It On The G String)
(Sammy Kahn, Harry Akst)
Barbara Stanwyck - from the 1943 film "Lady of Burlesque"

Barbara Stanwyck looking ridiculously hot

Labels: burlesque, cinema, comedy, glamorous

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/05/2008  (2) comments

Click through the vaudeville items I've posted and you're sure to notice the melting pot of ethnic caricatures. Some vaudevillians played up their actual heritage and some created a persona (or several) based on one of the many immigrant stereotypes flooding into the United States.
People from all walks of life attended vaudeville shows to laugh at themselves and each other.
The appropriate-ness of such humor is probably judged by most people in the context of social status, perceived or real.
In addition to immigration-inspired monologues like this, there was also the minstrel influence on vaudeville. Another one of my records, instead of "Norwegian dialect" declares that it's a "Darky Specialty."
I don't suppose I need to go into the way that piece of vaudeville history is looked upon today.
But without that history and baggage, "for many, vaudeville was the first exposure to the cultures of people living right down the street."
I don't know where Ethel Olson was born or what she looked like. I can determine that her specialty was gleeful laughter and Norwegian Dialect. (Scroll down that last link to a transcript and brief commentary about the monologue that's on the other side of the mp3 I'm posting.)


Ethel Olson
At The Movies
1923?

Labels: comedy, ethnic, vaudeville

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/01/2008  (1) comments