unicornmeat

I pulled this 10″ 33 1/3 compilation out of a box of records I haven’t looked at in a long time. It reminds me of record shopping, and when I used to get really thrilled in record stores and seek them out in my travels. I believe I got this at Rock & Roll Collectibles in New Orleans but that’s just a hunch. The best thing about discovering old music was knowing nothing about it… I had no idea quite what I actually liked, so any venture to buy music would result in some random purchases. Those times may be behind me, but this is the kind of record I get excited to find even still. I’m sure it’s not rare. It’s not really that great. But it’s got this.. essence. It’s a 10″, so it resembles a 78. It must have been promotional – it has a press clipping pasted onto the sleeve. That’s probably the clincher for me.
And here I am turning it into a cluster of heartless mp3s. As if it still has some value without the motion of setting a needle on it. I left it nice and scratchy so we can pretend.
Download:
Curtain Call Series Volume 4
Marlene Deitrich – Ben Bernie – Libby Holman – George Jessel

I get the feeling I recognize this guys voice. Might be one of the artists of of Listen To The Banned. But the party record page says it’s Ben Light And His Surf Club. Just now I discovered the party record page is up and running! whoo! I need to contact Java and see if I can do some kind of story in Bachelor Pad Magazine, if that’s still goin, with the economy and all.
This song’s about swimming in Atlantic City. Watch this song play games with your dirty mind.
Man I can’t wait until it’s nice out and I can go to the beach!

Ben Light And His Surf Club
The girl From Atlantic City

Coming soon: lots of Elmo Tanner whistling goodness, if anyone still reads this thing.

Nat M Wills
“No News” or “What Killed the Dog”
Victor 17222-A 1908

Why do I do things backwards? Grr. Usually I go through my records, pick out one, record the track and then research the artist/recording. But sometimes I find out the song is readily available in mp3 format and I feel silly.
I should research it before BUYING it, let alone recording it.
Of course the mp3 I put up here is the one I made, but you can also find this track at the wonderful archive.org’s collection of Nat M Wills’ recordings.
What’s more, there’s a schnazzy CD collection released by the nearly-as-wonderful Archeophone Records, doubtless complete with an educational booklet.
I also discovered this blog, “Vitaphone Varieties”, which I am enjoying and hoping will continue to be updated.
Well, these are the breaks when you’re on your own in the cold lonely world of 78s and vaudeville.
I think mine is the last generation that will remember when information was hard to find. Writing to indie labels for their catalogs, reading bands ‘thank you’ lists, taking note of Kurt Cobain’s T-Shirts, wandering the library stacks, and even calling up strangers with questions… thanks to good ole internet I can put those desperate acts behind me. It’s trite but yeah, I mean I’m posting an mp3 and including a link to another (likely better) mp3 of the same track.. I excel at redundancy .

AAAAHHH. MY CALIFONE! IT’S BROKEN!
What the hell man. Tonight it just wouldn’t spin. The sound works, the light works, but it never makes the shift from “standby” to “play.” I opened it up and all wires are secure and fuse is fine, etc. So I guess the motor died or something. How infuriating. And sad. So.. no ‘party record’ tonight.
Instead, something that’s actually funnier, yet also more substantial. I have no idea how I got this record. Well I know how I got it. I bought it online because it contained two of my favorite themes – burlesque and drag queens. But I have no idea how I got it for ten dollars. On the back of this record sleeve it lists 9 other Ray “Rae” Bourbon releases, which I just looked up on ebay and are for sale at around $50 each.
Why are these such collectors items? Well, Rae Bourbon is a pretty special character. The best information can be found in this tribute site.
Rae Bourbon was a female impersonator and gay icon, performing from the 1930s up until his imprisonment in the late 1960s. He’d been convicted of “Accomplice to Murder with Malice,” against a man who had disposed of dogs that Rae had put in his care. He died in prison in 1971.
He appeared in a few silent films in the 1920s after entering his photo (as a female) in a Photoplay contest. In the early 1930′s he performed in the “pansy shows”, gay and mainstream nightclubs, and vaudeville.
Another bit of his story from this site offers some enlightenment regarding party records:
From 1935 through the early forties, Ray would record with Bob and Chet, Howard, and other musicians in a series of sides released under various small labels such as “Bourbana”, “Liberty Music Shop” and “Imperial” (not related to the R&B label of the fifties). Like other “blue” party records of the period, they were sold at Ray’s shows, through mail order, and “under the counter” by discrete record dealers. A surprising number of Ray’s records were pirated under anonymous labels and many were pressed in small quantities for use in jukeboxes in adult establishments such as bars and nightclubs.

Rae seems to be an expert about vaudeville, burlesque, and Mae West. Now there’s a broad after my own heart.
Seriously, I urge you to read this life story.

Rae Bourbon
Strip Queen
Ladies of Burlsque
UTC 1950s

Hey. For extra fun here’s a wav of me singing into an answering machine a few years ago.
If you have any 78 player recommendations, let me know. I’m mostly likely to just get another Califone exactly like the one I have.

Well.. what can I even eloquently say about this? This recording is from a Victor Vaudeville Comedy 12″. The flip side sketch is “Darktown Campmeetin’ Experiences.” “Darky Specialty.”
I’m sure most readers of my blog are familiar with this unsettling phase in pop-culture.
I like to believe that my 1917 equivalent wouldn’t be interested in such a record as this. But as we all know- on some level, this type of entertainment wasn’t the sole domain of “racists.” Acts similar to this recording took place between the jugglers and opera singers in vaudeville. The inappropriateness of this type of entertainment was hardly acknowledged until decades later. (Although the Irish were able to successfully raise a big stink about the mockery they were facing in vaudeville.)
I think the majority of consumers then as now were mindless sheep, never stopping to think about the perversion of ‘lightheartedly’ ridiculing a people and a culture while simultaneously oppressing it.
I sometimes roll my eyes at the constant pop-culture self-reflection that takes place in our society today (hello VH1). But when you think about it in light of things that slipped by in the past, maybe it’s a good thing to keep our consumption and entertainment under scrutiny. Maybe we can reflect on our questionable judgement within our own lifetime.

Victor Vaudeville Company
Court Scene in Carolina
Victor Talking Machine Co., 1917

“Burlesque” Party Novelty
Biltomore
year: ??

Here’s another “party record” to pass a few minutes of your time. It’s pretty low quality and skips at the beginning but the point is pretty easy to understand. What I can’t understand is whether “Party Novelty’s” was intentionally possessive or just plain old bad grammar. I guess lowlife’s have had bad grammar for decades at least.

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.

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

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?

Farmer Brown’s Jackass
Part 1 / Part 2

Commentary is probably unnecessary.