[78-L] Introduction (a bit long)

[Steven C. Barr]

see end...!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bart" <garioch at texas.net>
> At 07:35 PM 6/27/2009 -0400, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>>Fascinating..I'd never heard that story about the Lasses (this sounds like 
>>a
>>cue for someone to interject a trombone joke).
>>The Piddling Pup is a fairly well known party piece recorded a few times,
>>including by Jackie Kannon on LP. List member David Diehl has been working
> on
>>documenting these since the last millennium, over at The Blue Pages
>>http://www.hensteeth.com/ but chunks of it are still under reconstruction,
>>including the title section.
>>dl
>>(Not gonna quote the whole thing, you'll be happy to know)
> Thank you, and Michael Biel, for this recommendation.  I had not seen this
> site before.  I spent a good time reading through some of the listings 
> last
> night.  I didn't find answers to my question though, just fresh questions
> as it sometimes goes. "Offspring Deluxe" is the more outre song and to my
> ears the more interesting side.  I think I can identify the singer as Ray
> Bourbon because his (her?) voice is quite distinctive.  I emailed a fellow
> who has a web site about Ray Bourbon and he suggeted it may be a pirated
> pressing from the days when organized crime controlled certain jukeboxes
> and bars.  If so that would explain why no identifying information (even
> accurate song titles) would be on the disc itself.  Whether that is a
> reasonable explanation or a fanciful one I'm not competent to judge. 
> Going
> with that theory though, I thought it might be equivalent to "Love Child"
> WESTERN RECORD CO. BOURBANA WR-717-B because it tells a first person story
> of an illegitimate birth, even using the phrase "I'm a love child of the
> very first degree" in the verse before going into a disquisition on his
> family tree.  However on the Blue Pages I see another record by Bourbon
> named "Family Tree" IMPERIAL 100B, so I've got another candidate for
> equivalence if it is indeed a known Ray Bourbon recording under another
> name, unless "Love Child" and "Family Tree" are themselves equivalent. 
> But
> I haven't heard either of them, only my own "Offspring Deluxe".
> On the other hand there was lots of good information about Benny Bell's
> records including dates, although Humoresque wasn't listed among them. 
> His
> songs can be heard at The Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic
> University but they have very little info by which to date what you're
> listening to.  My ears tell me it must be much closer to 1950 than 1930,
> but my ears aren't more specific and are known to be wrong sometimes...
> Bart
>
Well, "party records" were right on that thin line of illegality/obscenity 
as it
existed in the thirties/forties/fifties...! For this reason, they virtually 
NEVER
contained any information as to artists, manufacturers or, in many cases,
titles writers; it would have served as useful information to crusading
"anti-smut" lawmen.

Such risque recordings seem to date almost ALL the way back to the
first sound recordings; IIRC, there have been a number of such items
found on early cylinders...?!

As to my own involvement...well, among my many thousands of 78's
I have one whose "WHIZ" label displays only "GARBAGE MAN!"
The contents are based on the chorus of Luis Russell's "Call Of the
Freaks" (I THINK!!), which repeated "Stick out your can, here
comes the garbage man!" Apparently, this in turn was copied by
western-swing performers, who re-titled it as "Garbage Man Blues!"

I learned the rather risque lyrics from my "party record" version...
sped the tempo up a bit to a nice fast boogie...and performed
that at my blues gigs (back when I could GET them?!)...and
finally recorded my version on my second (so far) blues CD...
claiming credit as "arranger!"

...stevenc