[78-L] Command Performance

[James Tennyson]

Michael I think you're right:  the conductor is almost certainly O'Connell 
who was Victor's  A & R man at the time. Have you read...and I'm sure you 
have....his excessively sour book of memoirs  The Other Side of the Record - 
in which he vents so much spleen that it should have been subtitled " AND I 
DON'T CARE if I EVER Work in this Business Again!"  It seems to me an 
amazing exercise in bridge burning.   His subesquent career seemed to drop 
into a black hole. Anyone know  what happened to him?  But I will say he 
seems a competant conductor: I think  the work that shows him to his best 
advantage  are those recordings he made with Kreisler in the forties.... the 
These Are My Favorites  album  Victor M 910 is vey charming indeed. 
Kreisler orchestrated the piano accompaniments of his best loved 
compositions for piano and violin and recorded them with  O'Connell and the 
Victor Symphony. Since the session was in the Philadelphia Academy of Music 
..I suspect the orchestra was mainly Philadelphia Orchestra lads.
Jim Tennyson.
From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
> There is a video out called "Command Performance" which was filmed
> in 1942 and follows the entire process of the manufacturing of a
> record from making the wax to the home listener.

Great film.  You can see it at
http://www.archive.org/details/CommandP1942

> I attended the centennial event for the RCA Victor building in Camden
> on Sunday and they were showing it there.  Apparently it was shot at
> a time when they stopped producing records at that plant so they
> could convert it to military use.

Then how come they are showing the production and manufacturing of
records?  Of course there was the musician's union strike by the middle
of the year, but the manufacture of records never stopped.  It was
civilian electronics like radios and phonographs which stopped and
converted to military production.  I think when I heard the author speak
a year or two ago he made that same claim that they stopped
manufacturing records, and I thought I corrected him at that time.

> Anyway, what I'm curious about is that the record they are making
> is a recording of the Blue Danube Waltz by the Victor Salon Orchestra,
> (I thought that orchestra was retired by 1942).

It's not a real orchestra, it is whoever is around when they need an
orchestra.

> There's no conductor mentioned on the label, however there
> are lots of shots of the conductor,

I think it is Charles O'Connell

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com