[78-L] A LAUGHING RECORD THAT IS NOT OKEH

[Michael Biel]

There are at least three different Lowell Thomas laughing jags floating 
around.  He occasionally talked about them and probably was responsible 
for making them available.  For many years they were the only authentic 
blooper recordings that Schafer had.  Some of the fakes were redone 
several times which makes it even more obvious they are fakes.  In one 
case he finally got the legit recording of one from Buffalo Bob Smith 
that had been faked on one of the early volumes.

By the way, did you all know that Schafer did two PMB albums in England 
with English narrators on Decca??!!!  Leah and I stumbled across Vol 2 
in a record store across the street from The Strand in NYC, were able to 
audition it to assure that it was not just a reissue of a U.S. album, 
but since it was priced at over $20 we checked on the web and found a 
British dealer who had both volumes for less than 5 pounds each.  We 
haven't had a chance to listen to them yet to report on how many legit 
and non-American items are on them.

And as for the non-OKeh Laughing Record, there are MANY laughing records 
on other labels.  We've discussed these here before.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 


Michael Shoshani wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 16:04 -0400, David Lennick wrote:
>   
>> The Lowell Thomas blooper is about something that happened at the Hershey 
>> Chocolate Factory, "with and without nuts". 
>>     
>
> I imagine there are several, perhaps many Lowell Thomas bloopers. Kermit
> Schafer had one (hey, he had to have at least one authentic blooper on
> each record) in which Thomas began talking about a new book written by a
> former circus Fat Man who went on a diet after suffering "a near
> far--er, FAtal heart attack".  
>
> Apparently Thomas was so amused by his near-invocation of flatulance
> that he chortled and laughed his way through the next several minutes,
> cracking up various others in the process.
>
> MS