[78-L] How to Play Baseball

[fnarf at comcast.net]

Re: first baseball stadium organ -- Wrigley Field, 1941, possibly by Bill Veeck (as in Wreck) (he also planted the famous ivy, a few years earlier). 

Chicago Stadium, the indoor arena where the Blackhawks and Bulls used to play hockey and basketball, had a monstrous pipe organ built in 1929. Dunno if there were earlier examples in other buildings. They're just about all gone now; the few places that still do the "da-da-da-da da-dah -- CHARGE!" cheer song pipe it in. They all blare impossibly loud rock and R&B songs now, which I deplore.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Rodger Holtin" <rjh334578 at yahoo.com>
To: "78-List" <78-l at 78online.com>
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 3:49:27 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [78-L] How to Play Baseball

Saw my first story on spring training today, which reminds me...
 
Everything I know about baseball I learned from the 2-disc set of How to Play Baseball by Joe E. Brown on a pinkish Victor label 45-5804 and 45-5805.  These are 12" RCA Victor labels, automatic-coupled (1/4 and 2/3) with the words "Non-Breakable" just above the center hole, pressed in some sort of plastic, heavier than V-Discs.  They are from album Y-351, although I don't have the album.  Can somebody send me a picture of the album?
 
This set raises a number of questions, and much as I hesitate to ask more than one at a time, here they are.
 
When might these have been recorded?  Brown goes into his Elmer the Great character a number of times, so those movies were still in fresh public memory.  They look like wartime records and looks like the Dumbo labels.
 
I have the Dumbo album Y-350, which is a TEN inch set from the soundtrack of Disney's Dumbo, records numbered also in the 45- series, 45-5141, 45-5142 and 45-5143.  I am amazed that Baseball is a 12" and Dumbo is 10" in the same series.  Is this a unique situation, to have differeent sized discs in the same numbering series?
 
How to Play Baseball also credits "Porter W Heaps, organist."  Was he the regular house organist at some major league ball field?  Sure plays those snippets of Take Me Out to the Ballgame like a real pro.
 
When, where and who introduced the organ to American baseball fields?  
 
At the end of the last disc, Brown, as his Elmer character, says, "Well, as I always say, 'yaaka hula hickey dula.'"  I know that tune was recorded by the Avon Comedy Four, Victor Military Band and others before WWI and  by Spike Jones after WWII.  What, if anything, does "yaaka hula hickey dula" mean, and is it real Hawaiian??

Rodger

For Best Results use Victor Needles.

.


      
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