[78-L] Bessie Smith album

[David Lennick]

One of my sets of Air Raid has sides 1 & 2  with gold labels (like the Mercury 
sets), Columbia Full Range Recording. No album number on it, but disc # is 
69353-D, same as on CBS labels in C-5. "Sold in complete sets only."

ME-23 isn't even listed under Welles or Mercury Theater in the October 1940 
catalog, nor in Rust, although his listings of the Welles recordings in CED2 
are totally wrong. Somewhere I found a note that C-33 (Macbeth) was "to be 
released November 1940" according to David Hall.

dl

Michael Biel wrote:
> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>> Re the South American recordings, are you thinking of the Brazilian music 
> recorded when Stokowski was down there? There are definitely unissued 
> recordings among them, and supposedly lost, according to an article that
> 
> appeared on one of these lists last year.
> 
> Yes, that's it.  I was trying to see if the issued albums are these,
> probably the two tango albums. But now with the reminder that it was
> Stokowski who was involved I have googled about it
> http://daniellathompson.com/Texts/Stokowski/Stalking_Stokowski.htm
> and found that the albums are C-83 and C-84.  But the earlier albums are
> also in the similar vein, one of them being Cuban bands.
> 
>> I've never seen ME 23..didn't know it existed.
> 
> It's in the numerical listing of all of the ME discs with no
> explanation.  I never knew about it until I saw it there.
> 
>> All the Mercury Theater 
> Shakespeare sets were renumbered in the MM series (in the 700s I think)
> in the 
> late 40s. "Julius Caesar" was the only one to make it to LP..that set is
> seen 
> in the I Love Lucy episode where Orson is a guest. (I did all of those
> sets as 
> well as the abridged Julius for Pearl some years ago.)
> 
> I remember you needing a cast listing for one of them which I had in the
> published script booklets.
> 
>> Is "Air Raid" actually taken from the CBS broadcast? It runs well over 30 
> minutes, has no announcements, no cast list (unless anyone has seen a
> booklet 
> for it), and about the only voice I've ever recognized is Frank Gallop.
> Ray 
> Collins seems to be the only other name turning up on internet searches.
>  dl
> 
> The cast list is in the published book.  Yes it is from the broadcast. 
> The closing announcement on the broadcast (not included in the recording
> but in the script) mentions that the recording is going to be released. 
> Somewhere I have the rehearsal schedule from one of the original scripts
> I came across many years in an archive.  I don't remember the timing but
> it is not much if any over 30 minutes.  It is only 7 sides, not 8, and
> the 7th side is only a little over a minute.
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  
> 
> Michael Biel wrote:
>> >From the record numbers in particular series, you can see that the
>> albums were not issued in the order of these retroactive numberings. 
>>
>> C-1 Tango Album No. 1 342-M - 347-M
>> C-2 Tango Album No. 2 373-M - 378-M
>> C-3 Rumba and Congo Album 351-M - 356-M
>> C-4 the first issue of Air Raid, which no living person has ever seen
>> C-5 the second issue of Air Raid 69353-D - S 69356-D
>> C-6 Merchant of Venice ME-1 - ME-12
>> C-7 Twelfth Night ME-13 - ME-22
>> C-8 Bessie Smith 3171-D - 3176-D November 1937
>> C-9 European Dance Album 310-M - 315-M
>> C-10 Julius Caesar ME-24 - ME-34
>>
>> By the way, ME-23 is Excerpts From Merchant of Venice/Excerpts from
>> Twelfth Night. Does anybody have it or even seen it? 
>>
>> Mercury Theater's abridged Julius Caesar is Masterworks Set 325 11117-D
>> - 11121-D issued May 1938.
>> Macbeth was C-33 ME-35 - ME-43 December 1940.
>>
>> Air Raid was broadcast Oct 17, 1938. War of the Worlds was broadcast
>> Oct 30, 1938. CBS bought ARC/Columbia/Brunswick/Vocalion in December
>> 38, just at the time when Air Raid was probably being released. As I've
>> been reading stories in the magazines of the time wondering how this
>> would change things, I realized that if they issued War of the Worlds
>> they would have had a HUGE HIT on their hands!!!
>>
>> The four foreign dance albums are an enigma. Have any of you ever seen
>> any of them? I'm still looking for issue dates since the monthly
>> Columbia new release supplements on the films at R&H end at Dec 36 and
>> resume only with that Sept 39 cumulative supplement and the 1940s
>> numericals. I recall a posting that was linked from either here or
>> the ARSCList about a South American archive looking for the unissued
>> sides. Something like 40 songs were recorded in ONE NIGHT aboard a ship
>> in a harbor where local bands were invited on board to play and be
>> recorded. The sets are so rare that they didn't even know about the
>> second Tango album till a dub was given them, and some of the surviving
>> performers don't remember ever being notified of the releases. Does
>> this sound familiar to anyone? I should also ask on Arsclist. By late
>> 1940 all the pre-C11 albums other than the Mercury Theater were gone. 
>> (I'm hoping they will let me go thru the shelves at R&H next week and
>> they might be there. There's a new regime there and I don't know the
>> new higher-ups, and am getting my intros to them via Seth.)
>>
>> Mike Biel mbiel at mbiel.com 
>>
>>
>>
>>