Bracha Zfirah on Columbia

 Bracha Zfirah (or Zfira, Zefira, or Tzfira, depending on which transliteration from the Hebrew you choose) was a remarkable Israeli singer. Without going too much into the various ethnic branches of Judaism, she was of Yemenite heritage, but was raised in a Sephardic neighborhood in Jerusalem, and is often considered one of the greatest singers of Sephardic songs. Born in 1910, she met composer/pianist Nahum Nardi in 1929, and found an immediate musical connection. Nardi became her accompanist, and the couple was married in 1931. They parted, legally and musically, in 1939.

Zfirah continued to perform until shortly before her death in 1990. Although she was considered a cultural icon, her popularity waned over the years, as her style came to be considered old-fashioned. 

To inject a personal note - I began searching for klezmer and other Jewish 78s when I began a 12-year stint playing in Atlanta's 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra, which combined klezmer with jazz and Afro-pop. I found a green-label Columbia record by Bracha Zfirah in an antique store in Chattanooga, and was blown away when I got home and placed the record on the turntable. "Yesh Li Gan" was a striking song, and what a beautiful performance! I arranged the song for the 4WAKO, and it can be found on our Abdul the Rabbi album.

Here are three Bracha Zfirah 78s on the U.S. Columbia label. There are only five selections here because one is duplicated on two of the records - "Yesh Li Gan" is on the original blue-label issue and a later green-label issue from Columbia foreign series. I'm not sure whether or not any of these have been reissued, but they're all well worth hearing, in my opinion. The first thee selection were recorded in 1937; the last two in 1949.

Yesh Li Gan (I Have a Garden)

Shir Haavodah (Hymn of Praise to Labor)

Bein Nehar Prath (Between the Tigris and the Euprhates)

El-Hanegev (Toward the Negev)

Im Ein Ani Li (Who is For Me, If Not Myself?)

Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern: The Birth of the Modern Musical

Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, and Jerome Kern changed the face of American musical theater; they basically invented the modern musical comedy. Before Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern, Broadway shows fell roughly into two types: European-style operettas (The Merry Widow, Naughty Maria) or revue-type offerings, with the bare minimum of a plot interspersed with unrelated (or only tangentially related) songs and dances. To be sure, composers such as George Cohan and Will Marion Cook provided distinctly American-sounding songs to the best of these revues.

But Bolton, Wodehouse, and Kern took things a step further: in their conception, the musical comedy should have a tightly woven, coherent plot, and the songs should not just be catchy and entertaining - they should be vehicles to further the plot and/or reveal more about the characters. Bolton's scripts, Wodehouse's clever lyrics, and Kern's music, memorable and modern, were carefully integrated to form an entertaining, impactful whole.

The team only wrote five shows together, but their influence extended far beyond the sometimes limited run each musical had on Broadway. Their collaborations represent the peak of the "Princess Musicals," that string of shows performed at the smallish Princess Theatre between 1915 and 1919. Not all the trio's musicals ran at the Princess, but they were all in the modern, intimate style of the Princess shows.

In those days, there was no such thing as an "original cast album" - that concept had to wait until Decca recorded the Broadway cast of Oklahoma! in 1943. But as early as 1909, Victor Records began issuing recorded medleys of songs from Broadway shows in their "Gems" series: "Gems from Babes in Toyland," "Gems from The Belle of New York," etc. These usually filled one side of a 12-inch 78 RPM record, so each medley ran about four or four and a half minutes. Victor's Gems were recorded by the company's staff musicians, often very early in a musical's run, so that theater-goers who attended a show could then go to the nearest record store and buy a disc with their favorites.

Four of the five Bolton / Wodehouse / Kern shows got the Victor Gems treatment, and I'm presenting them all here. There are several caveats to keep in mind while listening. First, to fit five or six songs onto one record side, each song had to be abridged - so we only get a verse or two and maybe a chorus of each song. The lyrics are sometimes difficult to make out through the murky recording and surface noise, especially when ensemble singing is involved. And all of these records show the kind of wear you would expect from 110-year-old discs.

Here are the four medleys in chronological order. Each is backed on its record by a medley from an unrelated show; I have only included the sides by our famous triumvirate. Artist credit on all is "Victor Light Opera Company." I have listed the featured vocalists on each number. Enjoy these glimpses into the beginnings of the modern American musical.

Gems from "Have a Heart" - Victor 35624; recorded February 23, 1917

    I'm So Busy (full chorus)
    And I'm All Alone (Elsie Baker)
    The Road That Lies Before (Olive Kline and Reinald Werrenrath)
    Honeymoon Inn (Harry MacDonough)
    You Said Something (Olive Kline and Lucy Isabelle Marsh)

Gems from "Oh, Boy" - Victor 35651; recorded July 19, 1917

    Till the Clouds Roll By (full chorus)
     An Old-Fashioned Wife (female trio)
     You Never Knew About Me (Harry MacDonough and Marguerite Dunlap)
    Rolled Into One (Olive Kline)
    Till the Clouds Roll By (full chorus)

Gems from "Leave It To Jane" - Victor 35666; recorded January 2, 1918        

    Just You Watch My Step (full chorus)
    The Crickets are Calling (Lucy Isabelle Marsh)
    What I'm Longing to Say (Reinald Werrenrath)
    The Sun Shines Brighter (Olive Kline and Harry MacDonough)
    The Siren's Song (Elsie Baker)
    Leave It To Jane (full chorus)            

Gems from "Oh Lady! Lady!" - Victor 35672; recorded March 13, 1918   

    When All the Little Ships Come Sailing Home (full chorus)
     Not Yet (Elsie Baker)
    Before I Met You (Reinald Werrenrath)
    Some Little Girl (female trio)
    She Found Me and I Found You (Olive Kline and Lambert Murphy)
    When All the Little Ships Come Sailing Home (full chorus)    

La Bohême - Acoustic

 For opera fans, here's a half hour of some legendary voices of the early 20th century, performing selections from one of the great operas - Puccini's La Bohême. These recordings, drawn from the Victor catalog, were made from 1906 to 1916, so they are all recorded acoustically. There are a few key selections missing, but most of the favorite arias and ensemble pieces from the opera are here. The great Enrico Caruso is heavily featured.

Of particular interest is Caruso's famous rendition of "Vecchia zimarra," the "Coat Song." This is a bass aria, but Caruso's voice was so flexible that he had no trouble bailing out Andrés de Segurola when that singer lost his voice during a Metropolitan Opera performance in Philadelphia; with his back to the audience, Caruso sang the piece while Segurola mimed the performance. The famous tenor was persuaded to record the aria the next day in Victor's Camden, New Jersey studios, but the recording was never intended to be issued. In the late 1940s, radio personality Wally Butterworth obtained a test pressing of the aria and issued it on a privately pressed vinyl 78, with an explanatory talk on the other side.

All of the other records are one-sided, as were all of Victor's Red Seal classical records in those years. The company didn't start making double-sided Red Seal discs until the 1920s. Part of the reason for this was economics. In order to attract the biggest stars of the opera world, Victor gave them lucrative contracts, with generous royalties on each record sold. So the company tried to maximize its profit by charging as much as possible for each issued selection. The royalties demanded by Victor's two biggest stars, Caruso and Nellie Melba, resulted in a duet record priced at five dollars for three and a half minutes of music - and that's the equivalent of over $150 in today's dollars. The star-studded Quartet cost six dollars - nearly $200 when adjusted for inflation. 

So here's a generous chunk of La Bohême, transferred with minimal noise reduction. Apologies for the occasional spots of "blasting" distortion in loud passages.

Act I:

Enrico Caruso: Che gelida manina (Rudoph's Narrative) - Victor 88002, recorded 1906

Frances Alda: Mi chiamano Mimi - Victor 74448, recorded 1915

Nellie Melba & Enrico Caruso: O soave fanciulla - Victor 95200, recorded 1907

Act III:

Geraldine Farrar & Antonio Scotti: Mimi, Io son! - Victor 89016, recorded 1909

Geraldine Farrar: Addio! - Victor 88406, recorded 1912

Geraldine Farrar, Gina Viaforo, Enrico Caruso & Antonio Scotti: Quartet: Addio, dolce svegliare - Victor 96002, recorded 1908

Act IV:

Enrico Caruso & Antonio Scotti: Ah Mimi, tu piu - Victor 89006, recorded 1907

Enrico Caruso: Vecchia zimarra (Coat Song) - RCA Victor 87499 (private pressing), recorded 1916

Wally Butterworth & Frances Alda -Why Caruso recorded the Coat Song - RCA Victor 87499, recorded c. 1949

The Varsity Seven

 Here's another set of jazz records that can't really be considered rare, but which are somewhat obscure. The Varsity Seven was a studio band of all-star jazz players who made two sessions (December, 1939 and January, 1940) for Eli Oberstein's Varsity label. Despite the high quality of the music, these sessions have only been reissued sporadically (on Savoy and other labels) and are not well known.

Oberstein was something of a shady figure in the record business. He worked for Victor Records for a decade beginning in 1929, after which he left to form the United States Record Corporation, whose main labels were Varsity and Royale. Varsity was the discount label, selling for 35 cents per disc, while Royale records sold for the more standard 75 cents. Many of the early Varsity releases were drawn from the catalogs of dormant labels like Paramount, Gennett, and Crown - whether the titles were legally licensed or not.

But Oberstein also wrangled some fairly big pop and jazz names into recording for Varsity, including Harry James and Buddy Clark. Along the way, he recorded The Varsity Seven. I haven't been able to come up with much background information on how these sessions came about, but I assume that they were organized by either Benny Carter or Leonard Feather. Carter was always a reliable choice to organize a casual jazz session, and one of the tunes is his composition. Feather also wrote one of the tunes, and he usually managed to work one of his compositions into record dates that he arranged.

In any case, the band is top-notch and the music is generally excellent. "Easy Rider," from the first session, was selected by George Simon of Metronome magazine as one of the best records of 1940: "Coleman Hawkins' tenor leads an all-star group that hits a fine tempo and boasts of a magnificent vocal by Jeanne Burns and some good Danny Polo clarineting." 

Most contemporary listeners will be less enthralled with Ms. Burns' vocalizing than Simon was. But the mighty blues singer Joe Turner sings on two titles from the second session. And if Jeanne Burns is not really magnificent, the band certainly is. I was particularly impressed with the solo contributions by guitarist Ulysses Livingston, whom I knew as a solid rhythm guitarist, but not as a soloist. 

The great Benny Carter mostly plays his secondary instrument, trumpet, here, only offering an alto saxophone solo on "Scratch My Back." That makes this session another example of what a wonderful trumpet player Carter was. Incidentally, Carter is listed on the labels as "Billy Carton," presumably because he was under contract to the Vocalion label at the time.

So here are a couple of wonderful sessions that reside in that no-man's land of obscurity in which so much classic jazz finds itself. I have presented the music in order of recording.

Benny Carter - trumpet and alto sax

Danny Polo - clarinet

Coleman Hawkins - tenor sax

Joe Sullivan - piano

Ulysses Livingston - guitar, vocal asides (2)

Artie Shapiro - bass

George Wettling - drums

Jeanne Burns (1, 3, 4), Joe Turner (5, 6) - vocals

December 14, 1939, NYC:

It's Tight Like That

Easy Rider

Scratch My Back (Leonard Feather)

Save It, Pretty Mama

January 15, 1940, NYC:

How Long, How Long Blues

Shake It and Break It

A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody

Pom Pom (Benny Carter)

Louis Armstrong in Paris 1934

 It could be argued that no recording by the great Louis Armstrong can really be considered obscure. Most of his records have remained almost continuously in print - reissued over and over again. But some of his recordings have remained elusive, at least comparatively speaking. A latter-day example is the 1967 Brunswick session that produced two singles, including a cover of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Daydream." Those two singles have never been issued on an album, as far as I can tell. Speaking for myself, I find the whole session to be a delight, and I'm glad I have the 45s.

Among Armstrong's early recordings, perhaps the most obscure is the session he made for French Brunswick in Paris in 1934. These are Louis' only records between his last Victor session of the 1930s (April, 1933) and the first session for Decca (October, 1935). Without the Paris sides, we'd have a two-and-a-half year gap with no Louis Armstrong records!

The Paris sides have been reissued, in whole or part, quite a few times over the years, but often on obscure labels of questionable legality. In any case, I think it's worth posting this music again. My source is the first U.S. issue of this music: a Vox album from 1947. One of the Vox label's specialties was stateside issues of music recorded in Europe, so the Paris recordings fit that bill perfectly. Unfortunately, Vox pressings are not of the highest quality, and tend to be slightly noisy. And the session is not quite complete - two takes of "St. Louis Blues" survived, but Vox only issued the second take.

The band Louis assembled for a string of European appearances and for this session has few stars, (only pianist Herman Chittison might be worthy of that designation), but it's a fine band for that place and that time. The musicians were from various parts of the world, but were all part of the African diaspora; all were living in Europe at the time. I wonder if Louis felt a special connection to alto saxophonist Peter DuConge, a fellow New Orleanian; at the time DuConge was living in Paris and married to Bricktop, the famous entertainer and saloon owner.

For the record here's the band:

Louis Armstrong - trumpet, vocal; Jack Hamilton, Leslie Thompson - trumpet; Lionel Guimarez - trombone; Peter DuConge - clarinet and alto saxophone; Henry "Hy" Tyree - alto saxophone; Alfred Pratt - tenor saxophone; Herman Chittison - piano; Maceo Jefferson - guitar; German Arago - bass; Ollie Tines - drums

The session took place in the Paris Polydor studio on November 7, 1934. The tracks are presented in the order they appear in the Vox three-disc album rather than the original recording order. "On the Sunny Side of the Street" was originally issued in two parts, filling both sides of the third record; I have joined the two parts into one.

Tiger Rag (also issued as Super Tiger Rag)

St. Louis Blues (take two)

Song of the Vipers

Will You, Won't You Be My Baby?

On the Sunny Side of the Street

The Low Back'd Car is Back

 I have finally repaired the link to the recording of James McCool singing "The Low Back'd Car" from 1905. With this repair, all previously broken links in this blog are now working.

You can take a ride in The Low Back'd Car here.

Bach is Back

 It has taken me a while, but I have made new transfers of the Roth Quartet playing Bach's Art of the Fugue to replace the files lost in a server switch. This blog is now almost completely repaired - all that's left is to make a new transfer of James McCool's "The Low Back'd Car," and I will make sure to do that soon.

Here's the link to Art of the Fugue from 1934.