I Back in the day (by the way–when does that annoying phrase date to? Does ‘back in the day’ date back to ‘back in the day’? I doubt it–it sounds too cutesy–retro. I’m embarrassed to find myself using it, but too late now). Anyway, back in the day the occasional 12 inch 78 RPM record was issued as something of a novelty item. In addition to capturing longer serio-classical pieces, the extended length permitted different orchestral formats to be experimented with. These usually featured popular orchestras performing compositions that aspired to long-ish form semi-classical works. It’s hard to describe these lovely and eccentric ‘productions’ which usually featured a three-part structure featuring three seperarte themes. One of these, ‘Park Avenue Fantasy’ (1934–posted above) was responsible for a hit song that emerged a half-dozen years after the original recording. At about two minutes in you’ll come across a theme that became ‘Stairway To The Stars’, a hit song of 1939 once Mitchell Parish set lyrics to it. I’ve posted the ‘extract’ song below. Parish seemed to hold some kind of patent on adding lyrics to pre-existing melodies. He did this with tremendous success on several occassions–‘Stardust’, ‘Deep Purple’ and ‘Stairway…’ being the most notable. By the time ‘Stairway…’ became a hit, ‘Park Avenue Fantasy’ and the semi-classical pop style had long been forgotten. So had Paul Whiteman for the most part. The onetime ‘King Of Jazz’ (which he most certainly was not) had the orchestra leader gig on the Burns and Allen radio show for awhile but his sensational fame in the 1920s was–like most 1920s phenomenas–sadly dated just a few years after his prime.