https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dVl_ew0ek Continuing my obsessive pursuit of an audience who appreciates the history of the home organ phenomenon of fifty years ago (see previous two posts if you dare), here is part two of the SCTV send-up featuring Tex and Edna Boil. For those who remember SCTV this will make perfect
Last week I posted about the now-vanished phenomenon of the Organ Emporium superstore–a result, apparently, of a once thriving appetite among the public for ownership of the cheesiest of instruments, the home organ. To my surprise this post received the lowest amount of clicks I’ve ever received on this blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmo-9hQgDUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOqc3F4Gxhg Let’s finish up this week of sifting through the technology ash heap with a look at the now forgotten instrument/home furnishing known as the Organ. We’re not talking about some kick-ass Hammond B-3. We’re in a much more genteel musical world with the home organ–a Laurence Welk-esque land of
Continuing this weeks theme of exploring old audio/video formats, here is a seven minute film (probably made for a trade show) circa 1957 introducing the first cassette tape, brought to you by RCA Victor. It’s ‘small’ size is touted as one of its finer features but honestly the tape looks
Here’s a 1977 commercial for Pioneer home stereo components that appropriates Sonny Rollins’ story of dropping out of the music business in 1959 for two years in order to take his playing to another level, which he did by practicing at night on the Williamsburg Bridge. It’s a wonderfully evocative
Music has been delivered for decades on various forms of discs that spin and scratch, from the 78rpm shellac recording through the 45 to vinyl and finally, in the mid-1980s, the Compact Disc. It’s hard to remember that the CD was once a miraculous piece of technology–especially now that most
Recently I decided to unearth a pile of delicate, glass 78rpm records that I’ve been dragging around with me from one house to another over the years, each move threatening the life of these beauties. I hadn’t played them for many years–most were acquired when I was a kid and
For the grand finale of this weeks tap-centric postings, lets watch the grand finale of ‘Stormy Weather’ (1943) featuring the astonishingly elegant, athletic and altogether delightful dance team of Harold and Fayard Nicholas. This five minute clip includes the opening chorus of Cab Calloway singing ‘Jumping Jive’ so either skip
The astounding tap dancer Arthur Duncan, who died early this year aged 97, spent years performing on Lawrence Welk’s weekly TV show. For that the much maligned Welk should be commended. Duncan had the misfortune of being the very best at his craft at a moment in history when only
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiWpmprZDrAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufop72Q74fA Here are two deleted scenes from ‘Cafe Metropole’, a 1937 20th Century Fox musical (sort of) starring Tyrone Power, Loretta Young and Adolphe Menjou. Both feature tap-dancing legend Bill Bojangles Robinson, who already had made screen history by dancing with Shirley Temple in another Fox movie ‘The Little Colonel’