My second attempt to become the Jive Bunny of shellac. This mix contains some of the best of the 78s already featured on the site and a few I've yet to post. It swerves from low comedy to classical and back again pretty abruptly, but it gives you a sense of what we offer here on the site.
That's Delia Murphy. She sings the track ‘Spinning Wheel’, which I had hoped would be a precursor to the Peggy Lee song, but exceeded my expectations by some distance. In fact, her style is more of an Irish precursor to the ringing diction of Mabel Mercer.
Apart from having a very neat line in rolling her r's, she seems to have had a pretty remarkable life. There's surely enough material for a film - I can see Mike Leigh directing it for the BBC - in her double life in Rome during the Second World War, singing to Italian expats one day, assisting Hugh O’Flaherty in his efforts to give shelter to persecuted Italian Jews and anti-fascists the next.
The guy above is G.H. Elliott. (You'll have heard him mentioned on the post about coon songs.) His material and manner of delivery now sound more dated than Delia's, but there's a vigour and optimism in his voice that cuts through the surface noise and reassures you he's the real thing.
The most surreal song on here, one I can find nothing about on our treasured Web, is the track ‘Baby Parade’. It's a novelty march, complete with goo-goos and ga-gas and a few words I can't decipher.
The creepiest record is ‘The Wedding of the Painted Doll’ as played by Barney Bigood's Symphonic Dance Band. Somehow those xylophones make all the jollity incredibly sinister.
I had to put ‘Scenes of Domestic Bliss’ on here because, as one listener commented, it is “absolutely brutal.”
Music Makes Me's 78s Podcast - Volume II
Click here to read the tracklist
As with the last 78s mix, the sound quality varies, but if a track is noisy it usually means it rewards careful listening.
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