Showing posts with label Capitol Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Capitol Records. Show all posts

Thursday, December 14, 2017

How sweet it is, the holiday of the disembodied head












Oh, holiday of the
disembodied head, how we love thy floating '50s splendor!

Thy strings are lush   . . . and so are we, for the Christmas parties are upon us.

How we adore thy understated album covers -- oh, how mine soul is made warm by the crackles of the record which spinneth upon phonograph platter!
Thy martini, thy orchestra, they comfort me! And, lo! Thy floating head on the back of thy LP cover, it doth not creep me out!
Album cover of the disembodied head. It's a '50s thing.
Instead, it giveth me the comfort of sepia memories of a time long past, when verily the heads without torso spread across record albums and advertising like grains of sand upon the ocean shore.
May thy Christmas album be flippeth unto Side B, and may the joyful, soothing sounds of mine youth sound unto the people forever more!
My cup of egg nog runneth over. Surely music and jocularity will follow me all the days of December, and the soundtrack shall evermore float upon the aether . . . like Jackie Gleason's head.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Sounds just right. Not perfect, right



OK, there are better record changers out there than this 1956-vintage Zenith.

To be overly truthful, it's really a rebranded Voice of Music 1200-series unit with a "Cobra" tone arm stuck on it. There are even better changers of this vintage out there, if you're willing to pay up.

But to me, this sounds absolutely right. Just enough rumble, a wee bit of hum . . . it sounds like youth. My youth. It sounds like a console stereo in the living room, with the grown-ups playing their music on it.

You can almost smell the hot vacuum tubes burning off a thin coating of dust . . . even when your amp in 2016 is quite solid state. If you're over 50, you KNOW that smell, and you know it well enough to smell it in your mind's nose.

No, sometimes with the right album, you don't want sound that's perfect. You want sound that's right.

Thursday, September 03, 2015

Let's dance!


Here's some of what's been on the old record player the past couple of days.

In 1956, Capitol Records got Benny Goodman and some of the old orchestra gang together to recut some of his classics in hi-fi. And boy do they sound good in high fidelity, pointing out the advancements in recording technology in just the decade and a half or so since the originals came out on 78 r.p.m. discs.

THE ALBUM, The Benny Goodman Story, featured selections from the motion picture of the same name that had just hit movie houses all across America.

What's interesting about this album, which just may be a first-run pressing -- given the packaging and red Capitol label, which changed to turquoise sometime that same year -- is how the cardboard LP sleeve came inside a paper outer sleeve. I don't think I've ever run across that sort of packaging before for a record album.


And that's your bit of vinyl-nerd bait for the day, all the way from the fabulous '50s.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Omaha Picker


You know who have the best jobs in the world? The American Pickers guys.
Put me in a thrift store or at an estate sale, and I turn into the Omaha version of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz. I see relics of a time long gone, and I start to see who the original owners were and maybe what they did.


What some folks see as junk, I -- like Mike and Frank -- see history you can touch. History you can make your own.

CALL ME continually amazed at the stuff folks throw out that I find in the record stacks at our neighborhood Goodwill.

Retail, this Glen Gray album would be worth a few bucks, maybe a little more. At the Goodwill, 99 cents. And look, it's autographed! That should add a few bucks to the value.

Welcome back to 1956.

I love this stuff. So does 3 Chords & the Truth.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Everything I need to know, I learned in 1948

Click on photos for larger, readable versions

This isn't just an old issue of the Capitol News -- the way rad tout mag from the hot-wax peddlers in Tinseltown.

This isn't just another "primary source document" for students of the cultural history of the United States.

And this isn't just another fascinating estate-sale find in Omaha, Neb.

No, Poindexter, this is a guide to good living, good music, good writing and good times. Everything you need to know, pally, you'll learn in 1948. Because, as the continued existence and occasional unearthing of this cultural touchstone proves, it's always Postwar America somewhere . .  and there you, too, can be a hep cat, baby!

So, what did I learn from the preserved wisdom of '48? A few things.

FOR EXAMPLE, from the cover of the December 1948 edition of the platter-patter rag, I learned that if you're one to watch the record go 'round and 'round when you're grooving on your stacks of wax, don't be surprised if your eyeballs turn into spinning 78s.


I ALSO learned that the wise owl better give a hoot what Dave Dexter says -- he's gonna sign Sinatra to Capitol someday, you wait and see. I don't think he'll "get" the British invasion and the lads from Liverpool, though, Daddy-O!


AND WHILE I was doing a double take on that news blast about how Columbia's movie mavens are remaking Latin music maker Desi Arnaz into La-La Land's new cha-cha heartthrob, I found myself wondering what hilarious hijinks Lucy and Ethel will inflict upon the Left Coast.


LIKEWISE, didja ever wonder what the Pied Pipers would sing if they were pie-eyed? And do you suddenly want a piece of pie now?

I do.

I wonder why.


AND WE SEE that Nat  King Cole had himself a hit with "The Christmas Song" some 12 years before he had himself a hit with "The Christmas Song."



ONE VERY IMPORTANT thing to learn is that you got to be hep to the lingo, Clyde.

If you're not hep to the lingo, you might have ignorantly turned the headline Blues Bawlers / Sign New Cap / Waxing Pacts into something like Blue Ballers / Sign New Cap / Waxing Pacts. There's a difference, you know.



FINALLY, Capitol Records not only provides "Christmas cheer throughout the year," it also provides a pretty decent workout from lugging those albums full of 78s all over creation.

So drop the needle in a groove, dude, and we'll chatter about the platters long into the new-old year.

Friday, October 26, 2012

A Capitol idea!

 

My vinyl geekery knows no bounds. This is why I've been having a Capitol time the last couple of days.

(Insert groan here.) 

What we have here aren't just fine mid-century jazz LPs by the George Shearing Quintet and Dakota Staton. Oh, no!

No, what we also have here in the Revolution 21 studio are the first two iterations of Capitol's iconic "rainbow" label.

The Shearing LP, for example, is the second "rainbow" label the record company used, starting sometime in 1959. That makes it easy to tell that this album, though first released in 1956, actually was pressed and purchased no earlier than, say, late '59.


Because Capitol changed its label design again in 1962, putting the logo at the top, we know this record is an older pressing than that. (I told you my geekery knows no bounds.)

The third version of the "rainbow"? That's the one we know from, say, the original pressings of "Meet the Beatles," etc., and so on.


AND WE also know (getting back to the vintage album at hand) where it was purchased -- Younkers department store at one of the nation's first shopping malls, The Center at 42nd and Center streets in Omaha.

At left, on the other hand, is the very first of Capitol's "rainbow" labels, which featured the vertical "LONG PLAYING HIGH-FIDELITY" on it. The company introduced the new LP label in 1958, and the modification on the Shearing album first appeared the next year.

Being that this LP -- "Dynamic!" by Staton -- was a promotional copy, I'll betcha it's from '58.

Gee, I wasn't even born then. That's old.

I wonder how record geeks got along without me. Fortunately for them, I showed up in 1961.

Anyway, how much you wanna bet this stuff shows up on the next edition of the Big Show, otherwise known as 3 Chords & the Truth.


BE THERE. 

Or be square. 

Aloha!