celebrating the anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase
The #1 hits of 1904 include a few songs you know. You’re older than you look.
Sweet Adeline (You’re the Flower of My Heart) – Haydn Quartet (Victor), ten weeks at #1. The Crew-Cuts covered this in 1959. I have heard Sweet Adeline groups (female barbershop quartets) sing this song. I checked the Social Security database. Adeline was Top 1000 from 1900 to 1952. It fell off the list until 1999. In 2022, it was #92. Adaline (#242) and Adelina (#401) also ranked.
Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis– Billy Murray (Edison), nine weeks at #1. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition in that year was described as “the most lavish fair of the era.” Louis was a Top 30 name between 1900 and 1927, in the Top 100 through 1959, and is still #246 in 2022; Luis is currently #125.
Bedelia – Haydn Quartet. I couldn’t find a particularly clean copy. (Victor), Seven weeks at #1. I checked the Social Security database. Bedelia has never been in the top 1000 names since 1900.
Navajo – Billy Murray (Columbia), five weeks at #1. A piece of music of its time.
Bedelia – Billy Murray (Edison), three weeks at #1
Alexander– Billy Murray (Edison), three weeks at #1. A “comedy record” because Murray is presumably singing from the female POV? Alexander has been a Top 250 name since 1900, #4 in 2009, and #17 in 2022.
Blue Bell – Haydn Quartet (Victor), three weeks at #1
A couple more
All Aboard for Dreamland– Byron Harlan (Edison), two weeks at #1. This is about the Coney Island amusement park. I had a difficult time finding a decent recording.
Toyland – Corrine Morgan and Haydn Quartet (Victor), two weeks at #1
Adeline, Louis, Bedelia, and Navajo also reached the top 3 by other artists.
One song that my high school Glee club performed was a version of The Woodchuck Song. It was sung by Bob Roberts (Edison) and went to #3.
My favorite 1904 title is Under the Anhauser Bush, a comedy record by Arthur Collins and Bryan Harlan (Edison), which reached #2. The tune was used in the movie Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), starring Judy Garland, as was Louis, sung by Judy.
COVID isn’t over: “Globally, the number of new cases increased by 52% during the 28-day period of 20 November to 17 December 2023 as compared to the previous 28-day period.” In the US, “SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has continued to mutate and spread. The latest strain to attract attention is called JN.1, and so far, it appears to be highly transmissible.” I’ve known several IRL people who’ve gotten COVID this fall. My sister in SoCal told of one of her choirs in which almost 50% had to bail from a concert because of various respiratory ailments. BTW, I got my most recent shot in October 2023.
Kindness Doesn’t Have a Billable Code— But it’s a key part of patient care.
My questions to Ask Arthur 2023: Get here from there; measuring and measured.
‘The Gilded Age’ Stars Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon on Their On- and Off-Screen Relationship. My wife is currently bingeing on Season 1 of this program. BTW, the building in the background of the photo is my church!
Now I Know: The Smutty History of the Pixar Logo’s Older Cousin and The Town That Raged Against Rage Against the Machine and There Weren’t Skeletons In His Closet and The Silent, Stickless Award Show Protest
Tuesday, Dec 26, 2023. I’ve got five more since.
Voting in even years
On September 20, I complained in this blog about a bill passed by the New York State legislature that would mandate many local elections to be held in even years. There was bipartisan opposition from the Albany County Board Of Elections on the bill (Times Union, Nov 27): “Republicans and the New York State Association of Counties have generally mounted the main pushback against the legislation, raising concerns that traditional attention on local races will be drowned out by races for president, Congress or governor…”
The TU editorialized against it (Dec 3): “More people may cast a local vote as long as they’re in the voting booth, but those local races may just as likely get lost in the information overload of a considerably more crowded ballot. And the bread-and-butter local issues behind those races may get drowned out in the hyperpartisan, hot-button din of state or federal elections.”
To my great disappointment, Governor Kathy Hochul signed it (TU. Dec 23). “Hochul described the controversial measure as a ‘significant step towards expanding access to the ballot box and promoting a more inclusive democracy,’ but she also chose to sign it on a Friday evening, three days before Christmas. “
Friends and Foundation Book Talks move to Tuesdays at Two!
The FFAPL book talks at the Washington Avenue branch of the APL are moving from noon to 2 pm starting in 2024. The speakers in January:
January 2 | Book Review | The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark R. Levin. Reviewer: Frank S. Robinson, JD, philosopher, author, & blogger.
January 9 | Book Review | Prequel: An American Fight against Fascism by Rachel Maddow. Reviewer: Roger O. Green, MLS, retired librarian, NY Small Business Development Center, & current board member, FFAPL.
January 16 | Book Review | Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant. Reviewer: Jonathan Skinner, PhD, retired statistician & amateur classicist.
January 23 | Author Talk | Paul T. Murray, professor emeritus at Siena College, discusses & reads from his book, Seeing Jesus in the Eyes of the Oppressed: A History of Franciscans Working for Peace and Justice.
January 30 | Book Review | Best Remembered Poems by Martin Gardner. Reviewers: Joe Krausman, poet; Gene Damm, former journalist; & Jonathan Skinner, amateur classicist & retired statistician.
Chicken
Newsmax writes: “Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is poised to declare “war” over proposed legislation in New York that would force some Chick-fil-A restaurants to open on Sundays, a move that would run afoul of the company’s policy since it opened in 1946.” Except that the story is grossly misleading.
VerifyThis notes: No, a New York bill wouldn’t force current Chick-fil-A rest stop locations to open on Sunday. “The bill requires all restaurants at certain rest stops to remain open seven days a week, including Chick-fil-A. But it only applies to future restaurant contracts.”
Frankly, I never understood why the Thruway authority offered contracts to an entity they knew would be closed on part of the weekend.
I wanted to write about music in 2023. The truth is that I’m not connected to the tunes of this decade as I was with even the 1990s. And it’s not for lack of effort.
My wife and I were in a pizzeria this month. There was a screen showing some current music videos. Much of it sounded annoyingly similar to me. Musician Rick Beato has regularly said the same about today’s Top 40. But is he just an old man yelling at the clouds?
Arthur has posted end-of-the-year music mashups for a long time. The first of this year’s iteration… This is what he said: “This year, I felt my familiarity with the songs was the lowest ever: While I recognised many artists, I was unfamiliar with the songs themselves—apart from Luke Combs’ cover of ‘Fast Car,’ and that was only because I know the original.” This is no knock on Combs, but it isn’t a transformative cover, though I’m glad Tracy Chapman will benefit monetarily.
I recognized another song, Get Him Back by Olivia Rodrigo, only because of this commercial.
I hear some non-Top 40 fare, notably on CBS Saturday Morning’s Saturday Sessions. I’ve even bought music directly due to artists’ appearances on the show, such as Regina Spektor and Jason Isbell.
Still, I’m impressed and somewhat jealous of the impressive coterie of albums on J. Eric Smith’s Best Of album list. Here’s the New York Times’ roster, of which I own exactly one, Paul Simon’s Seven Psalms; older artists tend not to be as prolific. Seven Psalms trailer.
Conversely
Also, I purchased Brandy Clark’s eponymous album after seeing her on Saturday Sessions; listen to Dear Insecurity.
But much of what I did buy was OLD music. After seeing the musical, I snatched up the Million Dollar Quartet music; here’s a sample. A few were five-packs of Warner/Elektra/Atlantic artists such as Bonnie Raitt and Dr. John.
My favorite, though, was early Randy Newman. I never owned his first album, and I discovered Bet No One Hurt This Bad and Cowboy, both covered by Three Dog Night, are on this collection.
According to Wikipedia, Newman said in this 2017 podcast, that “he signed away the publishing rights on his first album, does not see any money from people doing covers of those songs, and advised people getting into the business to never sign away their publishing.”
I’m okay not being up-to-date in this arena, though. I have a LOT of music from the previous century.
I’ve used this song before, Elephant Talk by King Crimson, but I usually cite the B verse.
Talk, talk, it’s only talk Debates, discussions These are words with a D this time Dialog, duologue, diatribe Dissention, declamation Double talk, double talk
Handel’s Messiah – the Christmas portion. The New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Theoretically, these should play in order. The last piece is Hallelujah, traditionally more of an Easter piece, but I’m no purist. I’ve had the joy of singing this at least four times.
It’s the day before Christmas Eve. Finally! When the seasonal ads start the day after Halloween, whatever joy I might have gotten when I first saw them has dissipated.
Tomorrow is a Sunday, which means church. But tomorrow evening is the night before Christmas, which means church. It reminds me of going to some churches with very long services back in the day.
The Wexford Carol – Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss -My wife has a lot of Alison Krauss CDs. We saw her perform with Union Station in Albany back in 2003. Krauss is one of my wife’s “K girls,” along with Diana Krall. But this song is on a Yo-Yo Ma album, on which he performs with about two dozen other musicians.
Star Carol – Simon and Garfunkel. This song appears on the S&G box set.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing -King’s 2021. The descant is by David Willcocks. I’ve been singing from the carol books with his arrangements for about four decades.
Un flambeau, Jeanette Isabella – Loreena McKennitt. I’ll bring a torch for this rendition.
Little Drummer Boy – Johnny Cash and Neil Young. This is a fascinating pairing. I know a LOT of people who HATE this song and/or Neil’s voice, which I suppose is why I embrace it.
The Times has a column called The Amplifier by Lindsay Zoladz. A piece earlier in the month pondered: “They’re great songs. Are they Christmas songs?” Here are a few of them.
White Winter Hymnal -Fleet Foxes. “When a non-holiday song is suddenly reclassified in the cultural imagination as a holiday song, often, one must blame Pentatonix.”
So Much Wine – The Handsome Family. It was “Phoebe Bridgers’ pick last year in her annual Christmas covers series… Her version of this ballad of seasonal alcoholism is an out-and-out tear-jerker, but the Handsome Family manages to tell the same story with some dark comic relief.”
‘Tis The Damn Season -Taylor Swift. Zoladz attributes her colleague Joe Coscarelli… “with one of [her] favorite Taylor Swift conspiracy theories: That ‘Evermore,’ her second and decidedly more wintry 2020 album, was originally supposed to be a Christmas-themed release. This finely wrought ode to hometown what-ifs and temporarily rekindled romance is probably the strongest argument for that case.”
Wintering – The 1975. “Here’s another song about regressing at one’s parents’ house for a long weekend, a curiously season-specific track on the 1975’s excellent 2022 album ‘Being Funny in a Foreign Language.’ I often appreciate the details in Matty Healy’s writing, and there are some particularly vivid ones here: a precocious, vegan sister; a fleece that doesn’t warm as well as advertised; a mother with a sore back who objects to being mentioned in the song. ‘I just came for the stuffing, not to argue about nothing,’ Healy sings. ‘But mark my words, I’ll be home on the 23rd.'”
Also – Now I Know: Why Would You Name a Snowman “Parson Brown”?
The #1 hits of 1904 include a few songs you know. You’re older than you look.
I wanted to write about music in 2023. The truth is that I’m not connected to the tunes of this decade as I was with even the 1990s. And it’s not for lack of effort.
Merry Christmas 2023. Peace on earth: that would be nice. Goodwill to all: an admirable goal. 
It’s the day before Christmas Eve. Finally! When the seasonal ads start the day after Halloween, whatever joy I might have gotten when I first saw them has dissipated.