by Peter Cates

The Five Scamps

The Five Scamps, The Fishing Song; and Good Lover Blues. Columbia 30168, ten-inch 78, recorded 1949.

The Five Scamps were an African American group of singers and instrumentalists who began performing informally in a WPA work camp in 1936 but then the story ends there until 1946, when their professional career started taking off in Kansas City, Missouri, and extended to California and a contract with Columbia Records in 1948.

The Fishing Song is a hilarious, slightly risqué number while Good Lover Blues is a most captivating example of early rhythm and blues.

By 1950, after recording eight titles, Columbia terminated their contract due to a lack of sales but the group would earn a decent living as a night club act in Kansas City, with some changes of personnel until the early 2000s when they called it quits due to old age.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

In an 1837 entry in his ever-fascinating American Note-Books, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes the following during his visits with friends in Central Maine:

“On the road from Hallowell to Augusta we saw little booths, in two places, erected on the roadside, where boys offered beer, apples, etc., for sale. We passed an Irishwoman with a child in her arms, and a heavy bundle, and afterwards an Irishman with a light bundle, sitting by the highway. They were husband and wife; and B__ says that an Irishman and his wife, on their journeys, do not usually walk side by side, but that the man gives the woman the heaviest burden to carry, and walks on lightly ahead!”

These patriarchal and lazy attitudes of so many husbands expecting their wives to be beasts of burden during the good old days of 150 to 200 years ago were recounted in anecdotes by my own relatives, nowadays in blessed eternity, about how some of our ancestors treated their spouses.

I am also now curious as to whether Hawthorne visited East Vassalboro and South China during his travels around Augusta and the Kennebec River, and what he would have seen along the China Lake stagecoach roads.

Special Ops

I have recently started watching season one of Special Ops: The Lioness, a very suspenseful new series based on the increased recruitment of women in secret intelligence operations in the Middle East and elsewhere starting around 2003.

The only familiar face here is the very good Nicole Kidman as a CIA boss but the rest of the cast also does superb work.

Kudos to the on-location cinematography along Chesapeake Bay Bridge and elsewhere.

Raymond Dixon

Raymond Dixon – Underneath the Stars; Alice Green and Harry Macdonough – Shadowland. Victor 17946, ten-inch acoustic shellac disc, recorded January 4, 1916.

Raymond Dixon, Harry Macdonough and Alice Green were pseudonyms used by tenors Lambert Murphy (1885-1954) and John Scantlebury Macdonald (1871-1931) and soprano Olive Kline (1887-1976) while the two songs fall into the long forgotten category; and they are im­mensely charming ones which have held up through several recent playings of this record.

Murphy’s voice had an appealingly effusive quality which suited the expressed romantic sentiments of the nocturnal Underneath the Stars.

Shadowland was more upbeat but evoked similar emotions aroused during a nighttime stroll with one’s significant other. The lean tart vocalism of Macdonald’s reedy tenor blended well with Kline’s consistently exquisite high notes.

Olive Kline’s 1929 electrically recorded rendition of Ethelbert Nevin’s Mighty Lak A Rose remains one of my favorite vocal records of all time since I first heard it more than 10 years ago and I own the original 78 and an Amazon cd special transfer.

Graham Greene

Graham Greene in his 1969 Collected Essays described “Beatrix Potter’s style” as having “a selective realism, which takes emotion for granted and puts aside love and death with a gentle detachment.” That “gentle detachment” is evoked in the manner in which Peter Rabbit’s mother sweetly reminds Peter and his siblings of steering clear of the McGregor garden – “Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.”

My first encounter at the age of six with Peter Rabbit’s foolhardiness was through a five-inch yellow plastic 78 Golden Record in which Peter was depicted being shot at, sound effects and all, by the evil Mr. McGregor’s shotgun. For several years in my mind, the name McGregor equalled those of Hitler, Stalin and Dillinger in the ominous realm.

Greene also provided a telling quote from what he considered to be one of her masterpieces, The Roly-Poly Pudding in which rats in the attic have captured Tom Kitten:

– “Anna Maria,” said the old man rat (whose name was Samuel Whiskers), “Anna Maria, make me a kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding for my dinner. “
– “It requires dough and a pat of butter, and a rolling pin,” said Anna Maria, considering Tom Kitten with her head on one side.
– “No,” said Samuel Whiskers, “Make it properly, Anna Maria, with breadcrumbs.”

by Peter Cates

Johanna Fiedler

In the Introduction to her 1994 memoir, Arthur Fiedler: Papa, the Pops, and Me, the late Johanna Fiedler (1944-2011) writes the following about being in New York City and watching the live CBS TV presentation of her father conducting the Boston Pops at the 1976 Bicentennial 4th of July concert at the Charles River Esplanade Shell:

“From the overhead shots taken by panning cameras on the roofs of neighboring apartment buildings, I could tell this was the largest crowd I had ever seen. People filled the Espla­nade and the adjacent highway, crammed boats on the Charles River Basin, and stretched back as far as the television cameras were able to show. Later I found out that the crowd had been just as dense on the Cambridge side of the river, where the music must have been almost inaudible. The Guinness Book of Records was to list this as the largest mass of people ever to attend a classical music performance. “

Arthur Fiedler’s Boston Pops records sold in the millions. My earliest memories as a classical record collector in seventh grade are the 12-inch Red Seal 78s gifted to me by kind relatives and friends of Jacob Gade’s Jalousie with Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance on the reverse side; of Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours (itself the melody for Allan Sherman’s infamous early 1960s best selling record Hello Fadda, Hello Madda/Camp Granada); a spirited late 1940s 78 set of the Offenbach/Rosenthal Gaite Parisienne Ballet with its own Can Can; and hearing on the radio the Pops own semi-classical arrangement, with sweetly graceful strings, of the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand, for me the first enjoyable rendition of one of their songs, as during junior high I detested rock music, especially the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley.

With 13th birthday money, I bought a 1964 Boston Pops album (RCA Victor LM-2745) simply titled Music America Loves Best, and containing spirited performances of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Handel’s Largo, Grieg’s The Last Spring, Wagner’s Prelude to Act 3 of Lohengrin, Johann Strauss’s Acceleration Waltz, and the Brahms’ 6th Hungarian Dance, at Al Corey’s Music Center, in Waterville.

It had a full spread cover photo of Fiedler sitting on a park bench with his baton against a green background. I played that record to death.

Fiedler seemed to be a slightly gruff but likable character and conveyed this persona in his public appearances over almost 50 years. However, like so many artists, he was a very complicated man.

In her book, Johanna writes of her father as loving, moody, fun-filled, harsh, generous, miserly, attentive, and indifferent; and of his own harrowing insecurities as his fame and wealth increased.

Examples:

She tells of her father, when she was a little girl, giving her one on one time cuddling with her while they both watched boxing matches on his bedroom TV. But when she was a teenager and dressed nicely for her parents, he’d put her down with comments such as “She looks like a French prostitute or…a piece of cheese.”

The parents constantly fought among themselves and with Johanna, while, as an adult, she was estranged from both of them for months.

Her father’s insecurities stemmed partly from the resentments of the classical music world at the success of the Pops concerts and records. And, as he grew older, he had paralyzing fears about losing his mental and physical health.

Again, Johanna writes:

“‘Poor Pierre Monteux [the conductor who founded a summer school in Hancock, Maine, for teaching conducting],’ Papa said in 1970. ‘Near the end, he could hardly get on the stand, and his legs were frozen during a concert.’ Only a year or two later, my father began having trouble with his own legs, the fate he had been predicting for himself for years. His walking and balance got so bad that he could barely lift his feet off the floor, and we had to install a stair elevator at Hyslop Road [the address of the Fiedler family home in Brookline, Massachusetts.].”

As a personal account of growing up under a famous parent, this book is highly recommended.

I recently heard a 1970s cassette anthology, American Salute, in which Fiedler and the Boston Pops do staples ranging from Aaron Copland’s Hoedown from Rodeo, William Schuman’s arrangement of the Revolutionary War hymn Chester and the title selection American Salute, by Morton Gould, to pop songs by Jimmy Webb – By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Galveston; the more traditional Down in the Valley and Deep in the Heart of Texas; TV themes from Bonanza, Maverick, Have Gun Will Travel, and Gunsmoke; guitarist Chet Atkins playing Tennessee Waltz; Saint Louis Blues, etc. These were all culled from previous Boston Pops LPs and done with the consistently spirited musicianship Fiedler was justly renowned for.

Finally one Arthur Fiedler album I absolutely cherish among the many here at the house is a late 1940s RCA Victor collection of four Overtures by 19th century French composer Daniel-Francoise Auber (1782-1871).

And YouTube abounds with Fiedler recordings, the PBS Evening at Pops episodes and more.