Music

Category: Music

Today’s CDs

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms? Pffft. In our never-ending quest to provide the newest, the oddest, the anti-top-ten-est music, we present in today’s CD pile some piano works with a warning label, “Doo-dah” on saxophones, art songs by a German composer in English sung by a German guy and music inspired by paintings. The Mudd collection: not for the faint of heart.

Backs and Forwards Sing This Song: Doo-Dah, Doo-Dah

If we’ve been asked this question once, we been asked it a thousand times: where can I find sheet music for tunes commonly played in British pubs? We usually answer this query with the reference librarian’s shrug. But now a new source has appeared: A Traditional Music Library. This web site out of the U.K. is a “large traditional and folk music library of songbooks, tune-books, sheet-music, lyrics, midis, tablature, plus music theory, chord diagrams, scales and other music educational & academic reference materials.” It has handy full-text searching capability, too. Impress/bore/frighten your friends at your next gathering with rugby songs, sea chanties and banjo ballads.

Presenting Walter Busterkeys!

liberaceOn this day in 1987 Liberace went to that great diamond-studded, fur lined Cadillac in the sky. You young folk may not hear the word “flamboyant” much these days, but this gentleman was the textbook definition. Wisconsin claims him as its own since he was born in West Allis and, as you can see, he also did a few years in Sheboygan

On January 16, 1940 the Milwaukee Journal reported on his debut with the Chicago Symphony at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater. It appears that it took a while to develop his signature style:

“Walter Liberace, a member of the excellent group of young Milwaukee pianists … was heard Monday night at the Pabst as soloist with the Chicago Symphony orchestra. . . .

“Mr. Liberace, a strikingly good looking young man with a most engaging personality, had won the honor of an appearance with the orchestra in a local competition . . . The young artist was at no time in difficulty, but it was apparent that he was proceeding with infinite care, and the swaggering approach that goes so well with Liszt (Liberace had chosen to play Liszt’s Second Concerto in A) was somewhat missed.”

Liberace on LP at the Mudd. And, as you would expect, there is a Liberace Museum in Las Vegas.

More CDs

Among today’s new CDs we have the largest multi-disc CD set in existence: Jacqueline Du Pré and everything she ever recorded on EMI. And, to cleanse your palate after all that cello music, an opera that’s really not and a little live jazz.

Jazz at the Met

On January 18, 1944 the “All American Jazz Band” played the first jazz concert ever presented at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The players were chosen as a result of a poll conducted by Esquire Magazine. This jam session was held in conjunction with the awarding of $10,000 in war bonds to these poll winners:

trumpet: Louis Armstrong (first), Cootie William (second)

clarinet: Benny Goodman, Barney Bigard

trombone: Jack Teagarden, Lawrence Brown

saxophone: Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges

bass: Oscar Pettiford, Milton Hinton and Al Morgan (tied for second)

guitar: Al Casey, Oscar Moore

drums: Sidney Catlett, Cozy Cole

piano: Art Tatum, Earl Hines

odd instruments: Red Norvo and Lionel Hampton, tied

Armed Forces favorites: Artie Shaw, Willie Smith and Dave Tough (tied for second)

female vocalists: Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey

male vocalists: Louis Armstrong, Leo Watson

The Mudd has Esquire Magazine’s Jazz Book from 1944, 1945 and 1946 containing information on the All-American Jazz Band plus articles on jazz, jazz players and jazz records.