What are you listening to right now?

[eleazar]

Rain Parade ~ Crashing Dream

    LP

[tmazz]

Solti Chicago Showcase



R Strauss; Don Juan; Wagner; Die Meistersinger Overture; Rossini; the Barber of Seville Overture; Beethoven; Egmont and Leonore No 3 Overture

1973 London ffrr British Import Vinyl

[eleazar]

    CD

[jsaliga]

A rare two LP set of Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano featuring Rostropovich and Richter.  Amazing performances but only slightly better than average sound quality.  Still a very worthwhile listen.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

Time for a little break from classical music and relax with some 78s.  One of the many fun things about shellac is that in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s there were a lot of bands that cut a few sides but did not rise to national recognition.  So there are many gems out there by artists most people who are not avid collectors never heard of...

...such as Erskine Butterfield and His Blue Boys.



--Jerome

[jsaliga]

And then there is Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy...



I was actually familiar with many of these groups even before getting into 78s, mainly because I'm a jazz lover and followed the music rather closely from the 78 era, but still there many that were unknowns to me until I spun a 78 from them.

Like this one:



--Jerome

[richidoo]

Were you collecting in the 78 era?  That was a pretty long time ago, early 50s?  Back when a record album meant a book of 78 rpm 10" discs that together made an album of music, like a photo album. 12" LP squished it onto one disc but the term  was already in the vernacular.

Looks like some cool sides Jerome.

[jsaliga]

Were you collecting in the 78 era?

Oh no, not quite.  I'm not that old.  I meant to say that music from that period is of considerable interest to me.  A lot of 78 music from the 1930s and 40s has made it on to CD.  And, unfortunately, a great deal of it still languishes in obscurity.

Sometimes it helps to know a little something about the labels of that period to pick out stuff that might be good.  I try to scan through these things rather quickly when I am buying a lot of them because picking this stuff out can be time consuming.

Here's an interesting one.  I never heard of Charley Shavers and His All American Five.  But I did now a little something about Keynote Recordings and figured it was probably an interesting pair of jazz sides so I slowed down long enough to read the credits.  Hmm...Coleman Hawkins and Teddy Wilson.  Yep, any jazz fan would be familiar with those names.  So I snapped up several sides featuring this group.



After researching Shavers I learned that he played with Lucky Millinder in the 1930s and Benny Goodman in the 1950s.

--Jerome

[richidoo]

Yes, Charlie Shavers is a great trumpeter!! I haven't heard that name in a long time. My dad used to talk about that era of musicians when I was young. I listened to a lot of JATP which he played in. Nice band on that one.

[jsaliga]

An outstanding recording of De Falla's El Amor Brujo by Leopold Stowkowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  I have several of these Sony Essential Classics titles (they were originally issued on Columbia Masterworks vinyl) and I must say that it has done a terrific job with the mastering for CD.  Highly recommended.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

This minty original Columbia/SAX UK pressing of Beethoven Symphony No. 5 by Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra is glorious.  It's my favorite Beethoven 5th reading out of the dozen or so that are in my collection.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

This is a lovely Decca LXT pressing of Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2.  Fans of Eric Carmen should be very familiar with the Adagio Sostenuto second movement, seeing that he borrowed heavily from it for his 1975 pop hit All By Myself.

--Jerome

[jsaliga]

--Jerome

[eleazar]

Orange, Sugar & Chocolate
Psychedelic Microdots Of The 60's...Vol. 1

    CD