On the Tamiami Trail

...Szeretö Szívvel: Erzsébet és Sándor
Sándor Dioszegi with Bette Bere et al.
LMPS—2, Made in USA, 1979(?)

I've really now settled in into the "a-post-every-Sunday-morning" routine. This now is week #52 and that means I've been at it exactly one year. The 52 different LPs I tackled in a year provide a good sampling of the music I've bought in the South Florida thrift stores, but there are too many skipped genres to be a perfect sampling. Just a few days ago for example, I picked up a copy of The Modern Dance by Pere Ubu—easily one of the best finds of the year—but not quite the record I tend to pay attention to in the context of this blog. There are not really any criteria for selection but I do shy away from those records that are too familiar or too much part of the "official" canon of recorded music. More than half of the (estimated) 500 records I bought at thrift stores the past 52 weeks were bought at one of the many on Tamiami Trail. That street might well be the most densely populated—in terms of thrift stores in proportion to the number of buildings—in the country (probably a grave exaggeration, but just to illustrate my point). Tamiami Trail is known under various guises, in my hometown of Fort Myers the names Cleveland Avenue, Route 41, and Tamiami Trail all refer to the very same street. The name is not an exotic Native American name but a mingling of Tampa and Miami, between which two cities the street runs. I've not explored the full length of the street and I will certainly come across many more great stores in the months to come. ...Szeretö Szívvel (with a loving heart) I picked up at the very same thrift store on Tamiami Trail in Charlotte Harbor as Folk Music from Lőrincréve I wrote about last week. Keeps the Hungarian theme going for another week. This record was not produced in Hungary but in the US though, as performers are first and second generation Hungarian immigrants. And unlike last week's this one is not of folk songs but of so-called art songs. Side one has classical love songs while side two consists of chansons, musicals, and dance tunes. My pick to share this week comes from side B and is called Esti vallomás (Confession of love by twilight—poem by Erzsébet Kutas).

A curious aspect of this record is that there is no record label, not an indication where and when it was printed either, which probably means that it is somebody's private enterprise. What the record does have, and goes into my nice collection of it, is a signature of the composer on its sleeve. The musicians are credited on record: all songs by soprano Bette Bere accompanied by the composer Sándor Diosszegi on piano. The artist who made the watercolor that adorns the sleeve is also named: Csaba Zongor. The watercolor is signed Csaba 79 which gave me an indication as to how to date this record. It's not my favorite sleeve ever but hey...

Lőrincréve Népzenéje

Folk Music from Lőrincréve
Arrangements by Ferenc Sebő
Hungaroton, SLPX 18102
Made in Hungary, 1986

I found this lovely LP with Hungarian folk music in a thrift store in Charlotte Harbor. A half year ago I also found some Hungarian records at that very same thrift store. Coincidence? It had a plastic sleeve around it—for the protection of the photograph of this lovely man in a Hungarian folk dance pose—that told me the LP had been taken good care of. Despite the title being in English all texts are Hungarian (there is a hint that there once would have been a paper inside with English texts), so I can't give you many specifics or background stories concerning this record. What I do know is that the music on the record are traditional folk songs/tunes arranged by Ferenc Sebő. The track that I selected is vocal without instrumentation. The track consists of three songs performed by the vocal ensemble Tátika Énekegyüttes. Sebő is a well known folklorist, musician, and band leader, he launced the career of the famous singer Márta Sebestyén. Track B4 consists of the songs Kék ibolya, ha leszakítanálak (Blue Violet), Falu végén van egy vályú (There Is a Through), and Én Istenem, teremtőm (Oh, My God, Good Lord). The last two seem vaguely reminiscent of other songs (in a different language) but I can't bring them home. (Listen for yourself.)

Peanuts

Showtime at the Drumbeat
Tropical Recording Co., LP – 2470
Southeastern Records, Hialeah, FL, 1964

Showtime at the Drumbeat
backside with signature

The (semi) legendary John Berkely "Peanuts" Taylor (MBE) ruled the show club industry in Nassau, Bahamas in the 1960s and 70s. Peanuts owned the Dreambeat. It was founded in 1964, the year I was born. The club doesn't exist anymore but Peanuts still occasionally delights the tourists coming in to the Nassau seaport with a virtuous drumbeat performance, "a snapshot of the young tiny Peanut that danced its way into hearts over seventy years ago." Records with Peanuts Taylor are not that rare here in Southern Florida, so close to the Bahamas, but I am delighted every time I find one. You can imagine then how I felt to come across this signed copy of Showtime at the Drumbeat to add to my ever growing collection of signed records. More than half of this collection features performers from the tourist nightclub industry. Showtime at the Drumbeat features calypsos by various different performers, all managed by Peanuts, some became well known in their own right (i.e. Richie Delamore, Johnny Kemp). To share with you I did however select one of the four tracks on the album performed by Peanuts himself on goombay and conga drums. All four tracks are untitled and the following is the third. The one track in which Peanuts is most prominently featured.

The Little Sparrow

Edith Piaf – Les Plus Grands Succès
avec l'orchestre Robert Chauvigny
Columbia, C 83 340, Made in Germany

There's nothing unusual or rare about this disc with music of Edith Piaf. Every single song on it I already had on one of my other Piaf records, it was even my third or even fourth copy, or version for some songs on this "greatest hits". The biggest ones are all on it: there's La Vie en Rose, Non, Je ne Regrette Rien, Milord, Les Trois Cloches, and so on. I liked the cover image, green stickers were half off at the Goodwill so I only had to pay 50 cents, and it has been a while since listened to Piaf, so I took it home. And when I played it after all these years since hearing all these songs, I was stunned because of how beautiful these recordings really are. So intense, so timeless, so beautiful. If you're like me and you haven't heard the songs of Edith Piaf for a few years, I recommend to dig into your vinyl collection, go to the French chanson section (or to the the letter P, or to wherever you may have filed Piaf under), and play your Piaf records again. I guarantee you won't be disappointed. Listen to this 1950 recording of Hymne à l'Amour to get you in the mood. And if, by any chance, you're one of the few people in the world who doesn't have a copy of this song, you can download it here.                 

Teresa Trull

Teresa Trull – The Ways a Woman Can Be
Olivia Records, LF 910B
Los Angeles, CA, 1977

The best thing about shopping for records in thrift stores is when you come upon a specific mini collection from a specific individual. These mini collections are often quite intriguing and when I'm intrigued enough about a previous owner I like to buy all the records that were dumped at this thrift store. I live for the days that I find records from an unusual (in terms of rarity of record finds) country all together in one store. Once I bought a whole box filled up with Latvian records and another time I bought 15 Philippine records in one haul. Sometimes you'll find records of a certain topic or genre, and another time the type of labeling will give away that the records once belonged to one collection. The collections are most interesting to me if it concerns somewhat obscure records, a different set of records than those that anyone could have. I didn't think anything of it when I came upon two Chris Williamson records yesterday (one I already had—I only like it so-so), but when more women-only records from the 1970s showed up my mind became focused. It's not the first time I've encountered a feminist thrift-store record dumping but this was yet more specific. Studying the sleeves of records by Teresa Trull and Jade & Sarsaparilla it became clear that I was dealing with a collection that once belonged to a lesbian woman (or couple). I went back through the rows of records I had already been through to find all those LPs that probably came from this anonymous collector. I ended up with 7 records, including two by Edith Piaf that I suspect belonged to the same owner. Next week I'll post something about this Parisian cultural icon nicknamed The Little Sparrow but today I'll forward a song by Teresa Trull. I had never heard of her but that is not a surprise given that liner notes state that the record is intended for a female audience only (I'm a male by the way). Everything to do with the record is feminine, from the name of the record company to the production, and all music, lyrics, and musicians as well. That I had never heard of her does not mean she's completely unknown mind you, she's not. She has her own Wikipedia page and has recorded several albums. Maybe she's not a mainstream name but obscure she isn't either. Listen to the song Woman-Loving Women from her first album The Ways a Woman Can Be from 1977.