Bartók Plays Bartók

Bartók Plays Bartók
Béla Bartók, piano
recorded in Europe 1941(?)
Remington R-199-94, 1952
Printed in U.S.A.

Béla Bartók – Sonata for Two 
Pianos and Percusion
Béla Bartók at the Piano
recorded in 1940
Polydor, PLP 6010
Printed in the U.S.A.

Classical music is a bit underrepresented in these pages considering the vast amount of such records available at the numerous thrift stores in town. There are several genres, or topics that I collect within the broad field that is classical music. One of the topics that I always grab whenever I see one is that of the composer playing his (her's is a bit rare outside of contemporary classical music—a genre not often found at thrift stores) own music. I was delighted to find not one, but two records with the music of one of my all time favorite composers: Béla Bartók. Bartók here plays his own piano music. I found the record downtown Fort Myers in Franklin Shops on 1st Street, more a touristy, beachy kind of curiosity shop than a thrift store, a boutique really. Still the records were only a dollar a piece if you buy twenty of them. I had no problem doing so. The two Bartók records, together with a third one, were neatly bound into an album by the previous owner. I love those personal touches added by music enthusiasts of yore. Bartók Plays Bartók is an album of short solo piano pieces, one is a piano adaption of a work written for strings, another is a piece for two pianos. The second piano is played by his wife Ditta Pasztóry Bartók. Ditta Bartók has even a more prominent presence on the second album, which is a performance of the piece Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Béla Bartók is heard on piano, Ditta plays the second piano while Harry Baker and Edward Rubzan are the percussionists. The album is then completed with  some short piano solos performed by Béla Bartók.

I've selected three pieces to listen to here. The first two are from the Sonata album, you hear the third movement of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, followed by a very short melody that is part of the collection For Children. The third soundfile is called Preludio All'Ungherese and is from the Bartók Plays Bartók record.

More country comedy

Souvenirs from Slovakia: Songs and Dances
Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensmble of Bratislava
Apon-2498, Apon, NY, Made in USA

You have to be careful in blog-world not to step on anyone's (copyright owners' expensive) toes these days.  I received a notice last week that my item on Ham & Scram was removed due to copyright infringement. It's back up now but without the sound. Now, I don't want to step anyone's toes and if the rightful representatives of a certain music don't want their property published within these parameters I'll be happy to remove the content. The weird thing about the notice concerning Ham & Scram was that I received it when the page in question was visited only one time. Copyright owners must be getting resourceful, they must have some alert built in to their computers so that if an item appears on line from anywhere in the world, they are notified and can block it immediately. I' m always conscious of this fact that certain musics are protected and publish only those songs that I believe are 1. old enough, 2. obscure enough, and 3. not available on CD. I truly believed that Ham & Scram met those criteria. Besides: I only post one song and not a whole album, and I rip it in the lowest possible resolution. If a certain album is for sale elsewhere on the net I think a post with one song, like mine, would provide some free valuable advertisement for those with commercial interest. Not according to whoever it was with an interest in Ham & Scram. That said, I don't think there will be any problem this week publishing a song from a record with even less internet presence than the Ham & Scram album. Where the Ham & Scram record was referenced about 5 times on line, I could not find a single reference for Souvenirs from Slovakia played by the Eugene Farkas Gypsy Ensemble of Bratislava. I like to think that this means that the record is rare and valuable but it's more likely that it's just a forgotten worthless piece of history that was only put out to make a few bucks on tourists. I'm sure if Eugene Farkas is still alive, he wouldn't think it was worthless, I don't think it's worthless, I'm sure Zuzanka Antošková would be thrilled to hear it. The number of records from Slovakia in my collection is proportionately very small (only two). During the golden era of souvenir records, as well as ethno-musicological records, roughly from the mid-fifties to the early seventies, Slovakia was not an independent country but part of Czechoslovakia. Zuzanka Antošková is the soloist with the Eugene Farkas Ensemble on the following track called Hore Hronom, Dolu Hronom (the Hron river).

Country Comedy

Country Comedy: Songs & Frolic by
Ham & Scram, featuring Buzz Busby
Mount Vernon Music, MVM 176
Made in Mount Vernon, NY, USA

This one could have also been called Don't Judge a Book By its Cover, Part 2. My expectancy with this record after investigating the cover was to hear backwoods slapstick humor and I was worried that such a well loved yet ominous folk ballad as Pretty Polly is, would be totally butchered by such irreverent looking characters on the cover (and I didn't even show the back side!) And I was wrong, totally wrong, their Pretty Polly is in fact one of the most intriguing versions I've heard, and the  record as a whole easily falls into the A category of American traditional music. Ham & Scram is the musical duo of Pete Pike and Buzz Busby from Washington, DC. Guitar player Pete Pike from Virginia is mainly known for his association with the mandolin player Buzz Busby, who is an established name in the history of Bluegrass music. Bernarr Busbice was born in 1933 in Louisiana and among his credits is the formation of the popular group The Country Gentleman in 1957. But after the successful decade of the 1950s, Busby's career went downhill due to his "growing fondness of alcohol and drugs". After a term in jail he only occasionally performed and recorded. He died of heart failure in 2003. You can listen to Pretty Polly below.

Don't judge a record by its cover

Svívbajok ellen, kisasszony, 
szedjen tangót!
Various artists, Pepita LPX 17734
Made in Hungary, 1982

Charlotte Harbor Exhaust on Tamiami Trail is the garage I bring my car to when there's a problem with it I can't fix. It has happened too often in recent weeks. There's a little thrift store right up the street from it. It's called the Thrift Depot and I wrote about it last week, and the week before that, in respect to some Hungarian records I picked up there. So when I had to wait again a few days ago while my car was being worked on, I knew that they wouldn't have any new records at the Thrift Depot but I went nevertheless. All Hungarian records I had picked up on previous visits were really nice, and I knew there was one more I had left behind and I was going back for it. I didn't buy it last week because of the cheesy cover: How can a record with such a hideous cover be any good? Anyway, it was still there, as a matter of fact it was in the exact same spot I had left it a week earlier, right in front of one of the five rows of records situated on the floor. I spotted it the very moment I opened the door of the store. I inspected it before I forked over my dollar bill and it was fine. It was in good shape, dedicated in pen on the front cover (I would however not consider this a signed record), and that was all I could tell about this record because all the texts are in Hungarian (or Magyar). When I got home, not feeling too good because I had just spent more than a year's worth of my thrift store records budget, I immediately played the record, and all was good. As if I had gone to a doctor, just for him to a put a stethoscope on my back and tell me nothing was wrong with me. I kinda knew nothing was wrong but I needed his reassurance. (No, I don't look anything like that doctor or patient on that sleeve. I sort of look like the cross between the two of them, but older. Put her hair on him, shave off his moustache, and add a decade or two worth of age, then you've got an approximation of what I look like. I once had a very detailed dream featuring myself in a situation in Hungary around the time of the second world war. If there exists such a thing as reincarnation I surely would have been a Hungarian in my former life.) The record is full of songs that are tangos (I could have deducted that word from the Hungarian title) that sound like they could have been recorded in the late fifties or early sixties. It's a beautiful record and I picked for this week's "Song of the Week" the 4th song from side A: Ne Szólj! by the singer Mária Mezei. Almost every song could've been chosen, that's how good it really is, but since I have this tradition of posting songs sung by singers named Maria, I opted for this one.

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.