Experience to Innocence: My First Records
I want to start by saying this morning I came across the recent GQ interview of Mick Jagger. Note the article is listed under the GQ department of "Wellness."
"Mick Jagger’s Guide to Longevity Includes High-Intensity Exercise and No Drugs: It’s a no to saunas and cold plunges, and a yes to laying off the drinking after 40. Ahead of the release of the 33rd Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues, GQ spoke to the legendary frontman about staying alive."
Well, Jagger doesn't actually say "No drugs." He says no drugs all the time or no drugs in excess. But that's splitting hairs here because at the point I read a headline like this I feel like I'm in the movie Clue walking alongside Madeline Kahn, Leslie Ann Warren, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean and Martin Mull, going door to door with a spent-up soul finding dead bodies in every room.
Celebrity wellness is relevant to me because I've been writing a lot about celebrity health advice lately; and I think the only thing more absurd than rock stars dispensing health advice would be models and actresses dispensing health advice. In fact, we should probably throw out the whole show-biz health guru as a category.
But then journalism is suspect in all this too because this headline feels too much like manipulative click bait, like how could I not have experienced cognitive dissonance here, GQ; and Jagger was probably just innocently answering questions put to him about being 83, which is always the headline now about the Rolling Stones. (Gasp, they're still alive.)
And so we really are all stuck in the movie Clue: we all did it! The clues point to all of us.
Sigh.
Anyway, at times like this it helps me to go back to the beginning. What did I love about records in the first place, before all the posturing and social malfeasance, before the days when none of us cared about impressing the cool kids. When pretending meant just pretending for fun.
And my first records have been on my mind anyway because three weekends ago I had about 30 people traipsing through my Cher She-Shed, which is never exactly a pleasant experience for me. On first seeing the Cher She-Shed, people are usually surprised and delighted (at least outwardly) but I'm always worried they'll be disturbed instead, which means on some level I'm the one who is disturbed by my uber-collection.
And the story always comes up in the Cher She-Shed about its official security plan (prepared for an assignment in a museum studies class) and that always leads to pointing out the most valuable (to me) part of the collection, which are the record albums (entirely and affordably replaceable but inexplicably and sentimentally valued most highly); and since we were all there that day for my mother, when the conversation was occurring about the recrods I could hear my mother's comment made on Facebook years ago still ringing in my ears, (I could hear it), that one time I brought to her attention a Puff the Magic Dragon clip.
She said, "you sure did love your records." And that comment has kind of haunted me. Because I loved my records.
She was talking about these multimedia storybook/records I had when I was 5-7 years old.
And here is where this music blog will cross-paths with my literary blog, Big Bang Poetry, because thinking about all this has led to an epiphany as to why I love muti-media reading projects to this day: House of Leaves in combination with that Poe album, museum word/music mashups, interactive poems and stories and those childhood record albums that came with books!
In the best cases, you would read along with the books verbatim. In the case of the Disney albums, you would get summaries inbetween the soundtrack music, summaries which did not map to the words on the album's storybook pages. Kind of disappointing but better than nothing.
1. Acting Out the ABCs (1967)
It probably all stared with this record. Walt Disney presents Acting Out the ABCs is full of songs, poems and stories. A good introduction to letters for me but a bit shrill in retrospect.
2. Georgie and Georgie and the Robbers (1963)
For me, things really got interesting with more dramatic childhood thrillers, like Georgie and the Robbers. This might have been one of my brother's records. It came as a combination of a paperback book and a separate single-sized 33 1/3 record. We had a variety of these things but some of my favorites came from Scholastic Books and Albums.
This one is available on YouTube and you can read along with Alan Mills.
We also had the record to Georgie, the book that introduces this heroic apparition, but the book is since lost. Here's the online version.
I haven't seen these drawings in decades and yet I now instantly remember them each in detail. And this reminds me how I'd want to play the record twice in a row, once to read along with the narrator and once to study the pictures as the story progressed.
In fact, my parents quickly got tired of starting and turning the records over for me and they taught me how to work the phonograph by myself. The springs on the heavy lid were broken and I had to hold it up with my little head while I set the record, turned on the turntable and set the needle. That was really high-tech for me at age 5. And I spent hours and hours with these things. I can still remember the sophisticated and juicy feeling of experiencing something theatrical and yet literary.
3. The Elves and the Shoemaker (1975)
Another set I loved was The Elves and The Shoemaker also narrated by Alan Mills. This one isn't available on YouTube so I've created a little sample video.
4. I Know An Old Lady (1969)
I had this book and album too but it's long gone. I found it online searching for Alan Mills. Playback is disabled so here is the link.
5. "What Was I Scared Of?" from Dr. Seuss Presents "Horton Hatches The Egg", "The Sneetches" And Other Stories (1964)
Georgie and this Dr. Seuss story about the empty pants probably set me down on the path of loving ghostly stories. And I think these records and their crackling ASMR experiences also explain my love of film foley.
This record album went missing in our house, was probably broken in pieces during a scuffle between my two brothers. And we kept the empty cardboard sleeve for years thinking maybe the vinyl disc would be found again someday. As since this was one of the scariest childhood stories, I really mourned its missing-ness and eventually found a new copy on eBay recently.
This album was just narration. You had to provide the book from your own library. Not ideal but my Dad was a big Dr. Seuss fan and so I had an encyclopedic set.
6. Aesop's Fables (1972)
I also had this Aesop's Fables record book combo produced by Columbia Records. Beautifully illustrated, you could study the pictures during the narration by Marshall Izen. Each story had the Aesop's epigram at the end, which I'm sure aided in my intellectual and moral development.
This one also isn't available on YouTube so here's a copy I made of a single story, "The Sun and the Wind."
I loved this record.
7. Puff the Magic Dragon
I had two sources for this, a Wonder Book record by Golden Records (1965) that contained 6 stories but the only story I remember from it was Puff the Magic Dragon. I have vivid memories of these pictures and, as illustrated here you can see, I signed my name in the book wherever it was suggested. (I was a such a good student.)
This recording was helpful in that it would ding and tell you when to turn the page. Here's my sample video apparently narrated by a generic school marm.
The book's story on Snow White did have me curious about the sleeping arrangements in this apartment.
We also had a Walt Disney Presents album (1967) full of Dragon stories and music. This was the song I sent to my mother, a song sung by Sally Sweetland, Bill Lee and Thurl Ravenscroft (a familiar and favorite voice for fans of Dr. Seuss TV specials).
My mom had probably been made to listen to this song about a hundred times in a row.
8. The Music Machine (1977)
One evening in St. Louis, a door-to-door salesman came around and sold my parents The Music Machine Christian album. My parents weren't really into this sort of thing but it's possible they were being too polite to refuse. Here's the whole album. It had a record book you could follow along with and was eventually made into a TV cartoon. It's Christian message of love and kindness sounds crazy hippie radical right about now. It is almost un-listenable unfortunately but the color illustrations were lush.
9. Disney's Hans Christian Andersen (1967)
We also had this Walt Disney Presents the Stories of Hans Christian Andersen (1967) album I loved. This is the audio only (but the album came with a book).
I have never forgotten the drawings for the empty loom and the parade for "The Emperor's New Clothes."
And I was heartbroken by the story of the little match girl. That roast feast and the snow on the steps and then the image of her mother before she died. Terrible!
10. Rankin & Bass The Hobbit (1977)
Long before I actually saw the Rankin & Bass TV special and way before I read the book, I had this album memorized.
11. From Dumbo, Pink Elephants on Parade (1941) sung by The Sportsmen.
Then there were all the Disney movie albums we had, not great as read-alongs of the stories, basically just song soundtracks with interconnecting narrative tissue.
I developed a whole playlist of songs I loved. Those horns on this one!
12. When I See an Elephant Fly (1941) sung by Cliff Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir. This is a tough one because the song is full of stereotypes (just depicting black people as crows in the first place) but also the minstrel characterization and the egregious use of Jim Crow as a name for one of the crows. But this five year old did not appreciate all that (just some racism for the white adults to enjoy, I guess) but instead was focused on the delightful word puns, the great melody, the comradery of the scene and the fact that the crows were one of the few friends Dumbo had (and the song's big finish).
But this song does illustrate that Disney has a history that was as ugly as any sidekick Disney villain and one that's not limited to this particular song.
13. From Alice in Wonderland, In a World Of My Own (1951) sung by the Camarata Chorus and Orchestra with Darlene Gillespie.
"The greatest problems would be things a child could understand." That would be nice.
Each album had a "Magic Mirror" cut-out feature on the cover of the book/album sleeve and I thought that was a delightfully high-tech indulgence. It showed a preview of the page underneath, which was always an amazing collage of all the characters and the setting of the story.
The singers on these albums weren't always the same ones from the movies. In the movie, Kathryn Beaumont did the singing as Alice but the versions I remember where these Disney recreations.
14. I'm Late (1951) sung by Camarata Chorus and Orchestra.
"And when I wave, I lose the time I save. My fuzzy ears and whiskers took me too much time to shave."
Great lyrics this one.
15. The Unbirthday Song (1951) sung by the Camarata Chorus and Orchestra.
"Statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday, one birthday ever year. But there are 364 unbirthdays."
You can't argue with those numbers.
16. I Give Myself Very Good Advice (1951) sung by the Camarata Chorus and Orchestra with Darlene Gillespie. Probably one of my favorite songs.
17. From Cinderella, A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes (1950) sung by Ilene Woods. Many times covered (including many times covered by Cher), this is like the quintessential Disney movie song. It's also a song misguiding pretty much everybody in the universe (except relationship therapists) since 1950...but still a fun song to sing.
I spent a lot of time staring at this brick cooking contraption in the book. How did it work?
18. Bibbidi-Bobiddi-Boo (1950) sung by Verna Felton. I once lost my mind in an overcrowded Kansas City airport and starting singing this song quietly to entertain my husband who had also just lost his mind.
19. From The Jungle Book, The Bare Necessities (1967) sung by Phil Harris and Bruce Reitherman.
20. I Wan'na Be Like You (1967) sung by Louis Prima and Phil Harris. (I did not know I was listening to Louis Prima here. Huh.)
And this is how you teach kids swing jazz.
21. From Bambi, Love Is a Song (1942) sung by Donald Novis.
22. Little April Showers (1942). I love this one sung by the Disney Studio Chorus.
23. Mary Poppins (1964). Every song in this movie is dreamy or delightful (the whole thing is worth a listen), but the first song l loved from it was I Love to Laugh (1964). When I ever tried to say something funny to my mother, she would give me the snake laugh.
For Disney records, we also had Snow White (1937), Peter Pan (1953) and The Arabian Nights. I loved to listen along to Arabian Nights (probably with Alice in Wonderland and the Hans Christian Anderson, my favorite records issued by Walt Disney) but Peter Pan didn't have any music I liked. (But stay tuned for Patty Griffin.) There were songs I listened to on the Snow White record but the songs sound much more dated. For example, I liked "With a Smile and a Song" (sung by Adriana Caselotti) but can also easily see how it could become the target for Shrek's spoofing.
Overall, these older records sounded too precious and thin. We also had Pinocchio (1940) and I felt I should have liked "When You Wish Upon a Star" (sung by Cliff Edwards), but I liked "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee" (sung by Walter Catlett) better.
After this early phase of record listening came the next record phase when I grew old enough to understand the Marlo Thomas Free to Be You and Me album as well as the first Partridge Family Album and the Sonny & Cher albums my Aunt and Uncle sent us from Alaska (which had the Wrecking Crew in common). Then I branched out to explore my Dad's stack of albums (Johnny Cash) and my brother Andrew's Red Baron vs. Snoopy cassette tape and my first favorite Beatles song overheard from my brother Randy's budding collection, and then the first 1970s pop songs I heard on the radio and the great TV themes.
But those are all songs for another day.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with an old song from my childhood that has been made sadly relevant again. The song is performed perfectly by the incomparable Glynis Johns in 1964.
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