Welcome To Christmas 2010!!

OK, this is your official welcome message to Christmas 2010 at Ernie (Not Bert)!  This year has been a long time coming after the hard drive debacle of last year that greatly curtailed my sharing.  This year, I've backed everything up double, got a lot of stuff already zipped up and ready to go, so it promises to be a bang up year.  This is my sixth year of trying to share the greatest lost Christmas music in the known universe with you.  My goal is to share music that has fallen through the cracks, stuff that was once important to someone, but has somehow been forgotten in this era of MP3s and digital downloads.  I've got full albums and singles, vinyl both thick and thin, a cardboard flexidisc, and who knows what else to share with you this year.  I took some time to re-record some of my old favorite shares this year, so you're going to see a lot of those as well as lots of new stuff.  As usual, all shares are zipped up and comes with images of the cover and label.  Most of the current shares are MP3 files at 192 Kpbs stereo, 96 mono.  Everything I give you was recorded by me from my own records, unless I mention otherwise, but that's pretty few and far between.  I've got a couple of things in here this year where folks have given me records, and I really appreciate their generosity, I'll give credit where credit is due when I post those.  I also hope to point you to some of my own favorite sharity sites on the internet, places where you can go and get records that are probably better than the ones I share.  One thing I don't do is share CDs, or records that are available on CD.  I don't care how hard you may have to work to find the CD, I'm not going to send you a copy of it, so please don't ask.  Lots of things I've shared in the past are now on CD, or available for legal download somewhere like iTunes or Amazon.  I'll try to point you to those places when I can if you're looking for something that used to be shared here.  It's a good thing when labels take the time to restore their old stuff, so I enjoy seeing old stuff made available again.  Often I wish they'd do a better job of it, but something is better than nothing.  Anyhow, I'm blathering, so let me just say thank you to all the folks who come by during the season.  I enjoy all the music I record, and I hope you do too.

The Last Thanksgiving Soundtrack

I promise, this is the last filmstrip soundtrack about Thanksgiving I have to share with you today.  And I'm going to hold off a while on the Christmas filmstrip soundtracks I have ready to go, just to give you a bit of a break.  In fact, this 12" record has a Thanksgiving story on one side, and a Christmas story on the other, and I'm going to give both of them to you, how's that?  So technically, this is my first Christmas share!  I'd hoped to have something better as my first, but this is what happens when you don't think these things through.  Please download Lollipop Dragon Helps Santa b/w Thanksgiving In Tum Tum from the series Holiday Adventures Of The Lollipop Dragon (Singer/SVE L 106-4RR, Mono).  It's not that bad, really...

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Another Thanksgiving Soundtrack

Yes, it's another soundtrack to yet another filmstrip about Thanksgiving.  This time it's Thanksgiving For King (Singer/SVE A107-3RR, Mono), a nice story about a boy and his bird.  It's a tad predictable, but think about the audience this was intended for.  The narrator here is Mary Skol, and if you should happen to notice this is side two, you might be interested in knowing that the flip side was Rumplestiltskin.  It appears to be from a series called Children's Stories, but this was the only record from that series among the many soundtracks I've found.

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Have at it!

Ye Olde Thanksgiving Share

First shared out two years ago, this is the soundtrack to one of those filmstrips you used to dread watching in grade school.  At least I dreaded watching them.  They were only about two steps above a travelogue slide show at your aunt's house, and that was only the good ones.  I've never found any of these with the original film strips, but I'm not sure what I'd do with them if I did.  Heaven knows how hard they'd be to scan.  Someday, maybe.  Until then, why don't you go ahead and download Maurice Copeland-Narrator & Adele Scott-Organist, Squanto And The First Thanksgiving (Society For Visual Education XTAC-83759 (One Sided 12" 33 RPM), Mono).  I've stumbled across a few more of these in the past year, so if you like this sort of thing, stay tuned.  If not, come back tomorrow...

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It's Thanksgiving!! Finally!

Well, here we are, the day I thought would never come, or the day I knew would sneak up on me before I could get ready for it.  Either way, it's finally Thanksgiving, and that means the beginning of the Christmas sharity season.  As I've done now for six years (it only seems like forever), I kick off the season with my favorite Thanksgiving song, Thanksgiving Day Parade by Spencer Ross (Columbia 4-41532 7" 45 RPM single, Mono, 1960).  I re-recorded my single this year to see if i could get a little better sound out of it (as I did with many, many of my old shares this year.  You'll see...).  I started using a great little program called ClickRepair this year, which does a really, really good job of, umm, removing clicks (more on that later).  To this day, I don't know anything else about Spencer Ross, so maybe it's high time I did a little serious checking.  Hmmm, according to this article in the Billboard archives (more on those later, too...), Spencer Ross was a pseudonym for someone named Bob Mersey.  The flip side of this record, Tracy's Theme, was the 'hit', this side seems to have disappeared until I found it.  And Spencer Ross disappeared, too, although that article mentions a follow-up coming soon on a different label.  All these years and I never bothered to look that up...  Anyhow, I've also got a couple of new tracks this year for you that I'm throwing into the download as well, just to make it worth your while.  First up is The Pete King Orchestra And Chorale (whose Christmas LP is a big favorite around these parts) with Bless This House from Songs To Celebrate (Kapp KS-3284, 1962, Stereo).  I shared another track from that LP with you back during Christmas In July (and August and September...), so the LP may sound familiar to you.  Next up is a children's ditty called Timothy Turkey performed by Rosemarie Jun & Robert Spiro from the LP Children Sing Around The Year (Decca DL 4406, 1963, Mono).  Again, you first saw a track from this LP back in August as part of Christmas In July (and August and September).  OK, that's three tracks, but you also get two tracks that I shared out new last year for Thanksgiving, bringing the total here to 5.  Not bad for the first share of the year.  Those two tracks are The Big Clown Balloons, performed by The Merrill Stanton Voices from the LP Meredith Willson's Here's Love (Columbia Special Products CSRP 8899, 1963, Stereo) and Thanksgiving Day, from the LP Hits From The Gang Shows (Fontanta 680932TL TFL.5104, Mono). credited to Ken Jones. Look at me, I've rambled on for an hour about five measly tracks. How am I ever going to get through the season?  OK, now to the downloads.  I know many of you hate RapidShare.  So I'm going to try a couple of other download services this year, all of the in parallel for as long as I can keep it up.  RapidShare is still my default sharing site, mostly because I have a pre-paid membership which makes it really easy to use, but that's of no use to you if you can't download my shares.  There are three links to the download below, get it from wherever you feel is easiest.

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And there you have it.  Be sure to check back often as it's all down hill from here to Christmas Day!

Soon, Very Soon

Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  That's when the blog comes back to life.  Go buy yourself an external hard drive now.  :)

Chanukah On Labor Day-Part 2

Well, I know it's a long way from Labor Day, but it's still part two of what I started way back then.  Been real busy trying to get ready for Christmas if you've been wondering what I'm up to.  I've got tons to do between now and then, so blog posts are going to be pretty light for a while.  But come Christmas, hold on to your hats!  Tonight I've got five more Chanukah songs that I recorded for you back in August that I should have shared with you in September, but here it is October.  Oh, well.  Track one is Hanukkah Song by John Klein from his LP Around The World On A Carillon (Columbia "Adventures In Sound" WL 135 (Vinyl is marked XLP 43458 from Schulmerich, no mention of Columbia), Mono)).  This is probably my favorite of the bunch, just because it's John Klein.  The other four tracks are all by The Jack Elliot Orchestra And Chorus from their album Hebrew Holidays In Song (Capitol ST 2167, Stereo, 1964).  The titles are Maoz Tzur (Rock Of Ages), S'Vivon (Dreidel), Mi Y'Malel (Who Can Retell) and Chanukah, Oy, Chanukah.  I wasn't sure those were all Chanukah songs, but the back of the label was nice enough to tell me which songs were appropriate for what holiday.  Anyhow, there's the last half of something I started last month.  Here's the download link, hope you enjoy them!