First Times

First Times

This week, it’s personal. Boneapart skipped into new territory at the GNCC Arena Championship bonspiel — a first time playing on Sunday, a first time in a championship final. Runners-up in the C final, sure, but the letter on the bracket isn’t the point. The point is he’d never been there before. This was his first. So here’s the question: what are some others? First, off-theme and by way of welcome, Tuchki nebesnyia — “Clouds of the Skies” — a setting of Lermontov’s poem about clouds as eternal wanderers, composed by Alexander Dargomyzhsky and sung by Russian soprano Maria Mikhailova in 1903. The label names the composer and the singer but forgets the poet, so we’ll put Lermontov back where he belongs. Mikhailova made over 300 records and became one of the first singers anywhere to win her fame chiefly through the gramophone. Then the firsts. Chimes Blues, cut by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band for Gennett in 1923, is a tidy twelve-bar blues — but listen to the twenty-four bars in the middle, the first recorded solo by a twenty-one-year-old second cornet named Louis Armstrong. Everything he’d become starts right there. And You May Be Lonesome, by Art Gillham, “The Whispering Pianist,” for Columbia in 1925 — credited as the first electrically recorded disc issued to the public. The first time a record caught a whisper, sung by the man who whispered for a living. Three firsts. What’s yours?

Animal House

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, we throw open the barn door for “Animal House” — three records with critters in the title and not a serious thought among them. No grand theme, no hidden agenda. Just a bird, some chickens, and a bee, scattered across two decades of shellac. We open with “On the Wing” (1904), a breakneck galop from Arthur Pryor’s Orchestra hiding behind the house name “Victor Dance Orchestra.” Pryor was Sousa’s star trombonist, and this one moves like something with feathers and a head start. Then the Six Brown Brothers turn their saxophones loose on “Chasing the Chickens” (1918), a fox-trot from vaudeville’s favorite reed-blowing clowns — back when the saxophone was still the funniest instrument in the room. We close with “Bee’s Knees” (1922), a Ted Lewis romp co-written by New Orleans cornetist Ray Lopez, the same man who’d helped copyright the first jazz record five years earlier. The title was brand-new slang that year: the very best of the very best.

Games

Three Tune Tuesday plays tunes. So why does this week open with a man reciting a poem? Because the best story about a game isn’t always sung. The theme this week is “Games,” and we follow the stakes as they drain right out of one — from everything riding on a single swing, through the swagger of a man who never loses, to an afternoon where the only thing on the line is a bag of peanuts. We open at the ballpark in Mudville, where DeWolf Hopper throws his whole booming theatrical might into Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” (Victor, 1909) and the mighty Casey goes down swinging in front of the entire town. Then we take to the road with Kelly Harrell’s “Rovin’ Gambler” (Victor, 1925), the wandering player who wins every hand — and the girl besides. We land back in the bleachers with Harvey Hindermeyer’s “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” (1908), one of the very first recordings ever made of it, where the game costs nothing and everybody goes home happy. Hope, swagger, and Cracker Jack — three spins of the shellac. This week’s theme is inspired by our friends at https://ancient.games [https://ancient.games].

D-Day

D-Day happened in 1944. Three Tune Tuesday only plays music recorded before 1927. So how do you tell a D-Day story with songs that predate it by decades? You tell the story underneath the story. This week, we’re not playing war songs. We’re playing three recordings that trace the arc of what D-Day actually was — a moral obligation, a human cost, and a hard-won liberation — without a single reference to Normandy, the Atlantic Wall, or the Allies.

Double Middles

This week’s Three Tune Tuesday is personal, political, and unapologetically defiant. When Donald Trump attempted to stage a partisan concert and seven of nine scheduled artists declined to participate upon learning its true nature, it was a reminder that saying “no” is one of the most powerful things an artist can do. That act of refusal — of drawing a line and refusing to let your name, your talent, or your reputation be used for something that conflicts with your convictions — is the thread that ties together this week’s three selections. We open with Eva Tanguay’s “I Don’t Care” (1922, Nordskog Records), the only recording ever made by the woman known as the Queen of Vaudeville, whose entire career was built on the radical act of not giving a damn what anyone thought of her. From there we move to Gus Van’s “Promise Me Everything, Never Get Anything Blues” (1923, Columbia), a Tin Pan Alley blues complaint about being strung along by someone who talks big and delivers nothing — a sentiment that needs no further explanation in the current moment. We close with Bert Williams’ “Never Mo’” (1920, Columbia), a song monolog by the greatest Black entertainer of the early twentieth century, a man who spent his entire career navigating a system designed to exploit him while denying him basic dignity. “Never mo’” — nevermore — is the final word, the line drawn in permanent ink. Sometimes the most important thing an artist can say is no. Sometimes the most eloquent gesture is a double middle finger. BERT WILLIAM’S SILENT MOVIES * Fish (1916) [https://peertube.blindskeleton.one/w/fp7ckcLag37jA98WoaV7qX] * Natural Born Gambler (1915) [https://peertube.blindskeleton.one/w/eerzP8nEVUKSaJ8YdZaAne]