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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

Can’t remember how this British disc early in The Winner label’s catalog made it into the collection – probably part of a larger lot. I tend to hold on to interesting discs like this. Reminds me a bit of something the EMGColonel might play (R.I.P.).

I’d dedicate it to my dear departed grandmother, Kathryn Rooney, but she likely would have disapproved of such cantankerous carrying on. She once sang in the choir for Pope John Paul II when he visited Des Moines in 1979. I recently found out my grandfather converted to Catholicism to marry her, so that gives you an idea of the radiant power of an Irish lass.

Me, I love the whooping and hollering during the tune. These fellas were having a grand time while recording this one!

Released as The Winner 2028 circa 1912 – at the twilight of the Edwardian era and the eve of the Great War.

In any case, this one is suitable for playing on loop at St. Patrick’s Day dance parties.

Slán go fóill!

Ok – an ambitious and uncharacteristically unjazzy choice today – a little Christmas music from my man Tschaikowsky, who I first heard about after hearing Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Nutcracker Suite 😉.

While there were earlier recordings of selected passages from the Nutcracker ballet, this 1926 recording spanning three 12″ discs includes about 20 minutes of the score. It is one of the first multi-record album sets of the ballet to be issued to my knowledge.

Also, it appears to have been recorded electrically – so also is a very early – perhaps the first – electrical recording of the music of the Nutcracker.

A few jazzier holiday tunes to come this week – right up until Xmas.

Recorded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 10, 1926.
Released as a three disc album, Victrola M-3 (individual catalog numbers 6615, 6616, and 6617).

Credits:
Conductor: Leopold Stokowski
Orchestra: Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra

And now a word from our sponsors…

But seriously – it’s kind of amazing that at one time, the ball point pen – considered nothing short of “miraculous” when it first came out – was one of the hottest new technologies you could buy. Invented by Hungarian László Bíró in 1944, it was very quickly reverse-engineered by Chicago businessman Milton Reynolds and offered for sale in the U.S. within months.

According to the Reynolds website:
“The first Reynolds pen debuted in New York on the morning of October 29, 1945. The day the pen went on sale, an estimated 5,000 shoppers stormed the shop, and approximately 50 NYPD officers had to be dispatched for crowd control.”

Time magazine reported that Gimbels in NYC sold 30,000 of the pens (which went for $12.50 each) in the first week.

While most Americans will be hard pressed to find a Reynolds pen to buy, the company is still in existence and is prospering in India.

On this record you hear the voice of Franklin Lamb, President of Reynolds Pen Company. Before he joined Reynolds, Lamb worked as the Advertising Director of Gimbel’s department store. He left Reynolds in 1949, so that helps to date this record to some Christmas between 1946 and 1948.

In this promotional disc, Lamb excitedly tells Reynolds’ retailers about a new promotional initiative that he has cooked up to promote Reynolds Pens – a radio show featuring singer Georgie Price, who by that point had been retired from the entertainment industry and working at a brokerage firm.