Vinyl excitement

Background music is often derided.  Especially when the music's classical.  I remember doing calculus problem sets to Beethoven and Schumann -- probably a waste of good music, and not much of a help to me in my problem solving.  But maybe, even as background, music makes small desirable changes to the brain's synapses.  Who knows?

Anyway, a few minutes ago, I was slowly grazing my way through that book on the history of Yugoslavia and Serbo-Croatian civilization that I discussed a few posts ago (I'm now 54 percent of my way through it), with KING-FM playing as "background music."  I can read for an entire evening this way, without recalling anything I heard when I finish.  But at some point I stopped reading and actually listened to KING's broadcast of a Bach harpsichord concerto.  Wow, I thought, that's so great.  Harpsichords really do rock, don't they?

And the first thing I thought of was a record from my childhood entitled Said the Piano to the Harpsichord.   It was a record I had received, when I was about 8 or 9, from the Young People's Record Club --  a sort of a Book-of-the-Month Club for kids, with 78 rpm records instead of books.  The record consisted of an argument between an overbearing piano and a much politer harpsichord about who made the better music.  They duked it out with bits of famous classical pieces that each excelled in.  The battle ended in a draw, with each admitting that music came in many varieties, and the piano and the harpsichord each excelled in creating certain kinds of effects that the other couldn't duplicate.

It was one of my favorite records from that club, for reasons that I don't really understand now.  I understand why it was a very good record for kids, but I'm not sure I'm clear now why  I was so attracted to it as a child.

In any event, I then began thinking about the Club.  I think my membership began not long after we bought a radio-phonograph console when I was about six.  We got records for years, but eventually the selections became more enjoyable for my younger brother, and then sister.  Even with all the dispassion of my senior years, however, I'm convinced that the best selections were the early ones when I was in my record-listening prime.  Those early records seemed to assume a certain maturity on the part of the child, while the later ones sounded (to me, in my insufferable later childhood) more like stuff you give your kid to keep him amused.

I confess I may be biased.

Anyway, the Club had some very memorable selections that stick in my mind.  And, just before I began writing this post, I found a website that lists many of the earlier selections.  The Club, as a monthly arrive-in-the mail club, lasted from 1946 to 1952, and those included the years when the Club appealed to me.

The first record I ever received was -- I remember it well -- Risselty Rosselty -- a collection of Appalachian folk songs.  The title song included the memorable verse:

She churned the butter in pa's old boot,
Risselty rosselty now now now;
And for a churn she used her foot,
Risselty rosselty, hey bombosity, knickety knackety 
Retrical quality, willaby wallaby now now now.

I always wondered what a "pozzled boot" was!  Years later, I saw a comment on a web page from a woman who had wondered the same thing when she listened to the same record as a child!

The website listed, apparently, only those records that were still available for sale.  Risselty Rosselty, sadly, wasn't among them.  Some that were available included Licorice Stick: The Clarinet's Story; The Little Fireman; Little Indian Drum ("Where is Red Fox, where is Red Fox?" "I am here!  I am here!"); Pussy Cat's Christmas; Frère Jacques and the Bells of Calais; Chisholm Trail; Every Day We Grow I-O; and Little Brass Band. 

Most of these, admittedly, had no relation to classical music.  Many presented different forms of American folk music.  Many presented favorite themes from our great American myths.  Some of them -- later ones, mainly -- taught kids how to survive in society, in one form or another.

But it was the earlier ones -- most of which weren't available or mentioned on the website -- that I remember and that I think represented an admirable attempt to help kids grow up educated in our nation's history and its civilization, including musical traditions.

(Unrelated to the record club, but achieving some of the same goals, were the admirable Standard School Broadcasts ("brought to you by the Standard Oil Company of California, and broadcast throughout the Eleven Western States, Alaska, and Hawaii.") Our music teachers in the upper grades played each week's broadcast to us off a tape recorder.)  

I'm sure similar attempts are made at present to civilize the little savages, and that parents of young children could tell me all about them.  But, in my world as a child, there was nothing like the excitement of having that 78 rpm record arrive each month in the mail.  And then playing it over, and over, and over.  And over.  

As my folks would tell you, if only they could be here.