Stuff My Dad Dug

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 12:21 am

My Dad was a gigantic music fan his enormous record collection spanned from 78's of the 20's to jazz of the 60's. He was especially fond of big bands and dixieland, but he knew his quality from his shlock. He owned a ton of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, while there was nary a single crappy Glenn Miller album in his entire collection. Before the days of PCs and databases, he had his entire collection catalogued by hand in (now sadly lost) booklets. Around 1980 he donated his entire collection of 78's (probably worth thousands of dollars) to the local college radio station who are still playing them on their weekly swing era program.

He died on Monday at 84 after several years in a nursing home. My job for the funeral is to compile a CD of music to be played during the ceremony. My older sisters brought over a bunch of his favorite and most-often-played LP's and I've spent the last few days recording them to mp3's. The records are often scratchy, but some of this music is truly amazing. Goodman, Shaw, Armstrong, Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, Ellington, were among this pile. When people hear "big bands", they think "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "In the Mood" and the Andrew Sisters, but the truly great big band music is rarely heard. Goodman's Carnegie Hall concert, for example, or Shaw's Gramercy Five sessions, are masterpieces.

Anyway, it's what I'm currently digging.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:37 am

Sorry to hear about your dad, Jim.
Back when SoundForge was owned by Sonic Foundry they made some plugins for cleaning up noise, including record noises. I've got a copy... might be able to find you a link if you want to clean those recordings up (however, I don't have time currently to do it for you).
-bill

jimtyrrell · Post by **jimtyrrell** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 7:13 am

Sorry to hear the news, Jim.
I must say, though, that's one CD I'd love to listen to. Sounds awesome.

Jim of Seattle · Post by **Jim of Seattle** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:41 am

Thanks. I'll be sure to post the CD's playlist when it's done.

Bill, I have played with a de-scratcher plugin before, and all it managed to do (besides reduce the scratches of course) is remove all the high-end from the recording, so I always ended up preferring to keep the scratches. Is yours that way?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:54 am

I don't know, I never tried to clean up vinyl with it, I just know it's supposed to do it. It did a heck of a good job on cleaning the clipped peaks on one of the sounds in my # cover... without killing the actual sound.
-bill

Kapitano · Post by **Kapitano** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:23 pm

My father wants my help in transferring his vinyl collection of 50s and 60s jazz to CD.

Art Blakey - brilliant. Miles Davis - inspirational. Herbie Hancock - fascinating.

The Swingles - oh dear. Acker Bilk - um. An unreasonably large of vibraphone solos - really quite astoundingly bad.

j$ · Post by j$ » Thu Apr 14, 2005 6:51 pm

Kapitano wrote:My father wants my help in transferring his vinyl collection of 50s and 60s jazz to CD.
The Swingles - oh dear. .

Do the Swingle Singers count as jazz? If I was jazz, I would be keeping very quiet ...

j$

Kapitano · Post by **Kapitano** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 7:41 pm

j$ wrote:
Kapitano wrote:The Swingles - oh dear. .
Do the Swingle Singers count as jazz? If I was jazz, I would be keeping very quiet ...

Well, judging from the sleevenotes of Jazz Sabastian Bach, they think they're jazz. They also think JS Bach was a proto-jazzman.

http://www.jsbach.org/swinglejazzsebastianbach.html

Other toothgrating albums from The Swindlers:
*Jingle Bell Jam: Jazz Christmas Classics
*A Cappella Christmas Party
*Have Yourself A Jazzy Little Christmas

Caravan Ray · Post by **Caravan Ray** » Fri Apr 15, 2005 7:38 am

Sad news Jim.

My mum died last October - her musical taste was fairly awful, but she did introduce me to the concept of 'fun' music via her old '50's compilation records with Bill Haley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis etc. (that wasn't the 'awful' part of her musical taste - that came through the Ray Coniff, Kenny Rogers and Al Martino records).

On the morning of her funeral I decided I really should do a song in the service because "she would have liked it". I recalled asking her as a little boy what her favourite song was and she answered "I Beg Your Pardon, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden". So, I found the lyrics for that on the internet and knocked together a quick version.

I'm very glad I did. It turned out to be a wonderful song for the occaision - many people remembered my mum singing the song, and the lyrics turned out to be strangely comforting.