The Joys of Restoration

Every once in a while, something really amazing happens. I engrave a lot of old music that's been kept in moldering folders, shoeboxes and the like. It's music that's been passed on for ages. Some of it is too old to sing today, some of it is racist and doesn't deserve to be sung by anyone, and some of it is downright historical, but much of it is nearly unintelligible. And the facts about who created it and when are lost. That's where I come in.

What's In the Shoebox?

Several weeks ago I acquired a new shoebox-worth from someone's attic. One of the SOB alums from the class of 1951 did some digging and found some sheet music going back over 60 years. When I say sheet music, I am talking about hand-copied manuscripts that had been xerox copied numerous times and then have sat in someone's attic for 50+ years. This is not the stuff you buy from Hal Leonard or SheetMusic.com.

You look at this music and the staff lines are all but missing. Sharps cannot be distinguished from flats or naturals. Sometimes it looks more like spots on a cow than actual music. Over the past 6 years I have learned a lot of tricks to restore music like this, and find out who created it.

Today, I worked on a song I had seen in the SOB shoebox in 1971 called, "De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder". The manuscript had a frightening appearance even then - the scrawl of the copyist gave me the shakes, and the breakdown caused by xeroxing only added to the overall creepiness. Trying to parse the notes was nigh unto impossible, so I turned the page and moved on to the next song. In 1971, this piece had already become inaccessible.

Now I approach a scan from someone else's shoebox of the same old song. In the meantime, I have engraved hundreds of other songs in poor condition going back 40, 50 and 60 years or more. I might not want to consider singing this song, but I want to know how it sounded and preserve that for future generations.

Old Songs: Some Better Left Dead

Among the recent find, one of the racist songs was attributed to someone named Goodale, but I could find no mention of him in the SOB records. We also got a couple of arrangements done by Horace Taft, an SOB musical director from class of 1950. Taft had been tapped by the Whiffenpoofs and turned them down. He'd also been on the Manhattan Project before returning to Yale, and was Dean of Davenport College when I was a freshman, although we did not meet. Taft was classmates with other musical geniuses at Yale, including Herb Payson and Edwin Wolff. These guys were among the most prolific arrangers and directors the Yale a cappella groups have ever seen, and their music is still performed down to this day.

One of the Taft songs had his name on it, and the other did not. But it had his signature all over every measure of the music. After going through hundreds of songs note for note, you get so you can recognize the marks of the arranger. But I ramble. But why? Because the interconnections are what I am really talking about. That's why I could recognize the second song as another Taft arrangement.

Ok, back to ground. "De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder". I decided to search the Web using plain English. Bingo - I found the song.

De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder: Found!

Ok, I found it, but this is a song that is nearly lost to the whole world. I found exactly one reference to the song, but it was enough. It was sung at The Orpheus Club of Philadelphia in 2009 to honor Bruce Eglinton Montgomery, director of the Penn Glee Club starting in 1956 who had passed on in 2008, and a counterpart and friend of Marshall Bartholomew of the Yale Glee Club. In his early days at Yale Bartholomew, also known as 'Barty", had visited a lot of chapels in the South looking for spirituals and gospel music, and had collected one song that was a favorite of Montgomery's, and you've guessed which one, haven't you? It's about the wind blowing....

This manuscript was copied by Robert F. "Missing" Link into a handmade songbook called "Songfest", which somehow ended up in the SOB archives many years before I went to Yale. A similar songbook was assembled by Bill Oler, also an SOB, for the Whiffenpoofs that has come to be known as "The Whiffenpoof Blue Book". Many songs from both books are in both repertoires of the two groups, and many are also in the "Songs of Yale".

In the top, right corner of this manuscript is a notation, "arr. by Barty", which we could not read very clearly and up until today had thought said 'Borty'. Today, the light came on and now we know whence this song came. So I share it with you.

Armed with this realization, I scoured my "Songs of Yale" books (various editions), but did not find the song published in any. However, I did find documentation of previous Yale Glee Club directors, and Barty's predecessor was one G. Frank Goodale. Remember the racist song I mentioned earlier? This is the Goodale who arranged it. It is a meaningless camp song, the equivalent of "One little, two little, three little Indians", and appeared in "Songs of Yale" in 1906, called "Three Little Darkies". The title is the worst part of it, so if you read that and survived, you're good. But the good news is we got the song nailed down right to the attribution, because of interconnections. It may not be worth singing anymore, but it's worth documenting.

Getting Over the Shivers

This song that gave me the shivers in 1971 is important in its own way. It's a song you won't find anywhere - it's one of those songs that is not sung by anyone anymore and it's pretty much dead and gone. But I restored it today and heard it and it is beautiful!

A New Season Begins!

Well, it's been a great summer. There are still a few weeks to go and lots of sailing ahead so I am not calling it quits yet! However I am thinking about the coming year. Blue of a Kind just started preparing for the coming season. Like a professional sports team, a choir has to return to camp and reconnect with how they do what they do. Choirs like us also have to begin learning their Holiday music long before the snow starts flying. There's work to do!!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

The summer began with a 10 day trip to Cuba to sing with the Yale Alumni Chorus. It was the experience of a lifetime. Many non-US travelers have enjoyed visiting Cuba since 1980, but for US citizens you need to jump through a lot of hoops to do it legally. Luckily, YAC managed all this hard work for us, and the choir only had to sing and prepare to share friendship.

We have a phenomenal group of singers of all ages, and one of the best directors you could ever sing under, Jeffrey Douma. The singers work independently to learn the music for months. They gather for a couple of regional rehearsals under Jeff to put it all together. Once in Cuba, we rehearsed a couple of times a day for the first few days to get the spit and polish we needed. After Jeffrey shapes the output of 200+ voices, the results can be quite intoxicating! We were able to sing joint concerts in Matanzas and Havana with professional choirs and perform at a very exceptional level.

The Cuban people were thrilled that we wanted to come sing for them, put all our hearts and souls into it, and meet them as friends. It was a wonderful experience and we made many friends.

Summer Arranging

I also did more arranging this summer, focusing on classics from the American Songbook, and produced these new works for men:

Getting Some Fun Out Of Life

Lil' Darlin'

I Hadn't Anyone Till You

And I reworked a couple of SATB arrangements for men. These two were taken from the YAC Cantemos! repertoire:

El Bodeguero

MLK

Topics for the Coming Year

What shall we talk about this season? I'm developing an agenda for Blue of a Kind so we can continue developing and having fun. I have also developed a list of blog topics for the coming season. Last year, I got into a groove of producing an arrangement a week for 6 months and wrote about each one. This took me on a very single-minded journey which was quite productive, but requiring many hours of work before I wrote the first word of my blog entry. It also changed the course of this discussion, which is aimed at all things a cappella, rather than arranging tips and techniques.

If these are of interest (or not) I hope you'll post a comment with your thoughts:

• Becoming a better ensemble singer
• Developing a structure to support learning and development
• Section leadership, rehearsals
• Personal practice time
• Amazing singing - CDs, groups, new releases
• Your voice - approaches to producing better sound\
• Choral vocal production
• Balancing chords
• Consistent tone
• Singing parts as lines
• Vowels
• Forte consonants
• Romancing the lyric
• Singing softly


• Singing in tune
• Going flat
• Going sharp


• Ensemble singing topics
• Singing on auto-pilot: eye contact and engagement
• Dynamics
• Color
• Legatto, staccato, marcato...
• Exact attack and exact pitch
• Releases
• Shouting, bellowing
• Trusting your sound


• Performing
• Movement in performance
• Dealing with nerves in performance
• Translating rehearsal success into standing ovations


• Marketing, Increasing audience, getting more gigs - web, local media, PR
• Music selection
• Ordering songs in performance or on your CD
• Working with Finale, Sibelius
• Tips and techniques
• Archival concerns


• The joys of directing
• Rehearsal strategies
• Vocal Percussion and imitating bands
• Arranging music - tips and techniques

And What Else?

Do you have any other ideas or things you'd like to hear about or discuss? Post a comment and let me know!

The 70th Bacchanal of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus

Celebrating 70 Years of Music and Fun

The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus is in their 70th year. This "Bacchanal" is nothing more than their annual anniversary party and reunion. This year's event was held last weekend and was a tremendous success. The young men have regained their footing both in song and humor. The repertoire spans many years, with diverse styles and still stays on a high choral plane. The guys sing! And they can structure a delightful weekend event that appeals to all the men who returned.

The "lost" Songbook was not lost!
In past blogs I've mentioned the SOB Songbook and told a story about it going lost in 1972. At the Bacchanal last weekend, I met with my successor Orpheus from 1972, and a few other guys who knew his successor and we established the lost "Songbook" was nothing more than a rumor. Mind you, this is not a proper book we're talking about but rather a box of manuscripts. As the director changes nearly every year, the box is passed from one to the next. One of the reasons I got deeply involved in the Whiffenpoof, SOB and Bakers Dozen Songbook projects was that I had been told that the SOB songbook had gone lost after I'd passed it to my successor. This is apparently not the case. Nonetheless, I had felt some guilt over the last 10 years and I had begun working to restore the "lost" and moldering music.

So, the "lost" Songbook story is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing! How do these stories get started? I guess there seemed to be no other reasonable explanation why the music had changed so dramatically over the years and why so many songs had gone missing. It covered a truth that archival management over the years was at best shoddy. How could this be? I don't really know. If there was no mass extinction event, then maybe pieces were savaged by the occasional homework-eating dog, blown away by a gust of wind or they were tossed out from time to time. There were no holes in the box.

Poor Record Management
I've been through the Songbooks of 3 Yale groups now, so I've seen a few things. The Whiffenpoofs did a better job keeping their records, but they were not perfect. Songs went lost. The BD and the SOBs did not do quite so well. Stuff that seemed meaningful was copied, sometimes embellished and updated for better or for worse, and the originals discarded. Sometimes it was so completely "rearranged" it was simply co-opted by the editor. And, it looks as if stuff was simply pruned by guys whose heads were up their egos. What does this do to the guys who sang those songs 30 or more years ago? Nothing good.

Rule of thumb was if you arranged for the group, you donated your work and expected that if it was sung, it would be archived. Unwritten rule for the director: what is in the box at the beginning of your term should still be in the box at the end. But that is not the way it went down.

Weaving the Old with the New
So now groups like the Bakers Dozen and the SOBs are turning 'round about 70 years old. In large part, their founders and older members feel alienated and forgotten. Their music has moldered away, gone lost or worse, it was discarded. Many guys from the 40's, 50's and 60's gave up returning for reunions with their groups because they don't recognize the music and the group doesn't recognize them. They can't sing the old songs with their buddies 'cause the music is missing.

We are men from many generations. We sing, love, laugh, graduate and move on. We retain our connection with an organization like a singing group through shared experience and values - in this case the singing and the fun. The group has a responsibility to innovate and compete. Every year, things change. The Old Men connect to the group through the music (which changes) and the fun (which can also change culturally). They also connect from a sense of having been there to hold the fort, keep the tradition alive and keep the group competitive in their era. These are very important values, what I call "connection vectors". We connect along these vectors and we can disconnect along these same vectors.

Disrupt these vectors, and members feel disassociated from the organization. The fact that the music changes is expected. If the culture of the fun changes significantly, guys will pull away. When the group reunites, they must find a way to affirm the contribution and the culture of all of the alumni. The group must be able to see that the guys over all the years have basically been doing the same thing. If songs from the past are lost or forgotten, it is a rough road ahead. Old Men ask: You don't know what we sang? You don't have my name on the list? You don't know what we did to make this group great?

Once disassociated, they generally don't come back.

Bringing 'em Back
At the 70th Bacchanal, we had about 70 attendees. Of these, 90% were from graduating classes within the last 35 years. Virtually nobody came from the first 35 years of the group's existence. Nobody really knows why and when all your own friends are there, nobody really cares, an attitude which is very much at the root cause of the problem. The last time I went to one of these events, I saw that the culture of fun had changed so drastically that I did not identify with the group. Many of my classmates saw the same thing and vowed never to return. Last weekend, a small group of us ventured back into the water with some trepidation and saw that the culture of fun is much the same as it had been for us. It's sophomoric, wacky, edgy and obviously up-to-date, but it still looks and feels like "us." This was a pleasant surprise. Members from the 80's  and 90's still cannot understand how we don't know songs arranged 10 or more years after we graduated - to them these songs seem to have existed forever. Oh well!

For the Bakers Dozen, the problem is apparently worse than for the SOBs. I have letters from some of the founders of the BD, similar letters from fellow SOBs, all saying the same thing - how they want to reconnect but their experience has taught them they are forgotten and unwanted. The SOBs are unique in having a core repertoire of seemingly timeless music by some of the most phenomenal arrangers spanning nearly the whole history of the group. The BD have this too, but it's buried deeper in the past and has lost any meaning for several generations. It will be difficult to recreate a touchstone.

At the Bacchanal concert, I was lucky to bump into the father of this year's Pitchpipe. We sat next to one another and enjoyed the program. It turns out this man, Larry, was a classmate of mine and was "rushed" by the SOBs along with me when we were Freshmen. We had a few rush lunches together in 1969. Larry joined the BD and I joined the O's and B's. We sang in competing groups for the next 3 years. Earlier in the day, his son had told me about one of those concerts which had really bugged his father. He told me not knowing it was my group and my arrangement that had achieved something that night no other act could top and which had ticked his father off. Larry is one of the top arrangers for the BD from the early 70's and his group had talent with a capital 'T'. As last weekend's Bacchanal performance proceeded, he asked me how many of the songs I recognized from my day. In truth, there were quite a few. Some of them still had the power to move people to tears, wild screams or belly laughs. Larry was amazed at this. I think by now he realizes he's connected to the SOBs for life, the last thing he ever thought would happen to him!

Put it Back In the Box!
We SOBs have a big job to do - we need to reach into the first 35 years of what our forefathers did, shake trees and find anything we can and put it back in the box. We need to extend our reach, and set a table for those Old Men, so they'll come and reconnect. We need to embrace them when they return. It's a huge task, and one that won't see 100% success. My hope is that the process of reaching back over the years will reengage alumni along the connection vectors and we'll see some serious representation of the first 35 years of this group at the 75th Bacchanal in 2014.

~Bob

The Blue of a Kind CD

The boys have been working hard. We have "tracked" mostly everything and we have feathered our nest. There are some important notes on what we intend to release.

Here is the probable lineup:

Recorded at Chillhouse studios, November - December 2008:
Under the Boardwalk
Words and Music by Artie Resnik and Kenny Young
Arranged by Mark Brymer

• [Steve Francis' solo makes this a total knockout]

You Don't Know Me
Words and Music by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [This really rocks and was requested of me by Saki Okura, one of our founders. I sang it with him on duet one time and it was a memorable moment. Let us say, Saki has a gift.]

Trouble Soon Be Over
Words and Music by Blind Willie Johnson
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Based on Geoff Muldaur's treatment of the same tune. This is a folk/blues songs from the 20's by Blind Willie Johnson that defies description. Songs from that era did not abide by the rules of pop song. It's a honey. I asked Geoff about "stealing" his treatment, and he said, "Go to town!" Ron Serisky's solo really does the number.]

This World Is Not My Home
Words and Music by Albert E. Brumley, Jr.
Additional lyric by Woody Guthrie

• [Another Steve Francis solo that drops jaws, I arranged this after hearing Geoff Muldaur sing it at Club Passim in Cambridge, MA. Geoff later told me, "Wow, that's a really difficult song!"]

Mobile Bay
Traditional Sea Chantey
Arranged by Marshall Bartholomew

• [It's a gem. Marshall Bartholomew's pumping chantey lives on. Bob Griffin's solo makes it special.]

Pirates Chorus
Words and Music by G. C. S. Southworth (Songs of Yale, 1870)

• [This song was mined from "Songs of Yale" published in 1870. I doubt it has ever been recorded in either the 20th or the 21st centuries. Blue of a Kind uses it for their marching song when entering the performance hall. This is a particularly moving rendition of a song that dates back to just after the Civil War.]

It's Gonna Rain, Again
Words and Music by Charles Johnson
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [The Sensational Nightingales. Need I say more? Tug Yourgrau, Karl Geller and Mike Margolis send this one off into the stratosphere.]

To the Sky
Southern Folk Song
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [No one has heard this song, but when they do, OMG! Evans brought me this from his voice teacher. I arranged it in like a day and wait until you hear Evans Travis nail it.]

MacNamara's Band
Words and Music by O'Connor/Stamford
Arranged by Lewis Girdler

• [My dear friend, Lewis Girdler arranged this piece for the Yale Whiffenpoofs. I sang the solo with the Whiffs in 1972-1973, and my dear pal, George Caruby sang Uncle Julius with me at Saunders Theater in Cambridge, MA for my musical hero, Leonard Bernstein sitting in the front row. As I recall, Lenny and his companion got up and danced while George and I sang. Pinch me! Dan Franklin and Br. Richard Cook give this tune a run for the money.]

South Australia
Traditional Sea Chantey
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [I transcribed the entire "Songs of Yale", copyright 1953 assembled by the great Marshall Bartholomew. In the process, I learned something about arranging sea chanties. Check this one out. I sing the solo. It's a chantey men used to ask to be sung to them on their deathbeds. Stay with me...]

Away to Rio
Tradition Sea Chantey
Arranged by Marshall Bartholomew

• [No one does it better than Marshall Bartholomew. Extra verse penned by Evans Travis. I love a man who understands "holy stoning".]

'Linin' Track
Traditional Work Chantey
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Chanties were not only sung at sea. This is a chantey sung while aligning railroad track, a particularly grueling task. I got this song and the treament from the great Jug Band master, Jim Kweskin. Also from Club Passim. The place really rocks!]

Rolling Down To Old Maui
Traditional Sea Chantey
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [What can anyone say about the greatest forecastle chantey of all time? (A forecastle chantey was a non-work song sung only for pleasure by the work crews, for the benefit of all.) If you have not heard this song, you will be stuck on it forever once you have. Wayne Leslie solos on this and his unbelievable bass tone must be heard to be believed. Karl Geller and I layer atop Wayne for a duet and later, a trio.]

Roll Jordan, Roll
Spiritual
Arranged by Marshall Bartholomew

• [Just listen and smoothe your short hairs down. Solos by Tug Yourgrau, Phil Kukura and Steve Francis.]

Loch Lomond
Traditional Scottish Folk Song
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Most of this arrangement was mined from an old songbook, but I crafted a front end and a back end and it's totally different, so it's mine! Irish tenor, Br. Richard Cook shows you how it should be sung.]

John the Revelator
Words and Music by Son House
Arranged by Blue of a Kind

• [We developed this arrangement ad hoc. Son House was our inspiration. We listened, sang, crafted, re-listened, performed.... This one can really get ya. Solos by Evans Travis, Tug Yourgrau, Mike Margolis]

Nkosi Sikelel i'Afrika (South African National Anthem)
Words and Music by Enoch Sontonga and Samuel Mqhayi
Adapted for men by Bob Eggers

• [Tug Yourgrau grew up in South Africa. He also composed the music for a Broadway show name "The Song of Jacob Zulu", which featured "Ladysmith Black Mambazo". Lucky for us, Tug sings with Blue of a Kind. He introduced me to this song and the SATB arrangement. I rearranged it for men. Singing this song used to land a man in jail in South Africa. This version will keep you free.]

Walk Humbly, Son
Words and Music by Michael R. Clem
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Eddie From Ohio. They are from Virginia. Go figure! This is another group I heard at Club Passim. I must buy some more tickets soon. Michael Clem writes the funny stuff they do, but this song also reveals a deep spiritual awareness.]

Sentimental Journey
Words by Bud Green
Music by Les Brown and Ben Homer
Arranged by Walter Latzko

• [Walter Latzko. The Chordettes. These 4 girls showed up in NYC and got hired at CBS to sing every week on the Arthur Godfrey show. I watched them as a kid. Each week they were dressed in stunning dresses and sang sultry mens' Barbershop songs like angels. Boys like me, and men twice my age swooned. Later, they went on to become pop and film stars. Walter Latzko was with them all the way, and married one of the dolls. Mr. Latzko has arranged a piece just for Blue of a Kind, but not this one. This is one he did for the Chordettes.]

Live/bonus tracks:
Kentucky Babe (live at Fitch Home, October 16, 2008)
Words by Richard Henry Buck
Music by Adam Geibel
Arranged by Walter Latzko

• [Walter Latzko, again. Also arranged for the Chordettes. You're going to love this performance.]

Morning Prayer (live at Fitch Home, October 16, 2008)
Words by Evans Travis
Music Peter I. Tchaikovsky
Arrangement by Bob Eggers

• [Umpteen years ago, I got snagged by a kid's video from Russia, because the soundtrack was the complete "Children's Album" by Tchaikovsky. Written for his piano pupils, it's a masterpiece no matter how you slice it. I just had to sing "Morning Prayer", a true song without words. I arranged it for men many years ago but could not come up with lyrics. Once I met Evans in Blue of a Kind, he asked me to let him at it. Hope you like it.]

To the Sky (live at Fitch Home, October 16, 2008)
Southern Folk Song
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Evans Travis and the boys raise some goosebumps in a live performance in Melrose, MA.]

Trouble Soon Be Over (live at MMTV, Dec. 14, 2008)
Words and Music by Blind Willie Johnson
Arranged by Bob Eggers

• [Ron Serisky rocks the house on local MMTV. Look for a YouTuber version of the same.]

More Attribution Mysteries

The Whodunnit plot rethickens

Believe it or not, the story continues, and maybe Robert "Missing" Link is indeed the missing link in the evolutionary process of "(That Slippery) Slide Trombone". Robert recently wrote me, saying,

I should have told you that I knew Bill Oler when he was a freshman and I 

was a senior; I assume that he's the reason that Song Fest got into the 

Whiff repertory. Also, a many years friend of mine is Brower McClintock, 

'40, a founding member of O&Bs. If it's in the O&B repertory, I assume that 

Brower got it there.

So the trail has not gone cold. Oler, Brower.... Connections and all part of the evolutionary process.... By the way, Mr. Link was made an honorary Whiffenpoof in 1947, as I said before, but is also an honorary O&B. Connections....

Connections... and another Whodunnit

Another fun whodunnit story surrounds the classic Whiff arrangement, "I'll Take Romance". I engraved this long time favorite many months ago from a manuscript that was marginally readable. Before and after screenshots of a few measures this piece can be found on our home page, Acappellanation.com. Of side interest, this note: there is an error in that screenshot that has since been corrected in the actual engraving.

But I digress, don't I? During some months last Summer after making that engraving, I also engraved another half dozen or so arrangements by the same Whiff arranger, but these from his undergrad years in the Bakers Dozen. This arranger is Lewis Girdler, known for "MacNamara's Band" as well as "When Sunny Gets Blue", among other gems. I wrote about him before as the man I believe introduced the faux string bass line in a cappella singing. This humble genius probably turned the a cappella singing world on it's ear in the late 1950's and opened the door to some of the expression we have seen flourish in our genre ever since. That's another investigation....

I'm still digressing, but it's a story! Well, I attributed the arrangement to him because I could make out his name in the top, right corner where it emerged from a black cloud caused by too many xerox generations. I also recognized the handwriting, but so many of the works I engraved had been recopied by others hands making this evidence less credible. However the style of the arrangement, it's voicings, pace and rhythms all sounded like classic Girdler, so I had no reason to doubt it was his.

Arranged by "Unknown"!

Nonetheless months after I submitted it, our lead editor and musicologist bounced it back to me saying to change the arranger to "Unknown". I looked at the original xerox (interesting combination of words there). Girdler's name was clearly legible at the top and I was baffled. Perhaps the black cloud from which it emerged had said, "copied by", but the rest of the evidence suggested otherwise.

Luckily, I had come to know Mr. Girlder while doing the Bakers Dozen engravings, and I sent him a copy of the copy asking, "What about it?". Yes, he replied, and thanked me for sending the manuscript so he could say for certain. It turns out our lead editor had asked Lewis about 10 years ago at some Whiff function if he'd arranged "Romance" and well, he wasn't sure he had. So rather than take credit for what might be someone else's work, he said, "No." Remember what I said about humble? Besides, Mr. Girlder's contribution to both the Whiff and Bakers Dozen repertoires is vast and this is but one sweet "Romance" that slipped his mind. ;-)

Once Mr. Girdler recognized his own hand writing, we'd solved this whodunnit. Luckily, he's still matriculating along with the rest of us, otherwise this piece might have remained forever "Unknown".

Dick Peaslee's Garden of Earthly Delights on Broadway now!

Quick note before I depart: Dick Peaslee, another Whiff and Bakers Dozen arranger I've mentioned in earlier blogs, has a new musical on Broadway, called "Garden of Earthly Delights". Click on the name to visit the web page about it. The man is a powerhouse. I am currently engraving another bunch of his works from the 50's that he'd saved away in his attic and there are some great songs there! 

 

Bob

The case of (That Slippery) Slide Trombone, continued

"Missing" Link is found and tells all!

Robert Frederick "Missing" Link wrote me back and has relieved me of my position that he is the "missing link" in the case of (That Slippery) Slide Trombone. I hate to see this theory blown, but oh, what fun!

First, Robert made clear he was merely an honorary Whiff. He actually graduated in 1942 but was made an honorary member of the 1947 Whiffenpoofs. I'm sure there's another story there and I won't venture any guesses beyond saying the guys at Yale during the War years didn't pass and become forgotten at the usual rate of 4 years apiece. Robert may never have sung with the Whiffs or he may have done a ton of pick-up singing to fill the ranks - this I don't know yet. He says he probably got the song in his head hearing the '42 Whiffs sing it.

But Robert was the man whose hand wrote the pages of music I described. First he wrote me that he had little if anything to do with Slide Trombone, certainly had not arranged it. He said he might have written it down in 1946 among a group of songs he called "Song Fest" that he and a bunch of guys probably sang together at least once, maybe many times. He said songs like that were floating around being sung and shared. He suggested perhaps the "Silver Dollar Quartet" was the inspiration the arrangement of Slide Trombone.

Well, that seemed like a dead end, but I thought I'd see if my mysterious song cycle happened to be this "Song Fest", so I wrote him back, naming all the songs I mentioned below. Well, he said, if I looked at the piece "Slow Motion Time", "There should be a picture of feet sticking out from a sombrero" on the last page. Indeed, when I brought up the scan and scrolled to the last page, there was his little hombre in the sombrero.

Oh, how I laughed to know something about the source of these charts.

What can be known about anything?

Many years ago, I read "The Perfect Storm" and the author said the thrill of writing that book was creating a story about an event that was not witnessed and about which nothing could be known. But in the process of researching narratives of others in that storm, some kind of knowledge clearly emerged.

Sometimes, you can't know anything about certain things, but every once in a while you can get a glimpse. I just read "Shadow Divers" about one of my schoolmates named John Chatterton who was diving a deep wreck off New Jersey, a vessel that from his first dive, he thought might be a submarine. On one of his first dives, he found a dish and in 200 feet of cold, turbid water and he turned the dish over to find a swastika on the underside. For some long minutes, John was the only person in the world who knew the wreck he was diving was a German U-boat from the big War. A sudden glimpse, and it made him laugh.

So I laughed!

A link was made way into the past, concerning documents I had seen in 1971 and gave me pause. Other SOB compadres have also observed and wondered about these same charts. My thoughts about the genesis and life of these songs, of this manuscript, including where these particular songs went in published records have been shared by everyone who has seen them. And now, for a few moments I know something! They are "Song Fest", recorded in 1946 by Robert "Missing" Link.

And they're definitely part of that whole "oral tradition" thing. As Robert wrote to me, "Sometimes songs arrange themselves in an evolutionary way." He doesn't really know how he knew all the pieces, note for note. Really quite a bit of knowledge there. His explanation: "I osmosed them somehow when I was there."

So who arranged (That Slippery) Slide Trombone? Maybe "WBB" is short for "we'll never know".

Still on the trail,
Bob