Chattanooga Choo Choo – From “Live Concert – Music Made Famous by Glenn Miller”

[CORRECTION: A guy named John informed me that this recording came from a different album of the same year titled, "W/WS 1428 – Live Concert-Music Made Famous by Glenn Miller – Tex Beneke, Ray Eberle & Modernaires [1961]” Thanks John!]

This is “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” According to Wikipedia, “”Chattanooga Choo Choo” is a big-band/swing song which was featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade, which starred Sonja Henie, John Payne, Glenn Miller and his orchestra, The Modernaires, Milton Berle and Joan Davis. It was performed in the film as an extended production number, featuring vocals by Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, and the Modernaires.”

I recorded this film from a 1960’s-1970’s “Alpha Beta” market record that contains a compilation of “Big Band” hits. This features Tex Beneke & The Modernaires. Tex Beneke did live shows two decades after the end of the Glenn Miller Orchestra of which he was the front man. He got much of the Glenn Miller Alumni & the Modernaires to also play for his tour in the 1960’s so the sound and performances were true to form and were spot-on. The recording quality is excellent and the performance is amazing. It was also done in true stereo. It was featured on the album titled, “Reunion in Hi-Fi.” I love the energy of this particular performance and stereo sound quality of the song compared to even the original from the 1940’s.

-Jacob

Little Brave Sambo

I picked up this little gem last week called Little Brave Sambo from 1953. I bought it because it was a cool 50’s style 78 RPM kids record. I even made this little video on my new turntable and filmed it with the iphone then threw it up on YouTube.

Later, I read up on “Little Brave Sambo” and found out that it was quite a controversial record for its time as the name was changed from “Little Black Sambo.” Sambo was a racial term for a person with mixed Amerindian and African heritage in the Caribbean. So I guess the producers said um…yeah, let’s just call him brave Sambo instead of black, which I guess was only half offensive because it really was the term “Sambo” that was offensive.

Anyway, we’ve been buying up old kids records for our baby that will be born next year because I want our kid to grow up thinking that Records/LP/Vinyl are normal and not something that old people used to listen to 30+ years ago.

-Jacob