Saturday, September 24, 2016

Magic Whistle Radio Hour 92

Things I've collected over the years or acquired on mixtapes and comps or gathered from the internet or the library or my parents' attic. The different sources are the reason for the volume disparity. I make no claims to "discovering" or "owning" anything. Probably neither do you. It's whatever I feel like playing that week. Every Saturday. No repeats. Things that may or may not be familiar. Who knows? Past weeks here too. Just type "Audio" in the search engine. Or if you're too lazy to press a button more than once, here's everything from 2015 and up to July 2016. You don't get the all playlists, though. You can right-click this if you want to save a zip file of this one (containing an mp3 of the file) for later. Here what information I was able to find:

0:00 DICKIE THOMPSON- Thirteen Women And One Man (1954)
2:42 THE DU-DROPPERS- Can't Do Sixty No More (1952)
5:32 JOHN BUFANO- Caldonia (1958)
7:42 DON, DICK, AND JIMMY- You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It Too (1954)
9:39 DAVID SEVILLE- Goofus
11:11 THE TWO LESLIES- I've Gone And Lost My Little Yo-Yo
14:27 ""HARVEY- Any Way You Wanta (1962)
17:12 TRAILER- Lifeguard (1976) 18:12 LINDA LAURIE- Ooh What A Lover (1958)
20:04 MARK DINNING- Top 40 News, Weather, and Sports (1961)
22:26 VIC CAESAR ORCHESTRA & CHORUS- Nixon's The One (1974)
26:00 HARRY “THE HIPSTER” GIBSON- Who Put The Benzedrine In Mr. Murphy's Ovaltine? (1946)
29:04 DICK THOMAS- Sidetracked
31:21 DEEP RIVER BOYS- That Chick's Too Young To Fry (1946)
33:52 VAUGHN MONROE- They Were Doin' The Mambo (1954)
36:54 RED RIVER DAVE- California Hippy Murders (1971)
39:01 BELLE BARTH- If I Embarrass You Tell Your Friends (4 AM show) (1960)
  : She was 49 when this picture was taken
   Apologies for the ethnic humor
Belle Barth warns audience at her Belle Barth Pub in Miami Beach, "Here you won't hear the Gettysburg address.

Abe Lincoln however would have laughed the loudest at her homespun philosophy. Belle dares to be herself. She deflates stuffed shirts, kids sentimentality but is most sentimental.

"Who is Belle Barth?"

Even asking that question indicates that you haven't been to Miami Beach, Chicago, or the Catskill mountain resort area, where Belle Barth is almost everyone's favorite topic of conversation. Who is one of the most quoted women of our time.

Belle Barth is an entertainer who has never had a press agent, theatrical representative nor personal manager. Yet she is today one of the top night club attractions of the country, booked into clubs, not by the week or month, but by the year.

She is a singer whose emotional strength can move an entire audience to tears. She can have that same audience in hysterics moments later by kidding herself or them.

Her fan clubs up to now, have been the most exclusive clubs in the world limited to those who have seen her in person. Her celebrated collection of anecdotes comes from them. Members of her audience call her from all over the world to say..."Belle, here is a great story for you. Tell it tonight."

Women love her ribald sense of humour even more than men. Psychologists have explained her appeal by saying, "We all have a little Belle Barth in us...we don't like to admit it...we hear her laugh and it makes us less tense."

Walter Winchell tagged her as as the"Hildegarde of the Underworld." But celebrities of all fields crowd her dressing room after each show. She hears nightly, "There ought to be more Belle Barths in the world. What's a Belle Barth performance like?" It's difficult to describe, as Belle does what the spirit moves her. You're also too weak from laughter to have an accurate memory of what you heard.

Belle plays piano, as she puts it,"I'm no Van Cliburn." She interprets such numbers as "Darktown Strutters Ball" "Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find" to relate experiences which couldn't happen to anybody but her.

Stage and Motion picture stars and Directors are her greatest fans. They believe that if she hadn't conquered the nightclub field first, she might have become one of our greatest actresses. Fans such as Jerry Lewis are continually trying to get her into their movies.

Off stage Belle Barth is a woman whose first interests are her husband and home. The first time I met her, before I heard her perform, I thought, "This sweet kindly lady is not THE Belle Barth I've heard so much about."

She was talking to her husband about what roses to plant. Although she works until 5:00 AM and doesn't unwind and get to bed until noon, she's up daily before six to personally prepare her husband's dinner.

Belle is originally from New York's East Harlem area. She often played hookie from Julia Richmond High to go to B.F. Keith's Theatre and "pretend this is me on the stage." Her favorites were Belle Baker, Blossom Seely and Sophie Tucker.

When one director said she was one of the world's greatest muggers, she asked him "What's a mugger." Another star, to her amazement, asked her, how many hours do you practice making those faces in front of a mirror?

Belle has been called a female Victor Borge. Her own ambitions run more towards being a Shirley Booth-Carol Channing type performer.

A word of caution on this album: Don't ruin it by playing it over and over for your friends. Let them buy their own.

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