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Great Songs from 1901-1920 in MP3s

Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 10:41 AM Category: Meryl's Notes Blog No comments

Growing up, I loved musicals and songs from the first 40 years of the 20th century. I never talked about it with friends because it wasn’t rock ‘n roll, therefore not cool. I came across foldedspace.org: Twenty mp3s of Great Songs from 1901-1920.

As a kid, I loved singing “Over There” and other oldies like “Camptown Races” found in an old piano book that belonged to my mom. One of my favorite TV specials aired in 1983 and I still have it on tape. It was “Parade of Stars Playing the Palace,” (NOT this one — this one – requires registration) but it focused on The Palace Theater. It had famous singers, dancers, and comedians performing as Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Mae West, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson played by Gregory Hines, Nora Bayes (who has a few songs listed on foldedspace), and more.

I need to transfer the tape to a DVD before the tape dies. The show already had an interruption in the middle of Al Jolson’s performance because it was a stormy night, which knocked out the cable. I keep hoping a video company will bring it back to life on DVD perhaps the company that produced Broadway’s Lost Treasures. I did exchange emails with the company about this.

What I love about the Broadway Lost Treasures series is its inclusion of performances from various Tony Awards shows (Hey, looks like they came out with part III). I hope the company adds more because there are many other performances I remember from the Tonys that aren’t on those DVDs yet. I did tape and save a few years’ worth of Tony Awards, but unfortunately these were in the later years when there weren’t as many performances and the show cut to two hours.

I didn’t tape this year’s Tonys and of course, Harry Connick, Jr. performs “Hernando’s Hideaway” from The Pajama Game, one of the songs I listen to repeatedly. I also love Mame and All That Jazz.

How do we segue from 1900-1920s music to musicals? Well, “Over There” made me think of George M. Cohan and Yankee Doodle Dandy, and “Parade of 100 Stars” covered the early 1900s and worked its way up to when The Palace reopened for musicals.