Pam’s :Pictorama Post: Today’s post is an oddball card I picked up at the postcard sale recently. It portrays the never ending saga of cats atop a roof, singing their nightly woes and joyous howls. I have numerous entries in this bonanza of images although a favorite is an unusual panorama photo of cats on a fence (and dogs) shown below for a post that can be found here.
Pams-Pictorama.com collection
This is another of those postcards which is address and date by the sender but no evidence of mailing. On the back it says, For Beatie From Dad. Ramsgate. 24/3/07. Therefore this card is a bit older than maybe I would have guessed.
Cats on rooftops though is also a thing and I wonder about this. Blissfully, I have never found one of my cats, or a stray for that matter, on my roof. That might be because I lived in a very high two story house growing up, but even our more compact house in Jersey does not have rooftop kitties. I assume it is more of a function of houses and row or townhouses close together? How do they get up there and down again? Attics maybe? It must have been a thing because you see them portrayed on roofs as much as fences. Here it is a red tile roof, but definitely a roof nonetheless.
The artist has provided us with some cat diversity in this quartet, two marmalades, a dark gray and a white-ish tabby. Tails stick out handily for the composition on either side and peek up on either side of the Baritone and the Contralto, arguably somewhat strangely placed for the Baritone, sort of in front of him.
These musical felines clutch an advertisement sheet, with claw paws, that looks like it doubles for their music. It promises, Every Night Lessons in Howling by the Tomasso Catto Family Speciality Midnight Concerts/ Three Blind Mice Words by – Prowler Music by – Howler: Sung Nightly by the Mew Quartette. Their fluffy feet peer out below the paper. The orange on the end, Tenor, seems to look the most like a participant in and old-fashioned barbershop quartet. Meow!
(The post for this particularly good Louis Wain image below can be found here.)
Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
I don’t know about my Pictorama readers but I could never rest easy at night if I heard cat fights or howls in my yard. Although I know enough about cats to know the ruckus that can be raised, I admit to being glad that our colonies of strays is largely reduced enough that this is no longer a routine event here in Yorkville or in Fair Haven. A cat meowing outside will drive me nuts looking for it. Far from tossing a shoe at them I would of course be worrying about it. My mother was the same – hence the admission of Stormy and Gus into our family over time. They arrived at the back door with all paws on the ground however.
There were some good times for cats, even domestic ones, that managed to spend the occasional evening out with the fellas or gals as it may be. I have written out our cat Zipper who used to through parties in our garage for the local bunch after raiding a neighbor’s eel pail kept for chum. The price of domestication as I pointed out in a post last week where guest speaker Temple Grandin talked about a dog at the hospital that had eaten and entire shoe. For a quick look at that interesting talk see below. Our town in New Jersey seems to want to strictly restrict cat residents outdoors and the Jersey Five are all indoor cats. Needless to say, up on the 16th floor in Manhattan, so are Cookie and Blackie!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This sheet music actually wandered into Deitch Studio several weeks ago but other things pushed forward on the Pictorama agenda until today. Longstanding readers know that I have a smallish, but pointed collection of sheet music which I have written about before – many devoted to Felix although there is cat sheet music in general. When I worked at Jazz at Lincoln Center my walls were decorated with bits of old cat centric music. (Previous posts of musical interludes, Felix-y and otherwise, can be found here, here and here for starters – there are more if you look too!)
Page one of two.
The British produced a lot of these Felix novelty songs and to my pleasure they continue to turn up. While the lyrics certainly reference Felix they are somewhat less Felix-centric than you might expect, however this is considered part of the musical Felix the Cat canon. This music was printed in 1925, as it states under the Pat Sullivan signature. (Another website puts the composition as created in 1923 so perhaps it had another issue with a different cover?)
Page two of two of lyrics.
None of the folks credited here seem to have any break out hits of note. It would appear that Horace Shepherd was the lyricist although I gather he composed as well and the other two wrote the music. (Frankly three people seems like a crowd to have produced this item, but what do I know?) It is a fox trot with ukulele accompaniment, which I like the idea of – arrangement for “Banjuele” Banjo and Ukulele by Kel Keech. I feel like four people is a lot to have produced this scant bit of music, but again, what do I know? There is an advertisement on the top and back for Roland’s pianoforte tutor the best in the world. English and foreign fingering.
Advertisement on the back of the music.
And of course most notably a very regulation Felix of the day is walking uphill across the front, concerned expression, hands in thoughtful behind his back position. He is a round Felix, not the more squared off, blocky early one such as on the more common sheet music below. It is of note that this sheet music isn’t hugely available. I snatched it up because, although I may have seen it online, I have never seen it offered before. (I found a Hake’s lot from 2011 where it was sold with two other somewhat more commonly available ones.)
Much more popular and available Felix sheet music. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
The most Felix-y part of these lyrics goes like this: Let’s all follow Felix. We can’t do better than that.When he’s been up to mischief he licks every other crazy cat. He’s bound to make us hold our sides and Laughuntil we grow fat. So let’s all follow Felix that dog-gone crazy cat. I am unable to find a recording of this song so this is not a listening post as such, but if anyone can supply one I would love to know.
It was a pleasantly Felix crazed world in the mid-twenties, exactly 100 years ago. I was just reading that Lindbergh took a Felix doll on his flight across the Atlantic and for some of us Felix continues to frolic (if not actually fox trot) today.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Perhaps some of you wonder what kind of valentine I give Kim considering the very special one he produces for me annually. Since clearly there is no competing with that and love is a two way street here at Deitch Studio, I usually purchase a card and perhaps a specific token of my affection. This year I ran across this great vintage valentine a few weeks before the holiday and had time to secure it to give to Kim.
Of course it was the singing (yowling) kitty on a fence post that caught my attention, but it really is a nifty little item. This cat trilling on a fence is very close to the cover of a piece of popular sheet music simply called Meow which currently decorates my new office, while another copy hangs next to my kitchen door here at home. Shown below, I have written about it and my collection of cat related sheet music previously. A few of those many posts can be found here and here.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
This miniature sheet music card has heart shaped notes emerging from kitty’s mouth, who has a perfectly curled tail and a few stars and moon thrown around for decoration. It boasts Words by – N Websterand Music by – HY Pitched, while at the bottom the credit goes to Ima Gossip – Publishers – Inc. Anytown, U.S.A.
The inside has music (maybe someone who reads music can tell me if the notes are nonsense or not) and the heart shaped musical notes continue within. Beee Myyyy Valentine-ine-ine-ine! You are reminded to intone Romantically at the top. At the bottom it declares, Note* Practice until you know it by heart! It was sent by Ruth Abrams although alas, we know not who to. It was printed on a sheet of paper and folded into quarters, rather than printed as a card. There is no publisher or printer’s information on it.
Inside of the card. Nice!
There is in fact a real song of this title. First published in 1884 it was composed by James Lynam Molloy and lyricist Graham Clifton Bingham. It was introduced that year by Antoinette Sterling at the St. James Hall in London.
Because the chorus starts with Just a song at twilight it is evidently frequently identified that way. It is evidently known for being referred to in James Joyce’s Ullysses where Molly Bloom sings it. Arthur Sullivan (he of Gilbert and Sullivan) was accused of using the first two bars for When a merry maiden marries in The Gondoliers, which he denied.
The lyrics are below:
Once in the dear dead days beyond recall, When on the world the mists began to fall, Out of the dreams that rose in happy throng Low to our hearts Love sang an old sweet song; And in the dusk where fell the firelight gleam, Softly it wove itself into our dream.
Just a song a twilight, when the lights are low, And the flick’ring shadows softly come and go, Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long, Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song, comes Love’s old sweet song.
Even today we hear Love’s song of yore, Deep in our hearts it dwells forevermore. Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way, Still we can hear it at the close of day. So till the end, when life’s dim shadows fall, Love will be found the sweetest song of all.
Just a song a twilight, when the lights are low, And the flick’ring shadows softly come and go, Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long, Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song, comes Love’s old sweet song.
There are numerous recordings and I am sharing two very different ones here. (For future readers apologies – these links are available at the time of writing although may not be in the future!) The first is by John McCormack, recorded in 1927. He is a favorite of Kim’s and we listened to this version this morning.
The other is from Bing Crosby’s radio show and it is a very different arrangement. Also note that Bing says it was written in 1882, not ’84 which is Wikipedia’s thought on the subject as above.
This is a super little card and I intend to frame it up for display – where Deitch Studio and the Pictorama archive align! I see a small spot above Kim’s desk, right at eye level where he can be reminded of my affection daily.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: It’s the great Valentine reveal. It’s a post-Valentine’s Day bounty today with this glorious page Kim made for me! For any new readers who aren’t familiar with our ritual, every year since we first started dating, Kim has made me a Valentine which is a sort of combined birthday and Valentine’s Day gift. (Some prior year posts can be found here, here and here.) These have grown in complexity over time.
This year is a bit different and really is like a full page story. I love that the way we are celebrating 30 years together is to ride a magic pink elephant! Yes! It has really been exactly like this.
My 2017 Valentine! Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
I’m pleased that Waldo even makes a rare Valentine’s appearance. I won’t say he hasn’t shown up before, but spending Valentine’s Day with us isn’t his usual beat. Of course he’s evidently responsible for inciting the elephant to charge while we cling to our perch – which is secured by a belt of hearts. Despite the gravity of our situation hearts bubble up all around as well – perhaps a dream? No way – I assure you, this is life at Deitch Studio.
Despite the fact that I spend the whole page wearing a nightgown, I am here as in life, the more practical of the two of us. Although Kim does maintain extraordinary calm in times of duress as illustrated – Don’t worry he always gets away.
2020 was a very Felix-y year for my Valentine! Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Sort of funny that he has depicted me with my eyeglasses on in bed and even when we kiss in profile at the bottom. (I generally only wear them in bed to watch tv as I am a no eyeglass book reader person, at least for now. Talk to me again in a few years.) The page culminates at the bottom with us in bed reflecting on the adventure.
This box Kim decorated for me many years ago (and I posted about in 2015) inspired this year’s color scheme.
The word always plays throughout the page. It starts at the top with Kim, then I say it – and Kim does again and the whole page culminates with it in red. It brings us to the tune of the Irving Berlin hit Always. In 1925 Berlin wrote it for his wife (and gave her the royalties which certainly did not turn out to be insignificant) as a wedding gift. The lyrics are:
Everything went wrong, And the whole day long I'd feel so blue. For the longest while I'd forget to smile, Then I met you. Now that my blue days have passed, Now that I've found you at last -
I'll be loving you Always With a love that's true Always. When the things you've planned Need a helping hand, I will understand Always. Always.
Days may not be fair Always, That's when I'll be there Always. Not for just an hour, Not for just a day, Not for just a year, But Always.
Or if you prefer, the Bing Crosby version can be found below.
Or a less brisk version by Deanna Durbin can be found here.
Cookie and Blackie make an appearance having zoomies through the bottom – perhaps racing for the best spot at the foot of the bed, or more likely getting out of the way of our gooey human kissing as cats will.
Life here at Deitch Studio is a wild ride, but always my only very favorite place to be. Thank you sweetheart and here’s to the next 30!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a personal post. For those of you who are just in it for the photos and the toys, you might want to go back to finishing the holiday cards (ours coming up next weekend!), but for others you might want to get that second cup of coffee and settle in.
As I have alluded to in recent prior posts, I am finishing my last few days at Jazz at Lincoln Center. For almost seven years I have been their chief fundraiser and occasionally chronicled my work life here. The early days of figuring it out, nascent traveling with the orchestra, learning the rhythms and pace (very fast) of the place. I have likened it to leaping onto a speeding train.
JLCO taking a break outside of a Cracker Barrel restaurant during BBH Tour 2017.
Tonight I will attend my last Big Band Holiday concert as staff. Early in my work life I toured with the orchestra for Big Band Holiday, through Florida and much of the southeast. (That post can be found here.) I had made a nascent trip to Shanghai (and wrote about that here) in the first few months, but it was the Big Band Holiday tour that really made me understand what it was like for the orchestra when they were on the road and what was and was not going to be possible in terms of fundraising on those trips.
I wrote occasionally about the long Zoom-filled pandemic days – especially hard at a performing arts organizing which can no longer perform. I had to dig deep into my creativity to fundraise successfully, always hand in hand with Wynton Marsalis who proved to be an invaluable leader. Coming out of those pandemic days have been hard on managers. We are expected to mitigate both the needs of executive leadership and our staff. First the Great Resignation as folks settled into new careers and lives sometimes across the country from where they started.
Final evening at Dizzy’s this past week. Mary Stalling and the amazing Emmett Cohen Trio.
The longing to return to a pre-Covid office life is understandable, but not entirely practical as our staff has become accustom to more flexibility. Ours was a great office culture before Covid so it has been sad to see the office anemically filled, no longer teeming with musicians and bustling with energy. Sadly, longing for something doesn’t make it so. You need to create something new instead. A September mandated five day return to office was not the right catalyst.
As many of you know, my time there also morphed into the period I cared for my mother who had her final illness in New Jersey over the first four months of this year. I am beyond grateful for the thoughtfulness of Jazz at Lincoln Center and my colleagues while I traveled back and forth, frequently working days from there weekly until for a period at the end when I stayed in New Jersey. (Those days and that unusual time is in posts here and here.)
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Mom died in April and left me her house with five cats (plus Hobo, our outdoor pal). With the addition of Cookie and Blackie (the New York cats) that bring us more or less to eight. I became a crazy cat lady overnight – but I like to say mom had me in training for years! Kim and I packed the cats up and we spent five weeks in Jersey at the end of the summer. (A few posts about our lazy summer days can be found here and here.)
Without realizing it, I guess this brought me to the end of one period of my life and to the threshold of something different. I am not sure I knew that until late this fall someone put me in touch with the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center which was looking for someone to develop its fundraising arm. As I spoke with them I began to get excited about the opportunities I could see for them and my brain started shifting gears.
Paying a visit to Blackie at AMC. Was crawling on the floor trying to get him to eat tuna from my hand.
Some of you will remember that a year ago, Blackie was very sick and spent (and very expensive) week there while they saved his life after a dramatic infection suddenly took over his body. Although I mentioned it, I never posted about the very dark week we had while he was there. He was, in their words, a very sick kitty indeed and we are of course very grateful patients.
Blackie sporting a bright pink bandage after he came home.
The Animal Medical Center was founded in 1911 by a group of women who were volunteering for the nascent ASPCA and recognized the need for veterinary care for animals as well as their welfare. I plan to dig into this lore and I’m sure I will be sharing tidbits over time.
Today it is the largest animal hospital of its kind in the world, serving more than 50,000 animals a year. It is an elite veterinary facility where young vets train and research is done. I hope to help them expand what they do in these and other areas, including funding the free services they offer to the City’s police dogs and horse, our zoos and rescue animals which need surgical intervention.
Yoda the police dog being honored at the Top Dog AMC Gala this week.
I will miss my colleagues at Jazz, especially the endlessly talented musicians in the band, not to mention the nights at Dizzy’s – listening to Bill Charlap while the summer sun sets over Central Park – and the concerts in the hall. Dinners planned around the music and the stunning views of Columbus Circle. I will miss the daily encounters with folks who know me and I know them and we are part of a well-oiled machine together.
I find change painful and as I navigate the first holidays without my mom, this additional parting of the ways has sometimes overwhelmed me. Change is hard. Growing is hard, but you need to pay attention to the voice that urges you forward to the next thing.
Tonight, a final Big Band Holiday concert in the hall. Then we head to New Jersey for three weeks at the end of this week. Obviously I will post from there, but I am hoping it can be a few weeks of cookie baking and reflection. The new gig starts mid-January. So we gently close one chapter and head to the next.
Pam’s Pictorama.com: Last week I mentioned stumbling onto Radio Dismuke in passing. While in Cold Spring over our anniversary we happened into a shop where it was playing. They had thoughtfully provided a printout page by the register with the log on info. I snapped a photo. Later that week I remembered it and tuned in while at work. It is a glorious discovery.
From what I have gathered, the station started as one man’s hobby, programming and playing his vast collection. The documentation of it online seems to mostly date from 2016 when he (Dismuke) made the decision to place his collection and the station in the hands of an Austin, Texas archive. There is a Board and donations can be made to it as a 501(c) (3) organization. He continues to program it, although I gather there are evidently occasional guest programmers (I haven’t hit on those yet). It rolls along 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like an alternate reality.
Although occasional period commercials play and there are periodic station identifications, there is no disc jockey or voice of. The playlist is vast and the throughlines can be mercurial. The quality of the recordings is fairly universally good. There are radio transcription, 78’s and who knows what else. The variety is blissfully wide. I bless Mr. Dismuke for having the foresight to attempt to ensure and secure the future of his station this way.
Today while wandering around the site I discovered that there is a section of program notes and essays with music as well. I have to explore further. I have also subscribed to their emails so we’ll see what that brings.
As a young adult, even a teen, I shopped around for a music that suited me. Of course as a Jersey girl of age in the 1980’s, I listened to a bit of Bruce and other contemporaries of the time. My sister Loren had a prodigious interest in music and collected albums of both popular and classical music. She was musically gifted. Violin was her primary instrument, but she played piano and flute, and was even known to hop on bassoon in a pinch. Music both from her own making and from her stereo issued forth at all hours and whenever she was home.
I am old enough that radios were certainly ubiquitous and hugely inexpensively available. While there was a kitchen radio for family consumption, it sat atop of the fridge where we couldn’t reach it until we were old enough, tall enough. It was generally on news radio, (CBS News radio where mom’s brother worked), but mom would give into music occasionally.
This is remarkably close to the model I had.
I had a transistor radio that I was extremely proud of when I was about 8. It was a small black Sony. It really seemed like the height of technology and vaguely magical. It was later replaced by, in turn, a very swinging 70’s model that was sort of a twisting plastic donut that kept its radio bits where it swung apart. This was very cool, but didn’t have legs. At some point I found or was given a white table model with gold trim and all were eventually replaced by a series of clock radios. (We were a clock radio family – my father rose to one daily and I guess he figured we all should. In New York I still use one, although in New Jersey and for travel I depend on my phone.) This eliminated the need for batteries and as I often listened in my room I only missed the magic of portability slightly.
Found on Pinterest. I think mine was even yellow…
I loved finding radio programs where stories were told or books read. Think Jean Shepard. I’m not so old that I remember dramas or series acted out on radio. However, there were shows where snippets of books were read or the sorts of things that would be podcasts were broadcast. I wasn’t very good at remembering when these shows were broadcast so it was hit or miss, but I’d go looking on a weekend afternoon or lazy summer day an occasionally be rewarded.
In true Butler tradition I still use a clock radio and this Sony cube has long been the current incarnation.I wake to WQXR classical music.
Jazz started to interest me fairly early on, but what I heard was sort of largely to one side of what really appealed to me. Almost without realizing it became apparent that what I liked was early jazz, pre-1940, but it was awhile before I think I entirely put that together. And it was hard to find. Like the stories, I would stumble on it here or there, but certainly didn’t find anything dedicated to it until I was in college.
I have written at length about the period of listening in college and ultimately discovering Rich Conaty’s show. (That tribute post to him can be found here.) Therefore, I won’t go over that territory again. Rich helped me quantify that it wasn’t only jazz, but really all popular music of the 20’s and 30’s (and perhaps a bit on either side) that I most coveted.
Rich Conaty. While researching this I found that WFUV has made his shows available digitally on their website.
However, with Rich’s death I never found a radio replacement. His station, WFUV, is an eclectic college station and there is, to my knowledge, no attempt to replace his show, nor to play the many decades of archived material. Phil Schaap filled the bill, if differently, at Columbia University and on their station. Kim and I became weekend listeners to his show, trading Rich’s Sunday night spot for a longer one on Saturday nights. Sadly, Phil lost his battle with cancer in 2021. His daily morning show Birdflight, about the life and music of Charlie Parker, is still played in its morning slot.
Phil was also a fixture at Jazz at Lincoln Center where he had taught their Swing U adult ed courses for many years. I would catch up with him in the kitchen and chat – always jazz or baseball. (I know nothing about baseball and very little about jazz compared to Phil. He’d quiz me and I would fail.) Once in awhile he’d lope into my office and have a chat. That was more rare. His presence accounted in part for my interest in taking the job there. Despite my inability to remember dates and details, Phil was overwhelmingly supportive of my fundraising efforts on behalf of the music and always expressed his gratitude with enthusiastic abundance.
A young Phil Schaap.
I find it hard to listen to Phil or Rich now, both their voices so very distinctive, without getting sad so I don’t listen to the rebroadcasts of Phil’s shows. WKCR continues dedicated presentations of jazz beyond Birdflight, but I lost the habit of listening while I work entirely during the pandemic. Kim loves the music, but he finds it distracting when he’s working so unlike my office, I didn’t play it while working from home during the pandemic years.
Ironically, my discovery of Radio Dismuke has come as I finish my time at Jazz at Lincoln Center and popular music of the 20’s and 30’s pours out of my office there again for now. (The internet has of course long replaced the desktop radio that I had while at the Met – although I still have it and could probably put my hands on it right now.) It is of some comfort to me that when I am sitting in a new chair in a different office in a few months that I will take Radio Dismuke along with me. In recognition I made my first online gift to them. I hope that it will be the first of many.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This sheet music wandered into my collection recently via an eBay seller in Tasmania! I believe it is British in origin, but does have a Sydney, Australia copyright within. The photo on the front sports the Porter & Higgenbotham’s Danse Band, all six gents lined up in their rooty tooty suits with their hands in pockets, in order of size, instruments lined up.
Of course it has come to me because these fellows were cool enough to have a nice Felix, fully credited, on the front of their drum. An excellent indication for any orchestra and I would have followed them for that alone back in the day.
This sheet music also included are the little known tunes, All I Want is a Stay-at-Home Girl, The Rose of Flanders and a page of Dream House on the back as an advertisement. For better or worse I cannot easily find samples for your listening pleasure. Tasma Ockenden (?) has written his or her name on the top and it was stamped by Cawthornes Ltd. Music Warehouse.
I went searching for a version of Love’s Dream to share and came up with the one below. Give it a listen and let me know what you think. Hang in there for it to start to swing!
Liebestraume or Love’s Dream on Youtube available at the time of posting.
This recording is sort of in the sweet spot of my musical inclination left to my own devices, although I definitely like a good vocal too. Working for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra has broaden my musical jazz tastes a bit as well of course.
I like to say that when Phil Schaap (music historian, producer and DJ extraordinaire) was alive he helped bring me into the forties, the latter part of the Swing era, as I used to say my musical inclination ended in 1939, although Bebop and its kissin’ cousins still elude me. (I have written about the start of this musical journey in a post about the wonderful Rich Conaty which can be found here.) But of course now I listen to the orchestra’s new compositions, some of them beloved to me, and arrangements and am reminded that indeed, all jazz is alive and modern.
I am partial to Wynton Marsalis’s Swing Symphony, (you can listen and download here) and I run to it frequently. I often think that when I hear it next in a concert hall I won’t be able to stay in my seat so strong the inclination will be to increase speed on what tends to be the last third of my run.
Recently I wrote about our season opening (here), a fall ritual I was viscerally pleased to return to this year for the first time since 2019. Wynton’s Shanghai Suite was on the bill and it sent me back to thinking about my early trip to that city for work, (I wrote about that rocky and wild trip here), but also how different it feels more than five years later. I also considered how being back to a program of listening to live music has returned me to my endeavor of learning to listen more actively. I am privileged to live in a world of rehearsals, concerts and sets at our jazz club. I return to it with ears still responding anew to live performance.
My pandemic music listening, aside from my job and what I listened to online for it, revolved largely around what I programmed for my runs once I started running in the November of ’20. Working in one room with my husband Kim at my side (happy 22nd anniversary Kim!) didn’t allow for a lot of music playing. My chatter on the phone was distracting enough for him poor man! Occasionally I would play some early jazz or dance band music when I needed serious mood enhancing, but mostly I would curl up on the couch and home renovation television, like eating junk food, to relieve stress.
Beethoven String Quartet Op. 135 in F Major, on Youtube at the time of posting.
Oddly, I mostly do not like jazz when I run however. Although I went through a long Billie Holiday phase, I generally listen to a sloppy compendium of classical and rock and roll from my childhood. (Yes, some Bruce Springsteen in there – cannot take the Jersey entirely out of the girl I guess.) This fall it has turned to Beethoven and there is something just right about the symphonies for the yellowing light of an east coast fall, temperatures rising and falling the way they do about now. Yesterday at my request Wynton suggested a Beethoven string quartet, opus 135, for my run which is slated for today. I am looking forward to it and will let you know how that goes.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: As most of our readers know, I work for a well known performing arts organization and you may remember that last year I missed our opening weekend, pushed late into November to avoid inevitably Covid related early fall issues. My mom landed in the hospital and needing to be with her trumped even our long-awaited post pandemic opening. So for me, although I attended concerts later in the season last year, this was my first opening weekend since the fall of 2019. While it lacked the heavy emotion of last year, last night was more than suitably festive and, despite masks still dotting our landscape, came close to feeling like at least the return to a new normal. There was a real joy in the room.
For me it also marked the launching of many colleagues who joined the organization recently and wonderful to see them each fully assume their new roles. (I have written some about the interview process and the overall state of the office here and here.) Like the slow forward movement of a mighty ship, the gears slowly turned and it was something close to full speed ahead by the end of the evening. For my folks the weeks and months of getting to know the organization and about our supporters was like the musicians and their hours or practice and rehearsal.
Birthday cake for mom earlier this week. I started the week working from New Jersey so I could be there for a small, but festive birthday celebration.Being able to work from there periodically is a post-pandemic blessing.
An evening like this is marked with a certain expected stress and mishap as is the nature of our business. Tickets gone missing (and a supply chain issue with ticket stock having made us crazy), introductions needing to be organized and executed, catering issues. (Last night a vegan sandwich made with beets appeared – which oddly looked remarkably like corn beef. They were enormous – and well, made with beets. Ultimately we had them quartered which made them more approachable and in the end they were surprisingly good.)
I was endlessly pleased to see my folks embrace their new roles, talking with guests, moving the reception along seamlessly. Our fundraising work bounces back and forth between the administrative and in person, a delicate dance really between the two. It is a a miracle when it all meshes into a successful evening like last night and fascinating to see the new people embrace their roles, each in a different and singular way. The trained singer who came to us to be back in this milieu taking obvious pleasure in the music and in meeting the musicians, the talented and personable young man who has taken a flyer on working for an arts organization for a totally different experience finding his voice. Our events manager fully in charge and in his glory after a few spring trail runs.
Mixed in of course remains a core group of hard working and great long-standing colleagues who have stayed through it all and helped introduce the new people to their roles while continuing to keep things afloat, as we have for months and really years now. It was a moment to glimpse the future and how a new team will work together and for all the bumpy starts see how the road ahead will shape up. It is just the start of the season, but I return with a new sense of swing to my step.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I’ve seen this sheet music come and go and I finally grabbed it up. It occasionally turns up in my cat searches and I finally landed on this copy earlier this week. There’s another version with an equally good cover, but very different cover which I will still snatch up given the opportunity.
Pictured on the front between these two great black cats is, I assume, Emma Carus. Emma was a vaudeville performer who was the face and voice for putting this song over. According to the American Vaudeville Museum site (University of Arizona, here) although she was pleasing looking, she generally opened her act with the line, I’m not pretty but I’m good to my parents. However, her songs were incredibly popular and she sold reams of sheet music. She hit the big time as a performer in 1900 so when this sheet music (copyright 1922, but more about that in a moment) she was a well established star and money maker.
This Black Cat Hosiery Cat of the same period at seems to be a kissin’ cousin of the ones on the sheet music.
Emma gets the top credit, followed by Dan Blanco (of whom I find no real tracks) and then J. Walter Leopold. I am not sure I see real evidence of her actual song writing as I read her bio. J. Walter Leopold has numerous song credits, but was also a performer and he and Carus teamed up in 1918 and worked vaudeville until the end of that particular line. He drifts to radio and then manages some bands. She lived hard starting in her teems, has two failed marriages before she is 25, and dies in failing health at 48.
Emma Carus in all her glory in an undated photo, on Ziegfieldfolliesgirls.com
Sadly I cannot find a recording of her singing this song, nor can I find a recording of her singing at all.
While credit is given as above on the front of this sheet music, the internet reveals that the original song was song was British and was written and composed by TW Connor in 1899 for George Beauchamp – probably as a sequel to an earlier successful song Puss, Puss Puss (1897). A 1901 recording of the song can be found here with the slightly different name of Has Anybody Seen Our Cat, but virtually the same lyrics. There are recorded versions going back to 1897 under this name so I don’t know how to make that jibe with the claim of the 1899 authorship above – was it acquired and reacquired multiple times?
The copyright page tells us that Dan Blanco acquired the rights in 1916 and they were transferred to Emma Carus in 1922. So maybe Dan’s only claim to fame is acquiring these rights and selling them.
Children’s Book which claims to have roots in one of the versions of this song.
The song goes on to inspire a Tex Ritter tune, Has Anyone Seen My Kitty, (listen to it here) and eventually a recent children book, Anybody Seen Our Cat by Kenneth Griffin, illustrated by Brandon Weiner.
Below are the lyrics which bear their British roots and age, but produce a chuckle. Enjoy!
I'm upset now; let me tell you why,
Our old tom cat has been and done a guy (run away)
My old gal declares that it's a sign
Somebody's number's up and two to one it's mine
I've been wondering why I am to blame
For sneaking the bacon and the brawn
And the young man lodger's two-eyed steaks (bloater)
When they're missing on a Sunday morn.
Chorus: Has anybody seen our cat?
Has anybody seen our cat?
He's got a bit of black on the end of his tail
And the skin's all off where he's been fighting
Last Sunday morning we missed him from the mat
Puss! Puss! Puss! Meat! Meat! Meat!
Has anybody seen our cat?
How we loved that cat nobody knows
Put butter on his feet and pepper on his nose
When he caught cold gave myself a job
When the toothache troubled him so bad
And I found little Tommy couldn't eat
I tied up his face, put baccy in his ear
And got another cat to chew his meat.
Chorus:
I never thought he'd leave his happy home
Though after the gals he often used to roam
I've sent tripe hounds out upon his track
I'm doing everything to try and get him back
Got two cods heads stuck up on a pole
And nailed up a kipper on the door
And written underneath it ‘Welcome home'
And a promise not to kick him any more.
Chorus:
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I’m not sure I remember where this photo hails from, possible @missmollystlantiques which means it likely comes from the Midwest, or maybe eBay.
However, frankly I can find no tracks either way. I came across it yesterday when I was assembling the photos which had come to me via jewelry vendors (that post can be found here) where I had mysteriously put it aside after receiving. (And after publishing my post I was tickled to find out that at least one of my IG friends – shout out to Karen! – is a purchaser from the same vendors and collects their photos too.)
I have a fondness for this sort of early band photo which is something of a genre; seems folks couldn’t resist getting the band together in the yard before taking off somewhere. I don’t own more of them as they usually command competitive bidding and go high. However, I stumbled across this one and bought it. I was lucky and it is a good example. Only a $2 mark on the back of the photo, nothing to identify it further.
This is a banjo-heavy quartet with just the one guitar. I wonder what their sound was like. I probably would have liked a violin in there maybe, just saying. However, a quick look at Youtube tells me that banjos do like to hang together in multiple, not unusual to see four or five together.
These fellows are not youngsters, but of a certain age. We’ll assume they knew what they were about. Could have been bluegrass or something else. (The Youtube below may satisfy if this is putting you in the mood for early banjo music – a great slide show of banjo related pics too!)
Kim and I are unable to decide what their sign says, although I suspect that to them it seemed perfectly clear. FALL what? UJM? These four fellows are in their cleanest, whitest shirts and, as Kim pointed out, each is sporting the very same barbershop hair cut, freshly and recently executed. It is an earnest photo. The fellow on the top left is leaning in, probably as he would when he played.
If you look carefully, in the windows you can see some folks watching this photo being taken, as is the fellow out by the wash drying in the side yard, hand on hip. The front of a car (perhaps their conveyance to gigs) has nosed into the photo on the other side.
In my mind I imagine that right after this photo was snapped, they packed their sign and climbed into that car and took off into the summer day, on their way to their next gig.
Pam's Pictorama 