This is my blog where I write about music, and myself. Vaudeville, burlesque, blues, jazz, novelties, and whatever else I feel like posting. Mostly from my own LPs and 78s. Comments and feedback always appreciated. Please do not link directly to mp3s. It's rude.

"Burlesque" Party Novelty
Biltomore
year: ??





Here's another "party record" to pass a few minutes of your time. It's pretty low quality and skips at the beginning but the point is pretty easy to understand. What I can't understand is whether "Party Novelty's" was intentionally possessive or just plain old bad grammar. I guess lowlife's have had bad grammar for decades at least.

Labels: adult, burlesque, comedy, party records

Posted by: Kara Mae 4/02/2008  (0) comments

I aim to please.
I guess the writer of this intriguing classic movie blog found my site while searching for a recording of Barbra Stanwyck singing "Take It Off The E String (Play It On The G String)", as seen and heard in the movie "Lady of Burlesque"(1943).
For those of you who aren't familiar, the movie is an adaptation of the novel "The G String Murders" by the one and only Gypsy Rose Lee, eloquent stripper turned mystery writer.
Stanwyck sings this saucy number and flaunts her goods in the burlesque tradition, in the beginning of the movie before the shit goes down. (By that I mean the aforementioned murders of course)
The song is credited to Sammy Cahn and Harry Akst.
I can only guess that it would be this Sammy Cahn and Harry Akst, each relatively successful and acclaimed showtune writers on their own.
If I'm correct that would make it the same men who brought us such songs as "Dinah" (Akst) and "Until The Real Thing Comes Along"(Cahn). Hell.. Cahn partnered with various people on a whole slew of familiar songs from "Love and Marriage" to "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow."
I copied this song from the "Ladies of Burlesque" compilation LP. I posted another song and mentioned this one 2 years ago. Which of course led to this request.
Anyway, I'm glad someone looked at my blog. I'm glad I could be of service delivering this legendary burlesque-related recording to someone who seeks it. Enjoy. Sorry my record player sucks. I'm working on that.

Take It Off The E String (Play It On The G String)
(Sammy Kahn, Harry Akst)
Barbara Stanwyck - from the 1943 film "Lady of Burlesque"

Barbara Stanwyck looking ridiculously hot

Labels: burlesque, cinema, comedy, glamorous

Posted by: Kara Mae 3/05/2008  (2) comments

Party Platters
"Bits of Burlesque"
Newspaper Headlines








I didn't realize I have so many party records. I wanted to find something else Baltimore related. But mostly I want to get the post I entitled "vagina" down on the page since I'm trying to promote my blog and turn the world on to the lost art of party records. There will be some Baltimore stuff forthcoming... as well as "Farmer Brown's Jackass," which was too long for me to bother with tonight.

Labels: adult, burlesque, comedy, party records

Posted by: Kara Mae 1/31/2008  (0) comments

I set up my record player goods the other day. I'm not too good with wires but I always figure it out eventually.
I have that usb turntable but I don't use the usb port. That record player sucks anyway and if I had loose change I'd buy a different one.
It goes in through the receiver and out to my computer. Same with my Califone. It has a 1/4 headphone jack so I plug it in there like that.
As I settled down into my new home I got a few blasts from the past.
First and foremost and oh-so-exciting is that the Lili St. Cyr biography finally came out.


I played a part in this however small and for that I am proud and grateful. Kelly DiNardo did a great job and I really encourage you to check it out.

Photographer Ed Fox has a new book out on Taschen featuring yours truly, circa 2001. Good memories of that wonderful trip to LA.

And oddly enough I got a little mention in the City Paper mail section just this week. A photographer I once worked with gave me a nod in regards to a story the City Paper had done about "neo-pinups" in Baltimore.

Meanwhile I've been making jewelry, painting house, tending houseplants and reading.

...and mp3-ifying some records. Nothing appropriate for here, yet though. I'll get right on it, I promise.
In the meantime here's a Doris Day song.

When I was 19 I knew nothing about "old music" but I wanted to learn. I'd search the internet for things like 'life is a bowl of cherries', and for Irving Berlin, who I learned of from songs performed by my beloved Eva Cassidy on the Live at Blues Alley record, (a record which changed my life for real.)
So the familiar name of Doris Day sounded like someone I would probably like, and I bought a CD called "Cocktail Hour" because that sounded like something I would probably like. Today, the first track from that CD evokes the memories of sitting around in my old apartment on Park Avenue with hot cups of tea during the cold winter, discovering new old music, getting excited about jazz and Irving Berlin and Tin Pan Alley and burlesque and just about anything that happened before I was born.

Doris Day
Someone Like You

Labels: books, burlesque

Posted by: Kara Mae 1/20/2008  (3) comments

Well, well, well... it looks like it's time for another burlesque novelty. I haven't posted one in awhile.
The Sherry Britton LP is one thing, but I can't believe this one hasn't been reissued. Rhino? Somebody? At one point I'd thought about trying to do it myself. I don't think I'm up to the task. But someone should do it. And it should benefit Exotic World. Oh and I should be writing the reflective liner notes...

You probably know who Gypsy Rose Lee is. She was a dancer. And then she wrote a mystery novel. Which became a movie. She also had a musical written about her life.
The "Gypsy Rose Lee Remembers Burlesque" LP is much like the Sherry Britton one mentioned above (as well as a number of other burlesque LPs), but this one is centered around Gypsy and her career. There are some quality bits - the one I'm posting is my favorite. This humorous song speaks for itself. You can find this record for cheap on ebay, or perhaps even at your local thrift store.




Gypsy Rose Lee
Adam & Eve
Gypsy Rose Lee Remembers Burlesque
Stereoddities, 1962

Labels: burlesque, comedy, glamorous

Posted by: Kara Mae 1/24/2007  (1) comments

Billy and Lee
Climate
Live Burlesque Live
United Artists 1967

This clip is so terrible I couldn't even listen to it again to make sure the mp3 sounds right. Drawn out joke with a stupid punch line.



I want to research the correlation between the quality of the ads on an inner record sleeve and the quality of the record itself. Here are three other gems from United Artists list of mostly Soundtracks:





What do you think?

Labels: burlesque, comedy

Posted by: Kara Mae 4/21/2006  (0) comments

MGM Records Presents "THE BEST OF BURLESQUE." Narrated by: Sherry Britton. Top Banana: Tom Poston.




I think this record is probably my favorite out of all of my burlesque records. I wanted to save it for later, but "Burlesque With The Nuts Inside" was skipping, so lucky you, I decided to go ahead and start with this one. The embittered essay from the sleeve, posted below, refers to the 1942 ban on burlesque in New York City, advocated by the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Sherry Britton was a very beautiful and famous stripper, and her intelligence and sense of humor shine through her narration on this record. I have about three or four more installments I will be posting. Be patient - keep reading my blog, suckers!


From the record sleeve:

"The album you are now holding represents all that remains of an art form that was invented in America for Americans. On that bleak day in 1942 when a rumpled New York City politician with a penchant for chasing fire-trucks signed a ukase banning Burlesque, an era of unique entertainment ended. With the banishment of Burlesque from Broadway, this medium was stigmatized in the minds of the masses and, when transplanted across the Hudson River, the dry rot of vulgarity and synthetic sex completed the conspiracy. The new overlords of the runway forgot that the word "Burlesque" means parody or travesty, that originally the burlesque show had satirized and lampooned the topics of the times and contemporary musical theatre, and that Freudian and Kinseyesque overtones had no place in its initial concept. Thus it was that real Burlesque, along with the whooping crane and the passenger pigeon, passed into extinction.
What you are about to hear is a reconstruction of a burly show of the late 'Thirties. You have passed into the purlieus of roccoco architectural indescretion known as "Renaissance RKO" or "Early DeMille." Seated in the orchestra, you are overpowered by a miasma of cigar smoke thick as a prarie fire. Through it, dimly, you see the runway, a bridge of thighs cherished by devotees of dimpled derrieres, for it permitted propinquity to the "ponies" and the seats adjacent to it were tabbed the "bald-headed row." A cross-section of the male species, with a sprinkling of females, surround you. Stevedores, store-clerks, bookkeepers and home-wreckers, all they have in common is a limited entertainment budget and a thirst for adventure. An expectancy falls over the audience as the orchestra, toupees askew, files into the pit. The newspapers, racing-forms, tout-sheets and tattered copies of "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang" are put down, fresh Bayuk Phillies are ignited, and all settle back in anticipation of an hour's escape from the reality of dull days and empty nights; maybe Burly was banal and tawdry, maybe it was sleazy and tarnished, but to many millions it was the only theatre they could truly call theirs. Sic transit gloria Minsky!" - Jack Vaughan





(1) PROLOGUE: Emmett Rose

(2) NARRATOR: Sherry Britton

(3) OVERTURE: The Band

OPENING:
(4) "Hello, Everybody"
and
(5) "Autumn Salutation"
Nelle's Belles

Labels: burlesque, comedy, glamorous

Posted by: Kara Mae 2/07/2006  (4) comments

Whose Big Baby Are You?
Alice Faye - from the 1935 film "King of Burlesque"





I've never seen "King of Burlesque." This "Ladies of Burlesque" record is pretty common - record collectors will come across it often, especially when seeking other burlesque-related gems. It has some good songs on it. I don't know what year the compilation was put out, but the first song is "Ladies of the Chorus" featuring Marilyn Monroe, yet Marilyn's name is not printed on the front of the record alongside the other stars listed.
This comp also features the famed Barbara Stanwyck "Take It Off the E String (Play It on the G String)" from the Gypsy Rose Lee-penned film "Lady of Burlesque." Maybe I'll put that song on here at some point.
I really wish I could find "King of Burlesque," so that I could find out who the King in question is, and also so I could see what the crowd is laughing at in this Alice Faye track.

Labels: burlesque, cinema, glamorous

Posted by: Kara Mae 1/30/2006  (0) comments