When I was in college my roommate, Louie Capone, turned me on to opera and especially old Red Seal Victors. Louie had a huge collection. I collected quite a few myself. I found some real classics in junk stores. When Louie and I parted company (He went to the University of Florida where he earned a PhD in physics despite having only 5% vision in one eye and totally blind in the other)
The best of the bunch in my collection that I remember was a Riccardo Stracciari, I forget the song, but it was quite rare. The other was Caruso singing the bass aria, Vecchia Zimarra (Old Cloak), from La Boheme. It was not published, I believe, until the 1940’s. It was on some sort of red plastic, not unlike a 45, but it was played at 78 rpm. After Caruso recorded the aria he said “Maybe we better break him up.” Fortunately they didn’t. On the flip side of the record was the alto who sang Musetta telling the story. Here’s the description from the web site www.enricocaruso.dk
During a performance of La Boheme in Philadelphia, Segurola, the basso, who was about to sing the “Coat Song” (“Vecchia Zimarra” from La Boheme), turned to Caruso and whispered “I’ve lost my voice”. Caruso replied, “You just stand still and move your lips and I’ll sing it for you”. And so, with his back turned to the audience, Caruso sang the aria for Segurola. Segurola then acknowledged the cheers from the audience, who didn’t realize that it was Caruso who had done the singing.
OK, I got my new stylus. I heard the Patti Page version of this song and it brought me back to the Ink Spots version. As I said, I played this LP many many times when I was young. There’s something about the sound of vynil that’s so much warmer than digital, even with the scratches. I’m going to start buying LPs at the thrift store where Delores shops.
When I was working at the Physics Department at FSU in the mid 70’s, Dean Johnson was a grad student in the group. That means he did most of the dirty work. Today Dr. Dean Johnson just sent me this link of video of the installation of some doodads on the Space Station. He is involved in cooling systems for electronic gear in space. He had a part in this project. If you’re interested in space stuff, this happened a few days ago.
I got hacked again. My spam filter stopped working. I’ve got about a zillion spam posts in comments. I have to figure out how to get rid of them.They’re from Browser MMORPG and Fantasy MMORPG. Dirty bastards.
BTW, Even though I didn’t win the billion, I’m still ahead on my gambling. 43 years ago I won 10,000 francs at the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo.
Sunday morning I’ll be on my private jet on my way to St. Moritz. Yes folks, I bought my Mega Millions lottery ticket. Actually I bought 20 Mega Million lottery tickets. I figure my chance of winning with only one ticket is about one in a couple billion. With 20 tickets the odds come down to about 1 in 100,000,000. But I won’t forget you, the little people. Watch your mail for a postcard.
I ordered a new stylus for my turntable, so the Ink Spots will have to wait for a few days. Meanwhile…
My first wife’s mother gave it to me because I loved it so much. I’m sure I listened to it a couple hundred times. My old college roommate, Louie Capone, and I used to try to guess which one was the high tenor. We agreed that it was the fat guy in the middle. We were wrong. Bill Kenny is the guy with the guitar. You can see clips of them singing on YouTube. Tomorrow I’m going to dust off my old turntable and see if it works.
I don’t know if I told you or if you are interested, but my I Thought They’d Never Leave book is now available on Amazon. By going to Amazon I was able to get the price down to 9 bucks. The Guess Who Got Lucky book is still on Lulu, but that one is “R” rated to say the least. Be aware that the cartoons in all three books are in black and white, only the covers are colored. I moved some of the good cartoons out of the Guess Who Got Lucky book and put them in this one simply because I didn’t want them in the “R” book (I had to put clothes on the forest nymphs and the jockey’s wife), and I wanted a somewhat complete collection of most of my better cartoons. I made up for it by adding additional cartoons to the new book. There are 159 cartoons in the new collection. I also revised my What’s New in Science book on Amazon. I hope to find time to move all the other books (Ernie/Piranha Club and Babs and Binky) to Amazon. I can make them cheaper and I think the quality is better. It’s a ton of work and it will take a lot of time because I have to reformat them all, and there are a total of 17 books.
Just now I have been coloring old Sundays for a new collection. I think this will be my last book, and, as I said before, I hope to have it ready by the end of the year. This future collection will be comprised of what I consider to be the best of my Sundays.
Here are the front covers of the new collection and the science book:
I was hoping too watch the pupae to see them hatch, but they disappeared into the hybiscus. My hibiscus is about 10 feet tall, and I have to prune it, so I didn’t really mind if the caterpillars were lending a hand.
