Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians - 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Snuggle up kiddies, it's time for the last batch of Christmas albums. Fred Waring was a pretty interesting dude. He's most famous as a bandleader and radio personality, but his actual contribution to humanity is moderately important in its own right.

I told you the story about how vaudville composer Michael Brown coincidentally funded one of the classics of American literature. Fred Waring also funded a thing that turned out to be special. He funded the production and promotion of the first electric blender, called the Waring Blendor. It not surprisingly became a big deal in hospitals across the country for preparing special meals for patients. Thus, Jonas Salk used it while developing his vaccine for polio.

Yes, Fred Waring eradicated Polio for about $25,000 (a big sum in the 30s, but an inconsequential fraction of his fortune). Sure, someone would have invested in it eventually, and Salk would have succeeded regardless, but coincidence is the name of the game and this particular musician made the world objectively better by throwing a little bit of his fortune around.

The record? Oh yeah, it's good old 50s slap-happy radio music. My copy is so scratchy and skippy that it's pretty unlistenable even by physically holding the needle down, but i actually like Masterseal's Merry Christmas much more anyway. This is a classic though, so you can easily find the Pennsylvanians' enthusiastic versions of classic Christmas songs on line, should you want to do so.

Next

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more