Phonograph Monthly Review, Vol. 6, No. 5 (1932-02)

90 The Phonograph Monthly Review manner. Two 10” recordings of Miss Farrar’s voice which have never been published or offered for sale in any form have been found. Both were recorded prior to 1923 and comprise the following selections: Der Nussbaum (Schumann), in English with piano. Ouvre Tes Yeux Bleus (Massenet), in French with orchestra. Miss Farrar has given our club special permission to issue these recordings in a limited edition. The edi- tion will consist of numbered copies, the first 100 to be personally autographed on one of the labels by Miss Farrar. Although Miss Farrar is no longer interested in her phonograph records, she is doing us this great favor as a personal gesture to help make our club a success. Orders are to be filled in numerical sequence as re- ceived. Collectors should thoroughly understand that this edition, when exhausted, will not be supplemented with additional pressings. The usual price for 10” single white label pressings is, as we all know, S3, per single side. Yet, I am pleased to announce that this double-faced record will be $2. postpaid and insured to any part of the United States. (Foreign orders should be placed immediately with the nearest associated branch of the Victor Company, the special edition number being IRRC No. 1. The branch company will order direct from the Victor Co. thus eliminating high duties.) All communications, orders and money-orders should be sent to the Secretary. If successful with our first issue, announcements of further choices will be mailed monthly to those interested. WILLIAM H. SELTSAM, Secretary, 318 Reservoir Ave., Bridgeport, Conn., U. S. A. Remim'scenses of Anthony and Harrison By ULYSSES J. WALSH P ERHAPS it is one of the most ironical of life’s little ironies that “Harry An- thony and James F. Harrison”, the veteran tenor and baritone recording artists whose turn it is now to be “immortalized” by this historian, despite the fact that twenty-five years ago they held a virtual monopoly of the business of making records of sacred songs and gospel hymns, are always asso- ciated in my mind with two ludicrous inci- dents involving their names that took place during my childhood. This, as I have al- ready indicated, in spite of their recorded work having been, probably, of the most se- rious nature of any that ever attained note- worthy popularity among the masses of disc and cylinder buyers. With the chronological order of their ap- pearance reversed, the two incidents are as follows:— No. 2. It was the summer of 1914. The historian, then a boy of eleven, had moved the family Victrola to the front porch of his home at South Boston, Va., and had chosen to hear for his diversion, “Yaller Gal”, a loud and boisterous and by no means refined “coon shout” by that grand old black-face come- dian, Billy Golden. Suddenly there hove into view the Rev. E. K. Odell, to whose Methodist church the ap- preciator of “Yaller Gal” then owned a nom- inal allegiance. Horrors! Something must be done to save the family’s reputation for decorous behavior from disgrace! Something was done. By the time the min- ister came into hailing distance the “coon shout” had been throttled and “Anthony and Harrison’s” version of “Looking This Way” (“looking this way, looking this way, angels in glo-ree, looking this way”) was revolving upon the turntable. Later I came to find out that my swift change of pace was hard on Rev. Odell, who was a thoroughly good sort, of the kind that would have enjoyed the obvi- out buffoonery of “Yaller Gal”, but it seemed to your servant’s juvenile mind that the fam- ily honor was at stake and he was taking no chances. No. 1. Several years earlier, probably late in 1910, the writer, then seven years old, was standing beside a huge rack of Edison rec- ords in Patterson’s drug store and wishing that Mr. Patterson, “the most obliging man in South Boston”, would happen along and give a few of the wax cylinders a trial. In came a farmer, flushed with having disposed of his crop of tobacco at a better than usual price, and loudly announcing that “the old woman and the kids” had asked him to fetch home a few pieces for the graphophone. “You’ll want ‘Casey Jones’, won’t you?” the clerk inquired. “Everybody’s buying it now. We must have sold a million of it. Billy Murray sings it, you know.” “Naw, I wouldn’t want ‘Casey Jones’, not even if Ada Jones sung it!” was the bucolic gentleman’s unexpected reply. “I don’t hold with all these here ragtime reels. What I