Fool that I am, I missed Jo Stafford in the 1943 movie “Dubarry Was A Lady,” shown recently on Turner Classic Movies. Somebody has posted a clip from it, but the quality is only so-so, especially the sound synch. Now that YouTube has blessed us with working playlists again, you’ll find Dubarry after Jo’s appearance on “What’s My Line” from October 14, 1956.
Category: Music
The Buzz on Mitch Miller
An audio magazine I used to get, back when audio magazines existed, had a memorably succinct review of a CD release of a Mitch Miller Christmas Album — “Welcome to Hell.” Jonathan and Darlene Edwards paid tribute to the unforgettable music of Mitch Miller, as only they could, in “Baby Bumble Bee.”
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/AUG/BabyBumbleBee.mp3]Darlene’s friend, the late Jo Stafford, can be seen with Frank Sinatra in this old film clip, performing “I’ll Never Smile Again,” a song I featured at this link.
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Scenes From Lowell Folk Festival
Sunday we went to the Lowell Folk Festival, in the city where Jack Kerouac was born. While the event was winding down heavy rain hit, but before then I took a couple of videos. For my friends Bismo and Samjay, fans of the Blues, here is Mighty Sam McClain, who was featured in the dance pavilion.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/JUL/SamMcClain.flv 448 336]Eric, who plays the viola, was impressed with the Suhas Rao Ensemble.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/JUL/SuhasRao.flv 448 336]
They ARE a girl group!
D.F. Rogers, in his “Denro the D.J.” persona, will introduce this K3 video, which he seems to feel is perhaps their most accessible to American listeners.
“Ladies and Gentlemen — Kah-Thrrree!” Wow! Hey, this is the missing link! This IS Girl Group Music! And they sing part of it in English — and very well! They even do a few Klangs! They do the Supremes thing — but again no “Diana’s” up front — they sing as a group and spread the solos parts equally. The interesting thing is that it seems to be the one K3 song that has comments [on YouTube] in English! The comments in English are divided between “What th…???” and “Awesome!” — mainly because parts are clearly in English and they have no idea what the heck the rest of that stuff is! It seems like it’s an American group – but it’s mind-bending! It has an English title, too. This a gateway to the real hard stuff! Pure Flemish! Een Klang Kusha!
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/JUL/K3LoveYouBaby.flv 448 308]Note: This video clip required major surgery to fix the shape of the image, so you will see some re-compression artifacts.
Bonus K3 Video! This one is also partially in English, and required no special treatment other than being scaled up from 320×240. Shades of “Happy Days”! Rather than being just fun-loving, Karen, Kathleen and Kristel seem a bit boy crazy here, over a bunch of lunkheads, but we can deal. 😉
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Vitamin K3
[Sorry, but I had to remove the embedded YouTube video link because Studio 100 had all of the clips removed.]
Jonathan and Darlene Edwards
Considering Jo Stafford’s stellar career and her versatile singing talent, it’s somewhat ironic that she won her only Grammy for a comedy record. Jonathan and Darlene Edwards were the alter egos of Jo and her husband Paul Weston. They were a dreadfully earnest — or earnestly dreadful — lounge act, with Jo’s perfect pitch helping Darlene with her tin ear utterly destroy songs with stunning off-key precision.
You’ll find a wonderfully awful collection of Jonathan and Darlene here on MySpace. The link to Jo’s label, Corinthian Records, is wrong. Use this one instead.