Those French chanteuses whose influence was so evident later in the singing of Edith Piaf.  And Marlene Dietrich (but only in her early days and only in German). And oh – Mae West – seriously, she was sensational – the archetypal bad girl.

But today, let’s talk about the one – the only – the original red hot mamma – Miss Sophie Tucker (1884-1966). In fact, give me a spangly frock & feather fascinator and I’ll sit right down at the piano and do one of her numbers for you…

One of my mother’s favourite songs was My Yiddishe Momme and I realise now that it was Sophie singing it.  Now, Mother knew not a schmidish of Yiddish and if her Presbyterian soul had known of Miss Tucker’s background, she’d maybe have reconsidered. But that’s where I first heard Sophie Tucker.

Later, I bought the sheet music (with English words) and sang it to death, bashing out those sentimental chords on the piano.  But only in private.  I’ve harboured a longing for a long time to get out there  – in some old fashioned fleapit of a bar – and sing those songs, but of course I never will.  Besides, Bette Midler got there first – and oh boy can that girl sing!

Now I have a few 78s of the lady herself.  I wish I had more. They’re perfect for mechanical sound – on CD she can sound anodyne. On shellac, it’s like you’re sitting at the nearest table to the bar and Sophie’s perched up there on the mahogany, belting it out.

Here she is singing what was to become her signature number – Some of These Days – on the original cylinder recording of 1911. I’ve heard this played on a contemporary phonograph – fabulous. The 78 I have  is the 1926 version with Ted Lewis, which is much smoother.  I admit I prefer the rawness of the original – after all, raw and punchy was what Sophie did best!

Life begins at forty is half-spoken and you can just see that raised eyebrow, the hand on hip – once a vaudevillian, always a vaudevillian. It’s teamed with the classic Gershwin The man I love which we more commonly associate with Billie Holliday.  Sophie manages it surprisingly well – it’s not Billie but it’s good and original. So too is Bill, from what was then the smash hit Broadway musical -  Showboat. It’s proof that she couldn’t only do red-hot but sweet & straight too.

But it’s Yiddishe momme that I play again and again.  Side one is sung and in English and Sophie wrings every ounce of emotion from it without piling on the schmaltz.  On the other side, the band plays the song and Sophie speaks the words – in Yiddish.  Outstanding.

Isn’t that great? (I shan’t have the chutzpah to wear the badge, though).

Cloud Appreciation Society

I’ve been looking at my 78rpm shellac record collection.  The ones above are what I’ve called Various. They date from the 1920s through to the 40s. Although there’s some familiar names there with the big band names (Duke Ellington and Edmundo Ros), there’s a whole heap of weird and wonderful ensembles.  At the time, jobbing musicians were badly paid and so ad hoc bands were common, usually taking the name of the band leader.  You really have to know your record history (I’m a complete amateur, I don’t!) to know that an achingly sweet horn on a particular record was actually Louis Armstrong, for example. And look at The Seven Gallon Jug Band playing on the reverse side of the queen of the blues, Bessie Smith!

Johnny Dodds often put together a great group of musicians and those records are some of my favourites. None of my records are particularly rare or valuable, but I treasure them. This list is only a small part of the collection.  Maybe I’ll talk about some more about it in the future.

Oh and to anyone thinking of starting a collection, you have to do one important thing first. Buy a wind-up gramophone, the best you can get.  You don’t need a vast cabinet machine, just a portable, maybe an HMV 101. And a pile of needles. Believe me, 78s played on a wind-up machine gets you as close to being there in that smokey old studio with those guys slugging bourbon as you’re likely to get.

with what youthful glee is each new thing in the dainty “mother-packed” lunch box pounced upon and devoured!

date bread sandwiches spread with butter or cream cheese, peanut cookies, orange

carrots are apt to be more popular finely shredded and added to mayonnaise or served with a lemon parsley sauce or combined with gelatin

the daintiest lunch in the world may be spoiled in the packing

]]> http://curlsdiva.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/the-school-lunch-box/feed/ 0 curlsdiva the-school-lunch-box http://curlsdiva.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/chocolate-cornflakes/ http://curlsdiva.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/chocolate-cornflakes/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 14:48:46 +0000 curlsdiva http://curlsdiva.com/?p=441 ]]> My generation was (I think) the first to discover the delight of Kellog’s Cornflakes covered with chocolate and put in paper cake cups. We had no idea they were so simple to make, we just loved the combination of crunch and sweetness.  Nowadays, even the thought of them makes my mouth ache! But these simple cakes (if you can call them a cake) have endured and been fed to hungry children for another two generations – there’s a TV ad running at the moment on ITV showing children helping their mother make them – just as I did fifty years ago. Here’s my mum’s original recipe.

A dear friend told me last night that she finds the online world boring and a chore.  She switches off  when she tries to read onscreen text.  The typed word feels artificial to her.  But she’s very happy to read page upon page of handwriting or the printed page in a book. I get the strong impression that the online world simply isn’t real to her. She will buy socks or paints from an online company, but that’s business, that’s what the internet is good for.

First, I want to say that this person is a wonderful person – creative, warm, generous, intelligent and funny.  I love her a lot. But you know, I’m sad that she’ll never relate to me online.  That she’ll never read my blogs, answer my emails to her, look at some link I send her and go ‘oh yes, I love that too’. Because when I’m online, I’m every bit as much me as I am when I speak to her on the phone, or even more so.

It can’t be an age thing – OK she’s not young but neither am I. Is she old-fashioned or terminally incurious? Nope, far from it. But I think she feels that her world is complex and satisfying enough without including anything that’s happening on the internet.  I can understand that up to a point – she has a very busy and fulfilling life. And it would be ludicrous to suggest that everyone should be online – we still have some free choice left to us.

But does having a great real life need to exclude an online life?  I can see that I’m not best qualified to answer that – my real life is small, narrow.  But that’s not because I have a lively online life, it’s to do with all sorts of other things.  Why are some of us happily online, embracing the culture, bending it to fit to our own kind of lives and some of us are running a mile from anything that happens on a computer?

Examining my own motives for being online, I’d say that here I can be creative in all kinds of directions.  It doesn’t matter if the result is sometimes mediocre. I’m definitely more creative online because I can be.

It’s also a sharing thing – my geneablog is about putting my ancestors out there so they’re not forgotten. I hope that they live on again in some way through my stories.  If I wrote a pamphlet on The Cowans 1600-present and self-published it, who would see it? Who would know about those fascinating people in my history? It would sit on a dusty shelf and when I died, it would be chucked in a skip with the rest of my junk.

Someone from my distant past read my blog and left a comment – that was nice. And people who I’ll never meet read what I write. It’s a connection.

Then there’s that huge mass of people out there who fascinate me.  The living and the dead.  I’ve probably learned more in a decade of surfing than I did the whole time I was at school.  Being online keeps my brain alive (that, and my beloved local library).

I’ve gone through what I’d call the bad side of the internet.  The piles of virtual friends who turn out to be anything but. The stuff you buy that looks so good onscreen and is shabby tat when it arrives. But I’ve come through – my expectations of stuff and people are more realistic now. Online life shouldn’t be all the life you have, but it’s a damn good add-on.  It’s just part of where the human race is going now.  It’s culture, spirituality, creativity, community every bit as much as it’s commercial gain, porn and violence. Don’t stop planting the veggies in your real life allotment, don’t stop seeing a dear friend because you have to be on Twitter, don’t stop noticing the wonderful cloud formations above your head.  But there’s nothing to say you can’t have both – there’s time. There’s always time.

Listening to a podcast this morning, I wondered if Emily Dickinson would have been online. What say you, Emily?

saft, sleepy cooin frae above

the clock – set

at first light

afore ah wis up

low voices so the wean didnae hear

- grand day -

- ah hear there’s rain ower the Campsies -

-this wind’ll blaw them back -

-first time this year ah’ve been oot in mah sleeves and galluses -

-aye another cup’d be grand, thanks Helen -

straps o sun on the claithespoles

-mind mah maw complainin boot her washin

thae  bluidy birds! wi her wee fist shakin -

-aye Bobby keeps a guid loft -

- ken he payeed twenty smackeroonies fir his lead bird -

-naw! -

- aye, that sun’s warm eh -

dad’s snorin in his deckchair

- Tam, yir tea’ll gang cauld -

bees buzzin on Louie’s roses

sun creepin ower the greens

- ah hear Archie McCrindle pits oot his wife’s bakin fir to get them in -

- that wid mak them turn aroon and gang awa! -

- a ye need’s a good lassie doo – they’ll come hame fir that -

-want tae hold her? mind now, hold her wings like this -

heather n slate n moss glintin in the sun

an her hairt beatin hard against ma haund

bright ee regards me – you’re no the one

- aye, see her looking? she kens he’s close -

- nearly five – no long noo -

- whit’s that? ower there -

- I cannae see – whaur?

gees the clock gees the clock quick

it’s him – I’m shair it’s him

c’moan my wee lad, come oan -

droppin oot the sky

feathers flurryin

landin feet perfect

only the mesh separatin him

frae his beloved noo

- aye just a meenit, laddie

let’s git this ring aff first

then she’s a yours -

ding!

- aye that’s it -

- by, but that’s a good time -

- aye no bad -

- first one hame again then Bobby -

- aye -

I’m going to take a big risk here – I recorded myself reciting this on webcam, not something I have any experience of.  Then I compressed the file to its detriment – I know nothing about video making either! But here goes – if you watch this, do please be kind.  I’m a dishevelled old bag and I’m not a natural in the recitation. It’s on ipernity here.

On my  bookshelves sits a small red book called A Birthday Book for Children.  Its author is Irene G. Heath and there is no date of publication. This was given to me by my brother on my 7th birthday in 1961. Each page is like the one above – three dates on one side and a little illustration and poem on the other. These came from various sources including Woman’s Weekly and The Star.  They’re very much of their time and some remind me of my treasured Milly Molly Mandy books http://www.gusworld.com.au/mmm/mmm.htm.

I suspect that my big brother, aged 15, must have had help choosing this present and I see my mother’s hand in the decision! I was already a bookish child, so I liked the poems a great deal. It’s a rather worthy present otherwise – a little book of duty.  Write all your favourite people’s birthdays in this book and you’ll never forget them again and what a good little girl you will be.

Opening it now is a poignant experience.  This entry is for Mummy.  I’ve obviously written the word several times in all kinds of pen and pencil and the one that hasn’t been erased is by far the neatest. My father and my brother each have an entry, as do my aunt and her children.  My best friend from next door, Kathleen, is there and so is my beloved Alsation dog, Zona, who lived until I was 14.  My mother has written a couple of names – people whose birthdays she thought I should remember, I presume.  Then there’s various childish hands  entering their own birthdays – one little boy even enters the birthday of his mother!  To my great surprise, my great-uncle Jim, a very old man by that time, is there on September 1st – his surname obviously defeated me and my mother has written it alongside.

Then there are the mystery entries.  Who were Mr Couts and Mary Bell? I’ve put myself in too, and I am Number 20 in the book – even then, I liked to make lists. And talking of lists, being a scrawly wee girl, I used the backpapers to list, in pencil first then blue biro, all the books I’d read.

It’s far from being an erudite list.  Enid Blyton is about as highbrow as it gets, but then, I was only 7. There’s loads of annuals – Bunty, Judy, Beano, Andy Pandy.  And the Scottish child’s essential reading – The Broons and Oor Wullie (each volumes 1, 2 & 3).  I don’t remember what Hawkye (sic) was or School Friends, but I do remember my favourites. There was Farmyard Friends – I was crazy about animals from the start. Grimms Fairy Tales - a 19th century copy which had been kept immaculately until it came into my grubby little hands – I have it still, complete with formless scribbles and crumbling red rose petals pressed between its pages. And Black Beauty – an illustrated version for children which was my reward for being brave while I had two teeth out.

piping

the pilots

pull g at their breasts

stalling midair

scimitars slicing

the clouds

piping