Max Bygraves

Max Bygraves

Max Bygraves was a populer performer during the 1960's and 70's,he was a comediean,singer and writer throughout his career,he was the presenter of a lot of populer Television shows such as "Whack-O" and "Family Fortunes"whist appearing in films such as "Spare the Rod" and "A Cry From The Streets".

What he is most famous for however is his music career with one of his greatest selling songs being "Fings Aint Wot They Used T'Be",As of writing in my Collection I own the following records containing his music

1.  The Fings Aint Wot They Used T'Be  45rpm Single
2.  A Hallmark Record (Pictured above, Code HMA 206)
3.  Another Hallmark  Record with a black backround and Max Pictured on a Stage (Catalouge HMA 242)
4.  The Singlong with Max 6 Record Box Set released by Reader's Digest.

Now for the Singalong box this has a lot of music on it and luckily it has been re-released on Itunes albiet broken up to the different tracks on the records,Strollin and Mame are also on there as well which were the only two songs i didn't post from the Hallmark Record.

Here is a sample from Disk 1 Side A from the Singalong with Max Record Set,the medley

 "How Deep Is the Ocean/As Times Goes By"

Unfortunately at the moment this story is not a very happy one as last year Max's Wife (who he used to call Blossom) sadly passed away and earlier this year at their home in Queensland Australia his Daughter released a statement saying that Max was showing early signs of Alzheimer's disease much like Terry Pratchitt although he's reportedly been keeping himself busy and trying to keep himself active,if you have the time and you are a fan of his work Send a Postcard to him as support.

Captions

Captions

Youtube has a feature to give video's captions to make them enjoyable by deaf people so far my channel didn't have any but i recently made a few caption scripts for some videos as a test run,below are two complete captionised videos and one that has the end portion captioned.

Max Bygraves : Edelweiss

The Two Ronnies : This Is The News Side B

The George Mitchell Minstrels : The Good Old Summer Time (Partial Caption)

At this point im not sure if i'll do this to all my videos but if you think it's a good idea let me know in the comments section or send me a message on Youtube.

The Geoff Love Banjo's

The Geoff Love Banjo's

The Geoff love banjo's were a band that dealt with a number of classic american songs,Geoff love himself used to be in a Minstrel group and appeared as a memeber of the Music for Pleasure Minstrels most notably in the album "Music for Pleasure present their Minstrel Show",as a result of his past a number of the songs his band performed were the same style as the ones he sung back in his band,he also went under the name of "Manuel" and recorded a number of albums under that name with Manuel and the Music of the mountain being another album of his being a hit,afterwards he made appearances in a few movies and being responsable for the orchestration of a number of movie soundtracks and also appeared on Max Bygraves's TV Show SingalongaMax.

Two songs he perfomed while he was with his band I want to point out were "Oh You Beautifull Doll" and "The Band Played On",while they have appeared in a number of places and performed by a number of artists they both appeared in the last battle of the Alfred Hitchcock Movie "Strangers On A Train (1951)" with "The Band Played on" taking on a dark role for the movie as the theme of Bruno and appearing whenever the two characters fought each other.

Baby Love

Baby Love

Now this is a song and a half,The Supremes were one of the most famous singers in the sixties and ths was one of their most famous songs and has the rare honor of being an early song that still has some film footage that goes along with the music (something that a lot of other music from that era doesn't have),this copy isn't in that great shape and probaly got used a lot as the surface is very worn out.

Even the slip case has taken a beating as whoever owned it before had to tape it back together as it is covered in tears and rips but its better than no case at all.

The Many Moogs Of The Killer Watts

The Many Moogs Of the Killer Watts 

This record is an unusual one as this was one of the ones i found in that garage set of records (See the Another Misntresl Show Blog for that),At first it took me a while to get it working proplery on my player but after a while i finnaly managed to listen to the whole thing from start to finish,after that i'd say that this album is great for going into a trance like state: the computer like sounds just make you zone out especially if it's on loud speaker in your living room and by the time it gets to the track "Now Hear This" you could have been spaced out for a whole hour and not know it.




This album has been the most difficult to present on the channel as it is very difficult to get all the instruments just right in the transfer with there some turntables reacting differently to the surface each time and how the needle went down on the record,below is two versions of the "Hey Jude/We Can Work It Out" Video that appeared on the channel.

                                         The Original Version I Posted

                                          The Current Version

It was actually one of the first songs to appear on the channel but i kept having to take it down each time I got a better transfer untill eventually someone helped me get a good stereo print of the record in resonable condition,as a way of thanks his upload of one of the songs was added to the playlist instead of me uploading it as well as another persons video,This music style was honored with a Google Doodle,if you missed it here is a link to the doodle.

The Incomparable Voice Of Paul Robenson

The Incomparable Voice Of Paul Robenson

 This is an unusual record of mine as it's one i no longer have,when i recived it i quickly realised that it was a vintage record designed for Gramaphone machines rendering it unplayable on any of my turntables.

After a while sitting in a box i took it to a specialist Retro charity shop along with a couple of surplus Gramaphone record sleeves,hopefully by now it has found a happy new owner,when i handed the lot over the cashier pointed me in the direction of another store that sold record cleaning cloths which was a nice bit of marketing on her part and showed me a box that hadn't been marked for display yet, out of them i picked "Eye Level" and "Squeeze Me Please Me" singles from an Archive/Library that had closed down as well as a copy of the Electric Dreams Soundtrack Lp.

Quite fun little songs to listen to.

Deanna Durbin

Deanna Durbin

 Deanna was an actress that made her debut in the movie "Every Sunday" (1936) with many of her songs from the film being released on records like this,one Film of hers that is known more was the Film "Christmas Holiday" about a soldier on holiday on his way to get revenge on an ex girlfreind meeting a stranger who battles with the inablity to forget about her husband who is in jail.

Throughout the film the Song Always was a key tune akin to how As Time Goes By was featured heavily in Casablanca,this album had a lot of other themes (more than a few i'll admit to not liking) but Always was the one i picked for the channel as it was the one i enjoyed the most out of them,however that is not the most fun i had with her,Sometime ago i photographed the cover of the album for Face Raiders so now she's on my 3DS as a character to shoot at along with the likes of Max Bygraves and Cheryl Cole for me to shoot at.

3DS Face Raider + Record Album Cover = Fun Times

Another Black & White Minstrel Show

Another Black & White Minstrel Show

Now i wanted to start with this record as it is quite special to me personally,The majority of my collection comes from two tatty record cases that were found in a garage that had belonged to a relative of mine that had passed away,when i had visted her in the past when i was a child she had been going through the garage and showing off some of the stuff she had left in there and under a cover were two tattty record cases: A blue plastic one with cream stiching and a green leather one with a broken lid,i asked to see what was inside and she opened up the Blue one revealing that it was chock full of records.

This was the record that was randomly picked making it technically the first Record i had ever encountered (I had only seen Cassette tapes and CD's up until that point),while most of the other stuff in that garage was tossed away i claimed the boxes and used them as the start of my collection (Firstly by getting rid of an auful pub song compialation and adding some records that were more to my taste),I understand some people may be offended by this record ( i even considered recoloring the guy on the cover Purple when i was uploading this to the channel but later decided to post it as orignally presented as i'd also have to change the name which would be too much) but when i see this in the box it just gives me a glimmer of nostalgia so that's why it's on the channel.

The Purple & White Minstrels?

The Songs themselves are based off the live show from the BBC series which was populer in it's time,a lot of their music were compialations of existing music remixed together into new tracks,while most were comedy songs some had an altogether different tone (Try Listening to "More Stephen Foster Melodies" if you want an example of that),they had a good run on Televison before they relaunched in the Seventies without the Greasepaint Makeup although by then they were slowly being eclipsed by new Music styles with youngsters watching Top of the Pops and listening to Pop groups rather than the Minstrel type of music with the show eventually being canceled in 1978 3 years after Lenny Henry had made his televison debut on there and the highest audiance ratings for the show since it's launch being 18 Million Viewers,the show went on tour around the country for a number of years untill it finally ended with the last one being a Stage Performance on Barry Island in 1987.

Welcome To The Blog

Welcome to the Blog

I created this blog so i can post a bit more information about some of the records that feature on the Youtube channel as well as some that might not be on there like some examples of Pickwick Record's notorius cost cutting measures and some backstories behind various obscure bands.