Billy Murray: The Denver Nightingale

I was really getting into acoustic-era music and Billy Murray's name kept popping up. I was exploring early jazz (something I had long been interested in, but came into fruition during a Woody Allen kick), and I heard some Murray music from later in his career. These were songs like "Roll 'Em Girls, Roll 'Em" and the "Follow the Bouncing Ball" kind of stuff. I was acquiring these songs randomly, trying to scoop up as much as possible. I have at least 80 songs now, spanning a good part of his career.

There were other songs that I feel like I know from my childhood, like "In My Merry Oldsmobile", "K-K-K-Katie", "Be My Little Baby Bumblebee", "Come Josephine, in My Flying Machine", and of course "Oh You Beautiful Doll".

So the search was on for the oldest recording. Audio files. I'm not hard-core or rich enough to find the original wax cylinders. The oldest I have is "Two Little Boys" from 1903. It was written in 1902 about the Civil War, and think about it: the Civil War was only 37 years prior. Crazy. (As a side note, I didn't realize Rolf Harris recorded it in the '60s. And thank you, Wikipedia, it was apparently in Trainspotting, and recorded by Roger Whittaker,and Kenny Rogers. One of Margaret Thatcher's favorites. Hmm.) Of course, the crackliness of the recording gives me goosebumps, but the lyrics are really what get me:
Did you think I could leave you dying, when there's room on my horse for you? Climb up here, Jack, we'll soon be flying to the ranks of the boys in blue. Did you say, Jack I'm all a-tremble? Well perhaps it's the battle's noise. Or it may be that I remember when we were two little boys.

Anyway, to continue. Yes, the music now sounds pretty obnoxious. Because they were literally shouting into a horn to record it on wax, so He Who Shouted Loudest was the Most Successful, more or less. But then came the '20s, with new recording technology and crooning, so Murray had to alter his voice. Though I feel like I shouldn't (because it wasn't from the peak of his career), some of my favorite recordings are from the Ed Smalle days in the '20s. Smalle has that smooth, high voice that uncannily supplements Murray's. They do a mean version of "Dardanella Blues" with some sweet harmony. It's weird from a modern perspective that they recorded so many nostalgic songs like "Down By the Old Apple Tree", "Homesick", and "That Old Gang of Mine". Everybody thinks they remember the good ol' days, back when they were a kid.

I can't handle the Aileen Stanley era in the mid '20s. I'm not a fan of Irish ballads from that time, with affected accents, and clumsy so-called realistic dialects. Ada Jones in the '10s is rather grating to modern ears, but I cut her some slack. She had many recordings in the 1890s, was prone to epileptic seizures, couldn't read music, and got others to sign her autographs (was she illiterate?). She died in 1922 on tour as a result of kidney failure. Jones and Murray's 1909 version of the popular vaudeville song "Shine On, Harvest Moon" is lovely (just ignore the questionably racist spoken part).

Yes, it's hard to avoid racism in old songs, especially vaudeville. Murray's work with Bob Roberts is at times uncomfortable (and not just because of the title "Won't You Fondle Me"). And I can't see the song "Hi Lee, Hi Lo" making a comeback in the near future (if you'll excuse me, an example: "Hi lee, hi lo. Quite funny, don't you think, to every little chink, it means 'I love you so'"). But hey, it was the time period, right? He didn't write the songs. It wasn't overwhelmingly offensive back then, I rationalize.

To return to the above image, one of my earliest pieces. I wanted to make a piece about Murray, and in the end, it became a kind of shrine. Clearly, Joseph Cornell was a major influence. The free-floating element just inside the glass references Ada Jones (who was rumored to be "Mrs. Billy Murray" in private, though they denied it), and string (that maybe implies strings on an musical instrument). There are images from the Tin Pan Alley cartoon days ("In My Merry Oldsmobile"), remains of a baseball (he was a huge fan), and other elements. About the text: in 1954, Murray, his wife, and two friends went to see Guy Lombardo's Arabian Nights. Murray was breathing heavily, and told everybody to go into the theater while he went to the bathroom. Fifteen seconds later, he was found dead in the bathroom from a heart attack. The writing on transparency in the piece is from Arabian Nights. As in many of my pieces, I bring in a light, whose source cannot readily be seen. It's life, soul, the source, the person, the beating heart. It creates warmth, especially when reflected off of the rice paper portrait. The apparatus on the side of the box is functional: it looks like one of those old, wind-up telephones,
but I've piped some of his music through it. The observer should pick that part up and listen close, and it really makes a different environment for sculpture.

Oh, Billy. It's been so long since I've looked over my research. But I definitely need to come back to this era. And when the moon shines over the cow shed, I'll be waiting at the k-k-k-kitchen door.