A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

Wonderful collection of English hunting songs sung by Tom Glazer, with small chorus. Great version of "The Keeper," with small orchestral backing. This is the record that turned me on to YPR.

THE FUNNIEST SONG IN THE WORLD

Groucho's first children's record, from 1949.

GOING WEST

No story, just Tom Glazer singing some less-than-obvious American folk songs. The first record ever issued by YPR in its elementary age bracket.

THE LITTLE COWBOY

As with the Chisholm Trail record (see next entry), this one benefits from the downhome narration of Will Geer. The two stars of this story, Hank and Tex, are portrayed by Ernie Lieberman and Fred Hellerman, two years prior to the formation of the Weavers. They both do some really fine singing here.

CHISHOLM TRAIL

A script by the novelist Jay Williams, narration by Will Geer, and singing by Tom Glazer make this one of the best of the many cowboy-themed children's records.

Charity Bailey MORE PLAYTIME SONGS

Unlike her records for Folkways, or her first two records for YPR, More Playtime Songs -- and its companion Singing in the Kitchen -- present Charity not as a classroom teacher, but rather as more of a pop singer, accompanied by the small orchestral arrangements of Henry Brant.

Oscar Brand's AMERICAN ALMANAC

One of a 12-part series of "American Almanac" records written by Oscar Brand. He narrated all of them, and performed on most of them.

JEFFERSON CHORUS on the Union label

This 2-disc set of YPR's Horace Grenell conducting the Jefferson Chorus was one of only a few titles issued on Moe Asch's Union Records label. Extremely rare, this specimen was originally in Ron Cohen's collection (thanks for the cockeyed scan, Ron!), and is now in the archive at Chapel Hill, I believe.

LITTLE FUGITIVE on FOLKWAYS

The Folkways "soundtrack"* to the groundbreaking Little Fugitive movie. Top: Credit detail from liner notes. Bottom: LP cover art.

Ray Ashley is one of the many pseudonyms of Raymond Abrashkin, who wrote lyrics and scripts for many Young People's Records.

Lester Troob, then the recently-departed president of YPR, not only supervised the sound and music of the film, but also supervised the editing of the film itself, with Ruth Orkin doing the actual "fingerwork."

*The music on this LP is not actually the soundtrack from the movie, but rather a new recording of Eddie Manson performing some of the music. (Manson also recorded for YPR.)

Judith Sidorsky prizewinner (1926)

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Judith Sidorsky concert item (1944)

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YPR 1950 Central Park Concert

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"Awesome file of 1.2 million children"

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Here's some recently-discovered evidence regarding CRG's membership size. The figure of 1.2 million members is said to represent the total number who had joined since the club's inception (actually 1950—not 1951). If accurate, that's a minimum of 14,400,000 records sold, because each member was obligated to buy 12 records per year. But many members renewed their memberships one or more times, so the number of records sold is likely significantly higher than 14 million. (Again assuming the data given in this article is accurate.)

It is not clear if the 1.2 million figure refers only to primary CRG club (run by Stevenson's Greystone Corporation), or if it also includes the CRG franchise operated by Book of the Month Club.

In the book, I estimated annual record sales of "well over 2 million" by BOTH sources. But if the 1.2 million cited here refers only to Greystone's CRG, then the annual sales would actually be about double my original estimate.

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As for the 600,000 figure given for Music Treasures of the World, that is consistent with the 599,411 figure given by Milo Sutliff when he testified at a Congressional hearing earlier that year (1956).

The Ballad of Irving Katz

Irv Katz, circa 1972

Irving Katz was a well-traveled record label salesman back in the day. He started with Apollo Records after WWII, then left to become sales manager of the Children's Record Guild in 1950. In 1954, he worked briefly for Eli Oberstein and then the Urania label, before moving to Dallas in 1955 to head Century Distributors. While in Dallas, Katz knew Jack Ruby, according to the FBI memo below, which was published in the Warren Report. In 1960, Katz left Texas for California, where he became a pioneer in the blank 8-track, audiocassette, and videocassette business.

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Unchosen Cover Art

This is the design that I wanted for the cover of the book, but the publisher chose the other one instead. Which do YOU prefer? 

"Funniest Song in the World"

The announcement in Billboard of YPR's Groucho Marx disc. I knew this was issued in 1949, but didn't know exactly when until I recently found this article. Horace Grenell's name is misspelled here, as usual. "Peter Gordon" is the collective pseudonym of Horace and his wife Judith Sidorsky, in this instance.

Jewish Spectator

The Jewish Spectator, a newspaper founded and edited by a progressive woman named Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, commented in 1947 that "The success of such a venture as the Young People's Record Club leads one to believe that there is a very large field for Jewish children's discs." What did she mean by "Jewish children's discs"? The content of YPR discs is not Jewish. The owner, managers, and many of the performers were, but there was nothing unusual about that. I wonder if the Spectator comment was just an isolated view, or if it generalized.

Remembering the (original) Educational Record Center

Here's Bryan Bishop's remembrance of shopping for YPR/CRG records at the Educational Record Center (ERC) in the early 1970s.

"...my YPR/CRG records all came from a shop, the Educational Record Center, on Sycamore Street in Decatur, Ga. This was run by a dear old lady, Mrs. Hicks (don't remember her first name, if indeed I ever knew it). This was a retail store, though specialized one, and I think she did supply many of the local schools. As I remember she also carried all the Bowmar Orchestral Library LPs, and the Living Language series, and she also had Audio Book talking books on 16-rpm records that were small with large holes like 45s. (My grandmother bought the New Testament on 26 of these records.) The YPR/CRGs were in a special area at the back of the shop, not on display but stored vertically in wooden shelves. Mrs. Hicks gave me a list of the available records, and I would pick from it. All I had to go on were the titles of the records! The list, I remember, was a single 8x11 sheet of paper, double-sided; I think CRGs were on one side, and YPRs on the other. I think they were further divided by age group. The two-record sets were grouped together, and so were the "Children's Concert Series" (I had all 8 of those, by the way - and I remember only the "Nutcracker" excerpts had YPR labels, the rest were CRG.) I'm pretty sure that the list by then was far from being the complete catalogue. I had all the available two-record sets, namely: Aladdin, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the Mother Goose set, The Emperor's New Clothes and Robin Hood. The first four of these were in the original, gatefold sleeves, whereas most of the records I had came in the generic CRG sleeve with the drummer. (The only other ones I had with original sleeves were the Haydn Toy Symphony, the 2 records of Mozart dances, and the Magic Clock. It was a rare treat to get an original sleeve!)

The Educational Record Center opened, I think, about 1971...and remained open through the 1970s. I was born in May 1963 and I was 8 or 9 years old when I was collecting YPR/CRGs. I first knew Mrs. Hicks when she worked the children's record department at a big Atlanta record store in the late 60s; she knew of my preference for 78s and always had a stock of 7-inch Cricket 78s on hand there. I assume she left there to go into business for herself and that's when the Educational Record Center opened. She called us soon after opening the store because she thought, with my interest in 78s, that I would like the YPR/CRGs. She was right!"

[The ERC was sold in the late 1970s, and eventually moved to North Carolina, where it remains today.-DB]

Margaret Sanger

I recently learned that Margaret Sanger, the famous advocate of birth control and founder of what became the Planned Parenthood organization, subscribed her grandchildren to the Young People's Record Club. Two letters from Sanger to the Club are contained in Sanger's archived papers.

Canada Lee's other YPR connection

In addition to narrating "Jazz Band" for Young People's Records, Canada Lee also sublet office space from YPR at 40 W. 46th St., where the company was headquartered from 1946 to 1949.

Canada is most often remembered as a casualty of blacklisting during the Red Scare. His being blacklisted had nothing to do with his connection to Young People's Records, but there was a Young People's Records connection to his being blacklisted.

During the sensational 1950 espionage trial of Judith Coplon and Valentin Gubitchev, some secret FBI documents were made public, and one of them accused various celebrities of being Communists or "fellow travelers." Canada was one of those so accused.

The attorney who defended Gubitchev during that trial was the owner of Young People's Records, Abraham Pomerantz.

Not that there's any significance to that...

Memo

Just an artifact from the archive...

Pfeffer / Anderson

David Pfeffer and David Anderson were child actors in the 1950s, and performed on many CRG titles. If anyone has contact info for either of them, please email me at haymarketaffairs@sbcglobal.net

TG on CD

Smithsonian-Folkways has just reissued some of Tom Glazer's classic in-concert children's recordings. Stefan Shepherd has summed it up nicely in a brief review on his popular Zooglobble blog. I like his comment that this CD constitutes a "master class on how to play to kids." As an historical document, it does indeed present abundant evidence of Tom's ability to "tune in" to children and "get them on his side," as one reviewer put it almost fifty years ago. It has all worn very well because the songs are timeless, as is their performance. And some of TG's best singing is here; especially check out his soaring vocals on "Now Now Now." That song, which he and Lou Singer adapted from "Hava Nagila," was originally recorded in 1951 by June Valli and issued as a pop single by RCA Victor; I wish Tom had recorded the single himself!

And now for some discography trivia, which doesn't appear in the CD booklet.... All but three of these tracks were first issued on two LPs: TOM GLAZER'S CONCERT FOR AND WITH CHILDREN (Washington Records) appeared in 1960, and TOM GLAZER'S SECOND CONCERT FOR AND WITH CHILDREN (Wonderland Records) came out in 1962. The Washington disc, and probably the Wonderland disc, consists of solo recordings made in Washington DC in 1959, at one or more concerts sponsored by local record shop owner and concert impresario Robert Bialek, who was also the proprietor of the Washington label. The Washington LP was reissued on Wonderland Records in 1962, and both records reappeared in 1973 on the CMS label as ACTIVITY AND GAME SONGS, volumes one and two. The additional three tracks on the Smithsonian-Folkways CD come from the third volume of ACTIVITY AND GAME SONGS, released in 1977; on these songs, Tom is accompanied by a small band, and it sounds to me like they were recorded in the 1970s, perhaps in proximity to the release date.

As for the cover art on the CD, I do like it, with a reservation or two. The caricature of Tom, which is based on a photo that appeared on a few of his late 1960s LPs, is funny, wonderfully rendered, and probably more appealing to kids than the relatively dry cover art that Folkways is known for. However, I fear that the "wacky" caricature perpetuates the image of Tom as just some guy who wrote silly songs like "On Top of Spaghetti." Compare that to his contemporary, Pete Seeger. Nobody thinks of Pete as a wacky guy, and there are no wacky caricatures on Pete's many children's records. If I had to describe Tom in one word, it would be "literary." He was also serious and funny, witty and corny, scholarly and folky, loving and nasty, proper and bawdy, liberal and reactionary. And maybe a little bit wacky on the side.

Milo Sutliff testimony on Record Clubs (1956)

In early 1956, Milo Sutliff testified before Congress regarding the record club business. He said: "Last year I took a census which was not very difficult because I called the Book of the Month Club and found out how many records they ship and I called Music Masterworks and found out how many they shipped and of course I knew how many [of Music Treasures of the World] we shipped, and between us we shipped 3,300,000 classical symphony records through the mail." In contrast, he continued, "We shipped, maybe, 30,000 pop records." As of that moment, Sutliff reported that MTW had 599,411 members, adding that "some of them have canceled—lots of them—actually, 185,000 have canceled, and never bought a record. They said, 'Send me this for 10 cents, and they never bought a record.'"

Grenell's FBI File: Advertising Men's Post 209

To my surprise, there are a few interesting nuggets in Horace Grenell's FBI file (which I didn't receive until after RCR was published). In one document, for example, an FBI agent claims that YPR/CRG co-owner Milo Sutliff was an American Legionnaire. Sure enough, the New York Times archive confirms that Sutliff was at one time (1931) the Commander of the Advertising Men's Post 209 of the American Legion. Which adds a touch of irony to the Legion's attacks on YPR.