Sweet Talks – Osode Medley (Drum Break) 1976

A bunch of great African LPs came in the shop this week, so you know I had to take half of them home with me. Sir Shina Peters, Super 5 International, Sonora Gentil, Tony Grey and the Black Kings etc.

Many of the LPs are end-to-end listeners, top quality duelling guitar and grooving polyrhythms but the highlight of the whole pile is this two minute drum break in the middle of an eighteen minute medley. It appears on Sweet Talks‘ ‘Spiritual Ghana’ LP and its everything that is good in percussion. All at once.

The credits list the hitters as J.Y. Thorty (Drums), Yaw Samuel (Conga), Max Cozy (Percussion) and Pope Flynn (Percussion). I salute them.

Ernest Hemingway – The Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 1954

Ernest Hemingway – Second Poem To Mary Written 1944

Caedmon’s Ernest Hemingway Reading LP sounds an awful lot like Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’ recordings in Apocalypse Now. The gatefold sleeve contains extensive notes on the recordings, written by Mary Hemingway and Hemingway’s biographer A.E. Hotchner (subject of the film King Of The Hill). Unlike almost all Caedmon records which are of superb sound quality, this LP contains home recordings. A.E. Hotchner writes:

One of Ernest Hemingway’s deadliest enemies was The Microphone. The Camera ran it a close second, but The Microphone was the blackest villain that stalked his life, and despite the persistent blandishments of radio stations, television producers and record companies, he successfully fended off all efforts to put him in the grips of The Demon Mike.
But Over the years, under special circumstances, Ernest did record a few things for me on an old Webster wire recorder the he kept in his finca in Cuba, and on a transistorized pocket recorder called a Midgetape which we took on our travels. These wires and tapes, imperfect though they are, are virtually the only record we have of his voice. (The one exception is his acceptance of the Nobel Prize which was recorded by a Havana radio station.) This album contains, in addition to the Nobel acceptance, five recordings made during 1948-1961, which was the span of time I knew him.

The homemade feeling of the record carries over to the sleeve, with cover photo taken by Mary Hemingway and the candid picture of the couple attending a bullfight in Pamploma. This record is strangely personal and a bit disturbing but I guess that fits the profile we have of Hemingway. Regardless of his opposition to microphones he has a real character and presence when reading his work, something many authors that record profusely lack entirely. If he hadn’t terminated himself (with extreme prejudice) at 61 we might have heard more from him.

It doesn’t seem to be available on CD at all, the tapes belonging to Hotchner rather than Caedmon’s now parent company Harper Audio, but copies do pop up on Musicstack and Amazon sellers from time to time.
Recommended.

I love record labels.
While most music fans hate them and blame them for everything from Prince falling off to record sales slumping, I defend their place in music today, and obsess over their back catalogues.
Some labels are favorites because they are synonymous with musicians I love. The Isley Brothers and T-Neck or John Coltrane and Impulse.
Some are favourites for issuing a handful of niche records. Fondle ‘em, Prism, Childrens Television Workshop or SoundInk.
I even have love for some large labels. Atlantic still means something to me even with Ahmet Ertegün gone and the strings being pulled by the Warner Music Group. They still put out some great music, sixty years after they started. I’m even kind of fond of the the first record label, Columbia Records, despite no one having anything good to say about them. I like that their name has lasted from Wax Cylinders to MP3 downloads.

I’ll get round to writing about more of my favourite labels, but to start I’ll do a few posts on the phenomenal American literary label Caedmon.

Founded in 1953 by Marianne Roney and Barbara Holdridge (omg women!!), Caedmon initially released recordings of well known authors reading their own work. This line included works from such literary stars as W.H. Auden, Dyland Thomas, Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams and T.S. Eliot.

The above record contains the only recordings of Ernest Hemmingway and is, frankly, pretty nuts indeed.

Caedmon went on to issue records covering all areas of literature. Their children’s line featured the astonishing storytelling skills of Carl Sandburg and renditions of dozens of classic kids stories, read aloud by the likes of Boris Karloff, Carol Channing and Maggie Smith.

The “Shakespeare Recording Society” line saw recordings of the most celebrated stage actors of the 50s and 60s doing everything from Macbeth to The Rape of Lucrece. Many of them released as large box sets with lavish booklets. The “Theatre Recording Society” line featured the cream of 20th century plays, with casts to match. Caedmon recordings regularly featured Michael Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Montgomery Clift, Anthony Quayle, John Gielgud, Ian Holm, Richard Burton and the RSC.

Caedmon released three volumes of Edgar Allan Poe (read by Basil Rathbone!), Homer, Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales. They even had a Social Studies line that featured Carl Sandburg on Abraham Lincoln and Eartha Kitt and Moses Gunn reading Black Pioneers in American History – 19th Century.

The label is a favourite because it had Vincent Price reading Shelley and Ossie Davis reading Langston Hughes, but its also a favourite because of the care they took in packaging the records. Looking through my stack of Caedmon LPs, the only one that doesn’t look great is a Tolkien album, cursed with a photo of the old wizard. Every other LP I’ve seen on Caedmon is a thing of beauty.

I don’t think they ever pressed records for the UK market, so all the copies I find are imports. This means they have the chunky card “paste up” covers Americans were treated too from the 50s to the 70s. Some UK record types hate them and prefer europe’s laminated thin card sleeves but not me. I love American pressings and Caedmon are amongst the swellest with their green and blue labels on thick vinyl and their intelligent liner notes.

If I said I wanted to collect the whole catalogue I’d be a fool but I don’t leave many in the racks. Either the subject or the cast manages to sway my wallet or failing that the cover art will. Probably all three.

I’ll be doing posts on some of my favourite releases and possibly including some sound clips but be warned that Caedmon was sadly swallowed up by Murdoch’s Harper Collins and may now have a stain of google wielding lawyers. “HarperAudio/Caedmon” now releases items such as Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and The Reagan Diaries, in the finest tacky jewel cases. Some might see this as carrying on in the same direction. I don’t.

In the 50s and 60s Caedmon had that feeling of great intelligent Americanness. Warm and unselfconsciously in love with culture. A feeling I, sadly, don’t get from HarperAudio.

These are records I will bore my future kids with.

Further reading: Caedmon 50th birthday on NPR (National Public Radio)