I am not a fan of 45`s! Just the size of them are un-handy to me. When you try to clean them it`s really hard to keep them from slipping around. Also, the quality of the sound is never up to par with an LP to my ears for some reason. It`s time consuming to get them copied off also. I`d rather use that time on 78`s myself. Anyhoo....
Here is Homer & Jethro. They were a team that started in the 4o`s sometime, they may have even got going some in the late 30`s. Homer Haynes played guitar and Jethro Burns played mandolin. They were influenced by jazz music and were EXCELLENT pickers. They also had pretty good harmony together singing also.
I always thought Homer seemed funniest, come to find out Jethro wrote most of their songs and jokes.
Most of their material consisted of novelty songs, especially what Lonzo & Oscar called "No.2 songs" (Homer & Jethro`s And Lonzo & Oscar`s material was very similar, they even recorded many of the same tunes). A No.2 song was a mainstream song, usually one that had been a No.1 hit, that was taken and made a parody of. A good example is Baby, It`s Cold Outside (with June Carter). Often, a No.2 song would actually use No.2 in the title. An example would be Hank Snow`s hit Movin` On, which was parodied and recorded by both Lonzo & Oscar and Homer & Jethro as Movin` On No.2
All the song parodies here was written by Frank Loesser, thus the title. I don`t know anything about Mr. Loesser. Apparently, Mr. Loesser was a fan of Homer & Jethro`s parodies and loved it when Homer & Jethro parodied a song he wrote. I seem to remember reading somewhere once that he requested Homer & Jethro to do this album. I guess Mr. Loesser was a believer in the old saying "There is no such thing as BAD publicity." I wonder if any of these parodies boosted the sale of the "legitimate" version of the songs.
In my opinion, this is not one of Homer & Jethro`s better albums. I posted it just to get the 45`s out of the way so I could put them on the shelf. This album also came out on an LP. I`d say the LP may have been a 10 inch LP due to the number of songs. If it came out as a 12 inch LP I`d say it may have a couple more songs on it than this 45 set. I just don`t know about the LP size (or sizes) issued of this album.
ENJOY!
The next two scans are from the inside of the album---
This last scan is from the back of the album---
Click here to download Homer & Jethro Fracture Frank Loesser
"Baby, It's Cold Outside" was recorded at Homer & Jethro's first session for RCA (May 17, 1949, New York, evening session). After they did the song someone at RCA was worried that Loesser would object (Jethro said in a later interview that there was an unwritten rule that Broadway and movie songs were "off limits" for spoofs), so Loesser was advised the song had been recorded (there are two stories: one that someone from RCA called Loesser and read him the lyrics and one that they sent him a pressing of the song before releasing it). Loesser loved it, and it was Loesser who insisted that the songwriter credit read, "With apologies to Frank Loesser."
ReplyDeleteThe other seven songs on "Homer and Jethro Fracture Frank Loesser" were recorded in 1952. They re-recorded "On a Slow Boat to China" in the 1960s for the album "Cornfucius Says."
When Frank Loesser (pronounced "Lesser) broke up with his wife, he referred to her as "The evil of two Loessers". A pretty funny guy in his own right -
DeleteThanks for the great music!
Banjofiasco
Thanks for the Homer & Jethro. As a mandolin player myself, I've always held jethro Burns as one of the greatest players of the twentieth century, and I'm eager to hear as much as I can.
ReplyDeleteThe link was removed a split second ago, my d/l stopped :(
ReplyDeletereup?
tnx! <~!~>
The link is fixed.
ReplyDelete