Tell it like it is
“A Black Man Speaks From the Ghetto” Preachin’ and teachin’ in the ghetto.
Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt “Sings Cantorial Favorites” Volume 4. I got this record at a record store in Chicago. It obviously came from the collection of an interesting guy and it was one of many lps that I found around the store that had these obsessive, crazy, beat, poetic, sometimes right-on and sometimes incongruous hand-written notes scrawled right on the cover. Here are a few of his descriptive song reviews: “Like baby this sauve, powerful, floating bag is a bitch”; “Straight ahead and so very, very pretty”; A fabulously hip rocker” and “Rough and stomping, baby”.
Below is a clipping from an old Village Voice that I had stuck in the cover. It’s an excerpt from a Harvey Pekar comic about cantorial music. Mazel Tov.



Luis Aguile “Canta Para Los Ninos” Odeon (Courtesy of LP cover lover Carlos Malavida.)

Arthur Mullard of London. “Arthur was a fifties and sixties British actor (he usually played the heavy) and sort of comedian…well known for his gravelly, cockney voice and boyish good looks. His album, a collection of strange cockney monologues and painfully rendered songs (he sings the Beatles “Yesterday” as “Yus-today”) is a masterwork of dreadfulness. The cover says it all.” (Contributed by LP cover lover, Jay Strange)

Lonelyville. “The Nervous Beat” The Creed Taylor Orchestra ABC-Paramount I wonder if that’s Heartbreak Hotel there at the end of the street.

Berlin Musica Y Canciones Philips Records. Is she trying to hear that trumpet or play it with her ear?

“Learn While You Sleep” Sleep Teaching: A 20th Century Marvel. Release the power of your subconscious mind.