Tom Glazer found in a Polish basement, and favorites of 2010

"On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese..."

At a Polish church basement sale in the EV a few months ago, I bought this Tom Glazer cassette for something like 50 cents. I also bought a lot of Polskie Nagrania vinyl in the hopes that it would be jazz but it all turned out to be light instrumental/vocal music of one kind or another. Of course, the real charm was the coffee and cupcakes being sold and the Polish kids intended to market them.

I'd never heard of Tom Glazer before--but, incidentally, I came across a stack of LPs in the garbage recently, one of which was his classic children's album On Top of Spaghetti (Kapp, 1963), which reminded me that I bought the cassette. I liked it so I thought I would share. As I was putting this post together, I realized that Folkways has seemingly already released most of it as Tom Glazer Sings Honk-Hiss-Tweet-GGGGGGGGGG and Other Children's Favorites (2008), though there are a few songs missing, like the wonderful "Pick a Bale" and "Names," which provide connecting links in the cassette's live performance. (I wonder how Folkways chose which tracks to eliminate from the program? Perhaps a white man singing about picking cotton was considered by editors to be inappropriate or, at least, expendable?) Wikipedia informs me that the late Glazer (1914-2003) did not primarily consider himself a children's singer (or held this to be the least of his accomplishments) but was rather a folksinger of the leftie stripe who left a big impact on people like Dylan and Seeger. In any case, his children's music strikes me as a wee bit more interesting and carefree than that old warhorse Ella Jenkins.

Tom Glazer - Activity and Game Songs, Vol. 1: Come On and Join in the Game (CMS, 1973)

Side A: Jimmie Crack Corn / Jennie Jenkins / Skip to My Lou / The Fox / Put Your Finger in the Air / Hush Little Baby (17:59)

Side B: Pick a Bale / Names / Come On and Join in the Game / Little Bitty Baby / Now, Now, Now / The Frog / So Long (16:21)

I'm not much of a tastemaker and I don't have a radio program, so here are my (basically) meaningless year-end stats, in no particular order, and some of which you can find out more about (or even listen to!) in other posts here on Beware of the Blog.

 

Newly released material:

1.) Anne LeBaron - 1, 2, 4, 3 (Innova)

2.) Giuseppe Ielasi - Tools EP (12k)

3.) DeBrunner/Silverman/Carter/Zlabinger - Macroscopia (Metier)

4.) Ricardo Gallo's Tierre de Nadie - The Great Fine Line (Clean Feed)

5.) Jean-Marc Foussat & Sylvain Guérineau - Aliquid (Leo)

6.) Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek - Bird Lake Objects (Faitiche)

7.) Vladimir Tarasov - Thinking of Khlebnikov (NoBusiness)

8.) John Butcher - Trace CS (Tapeworm)

9.) Frank Rosaly - Milkwork LP (Contraphonic)

10.) David S. Ware - Onecept (AUM Fidelity)

Worth hearing: Marina Rosenfeld/George Lewis - Sour Mash (Innova), Vyacheslav Guyvoronsky - Pieces for String Trio and Trumpet (Leo), Giuseppi Logan - Giuseppi Logan Quintet (Tompkins Square), Daniel Carter - The Perfect Blue (Not Two), Axel Dorner/Diego Chamy - Super Axel Dorner (Absinth), Christopher Campbell - Sound the All Clear (Innova)

 

Worthy reissues/collections of old material:

1.) Sounds of Liberation - Sounds of Liberation (Porter, orig. 1972)

2.) Sun Ra - Heliocentric Worlds 1-3 (ESP, orig. 1965)

3.) Bruce Haack - Farad (Stones Throw, orig. '60s-80s)

4.) va - Next Stop, Soweto: Vol. 2 (Strut, orig. 1969-1976)

5.) va  - The NYFA Collection: 25 Years of New York New Music (Innova, orig. 80s-00s)

 

Released in 2009 but not reviewed until 2010:

1.) Tide Tables - Lost Birdsongs CD-R (Prefecture)

2.) Giuseppe Ielasi - Aix (12k/Minority)

3.) Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Glisten (Low Point)

4.) Nicolas Collins - Devil's Music (EM)

5.) Lisa Moore - Seven (Cantaloupe)

 

Best album I've heard that hasn't come out yet: Rova - Planetary (Solyd)

Most stitches knit in a day: About 2,500 or 3,000

Longest book read: Robert Caro's The Power Broker

Comments

[Mindwrecker]

Aloha, fellow WFMUer, I was tickled to see another person writing about good ol' Tom Glazer- nice find, this K7! You may wanna have a listen/look-see at my last Tom Glazer post:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/04/tom-glazer-as-played-by-vic-flick.html
Cheers!

[Jessi Hance]

I grew up with that Tom Glazer album, memorized On Top of Spaghetti with my siblings, and sang along to all of the songs to death. I didn't discover Ella Jenkins until I was a daycare teacher, and "my" kids and I quite liked her. Of course, Ella's stuff tends to work well with preschool age, where Tom's I think of more as primary school stuff. And Ella is quieter than Tom. So to me they're both treasures, but different kinds.

[Psmith]

Was Tom Glazer the originator of "Pick A Bale"? I remember that's the same song Steve Martin was singing in the movie "The Jerk" at the end.

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