Waldemar Matuška- Nebeskej Kovboj (Nebraska Cowboy)

This one is pretty interesting. It's an album from 1965 by Czech pop singer Waldemar Matuška. This isn't your run-of-the-mill Eurovision stuff either. Matuška was fond of American music, and like most foreign pop singers at the time, his songs are essentially an amalgam of various styles of American and British Popular music that were current at the time (or about 5 years earlier) mixed in with the traditional music of the singer's homeland (Bollywood is the most famous example of this).

But there was one thing that separated him from the others, not only did he mix early 60s American popular music (this album mixes lounge lizard, ratpackesque vocals, spaghetti western soundtracks, and surf-rock without any subtlety), he also mixed in American Folk Music. Many of the songs are clearly based on American folk songs (the kind you had to sing in Elementary School) such as 'Růže z Texasu' which is based on 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' or 'Jó, třešně zrály' which has the same tune as 'Go Tell Aunt Rohdie'. As you might expect from an album with 'Nebraska Cowboy' as the title, most of the songs have a western theme. The first song on the album, 'Nebeskej Kovboj' sounds like the opening theme to a Czech western (if they had any westerns), and it's one of the best opening tracks of any album I've heard.

He was fairly popular in Czechoslovakia during the 1960s, he even made appearances in a few films. In 1986, he moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. Soon after, the Czechslovakian government banned his records because they thought they promoted Western culture too much. After the Velvet Revolution, he finally received the credit that he deserved. He died in Florida on May 30, 2009 (exactly a year ago).



I got this album as a gift from my parents when they came back from vacation in Prague a few years ago. It's a CD re-issue from 1996, so it had 8 bonus tracks on it too!
I've translated the song titles with Google translator, because of this the translations may not be accurate, if you know Czech and are willing to provide me with better translations, please let me know!

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The best opening track ever

Banjo Songs of the Southern Mountains (1955)

This record is a compilation of American folk songs on the Banjo released by Riverside Records. The musicians in it are: Obray Ramsey, Henry Gentry, George Pegram, Walter Parham, Harry & Jeanie West, and 'Aunt' Samantha Bumgarner.



This record belonged to my grandfather who was involved in Chicago's Folk scene during the 1950's. He played the Banjo, but from what I have heard from relatives; he wasn't very good at it. He gave me this record along with some others for Christmas a few years ago.

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.mp3 sample of the first track

The pictures of this record's sleeve are not of my copy they are from http://www.downhomeradioshow.com/2008/08/banjo-songs-of-the-southern-mountains-lp/

Virasat (1996)

This recording is a cassette copy of the soundtrack to the 1996 Hindi Indian film: Virasat. I haven't seen this film, so I can't tell you what it's about. However, I can tell you that in my opinion the music is better than that of most Indian films released after the late 1980's.



I found this tape and three others at a Goodwill in Portland, Oregon. You will be seeing the other tapes in future posts.

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One of the tracks

Mysterious Acetates

This is the first post of my blog, Will's Audio Archive, were I will be posting and uploading the rarer music in my collection. I am going to start with possibly the rarest records I own.

About a year ago, when I was at a local antique store to buy some 78s; I found 5 8" acetate records meant for home recording (home recordings were often done on records coated in a plastic called acetate in the late 1940s-early 1950s, this method was largely replaced by magnetic tape by the early 1960s). When I found them, the labels were completely blank, which added even more to the mystery. So I bought these records along with some others and took them home.

Most of these recordings seem to be of a man singing various Jazz standards while a pre-existing record of the same song plays in the background; he would sing the lyrics when the actual vocalist wasn't singing, and would scat-sing the melody whenever the real singer sang. One of these records however was a bit different; it had the same person singing an a cappella medley of different Jazz standards.

These records are not in very good shape; the acetate lacquer is coming off of each side of nearly all the records at least a little bit, but this one is by far in the worst shape:



If anyone who is reading this thinks they might know something about these recordings, I would appreciate it if you told it to me.

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Here's one of the tracks to give you an idea of what they sound like