buy it.
MOORE, SAM
MOOOHIEEE!
(EM Records)
cd
21.00
Subtitled: Musical Saw And Hawaiian Guitar Soli Recorded In Early 1920s. That's what it is, and it's SO GOOD! We're in love with this sepia-toned collection of old time tunes, some of them lively rags, others sad slowed-down ballads made even sadder by the unique sound of the saw.
If Japan's EM Records (the same label responsible for reissuing both the "Symphony of the Birds" and the Moolah records we raved about last list) has anything to do with it, pretty soon we'll have a whole little "musical saw" section here at Aquarius! It's one of their several weird, wonderful obsessions (along with thrift-store exotica LPs, obscure '70s New Age psych, pioneering electronic experiments, etc.) and so there's a slew of releases on EM featuring the gorgeous, if sometimes gimmicky (but not here!) sound of the musical saw.
We're gonna start you out with this, music by Sam Moore, an early 20th century master of the musical saw ... who also plays a mean guitar too, and who is accompanied on most of these tracks by another talent of the era, Horace Davis. (Roy Smeck and Frank Banta also make appearances.) You'll get to hear Moore's "Octo-chord" (an 8-string steel guitar) alongside the "harp-guitar" (a guitar outfitted with extra, resonating strings) of Davis on their hit, the "Laughing Rag". But it's the tracks with the musical saw that grab us the most. Listening to those, you'll understand why this instrument, steel bent and bowed, is also often called the "singing saw". It's got a definite vocal timbre, maybe also a bit like the electronic Theremin in that regard. Wavering, wordlessly moaning, haunting and eerie. MOOOHIEEE! (Man, we'd love to hear John Jacob Niles accompanied by a singing saw, if such a recording were to exist. That would be perfect.)
Some background: Sam Moore (1887-1959), was a child musical prodigy who, having quickly mastered the violin, guitar and banjo, soon developed an interest in playing more eccentric, unconventional "instruments" as well. He'd been doing so from a young age -- Moore's father once claimed that Sam, as a child, had been able to "get music out of a pitchfork" (!) although sadly, no recordings exist to prove it... But we do know that at one point Sam Moore was part of a vaudeville act called "Spooning And Ballooning" in which he played an inflated rubber balloon, dueting with another fellow who played the spoons (of course). Another of his unusual instrumental specialties was (as documented on much of this fantastic cd) the carpenter's steel hand saw, which is something of a Southern folk music-making tradition. 'Round about 1918 Moore had taken to playing the saw, and was able to capitalize on the fad for the instrument in the early '20s, bringing his sawing skills to New York City's famed Ziegfeld's Follies for a successful stint on stage circa 1920-21. Although that fad soon faded, Sam Moore never abandoned the saw, keeping it in his instrumental repertoire as his career stretched into the '40s and '50s.
All the recordings found here date from Sam's sawing heyday in the Twenties... 13 tracks all taken from rare old 78 rpm records treasured by collectors. That these vintage recordings, warm and crackly, are so burnished with the patina of the past only makes sound all the better to our ears. EM has fitted this out in handsome digipack, the only disappointment being that the extensive liner notes are pretty much all in Japanese...
MPEG Stream: "Mother Machree"
MPEG Stream: "My Old Hawaiian Home"
MPEG Stream: "Old Black Joe"
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