[Dixielandjazz] Tabernacle Choir v. Bargain Rarities

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

Dave's reference to the Mormon Tabernacle choir with symphony orchestra reminds me of the last days of the Melvin family in Glasgow, brothers who looked different but all had the same strange voice, and who ran a record emporium (like the place latterly in Princeton) as well as another smaller shop where I found lots of jazz and blues oddities, and a religious bookshop. Eventually the reduced stock of used LPs and the religious books were in one small shop, with an evangelical staff, like the nice lady I didn't mean to upset, but the excellent LP recording of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto by John Lill was putting me off a little, playing at 45rpm as she sat knitting. 

Her boss had a fondness for overtly religious stuff, and I simply had to leave to avoid shell-shock, abandoning prospect of further bargain rarities, when Sibelius's Karelia suite music was blasting forth as if there were two symphony orchestras, and the choirs of several tabernacles starting bellowing the chorus and going from fortissimo to fortyfourfortissimo, yelling out louder and again yet louder again in English of all words (imagine this in letters an inch high)


BE  STILL [aaargh! eeek!] MY SOUL !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know about a bass singer making an early recorded entry, but this one made an early silent and unrecorded exit, prestissimo, ears ringing,  into the soothing roar of traffic on Great Western Road!  

(I can still hear!)

Robert R. Calder