Friday, February 28, 2014

If you download RADIOLA! from a-infos radio, please read this

UPDATE (3/12/2014): a-infos radio is back online with its servers in a new home. Contributions are still needed to add disc storage space and replace worn hard drives. Help keep this invaluable service going. Contribute here.

This was an email I just received, and the message is clear that the whole a-infos archive at http://www.radio4all.net/ is about to disappear owing to a loss of server space. RADIOLA! is only one of many worthy programs archived on the site. If this is a service you use, please consider helping whatever way you can.

Dear radio4all producer,

This is a nasty and sad email to send out, but I have no choice. Lyn and Shawn, the other founders of radio4all have no time to continue with the project, we're being booted from our free rack space and power arrangement, and I'm out of cash. I am sending this note to the 250 most recent uploaders (that's pretty much everyone who has contributed a program in the last year). If you want the service to continue, we need some organization, some fundraising, and an expert php/SQL programmer to take over from the excellent foundation that Shawn built -- the servers run without problems for months at a time. I am happy to continue maintaining the hardware and doing the network stuff but I can't do it all. I am hoping that among you all there is a group of people who can form a new radio4all organization, if it is of value to you.

Radio4all at the moment is throttled at 10 megabits per second in order to keep our bandwidth costs to the level that's matched by monthly contributions. If opened wide, even now it immediately consumes about 5 times that. The hardware and software are quite capable of this rate. The real cost of doing this in a data center here is in the range of $1,200 a month, and we need to rebuild the server boxes which have done more than anyone should expect over the past many years.

Here is a summary I sent to the Prometheus radio mailing list a little while ago:

Hello Prometheus friends,

This is a question of interest and an appeal for help. More than 17 years ago, Lyn Gerry and Shawn Ewald from KPFK had the idea for radio4all (www.radio4all.net) to distribute radio programs from independent producers. They had no way to make it happen from a hosting and server hardware point of view, and I volunteered to do it. We met for an afternoon in Berkeley and figured out how to make it happen. It started with a couple of boxes on a shelf in my workshop in San Jose, now it's serious servers on serious bandwidth at a data center in Santa Clara. I have built the servers from surplus parts and gotten sweetheart deals for bandwidth when I could, and the service is running today with about a hundred programs being uploaded every week and thousands of downloads worldwide. There is about 2 TB of program material in the archive.

Lyn quit the effort several years ago, her organizing job was finished and the vision she had of a free, unregulated mechanism for uploading and downloading radio programs remains today. Shawn did a super job writing the software that runs the site, and migrating it from ColdFusion to a more generic open source implementation. Now he's swamped with his work in New York and has no time to maintain the software. Then there is the little problem of money. No one wants to pay for the service; I have contributed about $3,500 of my own money keeping it running, paying for bandwidth and server parts, and wheedling rack space and power at a colocation facility in Santa Clara. There is a trickle of contributions coming in so that amount is not growing, but it will all end soon.

Our deal for rack space and power has ended, I have two weeks to get the servers out of the rack. The archive server is down, the main server is running on one disk drive, the other drive in the array has failed. This has cost $150 a month, to replace it will be about $350, and the lower-tier discount data center plans I'm being offered will not be as reliable. To replace what we have with equivalent quality will cost around $1,200 a month, and that does not include the cost of the hardware maintenance that is badly overdue. We have had essentially zero downtime in four or five years.

Shawn's suggestion at this point is to migrate the archived programs to archive.org and shut off the radio4all service. There are probably plenty of other ways that people can use now (that weren't available 17 years ago) to get their programs out for stations to broadcast. Absent a different solution that's what will happen.

I'm happy to continue keeping the hardware and network running if there is still a need, but I can't do it all. I'm not a fundraiser and I'm not a programmer. Anyone in New York who can talk to Lyn (upstate) or Shawn (Manhattan) to see what they would like to see happen, should do that. They haven't talked to each other in years.

Please forward this mail to whoever you think would be interested in forming a new posse to keep this running. Any questions please write to me at dljradio@josephson.com

Cheers

David Josephson

"All Over the Map" February 28, 2014

(Week 382)

This RADIOLA! is drifting over its own boundaries.

RADIOLA! streams continuously from my Live365 station. Outside the lines-cast here. Each RADIOLA! program is sent to subscribers on my mailing list (email here).

Victor Light Opera Co - Gems from “Floradora” (Stuart) (1914) - Victor 35451 A
Claude Hopkins and his Orch (Orlando Roberson v) - Do You Ever Think of Me (1934) - Decca 353 B
Willard Robison w/Ipana Troubadours - Wake Up! Chill'un, Wake Up! (1929) - from Columbia 1779 D
Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders (Franklyn Baur v) - I Haven't Told Her She Hasn't Told Me (1927) - Victor 20823 B
Synco Jazzers - Two Red Lips (1929) - Madison 5063 B
The Charleston Chasers - My Melancholy Baby (1927) - Timeless CBC 1-040
Lotte Lenya w/The Three Admirals - Alabama Song (Weill-Brecht) (1930) - Mack The Knife (Naxos 8.120831)
Jabbo Smith and his Rhythm Aces - Sweet 'N' Low Blues (1929) - Retrieval RTR 79013
Prince's Band (G. Hepburn Wilson dir) - Tackin' 'Em Down (Intro: 1.Wondrous Eyes of Araby 2.When We Meet in the Sweet Bye and Bye) (1918) - Columbia A6058
Paul Whiteman and his Ambassador Orch - Best Ever Medley (“Dance of the Hours” and “Love in Idleness”) (1920) - Victor 35701 B
Nora Bayes - Jack Norworth - Turn Off Your Light, Mr. Moon Man (1911) - Victor 70038
Henry Burr - You Know You Belong to Somebody Else (1923) - Victor 19026 A
Tampa Blue Jazz Band (Samuels) (Billy Jones v) - Uncle Bud (1921) - Okeh 4522 B
Ragtime Jazz Band - Ragtime'owy Chlopiec - The Ragtime Boy (Dymitr Markiewicz) (1966) - Ragtime Jazz Band (PNCD 1007)
Bibor Olga Ciganyzenekara - Betyar Gyerek Talpig Vasban - Columbia E4231 (Jack Theakston collection)
Royale Trio (Glantz) - Little Girl (1921) - Actuelle 020737 B
Yerkes' S. S. Flotilla Orch - HMS Pinafore (1922) - Vocalion B 14415
Al Winters and his Orch (Jerry Baker v) - Wait'll I Get You in My Dreams (1932) - Crown 3437 B
Harold Stern and the Biltmore Orch (Bill Smith v) - I Wake Up Smiling (1933) - Bluebird B 5019 A
Richard Himber and His Orchestra (Joey Nash v) - It's Psychological (1934) - Complete Vol.2 (Renovation 7007)
Little Jack Little - Hold Me (1933) - Bluebird B 5014 B
Cleo Brown - When (1935) - Decca 632 A
Red McKenzie and his Rhythm Kings - When Love Has Gone (1936) - Decca 734 A
Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orch (Bob Goday v) - Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (1936) - Bluebird B 6641 B
Mal Hallett and his Orch (Buddy Welcome v) - Big Boy Blue (1937) - Decca 1163 A
Johnny Claes and his Claepigeons (Benny Lee v) (Gerry Wilmot ann) - Stompin' at the Savoy (1941) - Columbia FB 2688
Bertholt Brecht (w Theo Mackeben's Jazz Band) - Die Ballade von der Unzulanglichkeit (Weill-Brecht) (1929) - Mack The Knife (Naxos 8.120831)
Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians - Chloe (Song of the Swamp) (1944) - Decca 29220 A
Snooks and his Paramount Hotel Orch (Walter Ashby v) - Goodnight, Sweetheart (1931) - Melotone 12245

Thursday, February 20, 2014

WRONG AGAIN!

Just over three years ago I went way out on a limb with a theory about the identity of Tempo King. I extrapolated that he was actually a vocalist by the name of John Arcesi (1917-1983), who at that time (1936) had recorded with Louis "King" Garcia. My basis came from the Tempo King and Louis Garcia groups having Joe Marsala in common. Joe Marsala lived in the same apartment building as Joe Venuti, who employed Arcesi (then working under the name Don Darcy) as his band vocalist. Venuti was also known to enjoy a good practical joke.

However, here (from vintage sheet music) is a photograph of Tempo King (many thanks to Randy Skretvedt):


And here is a publicity still of Don Darcy (John Arcesi) borrowed gratefully from eBay:


They are obviously not the same person. In further scouring my available reference sources, I find a date of death cited for Tempo King of June 25, 1939. I find no further reference to that other than the entry in Roger Kinkle's The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz 1900-1950.

King's putative birth year was 1915, and I saw another reference to "intestinal complications" as the cause of death. None of the above stated may be quite accurate, of course. I sincerely apologize to all those who followed me down this bumpy dead-end lane of speculation, but at least we had some good tunes along the way.

So, now what?

Friday, February 07, 2014

"Better Than Expected" February 7, 2014

(Week 381)

This RADIOLA! is a distinct improvement over itself.

RADIOLA! streams continuously on my Live365 station. Remarkably adequate-cast here. Each RADIOLA! is sent to subscribers on my mailing list (email here).

David Bispham - Pirate Song (1906) - Marconi 30026
Raymond Scott Quintet - The Girl With the Light Blue Hair (1939) - Columbia 35247
Willard Robison w/Ipana Troubadours - Wake Up! Chill'un, Wake Up! (1929) - from Columbia 1779 D
Ace Brigode and his Fourteen Virginians - Alone At Last (1925) - Columbia 426 D
The Caroliners (Bob Haring) (Scrappy Lambert v) - Why? (1928) - Cameo 8316
Colonial Club Orch (Haring) - March of the Old Guard (1930) - Brunswick 4690
Frank Munn - Let Me Spend the Jouney's End With You (1926) - Brunswick 3250 B
The Tune Peddlers - Blue Shadows (1928) - Vocalion 15745
Willard Robison and his Piano - Clap Yo' Hands (1926) - Perfect 12311
Utica Institute Jubilee Singers - Peter on the Sea (1929) - Victor 21925 B
Yerkes Jazarimba Orch - My Mammy (Intro Um-Pah-Pah) (1921) - Columbia A 3372
Original Memphis Five - Lonesome Mama Blues (1922) - Paramount 20131 A
The Columbians - Limehouse Blues (1924) - Columbia 88 D
Irene Young and Al Weston - Those Country Days Surely Were It (1916) - Columbia A 1995
Isabella Patricola - Lovin' Sam (The Sheik of Alabam') (1922) - Victor 18976 A
Sam Lanin and his Orch (Arthur Hall v) - I'm Sitting On Top Of The World (1925) - Perfect 14523
Eddie South - Blues in the Night (1944) - The Dark Angel of the Fiddle (Soundies SCD 4120)
Banu Gibson - Why Do I Lie To Myself About You? (1990) - You Don't Know My Mind
Elsie Carlisle - 'Leven Pounds of Heaven (1932) - Decca F 3038 A
Walter O'Keefe - The Man on the Flying Trapeze Pt 1 (1932) - Victor 24172 A
Walter O'Keefe - The Man on the Flying Trapeze Pt 2 (1932) - Victor 24172 B
Ambrose and his Orch (Sam Browne v) - Me (1931) - HMV B 6068 B
Clyde McCoy and his Orch - Sugar Blues (1931) - Columbia 2389 D
Rudy Vallee and his CT Yankees - Nagasaki (1933) - Bluebird B 7358 B
Ray Noble and his Orch (Al Bowlly v) - What More Can I Ask? (1932) - Victor 24314 A
Al Winters and his Orch (Gus Fetterer v) - Moon Song (1932) - Crown 3437 A
Benny Goodman and his Orch (Jack Teagarden v) - As Long As I Live (1934) - Parlophone R2695
Ray Nichols and his Four Towers Orch (Billie Hibberd v) - And Then Some (1935) - Bluebird B 6012 A
Henry King and his Orch (Joseph Sudy v) - Love is Never Out of Season (1937) - Decca 1333 B
Matty Malneck and his Orch - Hearts and Flowers (1938) - Decca 2060 B
Leslie Hutchinson - Watching the Stars (1936) - Parlophone F 752
Joe Marsala and his Orch - Lower Register (1941) - Decca 3764 B
Lotte Lenya - Lost in the Stars (1943) - Mack The Knife (Naxos 8.120831)