 |
 |
[The Novachord, closed and open (click either photo for an enlargement); both photos per Wikipedia]
When you grew up in the US during a certain window of time (and maybe in certain geographic areas, within certain socioeconomic strata), the culture you could absorb from the adult world was this weird amalgam of past and present. The mass media hadn’t quite figured out what “mass media” might mean. Television still felt like an extravagance. Pop-culture artifacts from the early decades of the 20th century could still be found lying around in basements and attics, waiting for (re)discovery by kids with maybe a little too much time on their hands.
One such sort of artifact in our household was 78rpm record albums. I have no idea from which side of the family most of these things might have come to us — or, rather, to the cardboard boxes in the second-floor “storage room” and in dark back corners of the basement. If they were Big Band-related, odds were good that they’d arrived trailing in Dad’s wake. But the others…?
We had a couple of records by Arthur Godfrey, for instance, including one on which he and a would-be comic country-singin’ group sang an embarrassing number called “Slap Her Down Again, Paw.” (That was the refrain, in a narrative about an adolescent girl who’d stayed out later than her parents allowed — but finally came in at sunrise.)
And we also had a collection of recordings on a musical instrument called the Novachord.
Like the Mellotron (covered here in a Midweek Music Break some time ago), the Novachord was an experimental keyboard instrument straddling the analog/digital divide. Wikipedia says only about a thousand were manufactured by Hammond (the organ company) between 1939 and 1942; production lapsed during World War II because of the shortage of parts, and never resumed afterwards because, apparently, the thing just hadn’t caught on anyway.
I don’t ever remember Mom or Dad playing the Novachord records on the family hi-fi (or later, stereo). But I listened to them myself, for some reason, and often enough that one song really lodged in my head. The label identified it as “Estudiantina,” a waltz by a composer named Émile Waldteufel. Although (as Wikipedia says) Waldteufel is considered a French composer, he was born in Strasbourg — as German a city as a French city may be, right down to the geography. (And his surname is German, meaning — I love this — forest devil.)
Given all that, maybe it should not surprise that “Estudiantina” — certainly as rendered by the Novachord, in the hands of someone named Collins H. Driggs — has so much a lilting, oomp-pa-pah beer-hall quality:
Maybe the main reason why this performance struck me with such force was that I recognized the tune well before I heard it from the Novachord recording — and even then, when I must’ve been only ten or twelve years old or so, I recognized it for an unlikely reason: it provided the melody to the advertising jingle for (yes!) a Germanic-sounding brand of beer, Rheingold. That’s Miss Rheingold* of 1949 in the ad over there on the right. I can almost hear “Estudiantina” tootling from her concertina, which perhaps sounded much like the Novachord: thin, reedy, and rather, well, burbly. I can even almost hear her singing the jingle — whose words, indeed, included the announcement: My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer…!
Background: When I set out a couple days ago on this general topic, for no reason that I can put my finger on, I had exactly two facts at my disposal:
- The word “Novachord.”
- The remembered connection between that old 78rpm record, and the Rheingold jingle.
I certainly couldn’t remember the song title, “Estudiantina.” And I don’t think I’d ever even registered the name of Émile Waldteufel.
But as I continued to think about the recording, I vaguely remembered that the overall album title coupled Novachord somehow with the word magic. It wasn’t Novachord Magic… nor The Magical Novachord… it was… was… was it The Magic of the Novachord?
And folks, I wanna tell you: I just about fell out of my chair when a quick check of Google led me to that very album on iTunes.
I love the Internet.
________________________
* The very first Miss Rheingold, in 1940, was Jinx Falkenburg. (I might have been able to invent that name, but I’d never have had the nerve to use it in a story. Too implausible.) Her autobiography, Jinx, came out in 1951, but apparently went out of print long ago. (Hers, I’d wager, is a potential best-selling story in search of the right biographer or filmmaker, especially in our beautiful-celebrity culture.) There are many pictures of her online (and yes, Jinx appears to have been something of a minx), but one of my favorites is the one at the right. She is here not signing the accordion, as it appears. She’s signing a short snorter. You can be forgiven for not knowing what a short snorter is; according to the site of The Short Snorter Project (where I found the photo), it is:
…a banknote which was signed by various persons traveling together or meeting up at different events and records who was met. The tradition was started by bush pilots in Alaska in the 1920’s and subsequently spread through the growth of military and commercial aviation. If you signed a short snorter and that person could not produce it upon request, they owed you a dollar or a drink (a “short snort”, aviation and alcohol do not mix!).
Did I say, I love the Internet?
cynth says
I don’t remember this at all!! Which is spooky to me in a way. It was kind of a jaunty little tune though, wasn’t it? We had a whole collection of them? I remember the 78s and the 45s but I don’t remember this at all. Wow! Thanks, I think.
John says
I don’t think anybody but me ever listened to it, actually. No idea what became of the records, of course, when the old house was vacated (or possibly before). But I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d already been broken. Those things were almost like brittle black glass.
One thing I’d forgotten was that 78rpm “albums” were multi-record sets because only one song would fit on one side of a record. When I found this on iTunes, I was surprised that the album consisted of only a half-dozen songs. (And also surprised to see that it was Volume II — couldn’t find a Volume I there!)
s.o.m.e. one's brudder says
so…the 78s exist (or I believe several do, haven’t looked in a while) in a basement space at TFPotco, where a 16 mm projector and some old “school” education films also exist. Maybe another sibfest at said location with lots of popcorn, beer (rheingold?), and a 16 mm copy of Citizen Kane is in order? What say everyone to say….mid-June?
John says
A pretty idyllic picture but, alas, not one that I can see in reality in 2012. Well, at any rate: not one that I can see a Florida contingent on hand for!
Retirement’s still a few years off; one of the reasons why I look forward to it is not having to ration days off. As it is, though, public-sector employees who play fast and loose with their allotted leave time are asking for trouble. :)
Froog says
Oh, what a tangled Web!
Of course, I couldn’t resist doing a little Googling on the improbably named Jinx Falkenburg (tennis players another of my weaknesses!), and… well, funnily enough, my eye was caught rather more by one of the lower results returned on a picture search, what appeared to be a photo of a Flying Tigers pilot and his plane. It turned out to be her husband, ‘Tex’ McCrary (don’t know if he was ever a Flying Tiger, but he was a USAAF officer during WWII). And the picture was posted on the website ofGeorge Malko, a Russian-American playwright/translator who had been one of his proteges, and who – I discovered! – played a key role in a famous confrontation between Richard Nixon and Nikita Kruschev.
John says
I’m proud of you. That was a jaunt around the Interwebs that I should have taken before!
Jayne says
I had to share this: My New Jersey born, of German ancestry, husband (whose been trying to get me to the beer tents of Germany for years–hell no, I won’t go) tells me that Rheingold is not a “dry” beer–just a bad, cheap beer. But I’ll bet Ms. Rheingold didn’t hurt sales none.
Hackerpschorr’s Munich Gold. A lager. That’s the gold standard (supposedly).
I fear the novachord.
John says
I’m pretty sure I never tasted Rheingold. My classicist Dad was a Budweiser man all the way, so until I was old enough to make some beer-drinking decisions of my own, that’s all I knew. But (as my family and The Missus would happily point out) somehow I managed to absorb the lyrics for a TON of television commercial jingles, including this one obviously, and fragments of Carling Black Label’s (“Ask your guy or your gal/Or your favorite pal”/”To come out to the Summer Fair”/”Mabel! Black Label!”/”At the Carling Black Label Summer Fair!”). I know that Schlitz is the beer that made Milwaukee famous, and that Schaefer-is-the-one-beer-to-have-when-you’re-having-more-than-one (and its pleasure doesn’t fade even when your thirst is done!).
Frightening, I know.
Anyhow, I bet your Mister is right about Rheingold. And that you are right about Miss R. :)
Kelly Jones says
It’s actually really surreal to come across random mentions of the novachord and the name Collins Driggs. He was my grandfather and I’ve been trying to collect info about him. I love the Internet, too! I was able to find The Magic of the Novachord album on iTunes and several YouTube recordings on records. So fun!
John says
Hi, Kelly — I love that this post found its way to you (and vice-versa). And I really love that you replied exactly three years to the day this post went up!
(As an irrelevant aside, after I posted this entry back in 2012, it occurred to me that your grandfather — who as an accomplished keyboardist may have had some experience with the organ as well as the Novachord — should have duetted with noted organist E. Power Biggs… just for the obvious album title if nothing else.)
Thanks so much for stopping by, and thanks for the note!
Bruce says
I have a couple 67 rpm albums by Collins that I found in thrift stores. Neither one is complete. Presumably the missing records were broken long ago. I do enjoy them.
John says
I went on the prowl just now for a video of any of the Rheingold beer commercials. Alas, no Jinx Falkenberg (as far as I know). But there is this — two commercials!