What Am I - Chopped Liver?
May. 24th, 2011 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdMy parents made me an avid fan of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, mostly by watching their movies on late night TV and a little bit from listening to records.
One of my current projects is to put titles and artists on the 200+ recordings I've transferred into iTunes. Some of these, maybe all of them, ought to be re-recorded (I have my parents' collection of 78s, 45s and 33 1/3s). But for now I'm just labeling what I have, which is a bit of a challenge because of the path these clips have taken. When I was a radio/TV major in 1969, I had access to a professional radio studio, and put all the parental 78s onto cassette tapes. I labeled each tape with the name and artist of each track, and also typed up a list.
A few years ago, probably when I was working in Redmond (1997-ish) I scanned the list into a Excel spreadsheet, and have worksheets sorted by tape#/side/track# and by artist. I think it was at my father's request, but when I transferred all the tapes to CDs, I did them by genre. About two years ago I ripped the CDs to my hard drive, and either the program I used did not have CDText capability, or the CDs did not have CDText embedded, but either way I have no titles on the files and iTunes just labeled them Track_1 Track_2 and so on.
So last night I started listening to each track, editing the titles into them, adding artist names if I knew them. Somewhere in CD4, I start hearing duets Eddy & MacDonald were famous for. But the baritone did not quite sound like Nelson, and the soprano, well it was hard to tell because 78s don't do well in the higher frequencies. I was convinced it was them, and blamed the many layers of re-recording on the "not-quite". So I looked up the song titles (I knew them all, of course) in the spreadsheet, and only see Nelson & Jeanette listed for two of the duets, but on another tape, which probably means another CD too. The spreadsheet listed "Kirsten & Knight" as the artists. Kirsten who? Online searches did not find a Kirsten Knight, or a soprano Kirsten from that era. Knight I was able to identify via Amazon as Felix Knight, a well-known musicals star about 8 years younger than Nelson.
I went downstairs and found the album the recordings were from (it was an album with a dozen 78s by the same orchestra on the Angel label, of favorite love songs). In very small print, it said Dorothy Kirsten and Felix Knight did the vocals. Dorothy was a major opera star who had some brief forays into radio and movies, and recorded for Angel. Reviews I have read hint that she was not the strong coloratura MacDonald was, but held her own in moderately challenging leading roles in Pucini operas. As I was putting the album back, next to it was an album with the highlights from The Desert Song, starring Felix Knight. Now I know where I heard that voice before. Interesting, because Knight was a tenor in that role, but Eddy was a baritone.
Had a call from a recruiter last night whom I had been working with, Tivo wanted to do a phone interview, so I told her Tues-Wed any time is fine, just let me know. Had the interview at 1 this afternoon, French fellow, it took a bit to understand his English, but he asked some good questions, and only one stupid QA theory question, and only one stupid in-house jargon question. I think it went well, but we'll see. Tivo is a reasonable commute, except for Hwy 237.
That done, it was time to do something about the three tubs of chicken liver and one or two of the three onions I'd bought last night. Long story short, there are now three tubs of chopped liver on the fridge which include an onion and some scrambled "best-of-the-egg" mixed in. Mixed in a little too well, though. I did not expect the dough blade on the food processor to be nearly as energetic as it was. So I fried up another onion with some sliced garlic, and will mash that in later. I figure half a tub's worth on some sourdough will be dinner tonight. Or part of dinner.
There are also three turkey drumsticks in the fridge which need to be cooked. Should go nicely with the third onion. I wonder if I should marinate them. I have some Madiera and also some el cheapo red wine just sitting there waiting to become part of a recipe.
We'll see. Right now I'm in Santa Clara, having dropped off some stuff at Goodwill. Somehow I missed the turn into the Sunnyvale branch. It's not on my GPS. Strange, that.
While I was waiting for the Tivo call, a recruiter in New Jersey with a mostly understandable Indian accent called about a contract in San Jose. The job description is one I can actually do, so I broke my rule and told him to go ahead and submit my name. Probably should not have, he is merely a phone bank person, the company his email said the job was with is a recruiting firm.
Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt stuff
????
One of my current projects is to put titles and artists on the 200+ recordings I've transferred into iTunes. Some of these, maybe all of them, ought to be re-recorded (I have my parents' collection of 78s, 45s and 33 1/3s). But for now I'm just labeling what I have, which is a bit of a challenge because of the path these clips have taken. When I was a radio/TV major in 1969, I had access to a professional radio studio, and put all the parental 78s onto cassette tapes. I labeled each tape with the name and artist of each track, and also typed up a list.
A few years ago, probably when I was working in Redmond (1997-ish) I scanned the list into a Excel spreadsheet, and have worksheets sorted by tape#/side/track# and by artist. I think it was at my father's request, but when I transferred all the tapes to CDs, I did them by genre. About two years ago I ripped the CDs to my hard drive, and either the program I used did not have CDText capability, or the CDs did not have CDText embedded, but either way I have no titles on the files and iTunes just labeled them Track_1 Track_2 and so on.
So last night I started listening to each track, editing the titles into them, adding artist names if I knew them. Somewhere in CD4, I start hearing duets Eddy & MacDonald were famous for. But the baritone did not quite sound like Nelson, and the soprano, well it was hard to tell because 78s don't do well in the higher frequencies. I was convinced it was them, and blamed the many layers of re-recording on the "not-quite". So I looked up the song titles (I knew them all, of course) in the spreadsheet, and only see Nelson & Jeanette listed for two of the duets, but on another tape, which probably means another CD too. The spreadsheet listed "Kirsten & Knight" as the artists. Kirsten who? Online searches did not find a Kirsten Knight, or a soprano Kirsten from that era. Knight I was able to identify via Amazon as Felix Knight, a well-known musicals star about 8 years younger than Nelson.
I went downstairs and found the album the recordings were from (it was an album with a dozen 78s by the same orchestra on the Angel label, of favorite love songs). In very small print, it said Dorothy Kirsten and Felix Knight did the vocals. Dorothy was a major opera star who had some brief forays into radio and movies, and recorded for Angel. Reviews I have read hint that she was not the strong coloratura MacDonald was, but held her own in moderately challenging leading roles in Pucini operas. As I was putting the album back, next to it was an album with the highlights from The Desert Song, starring Felix Knight. Now I know where I heard that voice before. Interesting, because Knight was a tenor in that role, but Eddy was a baritone.
Had a call from a recruiter last night whom I had been working with, Tivo wanted to do a phone interview, so I told her Tues-Wed any time is fine, just let me know. Had the interview at 1 this afternoon, French fellow, it took a bit to understand his English, but he asked some good questions, and only one stupid QA theory question, and only one stupid in-house jargon question. I think it went well, but we'll see. Tivo is a reasonable commute, except for Hwy 237.
That done, it was time to do something about the three tubs of chicken liver and one or two of the three onions I'd bought last night. Long story short, there are now three tubs of chopped liver on the fridge which include an onion and some scrambled "best-of-the-egg" mixed in. Mixed in a little too well, though. I did not expect the dough blade on the food processor to be nearly as energetic as it was. So I fried up another onion with some sliced garlic, and will mash that in later. I figure half a tub's worth on some sourdough will be dinner tonight. Or part of dinner.
There are also three turkey drumsticks in the fridge which need to be cooked. Should go nicely with the third onion. I wonder if I should marinate them. I have some Madiera and also some el cheapo red wine just sitting there waiting to become part of a recipe.
We'll see. Right now I'm in Santa Clara, having dropped off some stuff at Goodwill. Somehow I missed the turn into the Sunnyvale branch. It's not on my GPS. Strange, that.
While I was waiting for the Tivo call, a recruiter in New Jersey with a mostly understandable Indian accent called about a contract in San Jose. The job description is one I can actually do, so I broke my rule and told him to go ahead and submit my name. Probably should not have, he is merely a phone bank person, the company his email said the job was with is a recruiting firm.
Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunt stuff
????
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