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December 29, 2013:

“Disney’s Children’s Favorites, Volume II,” by Larry Groce and the Disneyland Children’s Sing-Along Chorus. Twenty-nine kid songs, and I find myself wondering what was on Vol. I, because most of the classics are here.

No problems with the transfer, really, though Audacity did crash once during the editing and needed to be rebooted. The LP (from 1979) seems to have been in perfect condition. I’m pretty sure we did play it, because I remember two of the three originals Larry Groce wrote for it, but there’s no detectible wear at all.

It’s kid songs; what else to say? It’s got some of the same songs as the other albums I’ve mentioned here, such as “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,” but a bunch that I didn’t have, as well.

And that’s the last of the only-for-kids records. There are two more borderline cases, Carl Sandburg reading his Rootabaga Stories, but I think those are suitable for adults, too.

Still more Bach, comedy, baroque/medieval, and miscellaneous to go.

December 31,2013:

I said, “And that’s the last of the only-for-kids records.”

Actually, it’s not; I missed one I’ll get to later. For now I did another comedy album instead — “Welcome to the LBJ Ranch,” a not-very-funny thing where politicians’ recorded answers were used as replies to interview questions that were definitely not the ones they were originally answering. (E.g., Eisenhower is asked, “How many Americans do you think actually voted for Senator Goldwater?” and answers, “About seventy.”)

The album may be best remembered now because Frank Frazetta did the cover caricatures.

It was in excellent condition, because frankly, it’s not anything you’d bother playing more than once or twice. (By contrast, both my copies of Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family” had been played to death.)

So it’s been added to my digital collection for its curiosity value.

January 19, 2014:

“Hair — An American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” the original cast
recording.

That’s the original cast, i.e., the off-Broadway New York Shakespeare Festival cast. The show got reworked pretty drastically before it reached Broadway, so the songs on this 1967 album don’t overlap the ’69 Broadway version all that much. Here we have “Exanaplanetooch,” and “The Climax,” and “Going Down,” but no “The Flesh Failures” or “3-5-0-0” or “Sodomy.”

It overlaps “DisinHAIRited” some, but again, not all that much. And even on the songs you’ve heard elsewhere, the arrangements are often different.

Honestly, it’s more a curiosity than anything else. But I have it, and now it’s in MP3 form. I had to re-record “Air” because of a skip, and there’s some other noise here and there; the second try it didn’t skip, so it’s all good.

“Hair” is so very much a product of its time! It’s weird listening to it now.